Chanyeol can’t wait. Chanyeol can’t wait until the day comes that he meets the one and finally, finally, he’d be able to see the world for real.

He’d finally be able to see the beauty that is color. Every single varying pigment and each individual hue along with that unique spectrum.

Ever since he was little, it’s all that he’s ever wanted.

He remembers asking his parents what it’s like, what it’s to see the world for what it truly is, to have the view be heightened and magnified into the greatest potential possible.

He’s told that it’s beautiful. He’s told that it’s breathtaking, and it’s more than they’ve ever imagined color to be. Chanyeol’s also told that it’s also not as significant as they expected it to be. His parents say that the color isn’t something that they realize is so important. They say that there are other, more important things in life.

Chanyeol doesn’t understand. Especially when he asks his aunts and uncles, who give him the same exact answer, Chanyeol’s even more puzzled. And then, he asks his neighbors, and his friend’s parents, and every single adult who has met their pair. And they all say the exact same thing.

The colors are beautiful, but they’re not terribly important.

The colors are vibrant, and they bring life to everything, but it’s not the most important thing to cherish once you meet your pair.

When his parents told him this as a child, Chanyeol couldn’t fathom what this meant. In his puzzling predicament, he missed the mutual glance his parents exchanged.

Chanyeol just doesn’t get it.

Right now, all he sees is one tone. It’s varying degrees of dark and light through his eyes, and he just wants to meet the one who can finally bring vibrancy and energy into his life. It’s all he’s ever wanted.

Now, Chanyeol’s in his early twenties. Nearly all his friends have found their pair.

He remembers marveling when he saw some kids in elementary school found their pair by mere chance. It was amazing, really.

Chanyeol remembers one day, when he was walking with his best friend, Sehun. It was completely by chance, that it happened.

It was just before the first day of third grade. They had been walking down the hall rather carelessly and mindlessly, simply killing off time before school started. They were lucky to have the same class and teacher.

And then, that’s when it happened. Another little boy had been scurrying in the hallway, probably hurrying in case he was late on the first day of school.

Sehun and the boy collided, shoulders impacting so hard that both somehow staggered down to the ground.

 Chanyeol remembers what happens next as clear as day, because it was his first experience witnessing a matching occur.

The boy, whose name he would later learn to be Luhan, gasped. His eyes widened even further. His gaze traveled everywhere before finally settling onto Sehun. And Sehun, unlike Luhan, did not let his gaze wander. Actually, his gaze was glued right onto the boy he had bumped into.

Chanyeol was no doubt envious, but the feeling wasn’t really envy, if you dug down deep enough. It was really just wonder and fascination. It was happiness, for his best friend, and it was hope.

What if he met his pair soon? Would he finally be able to see shades and tones, and pigments and the visible light spectrum?

Year by year, long month by month, Chanyeol waited for the day he would meet his pair. And yet, year by year, and long month by long month, his pair did not appear.

At his age, it’s actually pretty late. It’s rather uncommon for someone at his age to have not met his pair, but he’s optimistic nonetheless. He can feel it, somewhere deep within his heart and soul in the swirling mass of emotions that he is constituted of, he can feel it.

He doesn’t know what his pair looks like, or who his pair even is, but Chanyeol’s positive that his pair will someday, finally show up.

Do Kyungsoo can’t stand it all.

He hates it. He hates it when people find their pair and look all lovey-dovey together as they bask in the new color that swells and overwhelms their optical nerves.

Every day, he hears people speak of how great it is to meet their pair. He reads about all the artists who flaunt the ability to finally see the beholden pigments that make up the visible spectrum.

It all makes him so angry.

Nobody seems to be able to appreciate the beauty that lies within the black and white. The people he terms as simple minded fools miss the point. They can’t see how just one hue can contain so many spectrums. From just black to white, there are so many shades, and each shade has the capability to express just as much as any other pigment.

Kyungsoo likes how the smallest difference in contrast makes the black pop up off the white, or the white sharpen against the black, or how the two blend to form a middle ground, a beautiful gray.

Kyungsoo also hates it all because he’s never had someone to talk to who’s met their pair.

Growing up in an orphanage, Kyungsoo doesn’t remember his parents. No, he can’t remember his parents. He was only two when they passed away.

He wishes he could have asked what it was like, to meet your pair.

What a feeling it must be, first setting your eyes on the individual that you’re meant to be with. Of all the billions and trillions of people on the earth, there’s one that’s just meant for you.

Kyungsoo thinks it’s not fair, too.

