Substitute Soul Mates

Yongguk’s first impression of Himchan is that he is a loud, flippant guy who will prove to be much worse than his former roommate since he cannot even move into their shared dorm room without causing a ruckus loud enough to draw the attention of the entire floor.

“What’s wrong?” Yongguk bites out in exasperation and ends up feeling like a sadistic sod when Himchan looks at him as helplessly as a maimed kitten dying of an incurable disease.

“This is not my bag,” he whimpers, pointing at the violently electric blue holdall splattered with butterflies in various neon shades. He looks at it as if it is the bane of his whole existence. “They mixed up my luggage with someone else’s! I don’t believe it! Where is my stuff? I want my stuff back!”

Personally, Yongguk doubts that it is possible that there is another student in the university with a bag as ugly as that but he tries to reassure Himchan anyway.

“Just report it to the warden and at the main office. The other person must be looking for their things, too.”

Yongguk is a quiet guy who keeps to himself. But apparently, there is something about his stoic manner and sharp appearance that has led to people labelling him as a ‘bully’ all his life even when there is no evidence of Yongguk ever committing such an offence. He has managed to avoid the stigma in college and plans on keeping it so.

Hence, he tries to get Himchan to stop making those painful whimpers and just sit down and get himself together first. People are beginning to pass by casting covert glances towards Room 4003, wondering if they should call for help or something.

Yongguk surrenders his secret stashes of chocolate and beer to Himchan and then accompanies him to the warden’s office where a junior is already camped with a bag which is a replica of the one Yongguk is dragging behind him.

“Why don’t you guys label your stuff?” grumbles the warden.

But both Himchan and Daehyun ignore him.

Yongguk feels mortified as the awkward third wheel when Daehyun asks out Himchan for a movie after having exchanged merely three sentences with him. And for the life of him, Yongguk cannot figure out why Himchan acquiesces so readily.

Himchan is lounging on Yongguk’s bed later that night while Yongguk tries to get in some extra reading before the classes begin but he cannot concentrate – not with a stranger lying on his bed. Yongguk abhors it when other people lie on his bed or fiddle with his things. That’s his only quirk but a strong one nevertheless.

And it is getting on his nerves so bad! But he has a sneaking suspicion that Himchan’s hushed chatter will turn into loud complaints if he asks him to ing get off his bed and if anything, all the noise at this time of night will surely cast murky shadows on his reputation. So he sits tight, his eyes fixed on the textbook in front of him.

“I can’t believe I found my soul mate!” Himchan is in seventh heaven. “I thought it was such a troublesome thing when my luggage got exchanged with his but it was fate. Fate!”

Yongguk throws a repulsive glance towards the said luggage still lying unpacked in a corner.

“I knew we were meant for each other the moment I saw him!”

Obviously, Yongguk thinks, if there are two people who like that obnoxious piece of junk within a mile’s radius of each other, then they have to be meant for each other. No one else can risk sharing half their soul with a person like that.

In any case, that is when Yongguk learns of Himchan’s fantastical belief in the cheesy old concept of “soul mates”.

“Of course, everyone has a soul mate,” Himchan says placidly. He is stretched out on Yongguk’s bed again, a book open in front of him, his laptop by his side but an incessant stream of words keep flowing from his lips. However, Yongguk has suffered through this for two full weeks already and he never thought that he would be comfortable with the idea of it, but he is. He is okay with Himchan using his bed as his personal lounge-chair.

“I don’t believe in that ,” Yongguk says dryly, twirling a pencil in his hand. “If I have a soul – and I doubt the existence of the soul in the first place – then it is very much complete and my own.”

Himchan is unfazed by such criticism.

“You don’t have to believe in it,” he says, smiling at Yongguk in a condescending it’s-okay-if-you-are-an-idiot kind of way. “It is like that whether you believe in it or not.”

Yongguk learns early on that there is no point arguing with Himchan about certain matters. Himchan has some things that he trusts with a religious devotion and his fantasy of “soul mates” is something that he believes in more than anything else.

Thankfully, Himchan spends the rest of the night with his boyfriend and Yongguk is grateful to be able to have some Himchan-free time. Himchan believes that being roommates instantly equals being best friends and his definition of best friends includes sticking to Yongguk (like a leech) all day. And of course, Yongguk does not have the requisite skills to convince Himchan to the contrary.

They break up even before the semester is over.

Himchan slinks into the room gloomily one night after a date that is abruptly cut short and sits down at one end of his own bed, knees drawn up and face hidden in his hands, sobbing quietly and he scares the living daylights out of Yongguk, who stands awkwardly near him, wondering what he should say.

But Himchan throws himself at Yongguk the next moment crying miserably into his chest and it is better and worse at the same time because now Yongguk feels there is something he can do for Himchan but it hurts so much to see him in such a state – it hurts Yongguk like nothing has ever hurt him before.

He rubs Himchan’s back, his hair and gruffly murmurs that “It’ll be okay”. He’s there for Himchan.

“I really thought he was my soul mate,” Himchan says sadly.

Yongguk has brought him to a Mexican restaurant for dinner because as far as he remembers, Himchan never mentioned coming out here on a date. And Yongguk wants to distract Himchan from his sorrows in some way. But the latter seems adamant on holding onto the troublesome thoughts.

