00:00:00:00:24

Hoseok glanced down at the timer on his wrist. The numbers flashed lightly as they counted down, though they were a muted gray. But then again, everything was a muted gray to Hoseok. Less than half a minute left. He anxiously shifted from one foot to the other at the edge of the curb, unable to quell the butterflies in his stomach. Soon he would meet the eyes of his soulmate.

He knew nothing, except that it would be a man. He hoped he'd make a good first impression, that his soulmate would accept him. There were those horror stories of people who had been rejected by their soulmates, but those were few and far between. He doubted it would happen to him. And Hoseok himself was sure he'd accept his soulmate, whoever it was.

He wondered what his soulmate was up to, if he was as excited as Hoseok for their meeting. Was his soulmate driving? Was he walking down the street, decreasing the distance between them one step at a time? Was he waiting to cross at the same traffic light on the opposite side of the street? The light shone a dull gray at the moment, but in half a minute, he would be able to see red for the first time.

00:00:00:00:17

Hoseok knew it had only been a few seconds since he last checked his timer, but he couldn't stop himself from counting down along with it the time until his world would be filled with color.

He looked across the street, through the passing cars. And Hoseok saw him.

00:00:00:00:15

The man wore a plain white shirt and gray jeans torn at the knees. The shade matched that of the morning sky exactly, so it was likely a light blue, but it could just as easily be just that particular hue of gray. Hoseok grinned, knowing he would soon be able to tell. The man had to be his soulmate. The only other people in his vicinity were a young couple, holding hands and obviously soulmates from the way they looked at each other, and an elderly woman who definitely was not Hoseok's soulmate.

The man stood with his head bent down, scrolling through something on his phone and bobbing his head lightly to the music he listened to through his earbuds. Hoseok willed his soulmate to lift his head and meet his gaze, but it wasn't time yet. He wasn't worried. The timer had not reached zero yet, and when it did, his soulmate would meet his gaze. Hoseok consoled himself by admiring the man's body shape from across the street.

00:00:00:00:09

His soulmate's clothing did nothing to hide the bulging biceps the man had. He had a thick chest and a strong torso, and as a personal trainer, Hoseok knew the amount of work that would have gone into those tight muscles and tried to stop himself from staring too much.

00:00:00:00:06

The traffic light turned green for them, or for Hoseok it at least changed into a brighter gray tone, and he began to cross the street, walking towards his soulmate. The man kept his eyes glued to his phone, much to Hoseok's annoyance, so Hoseok turned his gaze back to his timer, watching it count down its final seconds.

00:00:00:00:03

00:00:00:00:02

00:00:00:00:01

00:00:06:28:54

Hoseok furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. Had his timer jumped? Instead of reaching zero, he now had 6 hours, 28 minutes, and 54 more seconds left. Hoseok shook with fear. Timers would count up when soulmates died. But his timer had leaped, skipped hours instead of counting up seconds.

Hoseok tore his eyes from his timer and looked towards his soulmate, because either way, this could not be a good thing. He had played the meeting with his soulmate through his mind hundreds of times, running through the worst-case scenarios and his most desirable fantasies. He had imagined full conversations with his soulmate, each time he would say something different. Other times they would share a heartfelt hug or even a sweet kiss before saying anything to each other.

But even in all the worst-case scenarios that ran through his mind before, never did Hoseok imagine the screech of car tires, the smell of burnt rubber, and the dull thump of the man's body, painfully thrown to the ground in a split second.

00:00:06:28:53

Hoseok felt his heart thump a beat.

00:00:06:28:52

Paying no mind to the cars grinding to a stop in the busy intersection all around him, he rushed to the lump on the ground that was his soulmate and turned him over onto his back.

“No, no, no,” Hoseok murmured under his breath.

He could feel that his soulmate’s shirt was damp with some sticky liquid that stained the white a dark gray. If he had chromatic vision, Hoseok was sure it would be red. He cupped the man’s face, shaking it gently, patting his cheeks, willing his soulmate to open his eyes. He didn’t though, and Hoseok tried to tell himself to be calm, that it would only be six hours, and his soulmate would open his eyes again. But when he looked down at his timer, it had gone up an hour.

00:00:07:34:18

Hoseok panicked, trying to find the source of the bleeding. He ran his hands up and down his soulmate’s body, this time unable to appreciate the muscles the man had worked to build.

When the sirens arrived, Hoseok was sobbing on the man’s chest, hands and face streaked with his soulmate’s blood. He let himself be dragged limply to the side as paramedics lifted the man onto a stretcher.

“Soulmate?” a paramedic asked.

