The first time Mingyu sees Wonwoo is, unsurprisingly, in the library. The surprising part is actually that Mingyu’s in the library in the first place. He needs more sources for his paper, and the only sources he can find that will actually be helpful only exist in book form, at the university library, so he trudges out of his warm dorm room and heads to the library. He’s scrolling through the shelves, trying to find the right book (He knows there’s the little numbers that tell you where you can find the book, but he doesn’t even remember what sections correspond to what numbers, and the library doesn’t tell him anything either) when he hears a loud thud, and his head whips around to spot a dark head of hair resting on an absurdly thick textbook (and college is full of already extremely thick textbooks) surrounded by papers full of notes and figures. Everyone around the now unconscious boy shoot him confused and some alarmed looks, though no one makes a move to go check up on him.

Mingyu’s just about to go check up on him himself when someone else calmly walks up to the sleeping boy’s side. The mystery boy shakes his head in fond exasperation, sighing before he lays a hand on the sleeping boy’s shoulder, and shakes him gently. The sleeping/unconscious boy quickly wakes up, looking straight into the other boy’s eyes with absolute trust and familiarity and fondness, like the boy in front of him is incredibly important to him. The mystery boy says something in a low voice, and the sleepy boy smiles and sits up. Mystery boy helps sleepy boy pack up, and then leads the other out of the library.

Just before the two walk out of view, sleepy boy turns and catches Mingyu’s eye, and it’s like all the air was out of his lungs and into sleepy boy’s--or at least, he hopes that’s where it went.

He’s beautiful. Granted, his eyes are droopy from having fallen asleep and been woken up so suddenly, and there’s this red tint to his nose and eyes that indicates that he’s getting sick, but that somehow only makes him so much more perfect and y in his imperfection. Mingyu knows he’s attractive--so many people have stopped to ask if he was a model or taken pictures of him on the sly it’s annoying--but this guy is on a whole other level. How could others call him handsome when there was a literal Adonis on campus?

Their moment is charged with electricity, sparking the air and affecting everyone and everything in the vicinity except sleepy boy and Mingyu themselves. His skin feels the tingles, but doesn’t absorb the electricity. His eyes see the sparks, but don’t let it distract him. Everyone pauses for a moment, perplexed, but he sees it in slow motion. He can almost feel his palm and wrist tingle and respond to the electricity in the air, the electricity that came from him and sleepy boy.

And as suddenly as it comes, it goes. The sleepy boy is dragged away by the mystery boy. Time resumes normal operations, and everyone returns to their work.

All except for Mingyu, who’s still frozen in his place, a book half-held in one hand, half falling off the shelf.

What was that?

The next time he sees the sleepy boy--though he’s no longer sleepy--is two weeks later, when Minghao needs to find a book for his own project, and he’s even less familiar with the library than Mingyu (which really is saying something, but can be excused by the fact that Minghao has only recently moved to this country) so he drags along his helpless roommate (and best friend/frenemy/bickering buddies) to help him search.

“You really should have asked Joshua-hyung,” Mingyu complains as Minghao drags him along, after having shoved a coffee cup whose lid wasn’t fully put on, thus spilling coffee down his shirt, “he knows this stuff better than I do.”

“Hyung’s busy,” Minghao replies. “Upperclassmen stuff.”

Mingyu really can’t counter the not-so-eloquent argument, so here he is, scanning the shelves for the book Minghao needs. “What kind of books do you need for dance?”

“It’s not for dance, idiot, it’s for one of my stupid Gen Eds,” he snaps, eyes focused on reading the titles. “If there were no Gen Eds, I wouldn’t have to do this.”

“If there were no Gen Eds, you’d be an ignorant, dancing idiot,” Mingyu retorts.

“Still smarter than you,” is Minghao’s response. Finally, he huffs and turns to Mingyu. “I’m gonna check another section, cover more ground. I’ll text you if I find it.” Without another word, he storms off, irritated at their failing search.

Mingyu rolls his eyes and returns to the bookshelf, carefully scanning each title. He doesn’t want to get yelled at by Minghao if the book they’re looking for happened to be right under his nose, so he reads and rereads the words on the books’ bindings, methodically sidestepping to prevent him from having to look away from the books and lose his place (all the books look the same--boring.)

He’s taking another sidestep when his shoulder collides into something, making him stumble and a bunch of books fall to the floor. “Oh, , sorry--” Mingyu begins, but is cut off once he realizes just who he bumped into.

Sleepy boy. Or, well, not-so-sleepy boy.

He’s still as beautiful as he was two weeks ago, though the minor imperfections from the fatigue and probably sickness he had seen last time were erased. The strange electricity from before, which he had originally attributed to his weird brain, comes back full force. The invisible electricity this time comes from his fingers, making his fingertips tingle and twitch with the aftershocks.

