Kibum frowns at the tangled mess of fate threads in front of him.

He’s at the bus stop outside the campus grounds to his university, on his way home. He’s been studying with his friends after class for the upcoming mid terms, so it is already well into the evening. He really wants to make it to the bookstore before they close, as a new installment in the series he’s reading has been released, but he has just stumbled across the biggest ball of fate threads he’s ever seen. It almost demands attention where it lays, twisted on itself.

He sighs and throws a glance around.

There are a few people at the bus stop, though most are staring at their phones. They will probably not notice him fade from view if he were to go invisible right now. There is an older woman sitting on the bench, however, and she’s looking around while waiting for the bus. There’s also a guy beside her. He looks around Kibum's age and his hair is a soft pink, which makes him stand out. Even if he hadn’t been sitting right in front of the cluster of fate threads Kibum would have noticed him, just because of his hair.

To his surprise, the pink haired guy isn’t looking at a phone like so many of their generation always do. Instead, he’s chewing gum and blowing bubbles, studying the people around him. He glances at Kibum and raises his eyebrows when he catches him looking, before letting his eyes sweep away to the next person.

Kibum sighs again and begrudgingly trudges to the nearest ally where he closes his eyes and concentrates for a moment. The familiar tingling sensation of turning invisible passes through him and he opens his eyes again, going back to the mess of fate threads. He picks the cluster up and gently pulls on it so he can sit down on the pavement in the corner of the cubicle at the bus stop and begin untangling it.

“What are you?” he asks the ball. “How did you end up like this?”

It answers him with stoic silence. Not that he expected anything else; he has a habit of talking to the fate threads whenever he untangles them and he’s grown used to never being answered. He sits and picks and picks and picks at them, seven busses come and go, which is a sign of quite a stretch of time since the busses don’t go that often from this station, as it is next to the last one and not a very populated route.

As he puts the fate threads down to take a break and roll his shoulders to ease the strain in his neck, he notices the pink haired guy is still there, watching whatever few cars and people pass.

“Dude, there’s only like three lines going from this station,” Kibum tells him. “How did you not catch your buss by now?”

The pink haired guy doesn’t answer, which is a given since he can’t hear him.

“If you’re waiting for a date, I’m sorry to tell you she probably doesn’t want to date you if she hasn’t shown up by now,” he continues.

The pink haired guy checks his phone and Kibum takes the opportunity to let his eyes sweep over him. He’s not bad looking so Kibum can’t imagine him being stood up. There is something about him that bugs him though. He can’t put his finger on it, but he doesn’t quite fit in.

Another bus arrives and suddenly the pink haired guy stands up and boards it. Kibum blinks.

“Oh, you’re leaving?” he says. “Have a nice evening then!”

The pink haired guy doesn’t look back and Kibum doesn’t mind. He returns to the arduous task of detangling the fate threads. It takes him an hour more until he’s completely finished and he let’s go of them, watching some expand and others shrink. Then he gets up and sits down on the bench, checking his clock.

The bookstore has closed long ago. He heaves a heavy sigh.

Rush hour is over at least and a bus has just come and gone so there aren’t many people at the bus stop, and those that are there are as always looking at their phones. He lets his invisibility drop and reaches up to rub his stiff neck.

He has to wait for half an hour before his bus comes and he nearly falls asleep once he has made himself comfortable in one of the bus seats. Thankfully the bus hits a bump in the road and it jolts him to full consciousness just as his stop comes up.

“Kibum, is that you?” his mother calls from the kitchen when he enters the door to the apartment.

“Yeah,” he calls back.

She comes around the corner, apron on and hair in a messy bun.

“You’re home late,” she comments and frowns a little. “Were you out with friends?”

Kibum grimaces, drops his backpack on the floor and toes off his shoes.

“No. There was a big mess of threads at the bus stop,” he says and picks up his backpack again before making his way to his room.

His mother seems a little surprised by this, but she ruffles his hair affectionately as he passes.