Hoseok nodded blankly. He showed the paramedic his timer.

00:00:07:31:59

“We haven’t even met yet.”

The paramedic laid his hand on Hoseok’s arm in sympathy. “Let’s take you two in the ambulance together. We need to give you a check too.”

Hoseok glanced at the paramedic's hand and saw his wrist. No timer. He had found his soulmate. He had chromatic vision.

"Is this... is this red?" Hoseok asked the paramedic, showing him his hands that were spotted with dark gray to him.

The paramedic looked at him with pity in his eyes and nodded. "It's blood."

Hoseok broke down for the second time that day, choking on his stuffed nose and tears. He knew it was blood, it couldn't have been anything else. But hearing it out loud gave it an aspect of reality that Hoseok wasn't ready to accept at the moment, if ever.

The paramedic placed a hand against the small of his back, and Hoseok let himself be led into the ambulance with his soulmate on a stretcher. He barely registered another man, tall and stick-thin, being dragged out of a smoking car and carefully placed onto another stretcher, and then rushed into a second ambulance. The driver, he realized, who had hit his soulmate. For a moment Hoseok felt a surge of anger towards the man, but it was replaced with a deep sorrow when he saw that the man was in just as bad, if not even worse, shape as the man he had hit.

00:03:22:11:02

In the hospital, Hoseok sat in the waiting area of the ER as two stretchers were wheeled swiftly past him into separate operating rooms on opposite sides of the hallway. His soulmate went to the right, the driver who had hit him to the left.

00:37:04:21:54

The next few hours were pure torture for him. His timer would jump every time Hoseok looked, adding and subtracting hours, and days, and even years.

02:14:09:11:02

"Shin Hoseok?"

Hoseok looked up. A doctor stood in the doorway of the waiting room, motioning for him to come over.

"Just a short checkup."

Hoseok nodded and got up.

He followed the doctor into a side room and sat down on the paper-covered bed. He opened his mouth obediently as the doctor shone a light and looked down his throat. He stared back, unblinking, as the doctor shone the same light into his eyes. He inhaled and exhaled slowly, just as the doctor instructed him with a stethoscope against his chest. He sat still as the doctor prodded his head, then his chest, and his arms and legs for any sign of injury.

"You're all good," the doctor said, washing his hands in the small sink in the corner of the room. He had rolled up his sleeves, and Hoseok noticed that he had no timer on his wrist. He had found his soulmate.

But doctors should have chromatic vision, Hoseok told himself. He hit himself mentally. It wouldn't help to be hyper-sensitive to the timers of the people around him.

"Any questions for me?" the doctor asked.

Hoseok shook his head.

"Then you're free to leave. You can also wait for your soulmate in the waiting room." The doctor opened the door, gesturing for Hoseok to step out.

03:10:18:44:59

"Actually..." Hoseok paused.

"Yes?"

"Could I have a bandage?" he asked.

The doctor raised an eyebrow at the strange request but handed him a small roll from a drawer next to the sink. He watched as Hoseok wrapped the bandage tightly around his left wrist and tied it off.

"Thanks," Hoseok said.

"Is your timer not functioning properly?" the doctor asked.

"It's not counting down at all. It keeps skipping forwards and backwards. In the last ten minutes it's added a year," Hoseok explained. "Does that ever happen?"

The doctor thought for a moment. "In some rare cases, it can happen."

Hoseok hesitated. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know, but he asked anyway. "What... what does that mean for my soulmate?"

"There seems to be a chance of your soulmate being in a coma for a few years, but if your timer is fluctuating rapidly, it can only be reliably inferred that he is in an unstable state of health at the moment. This is likely due to the fact that he's currently in surgery, which is a very unpredictable period of time during which any minor action could have lifelong effects. It's entirely possible that he will be in a coma for the next few years, but it's also equally possible that your soulmate will be up and awake tomorrow." The doctor offered a smile.

Hoseok thanked the doctor again and mulled on what he had said as he sat in the ER waiting room. He tried to focus on the optimistic possibility of his soulmate surviving and seeing him tomorrow, but as the hours wore on, he couldn't bring himself to peel back the bandage and look at his timer again.

He wasn't allowed to be in the operating room, so instead he flipped through a few fashion magazines. One model caught his eye, pictured in a natural walking pose staring straight at the camera. He wore white skinny jeans that accentuated his long legs and a cropped white denim jacket ed at the front. A pale wide-brimmed hat perched at the back of his head. Hoseok read his name in the corner of the page.

Chae Hyungwon.

