Minkyung is, was Baby A.

The letter because the newspapers cannot identify minors.

A because no one else was involved in the incident, just her.

Her parents did not tell her when she was five and came home crying from kindergarten after this one boy wanted to see her soulmate’s name but she couldn't show it to him because she didn't know where it was and could not find it so he said she must not have one.

“We'll tell you more when you're older, sweetie but you have a soulmate. Your father and I know that for sure.”

They exchange sad looks but just pat her on the head, give her a piece of candy and five year old Minkyung forgets about what meanie Mingyu said in the playground sandbox.

She lets a boy kiss her on the cheek in seventh grade and he sort of splatters his mouth all over. Jungkook runs off right after and all Minkyung wants to do is scrub all of him off her skin even though he's a nice boy.

She wished she knew more about her soulmate but not everyone is lucky enough to be born with a name, no matter what all the textbooks say because she does not have one and she, Kim Minkyung, is a person too.

A classmate looks at her funny when she says she wants to find out more about what her soulmate could be like.

Minkyung just shrugs it off the same way she shrugs off people who complain that she does too well at school.

Minkyung is sixteen and she finds the clippings in her parents’ closet, in a shoebox hidden way in the back.

She was just looking for some spare cash because Kyungwon and her kind of want to try out this new cafe and she may or may not have already spent all of her allowance on buying Kyungwon's birthday present because it was on sale (even though Kyungwon's birthday is not for three months) and she really should not ask for more money, would only be borrowing it and would definitely return it after she gets her next allowance.

A yard of floral-patterned cloth rolled up and tucked around the edges. Minkyung tugs it out of the biscuit tin. Maybe her mother had left some spare change in the bottom of what looks like sewing supplies but instead some old newspapers fall out.

They are clipped neatly together with a slightly rusty paperclip that leaves a brown powder on her fingers and the paper as she pulls it away for a closer look.

Baby A, the newspapers say, born on the 29th of July, was the only victim of the first known case of deliberate harm with regards to soul marks. A small picture of a baby, identity hidden behind a black bar across their eyes, wrapped in a floral patterned cloth that Minkyung literally just pulled out of the box.

The nurse involved was jailed for three months but this case set the precedent for soul mark-related sentencing, she reads.

Minkyung folds the cloth into a neat square and puts it back into the box, hands shaking.

She does not meet Kyungwon and does not go to the cafe even though Kyungwon calls her seven times.

Minkyung is eighteen and combing the internet for research on soul marks because it is getting harder and harder to pretend that hers is somewhere that really cannot see the light especially since she is thinking of going further with this kind of cute upperclassman. She thinks Kyungwon might also be getting suspicious if she really paid attention but Kyungwon is Kyungwon and Kyungwon has never even mentioned anything about soul mates ever that even Minkyung who hates the subject is starting to get curious.

Then she sees it, some article about a girl in China born in 98 who does not have one. It was not removed, was not hidden, the doctors just did not find one when the baby was born and never thought to mention it.

The existence of this girl is enough for Minkyung to make something up. She could say that it is somewhere inside, that the doctors said it was there.

Not that a one night stand would care, but Minkyung does.

Minkyung has always wanted to believe in soulmates.

There is just something so cute and so sweet about the idea that two people really do belong to each other in such a strong way that the universe decided to mark them in the same spot.

Except of course that some of a nurse had decided to burn hers off when she was a baby so Minkyung knows she at least has one but will never know if she has the right one.

Never.

She does not even really have a spot to go off of since the mark was burned off when she was a baby and honestly she cannot really tell for s