But his ambiguous reaction still leaves me, deep in my thoughts. He’s taking so long to return, neither do I have any idea what he is doing out there right now. The train is fifty coaches long, and the train will be coming to a halt in another thirty minutes. What might he be searching for, out there, at a moment like this? Is he regretting things? Is he looking for a route to escape?

But it is an inevitable fact that our hearts did indeed correlate. They connected, they touched our souls and led us to find our way to one another. I can never be certain of what this truly means, not until he returns to me, not until we learn the truth ourselves. But it scares me. It scares me if I’m almost too sure about what I feel. If it isn’t exactly what his heart returns? If it is the one thing that I truly fear? I don’t think I can take two heart breaks all in one day. I am in enough of misery already and I don’t want my heart to shatter even further until there’s nothing left. I’m sure I will never be able to love again, I’m sure my heart will remain to be scarred for life. But in this world, time and age where the sole indulgence laid in the hands of your lover, I cannot prepare myself to lead my life on my own. I will rather die.

I pull the lapels of my coat aside as the glow on my chest became fainter and fainter until there’s nothing left. Maybe he’s too far away from me now. Or maybe…maybe he suddenly realized that his heart just made a mistake. Or I must have glowed for another. A man that I will never meet.

With a sigh, I cover my chest with the coat and button it up, covering myself complete in the thick dark blueness of the jacket. Seeing nothing at all is almost too comforting to me, especially as long as you don’t realize how far the love of your life has flown away from you. I imagine him to have left me completely, to have found a better train compartment further away from me, in a secured distance where his god-forsaken heart will not start glowing again. Perhaps he would come running again, gather his belongings and escape this painful reality before all of it could even begin to catch up with him. All of these thoughts is implying one painful truth to me. It hurts even worse, to be left out with no soulmate even while being a wholly complete human being than it is to be defected and have no glowing heart. I wonder if there is more of me. I wonder what the fate of my kind really is.

I move to the furthest corner of the compartment, pull my feet up and bury my face in my hands. I can feel the rush of emotions overflowing inside me, knocking on all my senses, desperate to break through. I try to hold on, nonetheless. Because I’m a woman, and women in this period of time do not cry for being left alone. Rather, they strive to go on living on their own. That’s the value of women, of human beings generally, in the mid-2300s. We know where we belong, we know where we stand, and also we must know where the rest of our days lie.

The train slowly comes to a halt. I can feel it in the descending pressure within the compartment and also my body. I stay still for a moment, realizing that this little adventure on love ofour time has finally come to an end. I won’t lie. It was truly a remarkable experience. To learn that true love has never died is a sure reassurance to me; although it is quite as heart-wrenching to realize I might be one of the few who will not be someone who’d experience it. At least I am able to accept the reality. At least I am able to live the rest of my life without doubts. And that must be enough for me.

As the train comes to a complete halt and as I hear the hustle and bustle outside, the unlocking of compartments and the endless chatter of the travelers. I come to a final resolution. Never keep expectations. Never let my heart on loose. I have to accept that I am indeed, one of the odds. One without love. I open my eyes, let out a long sigh and proceed to stand up on my feet. They’re quite wobbly, my feet, perhaps because I was in the same position for too long. Nonetheless, I gain my balance, fix my jacket over my dress, then the mess of my hair and finally reach for my bags. The bubble has so much as evaporated in the air. It was solely a dream. And I, finally, am stepping out to face the truth, the reality.

But then…but then, the door to the compartment pulls open just as I am reaching for it. My heart does a strange skip, everything goes warm inside me. Expectation, wonderment, all the feelings that I needed to suppress are pushing past my good reasoning. I’m stilled for the moment as I’m revealed to the clamber of hurriedly passing travelers. His glowing chest. And him.

For a moment, everything is in complete silence. I feel like I’m in a dream. He’s standing there, before me, his tender brown eyes searching in mine, and pearls of sweat sliding down his pale skin. I stare back at him. Wondering if I’m in a daze, if I’m in an alternate reality of some sort where things were actually working out as I wished. But things tumble down and shatter into millions of fragments in a matter of few seconds. I feel his hands sliding around my neck, cupping my face. I feel him move towards me. In reflex, my eyes fall shut. And then…and then…his tender, warm lips are on mine.

