AN: For some background, since this is an AU, I'm going to clarify before anyone starts reading that in this AU, this system is how it has always been. From the beginning of time, people have heard their soulmates' thoughts. There has been little discovered on how to deal with it. I will delve into some subjects in this chapter and in others, but if anything comes off as confusing, then feel free to ask about it! I'd love to clarify and it will only assist me in writing other chapters so that they are clearer. The biggest part you should know going into it is that one starts hearing their soulmate in their early teens (usually before sixteen, but there are exceptions). What they are hearing is usually inner thoughts, not just mundane things, but things people dwell on. The thoughts that don't easily come and go. Those things that we can't get out of our heads. When someone like Mingyu hears his soulmate's thoughts, he doesn't hear them in his voice and that's how he knows they aren't this thoughts. No conversations can be had between the thoughts, but often they can think about similar topics. 

Side pairings will usually be heavily hinted at, but left up to speculation aside from one or two. I don't really have ship preferences other than Minshua, so the others pairings that are explicitly mentioned don't have much weight in the storyline. 

But thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy it!

When the strange voice cuts through Mingyu’s thoughts, at the age of thirteen, he feels strange. If he hadn’t been taught by his parents that the voice in the back of his head belonged to his soulmate, then he would have thought that somehow someone had infiltrated his thoughts. Minghao, in all his superstitious glory, would have been correct that there were beings and things that humans just couldn’t understand. Luckily, the voice sounds woefully normal. No aliens have hijacked his thoughts, instead, he was hearing the crisp, clean speech of a tired boy. He realizes that he can only hear the boy if he’s lost in his own thoughts or spacing out. He speaks in a language that he cannot understand sometimes, and other times he speaks in a myriad of languages. He catches onto the Korean, some of the English, none of the other languages that he doesn’t even know if he could put a name to if he tried. The first thing that he says that Mingyu can understand is: It’s hopeless.

It makes Mingyu feel anxious. The voice fades for awhile after that. Mingyu’s anxiety only grows as he realizes that his soulmate could be in some trouble. There’s no phone number to call to report his thoughts. There’s no emergency government system in place that allows for his soulmate to be found. Even if there was, then he’s only heard that one phrase… There’s no way that Mingyu would be able to pick up on his soulmate’s voice. All he knows about his soulmate is that he has a clear voice that can apparently handle several different languages.

By the time he’s seventeen, he’s addicted to the sound of his soulmate’s voice. He’s a singer, apparently, but not professionally. For a couple years, he’s been in America or he’s from America. Mingyu can shift through complaints that he’s thought about that nation, about his Korean, about his singing. All of the thoughts aren’t always dark and dangerous, but he still seems to have a hard time with even the things that Mingyu figures he’s confident in. At thirteen, his soulmate had already been speaking various languages, but he can often pick up on him being unsure of his speaking ability, specifically in Korean. Sometimes he sings in his thoughts, but mostly it is humming. Either way, Mingyu lives for those rare moments, but he’s more likely to hear his soulmate worry about his singing. Whatever his soulmate does, it isn’t enough for him. Mingyu wants to let him know that he’s doing a good job.

The system is not supposed to be used as a conversation, so Mingyu makes sure to think kind thoughts about everyone he sees just in case his soulmate is listening. Everyone does enough in Mingyu’s eyes, and it isn’t as though Mingyu is unkind or lying when he thinks these thoughts. It is just a little more effort than he usually puts into being kind.

--

Minghao thinks it’s bull. The entire system is.

“Soulmates are like objective truths,” he says, sounding too smart for Mingyu already. “They are just out there in the world, and apparently we know them or we don’t.” He shakes his head in annoyance. His face is screwed up as though he’s going to punch through his desk. “We just have to accept them, but that’s garbage.” He makes a noise of anger, flopping back into his seat across from Mingyu.