Since he worked out at the gym for the majority of his free time, Hoseok had seen his fair share of muscular men. But the taller, thinner men were always his type. Sometimes he wished he were more into buff men, he probably would've met his soulmate sooner. But somehow his soulmate was a muscle man.

As soon as he reminded himself of that, Hoseok shut the magazine and placed Hyungwon back on the magazine stand. He shouldn't be looking at other men when his soulmate was in the operating room with his life hanging in the balance. Besides, all the different tones of gray made the pictures more work for his eyes to decipher, not that it was anything new. He figured fashion magazines were for people who had already found their soulmates. He consoled himself by reading an ebook on his phone.

Time went by. Hoseok looked down at his wrist multiple times, used to looking there to tell how much time passed, only to see the white bandage blocking his view. He was tempted to remove it, curious to see if the timer was now consistent with the clock on the wall of the ER waiting room and if his soulmate was now stable, but decided against it. The room and hallway were quiet, all the surgical action and noisy machinery confined to the operating rooms behind closed doors that prohibited entry.

Soon the words on his phone were blurring together and floating off of the screen. Hoseok's eyelids became heavy and for every blink he made, his eyes stayed shut for a little bit longer. His chin dipped down to his chest, and he made no attempt to lift it back up. His eyelids slid shut, and his breathing slowed.

Suddenly there was a clamor as the door to one of the operating rooms slammed open and a man, surgical mask askew and white coat stained a dark gray that had to be blood, rushed out and ran down the hall. Hoseok eyes snapped open, and he shook the sleep from his head.

"We need a transfusion! Now!" the man, a surgeon, shouted frantically to the nurse standing at the doorway of the waiting room.

She immediately followed after him. "What blood type?"

"O negative!"

Hoseok saw the nurse swear under her breath before she ran out of his view. He felt his breath quicken and heart beat faster, fully awake now. He cursed himself for not having seen what room the surgeon had come out of. Was it the left, with the driver? Or the right, with his soulmate?

The two of them returned empty-handed, continuing their tense talk walking side by side down the hallway.

"We have O positive, but that won't work," the surgeon sighed in frustration.

"I can call the blood bank," the nurse said.

"No," the surgeon shook his head. "The nearest one's fifteen miles away. By the time they get here..."

The nurse spotted Hoseok. "Sir, if I may ask, what blood type are you?"

"B," Hoseok answered anxiously.

Before he could ask if it was his soulmate who needed the transfusion, the door to the operating room on the right where his soulmate was opened and a woman stuck her head out. She motioned them closer and moved her surgical mask out of the way before saying something with a serious look in her eyes.

Hoseok was too far away to hear. He strained his ears further and was able to pick up the next few lines of dialogue.

"Is he sure?" the male surgeon asked.

"Yes, he's adamant," the female surgeon replied.

"Is he lucid?"

The female surgeon nodded. "Go get the forms, quickly," she told the nurse.

The nurse gave a nod and rushed off. She returned within a few minutes with a thin packet of paper and a pen and disappeared into the room. Hoseok was caught between unwrapping the bandage around his wrist to see his timer and getting up to look into his soulmate's operating room. Eventually he decided against either. He didn't want to get his hopes up prematurely, and he trusted his soulmate, whatever he was doing. He rubbed the bandage, soothing an imaginary itch.

The door to the operating room on the right opened, fully this time, and Hoseok looked on as his soulmate, surrounded by a small army of surgeons, was wheeled across the hallway. He was awake, scribbling something on the top sheet of a small packet.

Hoseok's eyes were riveted on the man's face, observing the same thick eyebrows, plump lips, and sharp jawline he had seen directly after the accident. He stared shamelessly, without blinking.

And in a moment he could not have foreseen, his soulmate turned his head, and their eyes met.

It was nothing he had imagined, his soulmate half-reclined on a stretcher in a hospital gown, himself sitting in a plastic chair in a hospital's ER waiting room. There was no sudden electricity flashing up his arm like he'd heard. His heart didn't skip a beat. Time didn't stop, or slow down even remotely. In fact, the next second, his soulmate was through the doors of the other operating room.

But what was most telling was that there was no flooding of color through his vision.

Hoseok blinked. Maybe it was a subtle change that he had missed.

Hoseok blinked again. He had never experienced it before, he probably wouldn't be able to recognize it if it happened.

Hoseok blinked for a third time, now looking around. The clock on the opposite wall had the same gray colored numbers. The chairs around the waiting room were the same various tones of gray.

Suddenly in a rush, Hoseok grabbed the fashion magazine he had returned earlier. He flipped through it, scanning the pages top to bottom, in the weak hope that he would have a glimpse of anything that was not a monotone gray. He squinted closely at a page presenting a patchwork poncho that should've been painted with all sorts of colors. But all Hoseok saw were all sorts of grays.