What if you never find your pair? What if your pair is somewhere on the other side of the world, and it’s impossible to ever meet?

Are you doomed to a life knowing you haven’t found the one? Are you trapped into living a life with someone who makes you happy, and yet having to live with the guilt that the person you’re with isn’t who was destined to be with you?

How terrible that must be, Kyungsoo thinks, to live loving someone, and yet know deep down that they are not who you should be with.

From a young age, Kyungsoo grows in a life of solitude.

He watches as people around him find their mate, some younger than average, and others much older than average.

He frowns in disgust and swears to himself that he will never succumb to the stupidity that is a ‘true’ pair. It’s stupid that people are meant to be together. Kyungsoo sees so many things that can go wrong, so many things that can split a love apart, so many things that can shatter a relationship into so many pieces that no force in the world could ever put all the shards back together again.

Like the car accident that took his parents away.

He’s been trying to find the pieces of his heart, but too many chunks are missing. He swears that some shards have been ruthlessly ground up into a powder that flows away with the wind to be carried and spread across the world.

So, when Kyungsoo enters University, he really doesn’t care that he hasn’t found his pair yet. He’s actually happy.

He’s content living in this monochromatic life. It’s dull, but it’s a dull that he’s made his own. It’s his own special schedule that he’s grown attached to for the twenty years he’s lived.

His schedule is wrecked in his first university class; an introduction to art.

From the first day, he can already label every single student in the room. He sees those who simply love the history of famous artists and how they developed their masterpieces. He sees those who simply like to create their own masterpieces. Most of all, he sees those who long to find their pair, if they haven’t yet, and he sees those who marvel over every single pigment and hue that is the visible spectrum of light.

It’s easy to tell who has found their pair because they seem to exude a small glow. Every individual tends to have a special color, and it’s completely unique, if you look closely enough. Kyungsoo admits that it’s a little cool that in a pair, each individual’s color is mixed with the other’s to signify their pairing.

Well, at least, that’s what Kyungsoo’s heard. He doesn’t know if it’s really true or not, because all he sees is black, white, and everything in between, but he doesn’t mind.

There’s a loud one in his class, and he scowls in distaste. Even in the monochromatic color scheme of his vision, he can tell the guy is loud and energetic.

He overhears him speaking enthusiastically of color.

Kyungsoo figures the guy has already met his pair.

It makes him frown and scowl again. Looking around the room, Kyungsoo sees nobody as interested in just blacks, whites, and grays as he is, and he figures that he’ll be on his own this school semester.

When the instructor steps in, all the students sit randomly in the art room, quickly quieting. She has a seating chart, which Kyungsoo really doesn’t care for, but when he’s placed right next to the tall, lively individual from earlier, he frowns in distaste.

“Hi, I’m Chanyeol.” The voice introduces, and Kyungsoo barely makes eye contact. For one, he’s surprised at the deep tone of the other’s voice, and two, the giant is still much taller even when both of them are sitting.

“Kyungsoo.” Comes the cold response. Kyungsoo’s already labeled Chanyeol as one of those annoying people who just won’t shut up about how ‘wonderful’ color is, and how ‘pairing’ is simply a blessing.

Kyungsoo doesn’t shake his hand.

In his peripheral, he can see the hand retract rather awkwardly, but he hears Chanyeol’s laughter loud and deep in his right ear, and it’s all too friendly. It’s a foreign feeling and one that Kyungsoo doesn’t enjoy in his developed life of solitude.

“Well, nice to meet you Kyungsoo!”

Their ‘conversation’, if it could even be termed that, is cut because their teacher clears , beginning class.

Chanyeol loves his art class.

Though there’s nobody he knows in the class, none of his friends in it, he loves it. He loves how there are people like him who simply love color and just want to see it for real, sharing the same longing as him, but he also loves how there’s an appreciation for everything that is art.

It’s such a general term, but he can’t help but smile at the thought.

Art can be anything anybody wants it to be, and to him, art is finding the one who was meant to be with you, destined to love you and for you to love them from the moment of conception. To Chanyeol, art is the swirls that the melding of personalities makes that’s portrayed in secret smiles, the holding of hands, and the touching of lips.

Art is love and love is art.

“So, how are you?” Chanyeol asks conversationally. The class is well over halfway done for the entire year, and Kyungsoo has yet to return a proper response.

“Good,” comes the simple, short, and curt reply.

Much of their conversations simply ended like this.

Their seating arrangement places them next to one another, and everyone’s working on an art piece of their choice.

Chanyeol and Kyungsoo and complete and polar opposites.

