Part II

Hiraeth

 

"What are you guys up to?" Seokjin asked. Dance practice for the day was over and the members were left to do as they pleased. "I'm going to go sleep" Namjoon told him. "Perfect, get ready. We're going out to film another episode of the fabulous EatJin!" he told him. Namjoon groaned. "Why do you hate my resting time?" he asked dramatically. "I don't like all of you in general" Seokjin said crossly. "Now get up quickly" he protested.

"Namjoon hyung! I was looking for you!" Jungkook exclaimed, walking into his room. "Seokjin hyung is here too" he noted. "See! Kookie needs me so I can't go out with you sorry" Namjoon said quickly. "Why do you need him?" Seokjin asked Jungkook, folding his hands impatiently. "Uh... secret stuff" Jungkook told him. "What secret?" Seokjin asked curiously. "Boys' secret!" Jungkook lied, panicking under the intense interrogation. "I am a man too" Seokjin deadpanned. He looked at the two of them before sighing.

"I'll just call Jaehwan then. All of you . You both especially. Don't ask me for a treat any time soon!" he yelled as he left the room. "Boy's secret? Really?" Namjoon asked, laughing at Jungkook. "I panicked" Jungkook said defensively. "We saw. By the way, what did you want to show me?" Namjoon asked, shifting and making space for the boy on the bed. "Here. I found this app and I think you should check it out" Jungkook told him. He held out the iPad he had brought along, unlocking it first so that Namjoon could use it.

"It's an app. You use it to find your soulmate" Jungkook told him. "Jungkook..." Namjoon started. "You don't have to use it hyung. And you don't have to go looking for your soulmate straight away or something. But the people who develop the app have recently included a feature for people who have compass soul marks andI think you should watch the interview that the team did" Jungkook explained. Namjoon pressed his lips in a thin line. "I'll think about it" he told him. He put the iPad away and Jungkook stood up. 

"That's all I wanted to say. I'll just send you the youtube link" Jungkook said, standing up. He picked up the tab and was almost out of the door when Namjoon called out to him. "Hey. Do you want to go to the same restaurant as Seokjin just to annoy him?" Namjoon asked with a grin. "Okay" Jungkook said all too quickly. It was always fun to stir up trouble with Seokjin.

 

 

 

Namjoon put the earphones away. He wanted to concentrate on writing his raps but he couldn't take his mind off what Jungkook had told him about yesterday. It seemed crazy. How could a simple app help you find your soulmate. Any type of soulmate, much less rare unmatched types like the compass mark? Coordinate marks are easy. But even then what was the guarantee that you would turn up at the same time as your soulmate would?

He looked at his phone, sitting next to the keyboard. Should he check it out? Maybe he didn't need to see the app but he could listen to the interview. What would he stand to lose? For all he knew, this app would be something similar to those soulmate matcher companies from the late 80s. All of them had been inevitably exposed as scams but only after swindling a lot of money from the masses. So what had set this app apart?

"Sophia Lee" he read the name of the founder of the startup which had started the app. She seemed to be American but of an Asian descent by her features. She had striking brown hair, he noted to himself. Her profile was listed below along with related news articles. "10 million seed funding, one of the successful woman entrepreneurs to watch out for... here it is" he read to himself as he scrolled down to the video. The intro started to play and Namjoon plugged earphones in. The video was a cut of an longer interview, Namjoon guessed because it cut directly to the middle of a sentence and polite applause and agreements from the host.  

 

"Now let's discuss one of the new features of the app. The app claims that you can match soulmates based on First Word marks and Compass marks as well. Could you elaborate on the process?" the host asked.

"Well, let's tackle the First Word soulmate marks. As you know these soulmates are the ones who have their first words tattooed. We use natural language processing to find possible close matches. We factor in multiple other factors as well but the essence of the algorithm is the correlated sentence pairs that have been recorded during our surveys" Sophia explained.

"And what is the success rate of the algorithm?" the host asked. "As of last month it was 54 per cent. But this month we have already hit a reported successful match rate of 58 per cent" Sophia replied. "Isn't that a very low percentage?" the host asked bluntly. "Well, it depends on the factors you are considering. One is that there are many generic first word pairs that come across thousands of matches in the database. Those are always trickier compared to not so common greetings. Also, the algorithm is refined with every successful and unsuccessful match so this percentage is bound to increase as the app gains more users" Sophia said.

"And what about compass soul marks? That is a rare tricky type" the host continued. "It is. This feature however was the brain child of our research team after extensive research on documented stories of compass marks along with a few living couples that we managed to find after extensive searching. We identified a couple of features that have given us a potential direction work on and we are confident that this feature will be useful" Sophia answered.

"Doesn't the rarity of the soul mark pose a problem to development? Quite a few people have tried and failed" the host reminded her. "It was definitely rarer in the past. But if you take a look at the current world scenario where movement is much easier it seems to make sense that soul marks relating to locations would start becomign prominent. In the age of globalisation, finding a soulmate in a different country by compass or location marks can be very natural" Sophia hypothesized. 

"It's a strange kind of stigma really. a sort of soft discrimination against compass soul mark types. I believe that people can still find their other halves regardless of the soulmark type. We've had quite a few documented cases of people with Compass soul marks finding their soulmates. It's not impossible" she continued. "You seem to feel quite strongly about this issue" the host commented. "I do. I have a Compass soul mark so I do understand the implications very well"  she said sharply. "That's quite a revelation. Is one of the success stories of your app your own?" the host inquired. "I haven't found my soulmate yet. And considering how this is a private matter I would not like to discuss this further" Sophia said firmly.

"Right. Moving on, the company has also added features regarding security of users - "

 

The video ended mid question but Namjoon was already lost in thought. That was quite a bold and maybe even stupid move on her part. Celebrities never revealed information about their own soul marks. It was quite a risky affair. But she had been right. There had been instances of people with Compass marks finding their soulmates. He remembered reading about it online when he was a teenager. There were only a few famous cases and a few studies here and there which published generic results and nothing specific about the soul mark.

Namjoon put his phone away but the interview stayed on his mind for quite some time.

 

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Saumya #1
Chapter 2: Okay, wow I love it so far
IDK why but I pictured everything in grey hues and it's just really pretty and I can't wait for more:3
Ryukai
#2
Chapter 1: Ooo a soulmate prompt! I love it!