Living in a society where everyone puts love above everything, it’s terribly hard for Yoongi to start thinking otherwise.

He used to not understand why people are so desperate to find their soul mate. Yoongi thought that it was perhaps because of the hint given to everyone, and that people are childish enough to get all fired up by this little game of finding ‘their ones’ with just a single name. It works like a game.

His mother shows him his deceased father's name that's imprinted on the inside of her wrist and talks about him all the time, saying that she is lucky to have him and for them to be tied by fate and not even separated by death. But then it's just soul mate; a life partner decided by the heaven and imprinted on everyone's wrist like a barcode.

Never did he bother to think much about it until the morning of his seventeenth birthday when he found a name imprinted on his skin. It's not made of ink. No matter how much he tried to wash it off, it wouldn’t come off. His brother called him stupid for even trying to do that, but he just found it strange. It was as though a new emotion had been injected into his whole being.

He wanted to find this person. Jung Hoseok.

He was 19 when he met Jung Hoseok for the first time. The male whose smile was too bright for his sleepy eyes and whose voice held too much emotion, especially the one mirroring the cheerfulness on his face. This person is exactly the opposite of himself, he had sensed that ever since the first minute. And that that person was also his destined soul mate.

For two very different individuals to be tied together by a mere God’s game, he was uncertain on what to feel about it.

"I've been looking for you, Min Yoongi-ssi! Your name haunts me in my sleep that I want to find out how you look like, but hey, I think you're going to steal more of my sleeping hour."

That's ing cheesy, so not what Yoongi’s into. But there was a certain warmth inside his chest when he watched the male talk about various things, sometimes fidgeting, nervously playing with his coffee cup when Yoongi didn’t give a friendly respond, and also, the way Hoseok’s gaze flitting about the place, as he tried to find something else to talk about; he found it endearing, kind of.

This person is going to be the one he spends the rest of his life with. His heart skipped a beat when he thought about it again and he felt himself finally warm up a tad bit.  His lips stretched into a smile that felt foreign on his face. It shouldn't look that weird, because Hoseok stopped talking in the middle of his sentence with such flabbergasted look that could almost be seen as an adoring gaze at first glance.

"Say, Hoseok-ah, do you want to come over to my place? I think I have some herbal tea to help with sleeping problems."

Hoseok knocked his head on the table when he accepted the offer with what supposed to be a bow. Yoongi laughed out loud while Hoseok squeaked out his apology, flustered like a panicky kid he was.

That time, a random thought crossed his mind that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t mind spending a lifetime with Hoseok.

It went nothing like those shallow relationships he had always imagined people to have. Their relationship was deeper than that.

They might not know each other that much, even from those late night talks they had under the blanket while sharing innocent kisses and childish touches; but there was something more than just a mere attraction that attracts Yoongi to this person. They had nothing in common, as their friends used to mock them, and yet it's just right for them to be together. It's almost like needs.

However, a person doesn't always do what's right, and they don't always get what they need.

His mom never told him that a couple bonded by fate as soul mates could meet its end too. Yoongi keeps wondering if his was the first failed pair God has ever made, or if he was just plain unlucky.

It's a year and two months into their relationship when Hoseok told him the truth. The truth that he was still in love with his ex-girlfriend who happened to be his neighbor. And oh, he also said that he loved Yoongi, for the first time ever; but Yoongi didn’t hear it past the sound of his heart beating hard, muzzling the other sounds from coming into his ear. It told him that he’s going to lose Hoseok.

The topic was left untouched, because they know that it's not bound to happen. At the end, they will all get together with their soul mates no matter how much they love someone else. Hoseok's ex had a name on her wrist too, and it's not Hoseok's.

That name was what imprinted on Yoongi's wrist.

But Yoongi started to hate the ink-black curve of ‘Jung Hoseok’ in hangeul over his skin as he saw pain on his soul mate's eyes every time they happened to cross path with the girl.

Hoseok was the suffering one, but Yoongi was the one who dropped the bomb.

He tore the skin right where the name was carved on - marring the perfection of Hoseok's name on his pale skin with a line of red - right in front of the owner of the name, on the night when he caught the longing stare Hoseok threw at the girl. Hoseok looked like he was about to get a panic attack as he tried to get him first aid, but Yoongi shoved him away, with his injured hand and also with the words he never meant pouring out from his mouth like poison.

"Let's not do this anymore. This soul mate is just a teenager's game and we do not belong to each other, you knew it."

Hoseok was in shock at first, but not long after he spluttered that he didn’t want it, that he needed Yoongi, that he still loved Yoongi just like how he always did and he was sorry for looking at another person in that way. Yoongi deafened his ears from the pleas. He ended it with a whispered 'get lost' that cut Hoseok's trail of words.

He pretended not to see the tears in Hoseok's eyes when he left. He didn’t know if he hated it more to see Hoseok suffering because of the girl or him, but he decided not to care anymore.

The wound on his wrist hurt, but at least he couldn’t see Hoseok's name so clearly anymore when it healed; a line of ugly scar made it unreadable. He covered it with watches or wristbands most of the time, unlike those people who proudly had them displayed wherever they go. Not like he cared about the intrigued stare some of them throw him. They won't care enough to ask anyway, or even to talk to him, a nobody. People in this century are pretty much individualist when it's not about them and their soul mates.

A particular guy with messy, hazelnut-dyed hair proved him wrong one day.

