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our wills and fates do so contrary run

At six years old, Soojung learned that somewhere out there, hidden among seven billion other people, was her soulmate.

At eleven years old, Krystal decided she never wanted to meet him.

Sooyeon, at sixteen, was everything Soojung adored and wanted to be. Her older sister was beautiful, kind, intelligent, talented - she should have been angry for being so overshadowed, but Sooyeon was so loving that it was impossible to harbor any sort of hate towards her.

Maybe the reason why she was so beautiful - why she simply glowed - was because she was in love. She had always been in love. Jonghyun’s name in bold was clearly marked on the inside of her left wrist from her first moments in the world, and her mother had always laughed about how lucky Sooyeon was to have her next-door neighbor as her soulmate. It was the kind of story that happened in fairy tales and ended in happily ever afters.

(If only Jonghyun had a brother, their mother would then wistfully sigh. It must be fate that your and Soojung’s soulmates have such similar names.)

Jonghyun and Sooyeon were so, so happy together. They had found each other early, but it didn’t mean they loved each other any less. They had such bright futures ahead of them and they were even planning to get married before they went off to college.

And then one day, he was gone.

The motorcycle accident didn’t just take Jonghyun’s life - it took Sooyeon’s as well. The light from her eyes disappeared after that day. It broke Soojung’s heart to see her sister fading away without her soulmate to anchor her to reality, retracting into the shell that was Jessica.

The mark, as much as it was a blessing, was also a curse. It gave the name of a soulmate that could just as easily be taken away. They said that to have loved and lost was better to than to have never loved at all… but Sooyeon’s pain proved otherwise. To be tethered to one person without any control over who, when, or how - others embraced it, but she would always fear it instead.

Krystal decided that if it was possible to escape fate itself, then she would be the one to do so.

Seoul National University was everything and nothing she expected it to be.

And she loved it.

After living in a relatively small city all her life, Krystal felt right at home in Seoul, where she blended into the crowd like every other. In a city like Seoul, fate was too abstract of a concept to even consider - the present mattered so much more.

Marks, if in visible areas, were carefully covered up, soulmates’ names breathed in the dead of night to others sworn to secrecy. Second names were more commonly used than not. Krystal found family in her suitemates, even if they had never exchanged their birth names. Amber, Victoria, Luna, and Sulli were like her sisters, laughing over dinner, fighting over the TV remote, crying and rejoicing with each battle they faced.

Trivial things like names, Krystal realized, were just secondary to who they really were.

But even after two years of taking in the beauty of Seoul - the beauty of freedom - she couldn’t bring herself to pursue a guy.

“Key is graduating soon, right? Don’t you ever, you know, wonder?” Krystal asked as she and Amber lounged on the couch one day. “If Key is… you know.” God, eloquence was so not her thing.

Amber just laughed and leaned back against the cushions. “I’m pretty sure he’s not, so I guess I don’t really have to worry about that.”

“How?”

“My soulmate’s name is Chinese,” Amber shrugged.

Krystal’s face heated up, embarrassed she had even asked. Marks were an intensely personal thing; even if the girls were like sisters, soulmates were pretty much a taboo subject of discussion.

“I’m sorry - I shouldn’t have - ugh -”

“Don’t worry about it. I just feel like...” Amber sighed and closed her eyes, tilting her head up to face the ceiling. “When I meet my soulmate, I’m not going to want to have zero experience with relationships.”

“But…” Krystal was hesitant to continue, but she pressed on anyway. “Doesn’t that make it harder to break it off in the end. You and Key have been together for what, a year now?”

“Key and I have talked about it,” the older girl admitted. “I think of it this way: every time you’re in a relationship, you give away a little piece of your heart, and yes, that may mean you have less of it when you finally meet your soulmate.

“But giving away pieces of your heart only means that you’ve loved people, and in the end, that’s what life is about. Not how much you can give to your soulmate, but how much you give as a whole.”

“That doesn’t mean Key is any less jealous of Henry being your best friend, though,” Krystal joked. She got a cushion to her face in response. “Yah!”

She agreed to go on a few dates with Minhyuk, a Pre-Business major like her. They had shared classes together in the past and the flirty banter had always somewhat existed between them, though she’d always tended to avoid any sort of commitment stemming from it.

Minhyuk was a gentleman, caring and sweet and everything she could want in a guy. He played drums in a band with his friends and had the best marks in their classes. He easily made her blush with his compliments, and his smile was infectious.

After a month, they agreed to stay friends.

Sulli was all for ice cream and guy-bashing, but Krystal honestly wasn’t broken up by it.

(She refused to admit it was because Minhyuk wasn’t the one.)

“Guys! Guys,”  Victoria half-screamed as she burst through the front door of their suite, breathing too hard and two hours past curfew. “I found my match! I found him.”

“When? How?” Luna screeched, pulling on the older girl’s hands and sitting her down on the sofa as the others gathered around, offering bright smiles and their congratulations.

“The dance competition - he was there to support Wooyoung, he flew out from Thailand to see him - and then we met and he introduced himself, he used his birth name - and it was him.”

“He’s Thai?” Sulli questioned, her eyes as round as saucers. “Oh my gosh, that’s so romantic - “

“Does he have to go back? Have you guys figured it out?” Krystal asked. She wasn’t being jealous, just realistic, she told herself.

“He’s flying back in three days but we’re spending all our time together until then, and I’m probably going out there once I graduate. It’s so overwhelming, but… I can’t believe it happened. It finally happened!” And soon enough they were all squealing, jumping up and down in excitement until the floor below them came up to complain about the stomping.

“Wait, wait,” Amber laughed before they could make plans to celebrate. “If we’re giving you up to him, we have to at least know his name first.”

Victoria’s eyes were bright as she pulled away the curtain of dark hair from her neck to reveal Nichkhun, in a cramped scrawl behind her ear.

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