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that our devices still are overthrown

“KRYSTAL! Wake up!” Banging on the door, followed by an oops as it swung open, having been unlocked from the beginning. The yelling then got significantly louder. “Wake! Up!”

Krystal sometimes really wondered how Luna, who had the most beautiful singing voice, managed to produce such grating sounds in the early morning. “Five more minutes,” she groaned, pulling a pillow over her head in an attempt to block out the dreadful noise.

“No way! You’re not going to believe what happened last night!”

“Yeah, I saw you and Onew sneak into one of the closets to make out at the afterparty. I think I’m good.”

“Oh,” Luna flushed, at least embarrassed on some sort of level that her friend had noticed. Not that she needed to be embarrassed, of course; Krystal had been telling Kai just moments later, the alcohol reducing her to hand motions and giggles. “I mean - wait! That’s not even the big news!”

“Are you…” her eyes widened. “Oh my god, did you guys do… that?”

“Um, yes, but -”

“Lalalalala,” Krystal sang as she covered her ears with her hands. “Spare me the details!”

“I saw his mark!”

Immediately, the younger girl shut up, her jaw hanging in surprise. “You mean…”

“It said Sunyoung! Oh, Krys, I was on cloud nine the entire time, I couldn’t even believe -”

“Oh my god!” Krystal jumped out of bed and shook her friend’s shoulders. “You have no idea how cute you guys were together - and now you’re soulmates - is this even - no wonder your voices sounded so good together!”

“That’s what he said,” Luna giggled. “I don’t know, I just really hoped, you know? I still can’t believe this isn’t a dream…”

Two out of the five of them had found their other halves in college. The odds were a long shot that she would too. But when she opened Kai’s text (do u wanna get breakfast? my treat (:), all her statistics classes didn’t count for anything. With the feeling of his lips on hers still fresh in her mind, she felt like all the possibilities for the two of them were theirs for the taking.

Soon enough, it was summer and Krystal had secured her internship at a major investment trading firm. Only seven students from the Pre-Business program at SNU had been selected, from just over two hundred applications; she counted herself lucky.

Everything seemed to be going her way lately.

Victoria had graduated a year ahead of the rest of them and flown to Thailand to stay with Nichkhun, while Amber had returned to LA. Sulli was studying abroad in Paris, and Luna was working at a summer musical camp in Busan. It was the first time all five of them were in different locations during the break. Even if she’d been allowed to stay on campus in their suite – not that it needed cleaning, anyway – it would have felt like betrayal to live there alone.

She ended up finding a ridiculously overpriced hole in the wall that cut her daily commute by half. It wasn’t as if she spent much time there, anyway.

Kai, being from Seoul, was staying in the city with his family, meaning that they spent almost every waking moment together when neither of them was busy. When the interns decided to go out clubbing one Friday night, Krystal invited Kai along.

“You want a drink, Krystal?” her friend Luhan half-yelled, in an attempt to be heard over the pounding bass of the music.

“I think I’m fine for now,” Krystal replied, surveying the dance floor.

“Positive?” She nodded to assure him, and he shrugged. “This is much more fun drunk, but have it your way!”

Kai waited until the pretty, deer-like boy left before frowning. “I don’t like that guy.”

“What?”  Luhan was one of the few actual genuine people at the firm, in her opinion. The program was cutthroat, meaning that many of the interns embraced the fierce competition – and not a healthy one.

Next to her, Kai crossed his arms and scoffed. “He was obviously trying to get you drunk and take advantage of you, while I was literally standing right here.”

Krystal only smiled. “Are you, perhaps, jealous?”

“I’m only trying to protect you from creeps like him,” Kai hastily defended.

“Luhan’s already found his soulmate. He was just being friendly!”

“Well that just makes him more of a creep. I feel sorry for whoever she is, because she definitely got screwed over by fate.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t think Luhan’s creepy at all.” Krystal laughed and pointed to where Luhan and his boyfriend Sehun looked just about ready to tear each other’s clothes off in the middle the dance floor, before glancing at Kai’s confused expression.