“Oh, uh, hi,” Mingyu stammers awkwardly, taking a slight step back. “Uh, sorry about that.” He bends down to pick up the fallen books for the boy, making sure to pick them all up before sleepy boy got involved and they had a cliché hand-touching-over-a-book incident, because Mingyu does not need that right now, when his heart is already pounding in his chest from all the electricity and sleepy boy’s attractiveness.

Sleepy boy smiles slightly when Mingyu hands him the fallen books “It’s okay,” man, he has a deep voice, “I wasn’t looking where I was going either.” There’s a pause as sleepy boy scrutinizes Mingyu’s face, making him feel kind of self conscious. Is he really ugly to this Adonis? “Hey, I know this is kind of awkward, but--”

Suddenly, another guy comes out from nowhere, wrapping an arm casually around sleepy boy’s shoulders. “Hey, Wonwoo, you got all your books?”

Mingyu and sleepy, no, Wonwoo, flinch, stepping back and adding even more distance between them. “Uh, yeah,” he replies, glancing between mystery boy and Mingyu, as if trying to figure something out or tell one--or both--of them something

Highly aware of how awkward this whole thing is and how Minghao will scold him if he catches him not doing his duty, Mingyu backs away even more, saying, “I gotta go. M-My, uh, roommate needs my help, so...”

All too eager to get out of there, Mingyu almost falls flat on his face when he trips over air. Completely embarrassed, Mingyu all but runs away from the two.

Over the following few days, Mingyu goes through a crisis. It’s not even about school, or his future: it’s about freaking sleepy boy Wonwoo. He doesn’t know what to make of the whole electricity thing, because at first he thought it was just his mind playing tricks on him, but the second instance made him doubt even that. There’s no way that he could reimagine the electricity after spending two weeks successfully convincing himself that the electricity was a fluke, but what does it mean? Why does it keep happening around Wonwoo? Suddenly, he remembers when Seungcheol met his soulmates, Jeonghan and Jisoo, who he had met by pure chance: he described the moment their hands touched as pure electricity.

Soulmates.

Soulmates... the only crazy thing in the world that can bring two complete strangers together. The only crazy thing that could explain why he feels so much attraction to a almost-stranger who can’t get out of his mind, no matter how hard he tries. But he can’t be sure. How does he know it’s Wonwoo making him feel this way? How does he know it isn’t just him projecting his feelings on him because he finds him attractive? Why does he feel such a strong connection despite not even knowing Wonwoo at all? Is that normal for unconfirmed soulmates? Was it abnormal?

An even bigger question was mystery boy himself. Who was he? Who was he to Wonwoo? Why were they together? Were they together? Were he and Wonwoo anti-soulmates who had fallen in love with each other? Were they actually soulmates and Mingyu was just deluding himself?

There were too many questions and not enough answers for his brain, so Mingyu finally decided to solve the issue by going back to the beginning: doing research at the library.

A few minutes later, Mingyu has a stack of books on his table, and he’s poring through them with an intensity he’s never felt before. He doesn’t know where this determination came from (he’s certainly not this focused for school) but he needs to know if this electricity thing is normal, because he doesn’t remember this kind of thing from high school health/ ed class. To be fair, though, Mingyu blocked out most of the embarrassing things he learned from that class, but the most important stuff--like the whole soulmate thing--stuck with him, and he certainly doesn’t remember learning about pre-soulmate discovery electricity.

He’s working through his third book about soulmates when a deep voice says, “Wow, what kind of class are you taking?” Mingyu’s head almost immediately snaps up because he knows that voice.

“Wonwoo.” It takes him a second to realize that it’s kind of creepy to know someone’s name before they officially introduce themselves, and Mingyu’s blushing before he can stop it, and he stammers, “I-uh, I mean, that’s what your friend-boyfriend?-called you last time, so I assumed that was your name--is it not your name? I’m sorry if I just guess--”

Wonwoo(?) thankfully stops Mingyu’s blathering by laughing, making him freeze because damn that laugh is as beautiful as he is and shoot I need to stop gawking like the idiot I already look like. “No, my name’s Wonwoo, you heard right. And you are...?”

“Mingyu,” he replies normally (thank god) “I’m a second year chemistry major.”

“Wow, that sounds tough,” Wonwoo whistles. “I’m a third year anthropology major.”

“Sounds equally as tough,” Mingyu says, making the other laugh. The feeling he gets as he hears Wonwoo laugh is indescribable: he wants to feel that way forever, wants to make him laugh all the time. It’s all too much for such a little thing so soon, but Mingyu can’t really focus on the negatives when the positives make him feel this good.

“Very true,” Wonwoo concedes after he stops laughing. He inspects the titles of some of the books Mingyu has stacked, and he shoots Mingyu a confused look. “If you’re a chem major, why are you studying soulmates?”

“Oh, uh, this is, uh, extra work,” Mingyu manages to say, embarrassed by being caught. “I, uh, think I met my soulmate.” His fingers and toes begin to buzz with something faint but almost familiar, but he’s too distracted to really take time to investigate it.

