Mina remembers first truly realizing what the sudden appearance of symbols on the back of her hand meant sometime around the age of ten.

She remembers Sana breaking off mid-sentence to gawk down at where her left hand grips the laces of her skates, and her own eyes flick down to see odd looking characters being scrawled into existence on her skin.

“Miinaaa!” she had gasped, eagerly grabbing for Mina’s wrist to bring her arm to both their eye levels. “Momo nee chan look! Mina chan’s soulmate!”

“What kind of alien writing is that?” the older girl scoffed, having lazily skated over to curiously look at Mina’s hand, and the youngest resists the urge to pull her arm back and tuck it inside her jacket. “Well its obvious your soulmate’s not even Japanese, but I have seen that characters before, I just cant remember what…” 

Mina had tugged her arm back then, acting nonchalant when in fact she already wants to know and learn the language.
Sana then made a noise, grinning widely. “Don’t you recognize the writing? It’s in Taiwanese. Remember where we’ve seen those kinds of symbols before?”

Mina slightly perks up, eyes widening at the realization. 

— — —

Still, that day had left Mina hyperaware of the writing on her hand ever since. Sure, she’d noticed it all throughout her youth—smudges of colored markers or crayons popping up on her hands when she hadn’t even been coloring that day, awkward doodles popping into existence on her forearms—but after that day, Mina understood that it was her soulmate.

Mina loves the idea, even if it still is something that no one has been able to figure out. But it had been something that existed many, many years before, and it was such a small thing that no one ever completely questioned its existence. In fact, being able to write out messages to your soulmate on your skin made it incredibly easy to meet… as long as you knew the language.
Mina buys books on the basics of Taiwanese, and struggles to comprehend where to even begin.

She hasn’t even tried to reciprocate. Writing a message in Japanese was a no go since her soulmate was obviously Taiwanese, but Mina had thought to try and draw a small doodle on her skin, just to let the other person know that she was there. But whenever Mina tries to touch pen to skin, she falters and decides to put it aside for next time.

And “next time” isn’t until well into junior high, when the buzz around soulmate messages was at its peak. With coming of age came the interest of love, and the fact that Mina’s hands always seem to blossom with writing gets her more than her fair share of attention.

“What language is that?” one of her classmates asks her, her eyes wide. “Wow… is he writing an essay on your arm, or something?”

“It’s Taiwanese, and I… I think it’s a list,” Mina says sheepishly, her own eyes following the never ending scrawl of Taiwanese pouring from her palm and down her wrist. “I’m not sure what of though.” She frowns when one sentence is harshly scrubbed off, another few words settling into its place. ‘Four’, Mina thinks she recognizes from one of her books. Four of what?

The day when Mina finally writes on her skin comes in the middle of winter, one of those days where she’s too tired and cold to care about the drone of the teacher, and wishing she was skating.

Mina idly watches the snow fall outside when a flash of movement catches her eye. With a start, she realizes her soulmate is writing something else—not a list, but a long, solid black line down the back of their hand. And another. And another—

Mina lets out an audible snort when she realizes that her soulmate has drawn a tic-tac-toe board.

The teacher clears his throat, and Mina blushes, pretending to focus until the class resumes as if it hadn’t been disturbed. Only then do her eyes dart back down to her left hand, and Mina feels the beginnings of a smile when she sees that her soulmate has already drawn a bold X in one of the squares.

Mina pauses in reaching for a pen. Is she ready? Does she want to finally make contact with her soulmate?

Almost as if in response to her thoughts, her soulmate bolds the X, drawing it out with thicker lines and making their impatience clear. Mina smiles then, and lets her pen touch the back of her hand quickly enough to draw a crude looking circle in the center of the board.

Her soulmate’s response is almost immediate. Instead of another X, Mina’s entire hand begins to fill with little hearts circling the game, and Mina feels her ears begin to burn.

Immediately after that, she feels terrible—it’s the first time she’s ever made contact with her soulmate after years of having the other writ