“He was not,” says Yongguk firmly even though he doesn’t believe in all the soul mate crap. “He was an . And you are better off without him.”

He awkwardly reaches for Himchan’s wrist and Himchan immediately entwines their fingers together, looking for warmth and support.

“On the bright side, you are now free to meet your real soul mate, right?”

Himchan nods fervently.

“Yes! Yes, I will find him. I will definitely find my real soul mate – the one and only one.”

“Right,” says Yongguk considerably relieve by Himchan’s new train of thought.

Although somewhere at the back of his mind, a faint sense of foreboding is beginning to rear up its head.

By the time the winter break starts, Himchan is his loud, cheerful self again and Yongguk waves off a childishly enthusiastic Himchan before he drives back to his own hometown.

The first day he wakes up alone in his bedroom he cannot get over how quiet and lonely it suddenly feels. His family shares his traits of being quiet and thoughtful and keeping to themselves and by the third day, Yongguk misses Himchan so much that he actually picks up his phone and carries it around everywhere wondering if it is okay to call him, wondering if it is okay to text him for no reason whatsoever.

What he would have eventually done is a moot point because Himchan is the one calling him first.

“Bbang!” he exclaims, and Yongguk’s face lights up with a smile – he catches his reflection in the mirror smiling back at him. “Did you lose my number? Why haven’t you called to check if I got home okay? Do you even know who I am? Did you forget me? What are you doing? Did you get a girlfriend? Is that any reason to forget me?

Himchan barrages him with questions he doesn’t wait to be answered and he continues in this strain for a while and Yongguk throws himself on his bed, savouring the next best thing he can get at the moment – the next best thing to a Himchan sprawled over his bed talking at the speed of light.

He tells Yongguk anything and everything about his home – his family cat gave birth to four kittens (“I will send you their pictures”), his sister running away with her boyfriend but no one actually noticing till the said boyfriend’s family came knocking on their door (Yongguk is considerably less surprised by this piece of news than he ought to be), the bougainvillea tree that had been planted when he was born being struck by lightning (and a lengthy insight into how it will affect his future). Himchan takes almost an hour before he tells Yongguk what he really meant to tell Yongguk all along – the thing that he had called to share with him.

“You won’t believe it but I found him,” Himchan sounds nervous with excitement. “My soul mate! He has been there right next to me all along and I can’t believe I have been looking around everywhere when he has been so close to me all this time!”

The lazy smile that had adorned Yongguk’s face for the past hour falters, his heart fluttering apprehensively.

“Yeah? Anyone I know?”

“You haven’t met him. But do you remember I told you about a dongsaeng from school I am close to – Jongup? He asked me out when I got back on Friday and he is five years younger than me and just a high school sophomore and this is so wrong, Bbang! I can feel how it is a hundred different kinds of wrong. But we were caught in a snowstorm when we went skiing and we were waiting for it to clear out and the moment was just so perfect you know. And then I turn to look at him and he is already looking at me with this absolutely angelic smile on his perfect face. And my heart just knew when he kissed me. As pure as snow. Oh, Bbang! I can’t describe to you how perfect this feels!”

“Yeah...”

“Bang Yongguk! Please sound more excited for me! I was always the one taking care of him when he was younger because he was slow and tended to get bullied a little. And he always followed me around. And I really, really love it the best when I am with him! It feels so perfect! He knows all about me and I know all about him and we are on the same frequency! Always! I am such a fool to go looking around everywhere when he was there all along by my side. Always!”

Later, Yongguk realises that “always” is neither as long nor as enviable as Himchan had made it sound then.

Jongup is young – still a high school student – and his attraction towards Himchan begins to fade as soon as the latter has returned to college. Yongguk can tell because no matter how much he claims that he is in love with Jongup, Himchan cannot hide his disappointment when the latter does not receive his calls, takes days to reply to his emails and Himchan wants to believe that he is an understanding boyfriend. He knows what high school was like – and it must be the same for Jongup. He has his b-boying and dance crew and performances, too. And Jongup must be disappointed, too, since Himchan can’t make it to them because they live so far apart.

Soul mates or no soul mates, Yongguk secretly thinks that a long distance relationship with a teenager is the worst Himchan could have gotten himself into.

But he is soon proven wrong (again).

Himchan returns one morning – Yongguk had stayed up worrying about him all night because he isn’t supposed to be gone all night – and Himchan is hung over, his clothes unkempt and between vomiting into the toilet and gulping down the hangover soup and washing himself and crawling into Yongguk’s bed, Himchan tells him that he slept with Daehyun last night – but it was only a one night stand.

“I hate myself,” Himchan whimpers and Yongguk can feel again how badly it hurts to watch Himchan cry. “I am the worst.”

Maybe – just maybe – if Himchan wasn’t so hung up on his concept of “soul mates”, Yongguk feels, he won’t hurt as much. Everyone makes stupid mistakes. Everyone s up once in a while. But through it all, Himchan’s devout belief in his “soul mate” remains as strong, as pure as ever and more than anyone else, Himchan is the one who ends up hurt and disappointed.

Himchan does not mention to Jongup that he cheated on him – the kid doesn’t need this type of trauma – and he sinks into a quiet melancholy when Jongup accepts their break up with nonchalant calm.

He still goes to classes with Yongguk and sticks to his side all day. But Himchan’s new pastime seems to be staring off into space, thinking a t