He threw the magazine aside and pressed his face into his hands. How could he still have monochrome vision? He had made eye contact with his soulmate, just as his timer–

His timer.

Hoseok's fingers curled around the edge of the bandage, primed to unwrap it. He hesitated. Did he want to know? His fingers scratched unconsciously at the undeniable itch beneath the bandage. His earlier resolve crumpled. He gently but urgently unwound the bandage from his wrist.

05:22:16:32:07

He waited...

05:22:19:37:15

...and sighed with relief. His soulmate was still alive.

But not the man who had been across the street?

Hoseok got up from his chair for the first time in hours, legs protesting from lack of use and the long time spent in one position. He made his way to the operating room on the left, walking pins and needles out of his thighs along the way. He peeked through the small window at the hectic scene.

One stretcher was in the middle of the room, the original one that belonged there. Another stretcher, the one with the man Hoseok thought was his soulmate, lay crammed between the door and the stretcher in the center. Medical personnel swarmed the two injured men, adjusting machines and managing IV lines. A few hung back in case they were needed.

The man was still writing, had already filled up half a page, but he looked up as soon as Hoseok showed his face through the small window. He gave a small wave and a sad smile. Hoseok squinted as the man raised his arm into the air, turning it so that his wrist faced Hoseok.

00:34:06:17:32

00:34:06:17:33

00:34:06:17:34

Hoseok could just make out the small numbers, flashing upwards each second.

The man's soulmate was dead.

Hoseok looked at his own wrist.

05:22:23:09:17

So they weren't soulmates.

And then a surgeon gently pulled the man's arm from the air back to his side. She said something to him, and he nodded, offering his wrist. He didn't look away, and neither did Hoseok, as she inserted a needle into the artery of his wrist and began to withdraw blood.

When it had filled a large syringe, she stopped and retracted the needle. The man flexed his hand and resumed his writing. Even with his monochromatic vision, Hoseok could see that the man's face was paler than before.

The syringe full of dark gray liquid was quickly passed to another surgeon beside the unconscious driver. He inserted an IV needle into a vein at the comatose man's elbow and attached the syringe to it. Hoseok watched as the blood gradually drained down the tube into the man's veins.

04:06:19:11:44

Before all the blood was through the thin tube, another syringe-full was connected to the IV line. The other man, furiously writing, began trembling slightly. His skin turned a pale ashen gray. The pen fell from his fingers, but he picked it back up immediately and kept writing.

03:78:16:07:55

Hoseok watched from the small window as blood was transferred from one man to the other.

03:32:10:28:16

And with each syringe of blood... his timer decreased.

02:61:15:33:58

Hoseok could only think of one possible explanation for this. He was so lost in thought that he didn't notice the nurse beside him until she laid a hand on his arm. 

"Excuse me sir, but I can't let you stand in front of the operating room like this." She gestured towards the waiting area. "You can take a seat there. You just can't be blocking the door."

Hoseok nodded blankly and backed away to reclaim his seat in the waiting area.

He rubbed the palm of his hand against his forehead. Why had he thought the man across the street was his soulmate? Why had he been so bent on that man? It had all happened so fast, he had no time to check the man's timer against his own. He had been at a busy intersection. His soulmate could have just as easily been someone in a car. Instead of the pedestrian, the driver.

01:28:19:23:45

Once again, Hoseok stole a glance at his timer. It had only been going down as the transfusion took place in the operating room. The transfusion that restored blood to his soulmate.

00:61:22:35:29

Hoseok gave a short laugh in disbelief as he watched his timer race down. His soulmate would be alright. But at what cost to the other man?

The door to the operating room creaked open, with more of a sense of dread this time than panic. Hoseok looked up nervously.
A stretcher, body underneath covered with a white sheet, was wheeled out and away.

00:05:12:41:20

Hoseok's breath caught in his throat. His timer counted down, not up, so it could only be one person.

Sure enough, one of the surgeons came out of the room and headed towards him. She handed him a thin packet of paper. "Son Hyunwoo wrote this for you."

Hoseok accepted the paper with a somber nod and a thank you. He recognized it as what Hyunwoo – so that was the man's name – had been writing during the transfusion.

Shin Hoseok, as I'm told you're called, the letter began,

I'm writing this to you, so that you'll know what's happening. The situation here is very tense. You can't enter the room. And I won't leave alive.