Chanyeol took to the oil pastels, and though he can’t really see what the shades and hues of the colors he’s putting onto the canvas are, he can tell by feeling. He thinks that this one looks red, even though he doesn’t even know for sure what red looks like, and he fills in the petals of his flower. He reaches for what he thinks is green and fills in the rolling hills. His art is based on feeling, and it’s completely fluid. Chanyeol draws what feels right. That is his art.

Kyungsoo took to the charcoals. It’s where he feels most comfortable, in his life of monochromic visions. He can see for sure what each is going to look like, and as he outlines the rain clouds onto his paper canvas, he finds relief and solitude because what he sees is what everyone else sees, regardless of if they’ve found their pair or not. With and marks that are precise and calculated, Kyungsoo forms rain clouds and droplets of water in black, white, and gray. He depicts countless umbrellas and the outlines of faceless people.

He and Chanyeol are complete opposites.

Opposites attract.

Kyungsoo frowns when Chanyeol’s color pastels roll a little too close to his own workspace. His own fingers are black and smudged with the charcoals he’s working with, and he definitely doesn’t want to touch those pastels because the pigment will rub off onto his fingers and then onto his artwork. He curses whatever gods that may have placed him next to such a color obsessed guy.

“Hey, move your stuff. It’s rolling into my space.”

It’s the first time Kyungsoo’s really said a full sentence to Chanyeol, and though the tone is certainly not kind, Chanyeol’s still cheery as ever, well, despite his initial surprise.

“What? Oh! Sorry,” Chanyeol quickly apologizes, and he brings back his escaping pastels.

It would have been okay if it only happened once.

(It didn’t happen once)

Kyungsoo sighs again, the pastels rolling dangerously close once again.

He points his dirtied fingers with a sense of disgust at the pastels that he’s told are ranging in colors from red to purple, yet all he sees is different shades of black that he finds beautiful.

“Chanyeol. Move your stuff.”

“Huh? Oh, my bad. Sorry.”

Kyungsoo’s tone is very sour, and Chanyeol’s is very apologetic. The giant’s movements are a little too spontaneous and rapid as he moves to pick up his pastels, and he nearly brushes them all onto Kyungsoo’s artwork.

“Hey! Careful!” Kyungsoo reprimands, freezing as Chanyeol manages to stop one particularly bright looking pastel from staining his careful pencil sketch.

Kyungsoo watches Chanyeol work a little while before he deems it safe enough to keep working on his own project. His back is hunched as he carefully smudges just the right places, and sharpens other places.

He’s so focused that he doesn’t notice his own charcoal rolling down into Chanyeol’s horde of vibrant pastels.

“,” Kyungsoo curses quietly to himself, under his breath. He needs the pastel, but he won’t risk his fingers to grab it. No way will he ever grab that because if any of the oil pastel falls upon his fingertips, he won’t be able to see it, and if it ends up on his art work, he’ll be simply devastated.

“Uh, Chanyeol?” Kyungsoo asks rather meekly, because he hadn’t expected to be asking a favor from one of the people he’d been so rude to.

“Hmm?” Chanyeol hums, and though his eyes are still on his canvas, Kyungsoo can tell that the giant is all ears.

“Will you, um, grab that for me?” He points at the black charcoal that’s somehow buried deep into Chanyeol’s collection of colorful pastels, and Chanyeol chuckles a low laugh that somehow reverberates though Kyungsoo, making him feel a strange sense of…calm?

“Sure, no problem at all.” Chanyeol says, deftly salvaging the black charcoal.

“Thanks, you know,” Kyungsoo says, and suddenly, Chanyeol’s inviting tone makes him say more than he’s said to the other the entire year. “I can’t see the colors of the pastels, since I um, I actually haven’t met my pair yet, so I didn’t want to… you know.”

Kyungsoo mentally curses at his lack of vocabulary, but again, Chanyeol laughs that light laugh of his, and Kyungsoo nearly smiles. Nearly.

“No, I get it,” Chanyeol extends the charcoal, and wow, Kyungsoo thinks, he as really long fingers. “My pastels would totally ruin your art, but a little smudge of black on mine really wouldn’t hinder anything too much.” He smiles sympathetically, and Kyungsoo actually feels a little relieved, in addition to a little budding embarrassment that stems from admitting he hasn’t met his pair.

“Actually, I haven’t met my own pair either, so I guess you’re not alone in that.”

“What?”

Kyungsoo’s surprised. Most everyone has met their pair by this age.