“I… what? …oh.” he muttered, his face flushed - and not from the temperature inside the club. “I’m just… going to shut up now.”

“I can think of a better way,” Krystal grinned, tiptoeing to put her lips against his.

“Hey, can I ask you for a favor?” Amber called from the doorway one evening at the beginning of the fall semester.

“No, I am not cooking ramen for you. It literally takes two minutes, do it yourself,” Krystal responded, not even bothering to look up from her accounting data.

“I stopped asking you that freshman year,” Amber sniffed. “Anyway, that’s not it.”

“Ask Luna to trade chores.”

“It’s not that either,” the tomboyish girl said, annoyed. “If I’m ever too drunk or anything undress myself… I trust you to do it.”

The implication of that level of trust was beyond what she had expected. “And your mark…”

“I trust you,” the older girl repeated firmly. Amber and Krystal had always been closer - maybe it was the fact that they spoke English, or that the two were the only ones out of the five that weren’t majoring in performing arts (Amber was pre-med, but Victoria, as the group mother, would always be the one to patch up their injuries) - but for Amber to let her see the name of her soulmate was something she hadn’t anticipated.

“Okay,” Krystal nodded solemnly. “Are you planning on getting wasted soon…?”

“Is there ever a bad time to get wasted?”

Krystal always liked fairy tales – Cinderella and her Prince Charming, Sleeping Beauty awoken by true love’s kiss. She even adored the Little Mermaid, the girl who lost her voice for love, who failed and became the seafoam skimming the waves.

Maybe the reason why she enjoyed them wasn't for their happy endings, but the fact that none of them were born with marks adorning their bodies. Maybe it was because they were free to love and, like the mermaid princess, free to fail. There was never a fear of the wrong choice.

The names were supposed to protect them from having to make that choice.

Still, Krystal’s life seemed much more complicated than in the stories.

When Kai breathed the first I love you against her lips after a perfect night under the stars, she thought – no, she knew - she did too.

The thought of Kai being the wrong choice wouldn’t have burned so much, otherwise.

Maybe that was why she didn’t quite have the heart to say it back.

Krystal jerked at the sound of the doorbell, rubbing her tired eyes and trying to get a sense of her bearings as she sat up on the couch. The muted TV was still playing on front of her, and the light emanating from it danced across the shadows of the darkened room. She her phone screen and smiled; Kai had left her a goodnight, beautiful after he probably realized she had fallen asleep in between their messages.

The doorbell rang once more, the loud noise piercing the quiet of the empty apartment. No one else was home besides her; Sulli was visiting family, and Luna was on a spontaneous, romantic weekend getaway with Onew. Amber had gone out in the early evening, muttering something about mocha, chipmunks, and stupidity. Krystal had been too absorbed in composing the perfect, I’m-flirting-with-you-but-not-in-an-annoyingly-clingy-way text to Kai to ask why.

After the fifth persistent ring, Krystal fumbled her way to the light switch in the dim lighting of the room – no small feat, considering it was supposed to be Luna’s turn to pick up the varying crap littered on the living room floor – and winced as the sudden brightness burned her eyes. Hastily, she unlocked the door, planning on yelling at whoever thought it was perfectly reasonable to show up at their door at one in the morning.

“Hi,” Henry said sheepishly, supporting a drunk Amber at his side. “She wouldn’t tell me where her keys were, so I had to ring…”

“I thought you would’ve had a key of your own by now,” Krystal rolled her eyes, before letting Amber happily stumble in and fall onto the couch.

“What, are you jealous? Does your boyfriend know you’re cheating on him with your roommate yet?” The teasing words weren’t without a little edge. Henry and Krystal had never quite gotten along, perhaps because they each wanted to believe they were more important to their mutual friend than the other.

There was just something about the Canadian boy that rubbed Krystal the wrong way; she had a feeling it would be any day now that he somehow hurt Amber, and Krystal was nothing if not protective of her friends.

“Yes, I am totally jealous that you have a key to my apartment,” she deadpanned, before glancing back at Amber mumbling to herself. She sighed, turning to Henry once more and made a shooing motion with her hand. “You’ve