You believe I am your soulmate. That's not true. It's impossible. I have a soulmate. He died a while ago. 34 days, 6 hours, 17 minutes, 25 seconds, and counting. Always counting. I'll only have one soulmate, and my timer will always count up.

His name was Lee Minhyuk. He was tall and thin. He had soft, fluffy hair. He was cheerful, caring, bright, a ray of sunshine. When we met we were both in high school. In college he was diagnosed with cancer. I spent hours, days, weeks with him in this hospital. It was all the time we had, but we held on to it together for as long as we could.

Your soulmate is right next to me, unconscious. They say he's slipped into a coma. I've been told that your timer keeps fluctuating. That's probably why. Bloodloss. During the accident, during the surgery. I don't know how much, but it's enough to need a transfusion, and it looks like a lot, from what I can tell. It's all gray to me now.

But that's why I'm here. The doctors patched me up well enough to be lucid and to understand that I've got serious internal bleeding that will need to be taken care of within the next weeks with a 10% chance of success. It's over for me, but not for Chae Hyungwon. As luck would have it, we're the same blood type. I will save him with the blood I have left.

The writing had been getting progressively messy as Hoseok read, but here it faltered and began again, all shaky lines and jagged edges til the end.

Tell Hyungwon it's not his fault. Tell him I don't blame him for hitting me with his car. I'm the one who let it happen. He's reunited me with my soulmate. And in return, I've reunited him with his.

Hoseok, don't worry. Trust your timer, but don't spend every waking second looking at it. Your moment will come. And when it does, it will be spectacular. Zero is only the beginning, and it will be a brilliant chromatic filter for the rest of your lives. Trust me.

Minhyuk died here, and I'm glad to be with him now.

Thank you.

Son Hyunwoo

And on the back, Hyunwoo's signature, written neatly with a steady hand, after pages and pages of procedures and associated dangers and risks, right below a sentence of consent.

By my signature I acknowledge that I have received information concerning the risks and benefits of blood or blood product transfusions and alternative therapies; I have had the opportunity to discuss this matter with my physician.

Hoseok sniffed, blinking back tears for what Hyunwoo had done for his soulmate. For him. He wiped his eyes on the back of his wrist, frustrated. He wouldn't ever be able to even thank Hyunwoo. But because of him, Hoseok would be able to meet his soulmate and see color.

His soulmate. Chae Hyungwon.

Hoseok blinked. Where are he heard the name before?

Chae Hyungwon.

Then it hit him.

He grabbed the fashion magazine he had thrown aside earlier and flipped to the page he had seen the model on. Chae Hyungwon stared into his eyes with the same wide-brimmed hat and short white denim jacket Hoseok had seen the first time. The same white skinny jeans hugged his legs, one straight in front, the other bent and behind.

Hoseok smiled softly, staring straight back into his soulmate's eyes. His soulmate was Chae Hyungwon. His soulmate was a model. And damn did his soulmate look good in white. He flipped eagerly through the rest of the magazine and was rewarded with a few more pages of Hyungwon. He checked his timer.

00:03:11:29:37

00:03:11:29:36

00:03:11:29:35

It had stabilized and so had his soulmate, then. Chae Hyungwon, thanks to Son Hyunwoo, would be alright. Hoseok wondered when his surgery would be done.

As if on cue, the door to the operating room opened, and the other stretcher, bearing his soulmate, was wheeled out. Hoseok grinned knowing that Hyungwon was finally out of the critical condition stage although he would need to be in intensive care until he woke up. But his smile dimmed as he looked at the packet in his hands. He swore never to forget Hyunwoo.

"Wait up!" Hoseok stood up, clutching Hyunwoo's letter in one hand and the fashion magazine with Hyungwon in the other, and chased the stretcher down the hall.

The woman pushing it slowed down but didn't stop. "Yes?"

"Where are you taking him?" Hoseok asked.

"Your soulmate, right?"

Hoseok nodded, showing her his timer.

00:03:04:29:16

She lifted the unconscious Hyungwon's wrist to check, and Hoseok caught a glimpse at the same time.

00:03:04:29:16

They matched. Hoseok released a breath he didn't know he was holding. A light, almost giddy feeling came over him. He soothed the nagging in the back of his head that worried over whether or not the universe was lying to him and Hyungwon wouldn't be his soulmate. All he had to do now was wait a few days. There was no sense in worrying against fate.

The woman introduced herself as Doctor Lee. "And I'll be taking him over to room 514. You can visit him in a few minutes, but I need to change and get him cleaned up as well." She gestured to the blood and gore splattered all over her coat and Hyungwon's hospital gown and stretcher, something that was surely red to her, but a dark gray to Hoseok.