Kibum knows he isn’t the most responsible Guardian there is, as he would rather do something he thinks is more productive than wander around town taking care of fate threads day in and day out, like all the other guardians do. But it still stings a little to see the surprise on his mother’s face. It’s not that he doesn’t care at all. He just doesn’t want it to rule his life.

“Your father and I are making dinner,” his mother says. “It’ll be done soon so go wash your hands and set the table.”

“Okay,” he mumbles and closes the door to his room.

He throws his backpack onto his bed and changes into comfier clothes before he goes back out again to follow his mother’s instructions. Soon they are all seated around the dining table and digging in to to their food.

“So, how was today?” his father asks once they have eaten for a few minutes. “I heard you found a big cluster of fate threads.”

“Yeah,” Kibum answers. “I wanted to go look at some new books in the bookstore but it took me too much time to untangle it, so I couldn’t make it before they closed.”

“It’s our duty to take care of the fate threads first,” his mother says, like she always does when she wants to remind him of his ancestry, and Kibum sighs.

“I know.”

He wishes it weren’t sometimes. He wonders how it would be to not have to worry about other people’s fates and take care of them all the time. What would life be like if he was blissfully unaware of what tied everyone together and instead excelled at something he himself had chosen to know more about? What if he could have spent those hours untangling fate threads doing his homework properly and then go to an activity such as playing an instrument or a game or go to a sport?

But that isn’t the way of a guardian.

He rebels every now and then and ignores a fate thread when he is with his friends, though he sees it has been caught. He never can go for long before he feels guilty, however, and returns to where he saw it.

What he absolutely can’t ignore, however, are the rare instances he finds fate threads which are a deep dark red, nearly maroon, because those mean there is something wrong and that can compromise the two it is connected to. Usually it’s due to the fact that the two soulmates have never met and the fate thread is growing weak and desperate, as it’s not fed with the love it needs.

When that happens, the very tricky job of trying to make the two intended meet begins. Never mind actually finding them in the first place. It would be ideal if they all were in the same country, but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes Kibum sits down and concentrates on the fate thread, asking it to show him where the soulmates are, and he ends up all the way over in Canada.

A lot of planning goes into those instances, and guardians from all over the world come together to help.

Kibum always gets behind in school during those times and he asks himself why he even bothered entering university at all. Then he goes back to classes and it reminds him that he chose to go to university because he actually likes to learn.

As he goes to bed later that night he whishes, as he does on so many other nights, the world could exist without the threads of fate. Even for a day.

The ball of tangled fate threads is there again the next evening and Kibum stares at it incredulously. He barely refrains from groaning and stomps off irately to the same alley as before to turn invisible.

When he comes back the pink haired guy is there as well. This time he has his nose buried in a book.

“So you weren’t waiting for a date yesterday?” Kibum says as he sits down in the corner, the tangled fate threads in his lap. “Do you just enjoy sitting at bus stops or something?”

The pink haired guy flips a page.

“Ah, I see,” Kibum says. “Well, maybe it can be nice sometimes to just sit in one place for a while. I do that often, but that’s just because I’m required to because of this.” He holds up the ball of fate threads. “So you might be a weird one if you do it out of joy.”

The pink haired guy’s lips quirk a little and Kibum smiles to himself, though he knows the pink haired guy is probably smiling at something he read in the book.

It doesn’t take him as long to untangle the threads today and he stands up after about half an hour, stretching his arms over his head.

“I’m done for today, so I guess I’ll be leaving before you,” he tells the pink haired guy, who is still reading his book.

He gives him a little wave, even though he can’t see him, and decides to board the bus invisible.

Over the next few days, it becomes somewhat of a routine. Kibum arrives at the bus stop, finds a cluster, varying in size every day, goes invisible, and untangles it. The pink haired guy is always there, reading or people-watching, and Kibum casually chats with him every time, telling him about what he learned in classes that day or giving his opinions about the books the pink haired guy brings if he has read them.

That Friday, though, he finds the biggest cluster yet. Kibum doesn’t even bat an eyelash, and immediately starts working on it after greeting the pink haired guy who is sitting on the bench, once again reading. He has already turned invisible before arriving at the bus stop since it saves time rather than going back and forth between the bus stop and the alley every time.

