The night is clear. Stars, but no moon. The beach is an eerie quiet and Jennie barely makes out the crash of waves. There’s a single figure silhouetted by moonlight and she approaches slowly.

She finds Seungwan kneeling by the silver tide, salt-water at her toes and the edges of her dress, sand-stained fingers gently carving groves into her castle.

Seungwan adds a seashell with a flourish before she speaks. ‘I let her break me, over and over, because it might make her love me.’ She adds another. ‘All it did was make me strong.’

Jennie thinks her voice is like a comet. Brilliant and incandescent and passionate, but brief and painfully short. They’d just met today but she knows that this is a rare thing she’s witnessing.

‘Does having her love mean that much to you?’ Jennie has to know.

‘It did. It does. It’s supposed to.’ Seungwan smiles sadly. ‘Though I’m pretty sure this changes things.’

‘It doesn’t have to.’

‘She doesn’t love me. Not the way she loves you.’

‘It still doesn’t have to change anything.’ Jennie says desperately.

‘You’re my soulmate, it changes everything.’

Jennie has thought about her soulmate saying words like these. It was never like this. Jennie has thought about meeting her soulmate. It was never this way.

She would give anything and everything to meet Seungwan again. To not break her heart at first sight.