There’s no way that Minghao’s soulmate could ever want to meet him. The way he opposed the whole system scared many of his friends away until he realized that there were just some friends that wouldn’t stand to listen to him complain about it, then there were the rare few that would listen to his flippant rants about how it’s wrong to force people into believing that there is someone out there for them and that once they find each other, they will be happy. Without any real money to his name, Minghao doubts that he’ll ever be able to meet his soulmate who is from some Scandinavian country. Her pretty voice echoes in his head, but he hardly searches for her anymore. Just by hearing her voice, Minghao is reminded that he’s trapped with her until they meet. He’s been trying to block her out ever since he first heard her when he was fifteen.

“I don’t know. It’s the way that things have been,” Mingyu says, voice smaller than it has ever been. He doesn’t mind Minghao’s opposition of the concept of soulmates, but he doesn’t necessarily agree with it either. Sometimes, Minghao says things that makes him realize that maybe he never wanted any of this either, but he could never imagine abandoning his soulmate who feels so close to him yet so far away at the same time. “Even if you oppose it, nothing will change. I don’t know how any of it would change.” It’s an attempt at comfort. It ends up clawing its way up underneath their skin.

Minghao makes an uncomfortable sound, then sinks down into his chair until he’s pretty much sliding off of it. “I just want her out of my head. I don’t want to meet her and go through all the drama of telling her that this is bull.” He sighs. “I have a heart, I do.”

“If you had a heart, then you would have realized that with the amount of time you spend thinking about this, she probably has already heard enough to know that you aren’t interested and her and will never be,” Mingyu points out fairly. “Sit up.” Minghao, as he fixes himself, sticks his tongue out at his best friend. Once he’s seated appropriately again, Mingyu gives him a warm smile, “That’s better. Now I can tell you aren’t pouting.”

He gets a balled-up t-shirt thrown at him for that. “You sound like my mother sometimes,” Minghao says, then his expression shifts as though he’s just realized something. “Oh, yeah,” he says and Mingyu actually gives him his full attention. “I’m going back home for about a week. I know I said I’d help you with moving and stuff, but I can’t. I have to do a bunch of stuff for my parents.”

Mingyu nods. “That’s fine. I understand.”

The look he gets in response is bewildered. “You turned soft, you know,” Minghao says, turning away from him to fix some things on his desk. “After you started hearing your soulmate. He made you into a softie and you haven’t even met him yet.”

Trying to hide the blush on his face, Mingyu ducks his head and turns in his own seat to retrieve the shirt that was thrown at him. “It’d be foolish for me to fall for someone’s voice.” He says. “Plus… your innermost thoughts… those are the scary ones, the dangerous ones, the ones that you don’t want anyone else to know. How could those be criteria for falling in love? Shouldn't that just push us away?”

From underneath his desk, Minghao snorts. “Remember when Soonyoung thought that his soulmate was a murderer until he realized that he was just really angry about something silly?”

“Yeah,” is the only response that Minghao gets. Mingyu doesn't understand what he's getting at. 

“I’m just saying that thoughts are scary. Psychologically speaking, it isn’t even… not all of our thoughts are totally our own, you know? Like some of it is just our brains being… weird. Like intrusive thoughts… I don’t know.” Minghao shrugs, after he sits back up in his seat. “That’s just another reason why this system is bull.”

Mingyu tries to think about the last time he’s heard from his soulmate. If he focuses enough, then he can hear a quiet humming in the back of his mind. It makes him feel inexplicably warm.

--

“I’ve been doing research into this stuff,” says Soonyoung, tapping away on his keyboard. “I”m trying to figure out how to find your soulmate easier. Chan mentioned to me that I could… probably set up like… a virtual bank of voices or something, but I think that’d be too hard to search through, even with identifiers. Plus I'm also trying to figure out how to silence your soulmate’s voice, you know? Like... “

“For Minghao?” Mingyu knows all too well why Soonyoung would look into that.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, “I can’t find anything on it, except apparently the voice goes silent when your soulmate dies, but that’s all up to chance… plus it’s obvious. If your soulmate isn’t alive anymore, then they can’t really be thinking and you can’t really be hearing their thoughts.”

It makes sense, but Hansol seems to disagree, returning back from the vending machines with several variety snacks for everyone to enjoy while they are studying: some studying actual class material, others (Soonyoung) not. “What if, like, reincarnation is real though, or like… souls don’t die?” He shrugs at his own comment, not sure of the merit of it. Soonyoung shakes his head, remaining quiet for now.