“I think there must a force field or something around this place,” Kibum tells the pink haired guy after a few minutes of picking at the fate threads. “There’s always a mess here.”

There is no answer, as always, and Kibum doesn’t mind, as always. The pink haired guy is a great listener, if nothing else, even though he can’t hear Kibum.

After a few hours, Kibum stands up with a stretch and a yawn.

“Do you have nowhere to go?” he asks the pink haired guy. “It’s like you live at this bus stop.”

The pink haired guy continues reading and Kibum smiles a little.

“I don’t think I’ll be here tomorrow, since it’s Saturday and I don’t have classes,” he says. “But I’ll see you on Monday?”

As usual, he is met with silence, but that doesn’t deter him and he decides to read over the pink haired guy’s shoulder as he waits for his bus. It’s an interesting book, taking place a few hundred years back. It depicts the life of a warrior trying to redeem himself after being falsely accused of espionage and deserting his country in times of war.

They are just at an intense scene, where the warrior has found out who disgraced his name, when Kibum's bus arrives. Just before he boards he gives the pink haired guy a small wave and a ‘have a good weekend’, smiling to himself and feeling better than he has done for quite some time.

He doesn’t let the invisibility fall until he is outside the door to the apartment.

“Your grandparents called,” his father tells him as he walks past the living room, on the way to his bedroom.

Kibum stops and turns to him. His father looks up from the news he is watching and gestures to the seat beside him on the couch.

Kibum reluctantly sits down. Nothing good ever comes from his grandparents’ calls. Either it is to nag him to do better as a guardian, scold him for not caring enough about the fate threads or tell him about some girl they are considering him to marry.

“What did they say?”

His father’s mouth turns down in disapproval.

“They want you to take your ancestry more seriously,” he says. “You’re very negligent when it comes to taking care of the threads of fate, and the Guardian families with daughters are not eager to have them married into a family where they think our work as Guardians aren’t true to our ancestors.”

Kibum's jaw clenches against the angry words that threaten to bubble out of him. His fists are clenched in his lap and he’s staring straight ahead while listening to his father.

“I know you’ve begun to show a little more interest this past year, and you’ve even stayed out late this week to take care of a reoccurring cluster,” his father continues. “But you’re still only doing ten percent of what most guardians your age do.”

Kibum snorts.

“Well, I go to school, have homework, and sometimes I want to meet friends,” he mutters. He doesn’t mention he also has mid terms soon.

“Most of which are things your mother and I have let you indulge in,” his father says, a hard edge to his voice. “We thought that if we let you do the things you wanted you wouldn’t be as opposed to being a Guardian. Every other Guardian is homeschooled so they can focus on their duties.”

“Well, I’m not like every other Guardian then, am I?!” Kibum fires back and stands up. “Why does everything have to revolve around the threads of fate and being a Guardian?! Why can’t you just let me be normal for one day?! I ing hate this!”

“Kibum,” his father growls. “We have let you have your way long enough! Which other Guardian that you know of goes out and has fun with their friends instead of seeing to their duties with the respect they deserve?!”

“Well for them they don’t actually have any friends!” Kibum yells. “I want a life where I choose what’s important to me, not something that’s supposed to be in my blood! Sometimes I just wish the threads of fate would disappear! Then maybe you and all the other Guardians wouldn’t be so about actually living a normal life!”

“Kibum–,” his father starts, his voice rising, but Kibum has had enough and storms out the door to the apartment again, slamming it shut behind him.

He stops for a moment to turn invisible, the only good thing about his bloodline, before he continues storming down the street. He walks and walks and walks, he doesn’t know for how long or how far but he can’t stop. He’s so angry.

He doesn’t slow down until he realizes he is at the bus stop by his university, which means he must have walked for about forty-five minutes. His eyes widen in surprise and he lets out a heavy breath before he sits down on the bench. The place is desolate, which it would be at this time in the evening seeing as it is the next to last stop.