He nodded in understanding and went back to his seat in the waiting room. He straightened out Hyunwoo's letter and Hyungwon's magazine, placing them together in his lap with the letter on top. And then he took out his phone and rescheduled all the training sessions he had in the next week. He knew it would be only three days until Hyungwon woke, but he figured they might as well have a few extra days for themselves.

At least, he hoped in three days Hyungwon would wake up. It couldn't be sooner, because Hoseok would make sure he was by his soulmate's side until their timers reached zero. He didn't know what he would do if Hyungwon woke up in three days, looked him in the eye once, and then fell back into a coma.

He shook the thought out of his mind. Hoseok was no doctor, but he'd make sure Hyungwon woke up for good. He'd make sure his soulmate made a full recovery, for himself, for Hyunwoo. Somehow.

00:03:00:16:57

It turned out plain waiting is easier said than done.

It had only been a few hours since he came into room 514, pulled up a chair at his soulmate's bedside, and sat staring at Hyungwon's closed eyelids. Hoseok knew he would see his soulmate's eyes in three days, but there was a part of him that said if he stared long enough, they would open for him before that. He felt like he was waiting for a flower to bloom – in slow motion.

The natural light filtering in through the window had gone from a bright, light gray to a darker, more solemn gray as the sun set, but Hoseok only went to turn the fluorescent lights on.

He had read Hyunwoo's letter already a second time and then placed it aside, for Hyungwon to read later. He didn't want to start reading the long list of procedures and risks, at least not when he could avoid it. Instead, he had pored over every picture of Hyungwon that was in the magazine he brought with him from the waiting room. After carefully ripping out those particular pages and lining them up on top of Hyungwon's clean hospital gown, Hoseok had pretty much memorized each picture.

In one, Hyungwon sat on the ground with his back against a wall. One hand rested on his knee while the other was held at the corner of his mouth. The black sweater he wore had a low neckline that showcased his sharp collarbones, and his black jeans were ripped at the knees.

In another, Hyungwon sat on a tall three-legged stool, gazing off into the distance at something Hoseok couldn't see, chin propped up in his hand. He wore a white shirt with a thick horizontal black stripe in the center and dark gray pants that hugged his calves and flared out at the thighs. Hoseok wondered what color his pants were.

He was bored, and his phone was running low on battery. But he didn't want to leave Hyungwon's presence for fear that as soon as he was gone his soulmate would open his eyes and he would have a missed opportunity. It was a stupid and pointless fear, he knew that. The timer said three days, and three days it would be. But he just didn't want to leave Hyungwon.

In the end, Doctor Lee chastised him.

"You're still here?" she asked as she stopped by the room. "I'm about to clock out."

 "Yeah." Hosoek stretched his arms, fighting a yawn.

"What's your timer at?"

Hoseok showed her.

00:03:00:15:28

"You know exactly when he'll wake up," she pointed out. "Why don't you go home and come back in a few days?"

Hoseok shrugged. "I don't want to leave him alone."

"Shin Hoseok." Doctor Lee stood with a stern look on her face. "Hyungwon will wake up in three days, no sooner, no later. You have three days to wait. If you insist on staying in this room for three days, so be it. But take some of that time for yourself." She looked around the room. "Get a phone charger, for goodness' sake! And there's a shower in the bathroom next door. Go clean yourself up, for Hyungwon at least. I don't want him getting an infection from your dirtiness."

Hoseok nodded sheepishly. He took a look at Hyungwon, eyes trailing up from the light gray of his thick lips to the soft lashes of his closed lids.

"Be right back."

In no more than half an hour, true to his word, Hoseok returned to room 514, to his post at his soulmate's bedside. He had a phone charger the receptionist had agreed to lend him and a new stack of fashion magazines he had more or less stolen from the ER waiting room.

He found that while he had been gone, another bed had been wheeled in and set up for him to stay beside his soulmate, and he internally thanked whoever had thought to do that. He took the towel around his neck and rubbed his head vigorously to dry his hair as much as he could before turning off the light and getting into the bed.

His hair was still spiked up with water when he set his head down on the pillow. He to his side to face Hyungwon. The next day, he would see about getting a change of clothes. But for now, he was tired.

"Goodnight," Hoseok whispered across the room to his soulmate.

There was no reply. But he wasn't expecting one.

00:02:07:46:21

Hoseok began talking to Hyungwon. He didn't know if his soulmate was listening to what he was saying, didn't know if he could hear. But he talked anyway. Anything to pass the time.

