for some odd reason, he stops seeing the scars appearing on his body, sees the messages written in red fade from his sight. the marks on his wrist get a little thinner, a little less red, fading bit by bit day by day.

he raises his arm, and his gaze lands on the black ink engraved upon his skin.

you're worth it.

am i really? he can't help but wonder - the same thoughts that has been flashing through his mind for the past two weeks.

maybe i am.

there's a sudden rush of emotion that chokes him; perhaps it's because the thought that someone out there in the world genuinely cares for him, the way that no one ever did.

some stranger whose name he doesn't even know, the unfortunate soul that he's been bound to since birth, and yet the stranger who decided not to turn away from this depressed, useless guy; the one who he doesn't know who gave him a new reason to live.

"hey-"

the word is spoken aggressively, roughly, cutting through the calm silence around him. his brief state of peace is rudely interrupted as the door slams open, impacting with the wall, and he feels his spine go stiffer than wooden bark as he catches a glimpse of the scowling face of the man who strides into his room.

this.

he hasn't seen any new scars on his body for two weeks now. he traces the tattoo in wonderment - he's gotten used to seeing the unerasable black ink etched into his own skin now. 

so, it actually helped.

well, if this park jungsoo dude had actually ignored this tattoo he'd gotten, he'd probably get mad; it had hurt like a , not to mention a year's worth of angry yells and beratings from his parents when they discovered it during dinner, despite his efforts to hide his wrist.

soulmates are a funny thing, really.

they compel you, in a way; this whole idea of two souls being inextricably linked together by some inexorable force of the universe itself. they make your heart open without your permission, they make you take this whole other stranger into your world without even knowing who the hell they really are, they make you accept every broken tangled piece of this other person without really knowing why - all because they are your soulmate.

there's this little piece of him that's been resisting the idea of having a soulmate all along.

and yet here he is, doing things he'd never do for this one guy, just so the guy would feel better.

park jungsoo.

he wonders what his soulmate will be in real life.

he doesn't want to meet a masochist. he doesn't want to meet someone so deep, so twisted in the binds of depression that he's half lost between reality and oblivion. he doesn't want to meet a shell of the man named park jungsoo.

he wants to meet his soulmate, park jungsoo.

the man he was bound to since birth.

the man made for him and the man that he was made for.

and so - the realisation strikes him at one in the morning when he's absentmindedly tracing over his tattoo - he's fighting to keep this guy alive, to be this man's savior.

i want to see your face.

i want to meet you.

a million possibilities take flight within his mind; of how his soulmate will act, of how his soulmate's voice will sound, of how his soulmate will look. 

of how they will meet one day without knowing of one another and yet knowing that they were made for each other. of how they will meet as two bound souls.

when i meet you, i want to see you smiling and your skin untouched and i want to see you happy and healthy.

he smiles a little ruefully, refusing to let his mind stray towards corners he'd prefer untouched.

i promise i'll do the same for you too.

his vision is blurry. 

" off," he chokes out, his larynx constricted, his breathing rising and falling in uneven rhythms. he claws blindly at the air that feels heavier than usual, strikes at the demons that hang thick around him, grasps desperately for any cold metal that he can find.

and as he sits there in the dead of the night, back pressed against the wall, his entire body trembling, he bows his head and cries.

the tears slide down slowly, thick droplets one at a time, before getting faster and heavier all at once; he drops the metal to the ground, and it hits with a horrible clattering noise, and he pulls his knees in and buries his head between his knees and cries till his body shakes with the wretched intensity of some poisoned animal retching every shred of food consumed over a week onto the ground. 

"help me," his voice is weak, broken, and cracked all over, and he can hear his own voice echoing back to him off the four walls and surrounding his head like some sort of sinister chant.

he traces the skin on his wrist, tries to squint past his hazy tears to read the writings in black ink.

they only make his heart hurt more.

i'm sorry. he doesn't have the energy to voice it aloud; perhaps he doesn't have it in him to hear his own voice fade away without a reply again. 

maybe he's been too caught up in the fantasies of having a soulmate who cares for him. maybe he's been living in the shards of his own imaginations, and maybe he's failed to realise the hell that he's still wrapped up within. maybe he deceived his own foolish mind into thinking that everything will be okay now that there's someone out there in this great big world who cares about his existence. 

it isn't okay.

nothing's okay.

his body stops shaking gradually, and he leans back against the wall, his tears drying against his cold cheeks. at this point, he doesn't have it in him to sob, to cry, to move. he sits in the welcoming dark of the night, tears dried, throat raw, eyes blood red. 

what a fool he has been.

soulmates are part of fate.

but how can he possibly be okay, if his fate has been screwed up since the very start?

he allows his eyes to close, letting his fingers flit across the skin where he knows the black markings lie.

i'm not going to be okay.