A little peek! This is just the prologue, and it's unedited, so my apologies if it's bad and disjointed. It figures that Sunggyu and Woohyun will get me back to writing fic after almost a year and a half of not writing at all.

Many thanks to M., who is my other half and who encouraged me to write this after I talked about it a little bit. Thanks for the countless days of indulging my fantasies about this pairing.

prologue

When Sunggyu is five and Myungsoo is two, the Lees move into the empty house next door.

It doesn’t really affect Sunggyu, who spends his mornings in school and his afternoons at home, playing with Myungsoo and their cat, but a week after the moving trucks had left, their new neighbors come over and introduce themselves, and with them is a tiny baby, named Sungjong, and a toddler, named Sungyeol.

He’s five, so he only has some vague understanding of what’s happening when his parents’ eyes go wide, and they ask the Lees, “Is ‘Kim Myungsoo’ the name on your older son’s wrist?”

And that is how his brother and his brother’s soulmate meet.

It’s Sunggyu’s first real exposure to a pair of soulmates who aren’t his parents.

- - -

Ramyun, his and Myungsoo’s childhood pet cat, is difficult. He’s difficult because he’s never really fond of anyone but the Kims, softly hissing whenever guests try to pet him. In all the years Sunggyu remembers spending with Ramyun, the cat has always been fond of him and Myungsoo and their parents, but standoffish towards everyone else.

(“That’s just the way cats are,” Sunggyu had been told when he had asked his first grade teacher, because the other day Dongwoo had cried about not being able to touch Ramyun’s tail.)

For some reason, though, Ramyun is exceptionally fond of Yeollie. Yeollie, who manhandles Ramyun like a doll or a stuffed animal sometimes. Yeollie, who is a loud and brash and overly eager toddler on his good days. Yeollie, who tugs at Ramyun’s fur sometimes when he’s exceptionally excited.

Sunggyu is only seven but he knows there’s something special in the way Myungsoo just lights up—“like a Christmas tree,” he says, as he grumbles about it to his amused parents—when he sees Ramyun cuddling with Yeollie, in the way Myungsoo walks with all his four-year-old stability towards his cat and his soulmate when he’s ready for a nap.

Soulmates are something else, Sunggyu petulantly decides, when he’s seven-and-a-half and Myungsoo and Ramyun stray from his side to play with Yeollie in the backyard, and he leaves it at that.

- - -

When Sunggyu is ten, his parents tell him that the “Nam Woohyun” inked darkly on his wrist had appeared when he had been almost two.

“February 8, 1991,” his parents say. They tell him about the weather that day, how sunny and warm it had been for a day in the middle of winter—and they tell him that maybe this means his soulmate will be like sunshine, all bright smiles and soft angles and warmth on a cold winter day.

Sunggyu is ten, though, and all he wants is to play with Heechul-hyung and Dongwoo, and to have more recess time, and to not have to do homework. He’s ten and he’s about to conquer the world one school playground at a time, and his soulmate, even if they’re like sunshine, can wait until Sunggyu is the king of the entire universe.

- - -

The girls in his class become increasingly conscious and chatty about soulmates.

He’s taken to wearing a wrist guard, a simple black cuff that’s a cold but reassuring weight on his left wrist. It’s a common practice to wear one for privacy, a practice that he knows is popular among celebrities lest they want fans to bombard them with claims about being their soulmate, but it’s not exactly helpful when you’re actively searching for your soulmate.

And, to the disappointment and sad sighs of the gossipy girls in his middle school class, Sunggyu isn’t really searching for his soulmate.

He’s not ten, not anymore, so he’s long forgotten about his childhood aspirations to become the king of the universe. (It turns out that space travel, in fact, is expensive and requires years of training, which someone as lazy as Sunggyu doesn’t find appealing. Not to mention that space conquest itself is impossible.) But he is thirteen, and he’s too busy playing soccer with his friends during the afternoons, and singing out loud in his room in the evenings.

Sunggyu isn’t searching for his soulmate, not yet.

But sometimes he wonders.

- - -

When Sunggyu is fifteen, his best friend Dongwoo meets his soulmate.

A boy from Busan transfers to their school that year. Dongwoo and the boy meet when they bump into each other in the hallway, causing the items in their arms to fly everywhere, and then they catch a glimpse of each other’s wrist as they collect their books.

Sunggyu, standing towards the side, watches as Dongwoo—bright, cheerful, happy Dongwoo—lights up even more, smiling so wide his eyes can barely be seen. The boy—Lee Howon is his name, Sunggyu soon realizes, since he’s seen the name on Dongwoo’s wrist enough times to have it memorized—starts smiling, and it makes him look younger.

The rest, as they say, is history.

And Sunggyu’s happy for them, he really is, so he doesn’t quite understand why there’s a small pain blooming in his chest.

- - -

Later on, Dongwoo tells him, “My parents said my dad was playing with a soccer ball in our backyard and my mom was watching him when my name appeared. One second my mom was laughing at him hitting his head with the ball, and the next second, when she looked down at me in her arms, there was a name on my wrist.”

On an ordinary day, it wouldn’t matter, but. But Howon loves soccer to a fault, dreams of becoming a soccer star in the future, as Dongwoo had found out (and had relayed to Sunggyu). It oddly reaffirms the words of the older generations, that whatever happens on the day that the older half of a pair of soulmates receives their mark is a good indication of how the younger half is.

It reminds Sunggyu of what his parents had told him five years ago. Sunshine and warmth.

- - -

When Sunggyu is eighteen, he leaves for college.

His parents hug him goodbye, and his mom’s eyes are suspiciously wet. Myungsoo and Yeollie are there as well.

Sunggyu avoids looking at their hands, clasped tightly together, and just tugs at his wrist guard.

- - -

Here’s a little secret, though: Sunggyu meets his soulmate when he is twenty-one.

Remember, this is just the prologue! Woohyun will appear in the next chapter, which is the actual story itself.

Thanks for reading! If you're feeling nice, I would appreciate some comments. You can catch me on Twitter over here as well.