“Yeah, but there are actual records from people saying that they just stopped hearing their soulmate’s voice,” he finally says.

Mingyu’s eyebrows knit together as though he’s focusing really hard on his thoughts. “Wait,” he pauses, trying to gather all of the information that he has on this whole system. “I don’t know how they could have figured it out it was death in all those cases… like what if those people just met their soulmate but they didn’t realize it?” Hansol’s mouth drops open as he points his pencil eraser at Mingyu in excited agreement. “Or… what if there’s something else that allows for them to just stop hearing them? We just haven’t figured it out yet, huh?”

“, he’s right,” Hansol’s still holding his eraser towards him, bouncing it up and down between his fingers. “We can’t know for sure, so maybe focus on homework.” He reaches over to shut Soonyoung’s laptop, but Soonyoung moves too quickly to guard his precious work.

“I’m a dance major,” is all he says, looking prideful of his title.

Seungkwan walks up to their table, dropping his stuff down dramatically. “I didn’t know that dance majors were allowed to elect out of core classes.” He says, rolling his eyes. He flops into his chair as though this is his first chance at relaxation today (and it probably is). “If you don’t have any work, then you should help me with mine.”

Hansol shakes his head wildly, lifting his hands up too towards Seungkwan. “Bad idea, Kwannie. He’s the last person to trust here with your pre-med .” Seungkwan raises an eyebrow at him.

“And who’s the first one?”

“Minghao probably,” says Soonyoung. “But since Minghao, our brave triple major, isn’t here, I will be happy to help you with any.... proofreading you may have.” He looks humble when he says it, but Seungkwan kicks him underneath the table. All of them laugh.

It takes them no time to settle back into a comfortable silence as they all attend to their own work.

It also takes no time for Soonyoung to raise his voice again, startling Seungkwan, who jitters in his seat next to Mingyu. “Hey, Hansol, how long has it been since you’ve stopped hearing your soulmate?” His voice is small when he asks, as though it is a topic that isn’t allowed to be brought up. Hansol purses his lips, tilting his head back to peer at the ceiling as he thinks on it.

“About a year,” he answers just as quietly.

Mingyu shifts uncomfortably, wishing that he could simply will himself to listen for his soulmate’s thoughts. He often was overthinking any situation that he found himself in, so Mingyu got to listen in to a myriad of stories… or well, he did when he could understand the man’s thoughts. Most of the time, they seemed to be in English. If he caught onto a word, then he’d write it down and try to have Hansol decipher the meaning, but usually he didn’t want to share these thoughts with anyone else. They were private, and even Mingyu himself did not want to be able to listen to them sometimes. It felt like an invasion, but it was the way that things were. It was not like he could switch through his thoughts or turn them on and off like a radio. He was stuck with his soulmate’s dark thoughts, and his soulmate was stuck with his thoughts.

He wondered what he often heard, wondered if his soulmate ever calmed down enough to listen to Mingyu’s thoughts.

“Do you think…?” Mingyu asks suddenly, but finds himself unable to finish the sentence.

Hansol shrugs, looking nonchalant about it now. “Honestly? I probably met him on campus. I don’t have the best memory sometimes, so now I’m just trying to listen and find him. Most of the people I have thought it was usually still hear their soulmates, so… I don’t know. He sang sometimes, so maybe if I heard him sing I’d remember it. I often remember songs better than voices anyway.”

“You wouldn’t recognize your own mother’s voice, would you?” Seungkwan jabs, shaking his head.

Hansol grins, leaning back in his seat as they all share a laugh at his sake. “Hey, what’s up with all of you still though? I haven’t heard any updates this year.”

Soonyoung shrugs, “Mine sounds nicer, at least. I have no idea how to find him, but I’m going to keep looking. Chan says he still can’t really hear anything discernible. Not that that’s bad or anything, but he just says that it is hard for him to really focus on it. I told him to try meditation.”