He leans his head back against the cool glass of the bus cubicle and closes his eyes.

What he wouldn’t give to make his parents understand how suffocated he felt sometimes.

Suddenly footsteps come closer. He snaps his eyes open again and nearly laughs. It’s the pink haired guy; book in one hand and a bottle of soda in the other.

“What in the world are you still doing here?” he asks incredulously. “I saw you not long ago. Don’t tell me you really do live here?”

The pink haired guy sits down on the bench beside him, a little closer than he would have had Kibum been visible, puts the soda beside him and opens the book he had been reading earlier.

“I should give you a name,” Kibum says. “I keep thinking of you as the pink haired guy every time I see you, which is a mouthful.”

The pink haired guy lets out a soft sigh.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kibum hums, thinking. “Well, since your hair is pink and I already call you the pink haired guy… how about Pinkie?”

As if he can hear him, Pinkie frowns at his book and Kibum laughs.

“It’s kinda cute,” he chuckles. “I think I’ll stick to that one.”

Pinkie doesn’t answer, though his frown stays, and silence falls over them for a moment. Kibum looks out over the nearly empty street and Pinkie continues reading.

“I hate my life sometimes, Pinkie,” Kibum murmurs after a while. “You don’t know, but there are these red threads of fate that tie two people together that only people called Guardians of Love can see.”

Pinkie turns a page.

“I am one of them,” Kibum continues. “And at times I hate it. Everyone expects my life to revolve around these little fate threads, expects me to take care of them twenty-four-seven and devote all my energy to walking around town and checking on them everyday, start over and repeat. They’ll even arrange a marriage for me, so our bloodline can continue. But I want so much more. I want to do something that actually gives me new ways to view the world. I want new things to learn instead of following tradition.”

Kibum sighs and watches Pinkie close his book and put it in his lap before grabbing his soda and taking a sip, eyes following a passing car.

“I just want to be a regular guy who falls in love with whomever he wants,” he admits, “studies whatever he wants, and finds his dream job, but I can’t be that either. I’ve tried being better at being a Guardian. I’ve not opposed to it as much as I have before and I’ve even told my friends I’m busy when I see big clusters of fate threads, when I would ignore them before. I try. I really do, but it still seems as if it isn’t enough. And it probably won’t be enough until I learn to ignore the normal world and live in the world of Guardians, where we only work in our family’s companies at weird hours so we can all be out and about taking care of other people’s fates, invisible to everyone but ourselves.” Kibum laughs humorlessly. “What kind of life is that?”

Pinkie takes another sip of his soda.

“I must be boring you,” Kibum sighs. “I just… I want to live in a world where there are no fate threads sometimes.”

Pinkie hums and picks up his book again. Kibum spends a quiet moment watching him. This close he notices Pinkie has larger eyes than most and his jawline is sharp. His kind-looking, brown eyes move rapidly as he reads and his hair flutters every now and then with a passing breeze. He looks like most people, though he’s a little odd. Still, Kibum can’t shake the feeling that there’s something off about Pinkie.

They sit for about an hour in peaceful silence. Kibum doesn’t have his phone with him, as he left it in his backpack at home, but he guesses it’s really late at night and his parents are probably worried. He gets up with a heavy heart, not feeling up to going back and facing his father and mother’s disappointment. He wishes they would just try to understand sometimes instead of expecting him to be just how every other Guardian is supposed to be.

“I’ll see you around, Pinkie,” Kibum says wistfully. “I have to go home and face my parents.”

Pinkie actually does glance up, but it is most likely because of another passing car. Kibum smiles at him anyway and turns to leave.

There is a big fight when he gets back home, as expected, and he goes to bed crying angrily about how everything seems so hopeless. He is never going to fully fit in with either the normal world or the world of Guardians and where the hell does that leave him then?

A/N: I was inspired, so here, have the first chapter! I'm writing in present tense, which I've never done before, so I'm not sure how much of it is actually readable since I'm too tired to proofread this, but I hope you like it?

So... I'm gonna go to bed now...

Byeeee...