“Oh.” Mingyu thinks he sees Wonwoo’s face fall, but he might be deluding himself again. It’s really a testament to how often Mingyu deludes himself. “When?”

“A couple of weeks ago,” he replies. “I, uh, never shook hi--their hand, but I keep feeling electricity, and I don’t know why.” He feels his arm start to tingle, and then he realizes that it’s happening again. The electricity is back.

“That’s a normal thing for soulmates,” Wonwoo assures him, though his voice sounds a little off (again, maybe another Mingyu delusion). “Seungcheol--”

“Wait, you know Seungcheol?” Mingyu interrupts. His legs are starting to tremble with the electricity that’s starting to consume his body (is this potentially fatal? He doesn’t want to literally die in front of Wonwoo) but he forces himself to focus on his conversation with Wonwoo, who seems to have the answers to his problem (maybe literally, but that’s unconfirmed)

“Yeah, we have a couple classes together,” Wonwoo says. “You know him too?”

Mingyu nods. “We went to the same high school. What about Seungcheol? Are you talking about him meeting his soulmates?”

He nods. “He told me he felt a whole lot of electricity the entire time he was talking to them, and then he found out they were his soulmates.”

“Huh,” Mingyu says, leaning back in his chair. “Then he must really be my soulmate.” His head’s starting to vibrate imperceptibly, and he’s not sure how long he can hold out for. Wonwoo’s his soulmate. That doesn’t clear the air about mystery boy, but right now, Mingyu doesn’t really care about him right now. He just wants to know.

As quickly as he can, Mingyu grabs Wonwoo’s arm, which was lying on the table, ignoring Wonwoo’s gasp of “what?” and puts his hand on his, palms touching.

Electricity doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling Mingyu gets when he finally connects with Wonwoo. The lightning is jolting through his body, lighting every cell aflame and causing them to die and be reborn, entirely new but a thousand times better. He can almost see the shockwaves pulsing away from him and Wonwoo, affecting everyone it touches: time slows even more than the first time, and people seem to be physically affecting, flinching or jolting in their places. He can see the lightning flashing in Wonwoo’s eyes and under his skin as his jaw drops, shellshocked. His heart is beating so fast in his chest, he’s almost certain it’s visible to everyone who can see him, and the blood is rushing so much in his ears he can’t hear a thing anyone is saying.

Even as everything calms down, as his body weakens after the rush of power leaves him, Mingyu still can’t take his eyes off Wonwoo, or his hand out of Wonwoo’s (but that’s because Wonwoo’s now holding his hand hostage in a death grip). He’s even more beautiful in the after-discovery light, with his slightly more heightened senses, and Mingyu still needs to wrap his head around the fact that Wonwoo is his soulmate. None of this had been a fluke: this wonderful third year anthropology major, the one he couldn’t get his mind off of, who he admired from afar the moment he met him, is his soulmate.

“I’m right,” he breathes.

“R-right?” Wonwoo stammers, eyes scanning Mingyu’s with an intensity that looks even more attractive on him than it probably did Mingyu. “You felt the electricity too?”

“Yeah,” Mingyu says easily. “It was really hard to talk to you today.”

“Same,” the other answers. “I was gonna introduce myself last time, but Junhui’s a cheeky, meddling .”

“That’s his name?” Mingyu can’t hold back anymore. “I thought he was your boyfriend.”

That seems to startle Wonwoo out of his funk, making him laugh again, breaking the entranced spell that probably made both of them look rather embarrassing. “Junhui? No way. He’s just really clingy. Everyone thinks we’re together, but he’s just overly affectionate.” There’s a pause as Wonwoo looks away shyly and reddens, before seemingly steeling his nerves and continuing, “How could I date him when I couldn’t stop thinking about you?”

It’s Mingyu’s turn to laugh. “Funny you say that, I couldn’t stop thinking about you either. I think I even called you an Adonis in my head. God, Minghao would hit me for being such a cheesy dope.”

“Then we can both be cheesy dopes together,” Wonwoo suggests, shrugging nonchalantly. “If that’s okay with you?”

Mingyu grins widely. “More than okay,” he reassures him, feeling his heart begin to pound harder in his chest. This is happening. He’s gonna go on dates with his soulmate. Wonwoo likes him, and Mingyu likes him, and this is all gonna go okay.

Wonwoo glances at all the books Mingyu still has stacked to the side, waiting to be read. A couple are on the floor (probably when he grabbed Wonwoo’s arm--that would explain the stinging in his knuckles) but no one’s tripped over them yet. “I don’t think you’re gonna need to do more research,” he says wryly. “Think you have time for lunch?”

“Definitely,” Mingyu agrees.

I was in the middle of writing this when I realized this fit nicely into the "Red, White and Peach" universe. So consider the same universe as the Jihancheol story!