"I'm a personal trainer," he said. "You know, the kind that helps people achieve the physical goals they set for themselves. So I spend some time at the gym." He laughed at the understatement and immediately corrected himself. "No, I spend a lot of time at the gym, pretty much all my time. It's a wonder I got to meet you. I barely meet anyone new other than my clients." Hoseok chuckled a little and sighed. "I should really get a social life. But I'll have you in two days."

He spared a glance over at Hyungwon, who lay in the same position as the day before, IV needle at the elbow, eyes shut.

"As far as I can tell, you're a model," Hoseok kept rambling. "You'd never be one of my clients, you're in perfectly fine physical condition. Of course, if you wanted to be a client, I'd accept you. You're my soulmate." He paused, not used to having such a one-sided conversation. "I work out a lot," he continued. "Too much, as my small number of friends tell me. But I have what I want in my body. It's taken time and effort and work to get it, and it'll take all that to keep it, but it's worth it."

He flexed his biceps to show Hyungwon but quickly dropped his arm, realizing that his soulmate couldn't see it. Suddenly feeling both foolish at what he was going to do next and courageous at the lack of witnesses, Hoseok grabbed Hyungwon's limp hand and wrapped it around his upper arm, holding it in place with his hand.

And he flexed. "Can you feel–"

The door opened.

Feeling like he had just been shocked, Hoseok instantly dropped Hyungwon's hand back onto the bed and his own back to his side. He sat up in his chair and tried to act natural as a nurse came in with a tray.

"Hungry?" she asked, giving him a suspicious look.

"Yes, thank you!" Hoseok enthusiastically accepted the bowl of ramen and a pair of chopsticks.

"How is Hyungwon doing?"

"Well," Hoseok answered. "Very well."

"That's good." The nurse performed the typical checks on the coma patient and then left.

Hoseok breathed a sigh of relief. "God, that was embarrassing," he admitted to an inert Hyungwon.

He picked up the chopsticks and slurped up a mouthful of ramen, only to stick his tongue out in disgust. "Ugh, soggy noodles!" he exclaimed.

"I like ramen," Hoseok told his soulmate, "I really do! But not like this. There aren't even any vegetables in here!" He picked up a small chunk of gray onion. "This doesn't count." He looked at Hyungwon with envy in his eyes. "You're lucky. Getting all your nutrition from that IV. You'd better not get sick after you wake up. I don't want to eat any more hospital food."

The room fell silent as Hoseok ate the rest of his ramen. It wasn't good, but it wasn't that bad either, and he was hungry enough to disregard the mushy texture of the noodles and bland taste of the broth.

00:01:04:47:21

"You're beautiful," Hoseok said as he taped another magazine page of Hyungwon to the wall.

He wouldn't normally dish out such straightforward compliments like this, but he was accustomed by now to there being no reaction. Hyungwon lay motionless in his bed no matter what Hoseok said, and no one else was in the room to bat an eyelash at his frank words. And so for another day Hoseok could say things like "your lips look so soft" and not cringe. He didn't have the courage yet to stick out his hand and feel if his soulmate's lips really were soft.

So he hadn't crossed any lines. Yet.

But Hoseok really hoped his soulmate wouldn't be creeped out by the wallpaper of his hospital room when he woke up. It wasn't that he was obsessed with Hyungwon. It wasn't that he was trying to make room 514 into a shrine for his soulmate. It was just that he was bored and that he had nothing else to do than cover the walls with his soulmate. He avoided the ebook on his phone to conserve battery power. Nevermind the phone charger the receptionist had lent him. It didn't charge fast enough.

Hoseok carefully tore out another page featuring Hyungwon. He flipped it over so that he could secure tape to the back and groaned in frustration. Hyungwon was on the other side too.

"What am I supposed to do?" Hoseok asked his mute soulmate. "Your hair is styled so nicely on this side, but on this side your eyes are so pretty!"

He received no answer, and eventually he just put the page on top of Hyunwoo's letter on the small table in the corner.

There was something satisfying and mesmerizing about all the Hyungwons taped up on the walls. It gave Hoseok a warm, reassuring feeling in the pit of his stomach that helped calm the churning portion of his stomach where the disagreeable hospital food resided. He realized what it was a second later.

In all of his modeled photos, Hyungwon's eyes were open.

Hoseok had spent almost the entirety of his three days with Hyungwon lying in the sturdy hospital bed studying his soulmate's face. He could probably draw it blindfolded, if he were any good at drawing. But he had never seen his eyes. He would, tomorrow, but having all the pictures of Hyungwon with his eyes open gave Hoseok happiness and hope – that his soulmate would make a full recovery, that his soulmate would accept him, and that his soulmate wouldn't be creeped out at the shrine he would wake up in.