I gasp, I whimper, and I breath in his scent as if it’s all that I need. My hands reach out to him, feel his chest and imagine that the emanating warmth that I feel under my cold palms is from the glow of his heart, glowing, perhaps, for me. His lips are tugging and nipping onto mine, his raspy stubble rough against my skin. I respond to him the best I can, despite my still hovering doubts and tremor. I allow him to slip past my teeth and go on the furthest that he can, explore me as if I am a precious treasure hidden beneath the depths of the deep blue sea. It’s then that I feel his hands move downwards, slip past my shoulders and reach the button of my jacket. He undoes them, one after the other in the best way that a man can while having his eyes closed and lips kissing another. The moment the glow of my chest reveals, I feel it like a splash of warmth against me. I flutter my eyes open, and slowly he breaks the kiss. We’re staring at one another, once more. But this time, we’re gasping, trying to catch our breath. We’re smiling. And we’re glowing; vigorously than ever.

“Sorry” he whispers and gives me one of his wondrous smiles. “That was not the kind of introduction I was going for….”

I smile, only the slightest, but I remain still, even as his fingers tenderly touches my cheek. “But upon seeing you…I lost all my good reasons”

This, perhaps, is the most beautiful thing someone has ever told me that I myself lose all my good reasons in seconds. I stare up at him, my eyes giving away something funny that he looks down at me equally amused, before I break into endless laughter. He watches me as I laugh to my heart’s content. His gaze, soft and warm as if he’s looking down at a child. When I compose myself and look up back at him. His eyes are glassy, his lips are smiling the gentlest, and his cheeks are dusted pastel pink. And despite the rush of crowd rushing out behind him, pushing and pulling him as they did. He seems unfazed. Almost as if…he’s in a world of our own.

“I trust my heart to make the best choice of all” he says, in a voice so soft but honest that I feel warmth in my eyes.

“A-and that is…?” I ask, and I leave the question hanging, because I’m too scared to voice out the word. Too scared if it will turn out to be true and I will yet again be left in square one.

“You….” He says and kisses the tip of my nose. “And I won’t lie…you are such a uniquely attractive woman yourself…” he takes this a moment to slowly push ourselves into the compartment and close the door behind him. “Your eyes, your hair…. your everything honestly make me run out of my mind…but…”

I laugh and he laughs too, because such a confession is so unlikely to come from a man that I have met for the first time.

“But…?” I urge, and he takes a step back, I take a step towards him, and he leans against the closed door.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for so, so many years. And that wait proves it to me now…that this is whom I have been waiting for. It proves to me so many things. Not just what my heart and mind has to say when I finally meet the girl of my dreams, but my conscious, my fate….”

He takes a deep breath then, and looks up into my eyes. “I want to protect you. With all that I have. If there’s one thing I have learned from the soulmates is that it’s not to only produce your kind…but also to protect your soulmate, to make them happy, to wipe the tears off their eyes and to hold their hands, be beside them through thick and thin. And that…. that’s what I want to be for you…. I want to be your guardian. I want to be your forever…”

It takes a moment for me to realize that there are tears pooling in my eyes. You see, humans don’t necessarily have to say that they love you to make you believe that they do. They can go for it in any possible way. At any given time. Love is to have no boundaries. Love is to know it yourself that you set the decisions yourself, on whom you would give it to, from whom you would receive. Nothing can decide where your love might be headed on to, no matter what time and age you live in. For me and him, our hearts still live in the past. In the days when men can buy coffee for beautiful ladies and kiss in the dampness of a senselessly falling rain. Our belief in love connected us, made us mutual. It’s not about how attractive you find the other’s eyes; but about how attractive it is, when you find yourselves in an enigmatic connection of mutuality and compatibility. And thus, love would last long.

“Then be my forever” I respond, without taking a moment to think. I don’t have to think, for I know the truth from the depths of my heart. We might have met just a few hours ago, and all that we shared might be minimal. But that bit of an exchange was enough for the fated hearts to connect.

He throws his head back and laughs. A beautiful one, like dozens of wedding bells, all ringing at once. I smile as I watch him. Watching the endless pleasure of his laughter, and thinking to myself. ‘This man here…this man…he is my soulmate’

His laughter ceases, and with a tilted head and a smile on his lips as his hands rested on his waist, he says; “Well, it seems that your story just took…a completely unexpected twist”

“So did your trip” I point out, gesturing upwards where it is mentioned the next stop, which clearly wasn’t his.

“Oh…” He mumbles, and takes a step towards me. “Well, you know…I can always hologram myself” He says, and cups my face then, only to catch my lips in a sweet kiss.