Chanyeol nods and hums. He shakes the charcoal in his hand because Kyungsoo has gotten so distracted by the fact that he’s not the only one that he’s forgotten about the art utensil in the other’s large hands.

“Yep,” Chanyeol nods, with an encouraging smile, “Never met mine. I can’t wait, though.”

“Then…how are you…?” Kyungsoo stammers, and Chanyeol chuckles again. Kyungsoo actually cracks a smile.

“Oh, this?” Chanyeol nods at his art, “It’s just…feeling, you know? I use whichever pastel that feels the most right.”

At this, Kyungsoo’s completely bewildered.

“Oh, well,” Kyungsoo says, eyes wide, “That’s actually…” It’s hard to say, because Kyungsoo absolutely detests color, but he says it, “That’s actually really cool.”

Kyungsoo finally reaches to take the charcoal that’s been hanging in Chanyeol’s grasp for some time now.

“Yeah, I could help you, you know, if you wanted?” Chanyeol suggests.

Kyungsoo nods, and he smiles for real now. Maybe he should really stop labeling people, he thinks.

“Thanks, I’d love that. That sounds perf—“

Kyungsoo’s cut off by a sudden, involuntary gasp. It’s a sharp intake of air that he experiences the moment his own fingers touch Chanyeol’s, and the charcoal drops to the ground and snaps in half.

The sudden feeling is all too much.

It starts at both their fingertips, right at the moment where they both touched, and then the warmth spreads outwards.

It spreads up Kyungsoo’s arm, and he sees a color travel up to his body. He gasps in surprise, because it’s nothing nearly as terrible as he’s imagined.

It’s not disgusting, it’s not horrific. No, it’s…beautiful. It’s blue, and at the same time, it’s not just blue. It’s not boring, and it’s not plain. Just like the black he loves so much, the blue has layers and layers of hues and shades. He sees the light blue of his fingertips become darker, a deeper, navy blue, as it reaches his shoulder, and soon he sees the most beautiful shade of royal blue in his life.

He’s never seen these colors before, but he’s knows what they’re called because he can feel it.

Colors aren’t so bad, Kyungsoo thinks.

A light orange begins at Chanyeol’s fingertips. The first thing Chanyeol does is look around as the light orange grows to be a strong red orange, the kind you find at just the tips of the flame, where it’s hot but not too hot. He sees the colors of the world, but for some reason, his eyes are drawn elsewhere.

They’re drawn to Kyungsoo, who’s simply radiating the most beautiful color he’s seen. Suddenly, Chanyeol’s really not so interested in seeing all the colors he’s fascinated and fawned about for the past twenty years of his life.

No, he’s more captivated by the individual just in front of his eyes, and finally, finally, he gets it.

He gets what his parents meant, he gets what his aunts and uncles meant, he gets what his neighbors and his friends’ parents meant when they said the color wasn’t the most important part.

It’s your mate. It’s your pair. They are who you will cherish the rest of your life. Not the color, it’s the mate.

The color is a bonus to finding the one destined to be with you, and not the other way around.

When all the pigments and hues have finally spread everywhere, it’s then that it finally dawns on the two.

They’re mates. They’re pairs. They’re destined to be together.

Chanyeol sees that Kyungsoo’s lips are the deepest shade of red he thinks he’ll ever see, and he’s suddenly captivated, drawn by some invisible force.

At some point, their touching hands intertwined into a strong hold, and the both of them leaned in forward.

Time feels like it’s moving so unbearably slowly, and yet at the same time, they think time is traveling so fast they’ll be left behind.

Where their lips meet, soft plush red against soft plush pink, Kyungsoo’s blue and Chanyeol’s orange begin to blend together wherever they touch. The colors mix on their own from the glow of their outlines, and everywhere they touch, a beautiful, unique shade of yellow is created. At some parts, it’s bright, just like the sun, just like Chanyeol, and at other parts, it’s dark, just like Kyungsoo’s love of all things monochromatic.

And where their lips meet comes a deep, rich canary yellow.

When the kiss is broken, both pulling away for the need of air and the need of air only, Kyungsoo is blushing, and Chanyeol likes the pink that fans so prettily along his cheek bones.

“Nice to meet you, pair,” Chanyeol says, and it’s much like the first words he had uttered to Kyungsoo on the first day of class. Although their hands are already together, holding tight, Chanyeol holds up another hand for a handshake.

“I’m Chanyeol.”

Kyungsoo laughs, and the smile reaches his eyes as he takes the large, outstretched palm

“Kyungsoo.”