Soulmates.

Every story is unique. The details are a little different. Some people had tattoos with their soulmate’s name, some people only saw black and white until they touched hands with their soulmate for the first time. Some had clocks which counted down the seconds until they met their fated one.

But in the end, it was all the same, right? Happy endings, falling in love, and so on?

That wasn’t exactly Min Yoongi’s scene. He wasn’t the type of guy who was good at things like love or promises or forever or mush. Sure, like any young boy, he’d had his crushes, but he had decided that he had better things to do with his time. His music career took priority in his life, so he decided to forego the frankly unnecessary worries about love and focus on becoming the best at what he could do - making music.

The fact that his 18th birthday passed and he’d gotten nothing, no sign of a soulmate...that was a separate fact that had had no impact on his views about love. Totally not. Or at least, that’s what he told himself.

“Maybe you just have to touch hands with your soulmate! There are those kinds of people, too!” His mother’s reassurance had come punctuated with a smile, but Yoongi had just shrugged her attempts at comfort away.

And he continued to shrug away all thoughts of love and ‘forever’ until around the middle of his third year in college. It wasn’t even midterms yet, but he was already back to that constant sensation of dreading his double major in music composition and history (his parents had insisted he be sensible about his future, so it had been their compromise). Anyone who majored in the music building knew that double-majoring was like asking for death itself, and he was really beginning to feel the pressure. It didn’t help that he was also a goddamn perfectionist.

He leaned back in his chair and groaned up at the ceiling of his dorm room. A long, low sound that crackled in his throat.

“Having a hard time?”

Yoongi lifted his head to look over at his roommate, Kim Seokjin. Jin was in his fourth year studying Mass Communications, and as far as Yoongi was concerned, he was a Roommate Angel sent from above, because after Yoongi’s terrible experiences in first and second year with roommates (a long story including Jägerbombs, flags and excrement), he had been fortunate enough to make friends with Jin during their World Politics class and gotten along so well that they’d put in a request to room together the next semester. He was, in Yoongi’s words, ‘a most compatible roommate.’ He was clean, quiet, and friendly. Everything Yoongi wanted.

He also understood Yoongi’s unspoken frustration with soulmates. Jin had never had any sign from his soulmate either, although he took it in stride with a smile, saying, “Well, I can always love myself as an option, at least!” But they both had an unspoken understanding, keeping each other company in their mutual lonely disappointment. Yoongi had enough acquaintances to know that having a roommate who had already met their soulmate would have been torture.

“Yeah, this piece just does not want to come together,” Yoongi complained, staring at the DAW on his laptop screen. “The middle is okay, I have a good hook, but...the sound is just off and I don’t know why… Plus, I have to fit in that melody the professor gave us, and he deliberately picked something that sounds ty.”

“How bad?”

“It sounds like a rip-off of Pororo.”

“Yikes…” Jin snickered from the corner. He looked at his desk for a minute, then stood up and unwound his scarf from the edge of his chair. “Well, I can’t seem to get this speech finished, either. How about we take a break and go get a coffee?”

“Thank god, I thought you’d never ask.”

The coffee shop was only about a ten minute walk from their dorm door, but the late October wind seemed to just rip right through Yoongi, making him even more irritable by the time they walked into Starbucks. It was warm and cozy inside, and Yoongi breathed in the scent of coffee contentedly.

“Oh, Jimin’s on shift today,” Jin noted, waving at the red-headed boy behind the counter. The boy waved back energetically, his bright ear-to-ear smile almost blinding. Even Yoongi gave a little smile. He didn’t get crushes anymore, but if he did, Jimin would be just the type of kid he’d have a crush on. Someone utterly bright and incompatible with him. What a hopeless endeavor, love was.

“He’s so cute, right?” Jin giggled, “I just want to squish his cheeks. Freshmen are so adorable.”

“Uh, right,” Yoongi muttered. He hadn’t thought of a Freshman as that young, but he guessed an extra year or two really mattered more to some people. Jin took their money and went to go get their usual order, so it was Yoongi’s turn to pick a table. He looked around the buzzing coffee shop and spotted two familiar faces- Kim Namjoon and Kim Taehyung - Jin’s two younger brothers. With a look of amused confusion, he followed their gesturing hands and joined them.

“Hyung!” Taehyung beamed, apparently not knowing he had a trace of whipped cream left on the edge of his top lip. He wore a bright red sweater that contrasted with his constantly sun-kissed skin and a matching sunny smile. Namjoon was wearing a turtleneck the color of an overly aged orange, a black beanie tucked over his bleached hair. Yoongi could swear that the Kim family was all so very different from each other, it just blew his mind. Namjoon, while the worst when it came to fashion (although Yoongi usually just judged him silently, his brothers brazenly taunted him) he was intelligent and cool, a mathematics major that deserved more attention than he usually got, but given his intriguing choice of electives and his passing interest in Yoongi’s production software, the elder had been quietly trying to convert the boy over to the dark side that was getting a Bachelor of Arts. The current argument was that it was ‘too late in the game’ to switch majors, but Jin just told him that it was his job as the eldest to get the ‘sensible’ career, and that he wanted his younger brothers to major in what they wanted. “You’re not about to graduate, like me, you’re just going into your second year,” Jin had argued, “If you want to major in music, do it!” But Namjoon still seemed hesitant to move.