Nodding, Hansol moves his gaze from Soonyoung to Mingyu. Mingyu shrugs too. “It’s fine. He’s… still there. Thinking all the time. He seems to be planning a trip or something recently, but I can’t really tell for sure.” He begins to chew on his bottom lip. Just when Hansol seems to lose interest in him and move on to Seungkwan, Mingyu holds a finger up. “Minghao said that his soulmate is definitely still alive. He was hoping that she’d disappear sometime during his trip.”

Seungkwan rolls his eyes. “Minghao’s dramatic.”
 

“Says you,” chimes Hansol and Mingyu.

In response, Seungkwan pushes Mingyu and kicks Hansol. “Anyway, I’m still hearing my soulmate loud and clear.”

At Seungkwan’s curt reply, everyone exchanges confused looks. Seungkwan always shares any gossip that he gets, so when he doesn’t share the details of his own scant love life, they all realize that there is something deeper going on. Soonyoung breaks the silence up quickly before Seungkwan can get upset at them for suspecting him of withholding anything. “Well, that’s good, at least. We can all rest easy knowing that our soulmates are all weirdos who we may never meet and that Hansol blew his chance by forgetting what their voice sounded like.”

“His,” Hansol corrects. “I remember it was a guy.”

Seungkwan rolls his eyes once again. “Great, that assists you wonderfully.”

--

Minghao calls Mingyu at three in the morning on a Tuesday. He’s got an exam at nine in the morning, then another exam at noon. When he finds himself reaching for his blaring phone, he almost just turns over and ignores it instead. He’s better than that and he knows that if his soulmate is asleep, then his thoughts could seep into whatever dreams he may be having. It’s happened to him before. He tries to stay positive as he rubs his eyes. He can barely make out the name on his screen, but when he does, he answers it without anymore hesitation.

“, Mingyu,” Minghao says, sounding breathless and irritated. “What were you doing? Sleeping?”

He laughs.

Mingyu grumbles something that he doesn’t even really understand.

“I know it’s late and I apologize. I’ll make it up to you… but I can’t hear her anymore.” He sounds excited, like a child on Christmas morning. Mingyu inhales slowly, then exhales even more slowly. He has to cling onto his consciousness to be able to confirm what Minghao was saying.

He echoes him, “You can’t hear her anymore?” He sits up fully in his bed, rubbing at the back of his neck while holding his phone up to his ear with his other hand. His throat feels dry with anticipation. He wonders if Minghao met her or if she had died suddenly. Something had to have happened for him to stop hearing her voice. Mingyu’s curious, but nervous. He feels this way every time he hears someone say that they no longer can hear their soulmate. He doesn’t want to be unable to hear his. He needs to hear his or he cannot ascertain that he is alright. Over the years, Mingyu has only grown fonder of this stranger whose thoughts he frequently got a chance to listen in on.

“Yeah,” if Mingyu could see him, he’d know how important this moment is for him.

“You sure she’s not just sleeping?” Mingyu asks, just to clear all his bases.

Minghao laughs, still sounding breathless. “I’m positive. It’s been days, Mingyu, days. I’m here in Hong Kong for a teaching gig and I haven’t heard her for days. It’s like a miracle. She just… faded and now I can’t hear her anymore. People say that when they think their soulmates die, it just disappears immediately, but she’s been getting quieter as time has passed.” He laughs, sounding as though he might cry. “I’m free, Mingyu.”

Mingyu can’t help but be happy for him. He smiles into the receiver, trying to convey his happiness for his friend at three in the ing morning. “Congratulations. I hope it’s everything you ever wanted,” he says. Minghao is still laughing. Mingyu’s chest feels so light.

I’m happy for him. I really am. This is all he ever wanted. It’s hard to be mad at his best friend when it is three in the morning and he has two exams in the morning when his best friend was just released from what he considered a personal type of Hell. Mingyu bids him a good night and settles back into his sheets, exuberant. “See you tomorrow,” Minghao still sounds blissful.

He hopes that he can hold onto this.

There’s a warmth in his thoughts as he drifts back to sleep. His soulmate’s singing the sweetest tune. That’s still something that none of his friends know. It is just another thing about his soulmate that he wants to keep to himself. Anyone could call him selfish for it, but he wants to hold onto this stranger. He could spend a lifetime with his thoughts.

Even the dangerous ones.

He’s thankful that tonight is warm.