He was 22 when he met the nosy kid named Taehyung. The first thought crossed his mind was that the guy must be illegal and he’d get kicked out soon from the place. But later on he discovered that he was only two years older.

The bar was the only place Yoongi knew to be a place where everyone who came abandoned the names on their wrists. They have fun there, hooking up with random strangers, not giving a that they’re not their soul mates. He also started to develop that kind of mindset after a while.

It was crowded at certain days of the week, but most of the time, it's almost lonely for him to be there, sipping on his liquor alone while throwing nonchalant glances to people who did not pique his interest enough.

He first wondered why a teenager such as Taehyung was hanging out in a bar like this. But he almost couldn’t hide his surprise when the male showed him his left wrist and found the place where the name should be printed on, flawless from any mark.

"You are 20, you said," he deadpanned.

"I am," Taehyung shrugged, nonchalance hanging on his sentence as he shook the empty glass on a hand before reaching across the bar to take a bottle of liquor himself. "I'll tell you what you want to know only if you agreed to pay for this whole bottle."

A few shots after that, Yoongi finally found out that Taehyung used to have someone's name there; just that it disappeared one day when he discovered that the owner of the name had died in an accident.

Yoongi wanted to question it, because it was against everyone's belief that every destined couple will be together at the end and he had never heard anything like this before, but he was too tipsy to care about it anymore and Taehyung started to mumble random things that give him headache. The kid spoke out loud about the bartender looking like a gorilla. That shouldn’t sound so funny, but they laughed out loud. Yoongi couldn’t comprehend much more at that point, but he knew that they got kicked out from the bar and they passed out on a random street that night, pressed against each other to not feel the chilly autumn air much like a couple of stray cats.

Their parting words were Yoongi's curses for the hangover and Taehyung's lazy hum when he kindly woke the kid up, telling him to get up and leave too before he left him alone in the street.

It was not really pleasant for a first meeting, but it was sure an unforgettable one.

He admitted that because he recognized the guy right away when they happened to be in a same place again weeks after that. It was a cafeteria full of students. Yoongi was busy testing the focus of his new camera to notice what he captured for the last few shots. They're mainly just random students buying lunch, he thought. But Taehyung proved him wrong for the second time when he suddenly appeared close up on his lenses, claiming that it was not free to take a picture of him. Yoongi denied with a dirty look thrown to the boy. Only after they go through the pictures again that Yoongi realized that he had snapped a few pictures with Taehyung included in it.

"I will let you off if you let me eat your food. You're not going to eat it, right?" The boy gestured to his tray of food that left untouched ever since he brought it to the table. He was right.

Yoongi let the stranger eat his food while he worked with his camera again, even though the boy wouldn’t stop talking to him. He even offered himself to be Yoongi's model and blatantly ignored his skeptical look, taking the silence as an agreement instead.

Yoongi didn’t usually take pictures of models, or people in general, but he didn’t have a say in this when Taehyung dragged him out to an open space and started doing those random poses that made them crack up together.

Only two pictures were categorized decent enough for Yoongi, but Taehyung insisted that the other pictures came out as nice, claiming himself as an experienced model and that his pictures were always decent. The photographer scoffed at that. Taehyung ignored it, forcefully scribbling his number on Yoongi's palm at the end of the day and demanded (threatened) the poor guy to call him when he had the time because that guy wanted a copy of the pictures for his own documentary. Yoongi yelled at him that he would never do that when the so called model ran for the upcoming bus.

Yoongi called him when he got home.

Kim Taehyung was too casual of person. He used informal language right away and he allowed himself into Yoongi’s house whenever he wanted to. It made all the possible things he could dislike from a stranger combined into one individual.

He mentioned to Taehyung about it one day, and also the fact that his mom didn’t like ‘some indecent-looking kid’ playing around in her house. Taehyung never took the offence well and kept coming, giving some acceptable excuses every time.

It came to the situation where Yoongi finally offered himself to come over to Taehyung’s house instead. Because the kid needed a help with his photography class and he was so horrible at it Yoongi couldn’t just let him be. The question on how the hell did Taehyung manage to take that class while he was majoring in acting department left unanswered.

Only after three visits he finally figured out that Taehyung had been lying all along. There had never been a photography class. It was an understatement to say that Yoongi was fuming because he ended up chasing the boy all over the flat and almost punched him when he finally got the upper hand. He managed to pin Taehyung down against the cold tile of his bedroom and that’s how he managed to make Taehyung spill the truth.

“I don’t meet nice people a lot and, and, I like you better than most people. I just want to spend more time with you, Yoongi-hyung, please spare me this time!”

Those pleading eyes were funny, as well as the small pout on those lips. That’s why he ended it with only a whack on the kid’s head while mumbling about how annoying and stupid Taehyung was as he walked away. No one called him nice before. Taehyung must be stupid, he concluded.

Truth to be told, it was only a baseless conclusion he made while he was trying to ignore the way his heart beating a beat faster just because of some random kid’s stuttered confession.

It was two months of hanging out together and some random bickering when Yoongi kissed Taehyung for the first time. It originally happened to shut the boy up when he ‘accidentally’ ate the strawberry Taehyung left to be eaten last from his cheesecake ("Best things are saved for last, Yoongi-hyung! How dare you end my happiness just like that?"), but Taehyung pulled him by the collar just when he withdrew and they kissed again, taking their time well this time because Yoongi loved how Taehyung's lips tasted like the cheesecake he just ate and Taehyung was just too intoxicated by Yoongi's li