Taehyung was a psychology major, and he was the type of person Yoongi would read about in novels or see in movies, but didn’t believe actually existed in real life. The first time he had met Taehyung he thought he was either deliberately putting on an act, or on drugs. (It was an understandable thing to think, seeing as when he first saw the boy he had been talking dramatically to himself while folding laundry in the Kim's living room.) He was just so full of energy, randomness, and alien behavior. The type of guy who asked why the sky was blue, and then actually went out and discovered the answer for himself, before anyone else even bothered to consider it. He was also branded on his wrist with a timer that counted down until the day he would meet his soulmate (something Yoongi was secretly envious of).

And that, unfortunately for Yoongi’s peace of mind, was the topic of the afternoon.

“Hyung, hyung! Today is the day!” Taehyung beamed, as he sat down across from them. The boy pulled back his sweater and grinned his box-shaped smile, showing the timer that was now down to mere minutes. “It’s gonna happen any time now!”

“Oh?” Yoongi arched an eyebrow at the glowing red numbers. “So you picked a coffee shop?”

“No,” Tae pouted, looking up through his bangs at his brother, “Namjoon insisted he tutor me in math, and he said Seokjin-hyung comes here a lot, to study. So I had no choice.” He shrugged, “But maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be!”

“Or maybe you’re destined to be soulmates with a geometric formula,” Yoongi teased. He looked over at Namjoon to see if he would join in on teasing the boy, but the math major was busy looking like he was going to be sick. “Hey, Namjoon, are you okay?”

“Huh? Oh...yeah...I just have a bad stomachache today,” Namjoon gripped at his navel, that grimace still playing at his lips.

“Jin’s here with you, right?” Taehyung bounced in his seat, looking down at his wrist.

00:00:00:00:02:30

“He needs to hurry up! Stop talking to people and come to your brother, hyung!” Taehyung whined towards Jin, who was talking to Jimin at the counter and laughing. He looked over his shoulder and gave them a little acknowledging wave, before picking up the two drinks there and walking over.

“Hyung!” Taehyung held out his arm to his brother, who beamed. “Less than two minutes now!”

“I know, I know! I just got your text!” Jin laughed, joining in on Taehyung’s excitement. “It’s exciting, right? How do you feel?”

“Like a water balloon,” Tae said, looking every direction in the cafe, trying to spot one soulmate amidst the twenty-something people in the building. Yoongi arched an eyebrow at the simile, but didn’t bother to ask.

“Here, you have some whipped cream on the edge of your mouth, let me get it off.” Just like a mother, Jin the edge of his thumb and swiped it along the corner of his brother’s mouth, causing the younger to suddenly squirm and growl in disgust.

“Ew, Jin! Why did you do that? I’m about to meet my soulmate here! And you’re me!”

“I did not you, I was trying to help!” Jin nagged back, reaching up with his other hand to straighten out Taehyung’s hair. “Just sit still for a minute and let me help.”

“No-o-o!” Taehyung whined, his arms flailing to fend off Jin’s motherly attack, “I don’t need it!”

“He probably doesn’t need it,” Namjoon agreed, still grimacing. “He spent like two hours in the bathroom getting ready.”

“Hey, what’s with you? You look sick.” Jin noticed his brother’s hunched shoulders and pained expression for the first time since sitting down.

“Oh, just a stomach ache, it’s nothing too bad.”

Jin’s eyes narrowed. “Did you eat something funny?”

“No.”

“Is it a stabbing pain or a dull pain?”

“Um...both?”

“Where is it at? Does it get worse when you press on it?” Jin leaned in toward his brother, going through the list with a sharpness to his tone.

“I dunno, it feels really low and really weird. Like here?” Namjoon pressed his hand to the space just below his belly button, “I think it’s just another stomach ache. I’ll be fine, hyung, really. It’s just annoying.”

“Do you want to go get some medicine?”

“Nothing I’ve tried seems to help,” Namjoon sighed.

“That’s so weird, I wonder if--”

“Hyung!” Jin was cut off by a familiar, chipper voice calling out to him. They all looked up to see Jimin coming over to their table, his apron folded over one arm and a dark-haired boy at his side.

“Oh, Jimin!” Jin beamed, “You got off shift earlier than I thought!”

“I’m just on break for the moment,” the boy flushed, smiling. He turned to the rest of the group and gave them a warm smile that made his eyes curl up into little crescent shapes. “Hello everyone, I’m Park Jimin! I’m a friend of Jin’s. And this is my roommate, Jung Hoseok!”

“Nice to meet you!” Hoseok saluted the table with a broad grin that seemed too big for his face to handle. Yoongi felt a little jab in his chest at seeing the two of them - why were some people so warm and endearing? Jimin had brightly colored hair and a face that looked like it had been sculpted by some talented artist, carding a hand through his long bangs that looked so soft. His friend Hoseok seemed to just exude a sort of unspoken friendliness, an electricity that shot through the room and gave Yoongi goosebumps. The Kim brothers, too - they were all handsome, even objectively speaking. Yoongi quietly took a moment to bemoan his situation. Why couldn't he have uglier friends? Friends that looked a little more normal and disappointing, like himself? He wasn't warm and endearing or sweet - he just ended up surrounded by such people these days.

Jin, also one of those warm and endearing people, gestured for them to join their table. “This is my roommate Min Yoongi, and that’s--”

“What?! What?!” Taehyung stood up and almost knocked over the cups on the table. He turned to the two newcomer’s, looking between them. “I missed it! WHICH ONE OF YOU IS IT?”

“Taehyung?” Seokjin queried. Hoseok and Jimin stared at the boy with matching bemused expressions.

“Which one of you is my soulmate?!” Taehyung cried out, holding out his wrist for the others to see that the numbers had finally gone down to zero.