Colorblind

            If you’d asked me, at age seventeen, what my ideal type was—the kind of person I thought I’d end up falling for—I would have probably told you some model-type girl with long legs, lush hair, and big .  No brains required.  In fact, I probably would have thought that a detraction.  I would have just wanted someone popular and pretty to hang on my arm…and to sleep with whenever I wanted. 

            That probably doesn’t give you the best impression of me.  Well, it shouldn’t.  I was kind of an back then.  So you’ll have to understand, when I unknowingly ran into my soulmate, who didn’t meet any of my criteria, things didn’t go well between us.  In fact, it’s a miracle we ever got together at all. 

            In the beginning of my last year of high school, I was one of the most popular guys in school.  Honestly, I don’t even know how the hell that happened, because I didn’t really give a crap about my image.  But I was one of the smartest kids in class, one of the best looking, and people loved my standoffish attitude.  I never let anyone mess with me and I had a very short list of people I considered friends. 

            I hadn’t bothered dating much, since I was wasn’t impressed with anyone in particular.  If I dated a girl, it generally lasted a short while.  None of them were my soulmate, after all.  Why should I bother with them if they weren’t, aside from getting laid? 

            I only knew a handful of people my own age that had met their soulmates at that point and listening to them talk about it nonstop was enough to make me want to vomit.  I’d been good friends with Sungmin until the day he accidentally bumped into Saeun on the bus.  Then I had to listen to him talk about her all the damn time: during class, while eating lunch, and in the middle of studying.  He even whispered about her in the middle of theater practice.  Then he commented on the rich color of the red cape he was wearing or the way the blue waves—props depicting the ocean—shimmered under the lights.  As if I wanted to hear about colors.  No one else in the cast could see them except the cordi-noonas and the director.  I invited him over less and less after he started going out with her, but he didn’t seem to notice.  Sungmin spent a majority of his free time with his new girlfriend.

            Same thing happened to Eunhyuk.  We grew up next door to each other and he was completely normal until the day that Donghae joined us in our seventh year of school.  And it was only a few days into the beginning of classes when they’d been outside, playing some game, when they’d accidentally collided together while going after the ball and their skin came into contact.  Eunhyuk ran the halls, looking for me, and pulled me into the boy’s bathroom in a panic.  He told me that the moment he bumped into Donghae he could suddenly see colors and asked if that meant if Donghae was his soulmate.  I thought it sounded crazy.  Eunhyuk had always flirted with girls before this, so I thought it was some kind of accident.  But it wasn’t.  As time went on and he and Donghae began to hang out more, it was clear that the two of them were a perfect match.  It was another year or two before they began dating, but once they did, they were inseparable. 

            “The colors you see when you touch your soulmate the first time are dim compared to what you will see when the two of you finally kiss,” Eunhyuk explained one day, when I got up the nerve to ask about it. 

            “What is it like?” I asked.  “Seeing the world in color?”

            Eunhyuk looked around.  We were sitting outside, eating our lunches in the middle of autumn as the leaves fell around us.  He let out a long breath and smiled, his eyes shining in the sunlight.  “It’s as if you’ve woken up from a long, dull sleep…and you will do anything to keep what you’ve found.”

            “Isn’t finding your soulmate enough?” I asked.  “Isn’t it more important than seeing everything differently?  That’s what people always claim.”

            He turned to me and nodded.  “Yes.  Even if I was blind or still saw everything in shades of grey, just finding Hae would be enough.  He’s what brings all the color to my life,” he explained, smiling to himself as he spoke of his lover.  “So, as you must understand, finding your soulmate and seeing the world in color both at the same time…it’s a little overwhelming.”

            Maybe part of me was jealous.  I didn’t ask him any more about it.  Some people don’t find their soulmates until they’re in their sixties, after all.  Some people never find them at all.  What if that happened to me?  Would I be one of the cursed people that never found who they were meant to be with?  Or I had to wait until I was old?