The majority of the clothes Hyungwon modeled were monochromatic, black and white. Hoseok wondered if it was because Hyungwon hadn't found his soulmate and couldn't tell the colors he was wearing. In a small number of photos though, Hoseok could detect the various hues of gray that he had come to associate with different colors. Those he taped at the center of all the others.

Hoseok wouldn't wait to see all of Hyungwon's colors.

Zero couldn't come fast enough.

Until, finally, it was almost there.

00:00:00:00:24

Hoseok draped himself over the side of Hyungwon's bed. He craned his head to look at the muted gray of Hyungwon's pictures on the wall for the last time. Less than half a minute left, and he would be able to see in color. Pale moonlight shone through the window, mixing with the white fluorescent light of the room. The same butterflies materialized in his stomach once again as he watched the numbers on his wrist flash down, second by second, to the moment he had been waiting for his entire life.

00:00:00:00:15

He shifted in his chair, trying to make himself more relaxed. It was unfair, he thought, that he was so anxious while Hyungwon was not agitated in the least bit. He smoothed his hair down, as much as he could when it kept popping back up in waves. He smoothed his shirt, considering for a second to change from the plain t-shirt into a more conventional collared shirt but quickly ditching the idea. He had no time.

00:00:00:00:06

The corners of Hoseok's mouth lifted up in an excited smile. He tore his eyes away from his timer to look at Hyungwon's face. The soft eyelashes, strong nose, plush lips, sharp jaw. Short hair, curled lightly at the ends and a gray so dark it was almost black, framed his face perfectly. This was his soulmate.

00:00:00:00:03

00:00:00:00:02

00:00:00:00:01

00:00:00:00:00

Hyungwon opened his eyes.

Hoseok beamed and held his gaze, unblinking. He had imagined this moment so many times. He had dreamed of this moment so many times. But because he had never experienced it before, he had never imagined it to be like this.

Light flooded his vision. Color flooded his vision.

At zero, the dark gray of Hyungwon's eyes that Hoseok had seen in the pages of fashion magazine he had taped up melted into a dark cinnamon brown he had never seen before. The light gray of Hyungwon's skin faded into a pale tan. Hyungwon's lips became a vibrant pink from the dull gray they had been just a few seconds earlier. Even the monochrome colors, black and white, were more striking – the moonlight shining through the window was now a vivid silver.

But gazing into Hyungwon's eyes, all Hoseok could think was, zero was such a lovely shade of brown.

"Hello," Hoseok said after a while, still staring into Hyungwon's eyes.

His soulmate cleared his throat after not using it for a long time. "Hello."

The single word from his soulmate was enough to renew Hoseok's wide grin. "How are you feeling?"

"Sore... but not bad." Hyungwon offered a smile of his own. "You?"

Hoseok's eyes crinkled at the edges. "Just perfect."

He finally broke his gaze with Hyungwon to turn his head and look at the colored pictures he had grouped in the middle of the wall. His soulmate followed his gaze, mouth gaped slightly open.

"What do you think?" Hoseok asked tentatively.

Hyungwon's eyes snapped back to him. "...Are you obsessed with me?"

Hoseok flushed, a tint of pink appearing on his cheeks. "I just had nothing to do, that's all... You're not as surprised as I thought you'd be though," he observed.

Hyungwon let out a short laugh. "You know, I could hear what you were saying."

"Oh no." Hoseok buried his face in his hands.

"And I just want to say," Hyungwon pulled Hoseok's hands from his face, "I think you're beautiful too."

As much as Hoseok wanted to jump into a bottomless pit at the moment, he couldn't help but feel an attraction to Hyungwon right then and there that pulled him closer to his soulmate. He lowered his hands on either sides of Hyungwon's head, creating two dips in his pillow. Maintaining eye contact, he leaned down and placed his lips against Hyungwon's.

"Thank you," he whispered into his soulmate's sweet lips, and then pulled away.

The two stared at each other, lips parted and shining, and shared a smile. Hoseok sat back down in his chair, and Hyungwon lay content in his bed.

As his life, Hoseok had waited for zero, waited for color. Zero had been his goal from the start, the moment his sight would be blessed with color, the end of his monochromatic vision. But as he looked into Hyungwon's soft chocolate eyes and the glistening pink of his lips, he realized Hyunwoo was right. Zero was only the beginning of the rest of their lives.

Soon after, Hyungwon stuck a hand out from under his blanket, an invitation. Hoseok took it in both of his hands and gently massaged it until Hyungwon broke the silence.

"So are my lips soft?"