“But wait” I whisper, just as he pulls away. “Why did you run away at that time…? When we…you know…”

He purses his lips and with closed eyes, he nods to himself, as if he’s reassuring himself with the answer that he already had in mind. Then he opens his eyes. “I wanted to check…” He says.

“Check what?”

He smiles. “To check if there was any other heart glowing in this vicinity except for you and me.”

“And?” I go on.

“Well, of course. I ran from one end to the other, to make sure that your heart or mine wasn’t glowing for someone whom we may have randomly met”

“Uh-huh”

“And for my relief, there was only you and I…glowing for one another…”

“Oh…” Oh

He kisses me again, and pulls back, giving me a stern look. “And where on earth were you waddling off to, if it wasn’t even your stop?”

I don’t reply. I can’t. I am too embarrassed. Too ashamed to not to have thought of things the same way that he did. He only wanted to make sure that it was indeed me...for him and him for me. But all the while, I was distrusting him. I was crying, and making a complete fool out of myself. He watches me for a short moment, expecting for me to respond. But when he realizes that I am not really going to, he seems to accept that his hunch on my strange behavior is indeed right. He rolls his eyes in a rather dramatic manner and helplessly shakes his head. “Oh dummy! Did you really think I will ever dare to do something like that to you?”

I look up and part my lips, trying to find my words to respond. But then he cuts in, with a smile. “I just told you. I…I trust my heart than anything else. And if it’s you that my heart is asking for…well, then, it is indeed you.”

He’s making a strange face as he says this, which eventually make me laugh. It doesn’t take me more to realize that I have indeed found the one. The thing about soulmates is that, they could be anywhere. Perhaps that’s why you need the glow of your heart; or you’d indeed be the fool that you are, ignore your heart’s call and run away in fear, only to end up making a decision so wrong. I made the wrong decision once, because my heart and the glow in my heart are two different things which I couldn’t make out with my own little immature mind. But along the time and with experience, I have grown. I have grown to realize that this handsome young man I randomly met in the train, 1004, does indeed hold my heart.

I giggle in response, and he reaches out to slowly tap on the reddened tip of my nose as he speaks.

“So, Miss 2012…don’t you deem it as strange that you hold a part of the past and also ‘forever’ in your name?”

Forever. 012. Yeon-Won-Hee. It has never occurred to me, honestly. Perhaps because it has never made much sense to me albeit it carrying a bit of our past. I don’t know what might have transpired in that year in the past. I don’t know who or where we could have been in that period of time. But now, that I look at it. My name indeed make sense to me, as much as his, ‘angel’, did to both of us.

“Two…forever” I mumble, my eyes bearing into the universe of million stars, which is his.

“Indeed” he whispers back, taking my hand in the warm one of his. “You and I, forever”

“And you” I add, and put my hand on his quietly but vigorously glowing chest. His heart which glows along mine. I feel his hand reaches over to me, and the warmth of his palm, I feel, is resting just below my shoulder, where it still shines. I pull him further down, and feel his warm breath colliding with mine. I smile. This is it. Here is my soulmate. A happy ending of my own.

“And you…” I repeat in a low whisper, and close my eyes, “You…my angel…Forever…”

***

Hello everyone!

I'm sorry it took me so long to give you the ending. I started this story as an entry for the K-pop magazine i work for, but as my stories usually would, it ended up being too long for a publication. But I loved writing this, and the amount of thinking i had to put in for this is immense. I am so bad at fantasy and yes, science fiction that I do not usually take up that challenge; but as a woman who has begun to grow her roots as strong an independent, finally folding a new page in life and, yes, finally being able to see progress in healing depression, I decided to take a risk. I am sure this story has so many loop holes and loose edges, but this is purely a work of fiction, and I do not assume technocism will ever rise to power (Or such a thing even exists) And also this is my attempt of putting the prompt of 'Glowing chests' into a tale, so I tried to make things as concievable as possible. I hope my attempt does have some good. Nonetheless, apologies for keeping you waiting. As I said, I'm far from home at the moment, away from family and friends, trying to find the self I lost in the labyrinth of life. It has done me good so far. But in retrospect, I have lost my touch on writing. So many of my stories are needing attention. But if anything, I will get back to all of those stories that you love; from Life is Well to Hopeless Romantic. I haven't forgotten their plots at all, so I hope you will be looking out for them.

Last but not least. I love all of you who read my stories. I write them for you.

And also, if you have any questions about this story, or just anything, generally, ask away. I'm very flexible and open is I am.

Wish to give you more than I already do, because every single one of you are beautiful souls.

Loads of love,

Achini