Seulgi is used to waking up in the middle of the night with a strong urge to break out her charcoal pencils. She’s used to sketching the same face every other month since she first knew how to hold a pencil. Each year—each drawing—the face becomes less abstract and more solid.

It’s not only her skills that are getting better, but the image in her head grows clearer. When she was younger, she was never sure if it was a boy or a girl that she was sketching. She knew they had a little scar on the right cheek and unruly hair that was never the same length twice. But with age and time, it became clear that the face is male, it’s strong, and it’s more attractive than most men she’s seen in real life.

She doesn’t know who he is or what he does or where lives. But she does know—or, at least, suspect—that he’s her soulmate.

Soulmates aren’t guaranteed in life, but there are certain people who find their soulmates in various ways. Seulgi thinks that the urge to sketch this one particular face is her way. The face ages along with her, maybe a little older, but at the same pace.

And when she is twenty-three years old, she wakes up and the face she sketches is as clear as day. Her hands move rapidly, creating the lines of his face with unmatched precision—not a single stray line, not a hair out of place, not a scar forgotten. He’s wearing glasses and smirking ever so slightly. It’s the realest he’s ever looked—like he’s standing right in front of her. And when she stops and scoots her chair away from the table, she finally breathes again. And she can’t look away.

“Who is that?”

Seulgi finally turns her head to find Joohyun leaning over her shoulder, studying her drawing. She was so lost in it that she never even heard Joohyun come down the hallway. “I don’t know,” she admits. Joohyun just hums and starts up a pot of coffee.

She and Joohyun have been friends for two years. They ended up living together when they realized Joohyun’s live-in boyfriend was also dating Seulgi. It wasn’t an easy transition from jilted ex-lovers to friends, but they’ve reached the point where they’re friends first and Jongin is just a distant memory.

However, Seulgi hasn’t told Joohyun, or anyone—except for Junmyeon—about her drawings. And she only told him because he caught her drawing the face when she first started, when they were just little kids.

“I’ve been drawing this same face since I was, like, eight,” she explains and Joohyun turns slowly, like she’s starting to understand what’s going on. “This is the best I’ve ever done. He looks… real.”

“What do you think it means?” Joohyun asks her carefully and Seulgi is having a hard time reading her tone.

The two of them have never talked about soulmates. She always just assumed it was because Joohyun didn’t have one. Or that Joohyun assumed the same about her. Neither of them have any visual soul marks on their bodies, so it’s an easy assumption to make. And because soulmates aren’t guaranteed—or even completely understood—Seulgi doesn’t share what she believes is her soulmate connection with anyone.

“I think it could mean a lot,” she finally says and they both laugh because the thought seems so unbelievable. Soulmates . Joohyun slides into the seat across the table from her and touches the top of Seulgi’s sketchbook. Seulgi pushes it toward her just enough to let her know she can look through it.

The book isn’t just that same face over and over. There are some other sketches thrown in there, too. But she’s been so busy with school and work that hasn’t had much time for her own art and the book is full of sketches she’s done over the past two years. The face takes up more than half of the filled pages, though.

Joohyun starts at the beginning and stops to inspect each iteration of Seulgi’s could-be soulmate. She ignores the beeping of the coffee machine, so Seulgi gets up and pours them both a cup while Joohyun keeps flipping through the pages. When Seulgi sits back down, Joohyun is looking at the face Seulgi drew three months ago. The differences between that and the one she finished are even starker than Seulgi originally thought.

“Wow,” Joohyun says, pushing the book across the table and trading it for her coffee cup. “He’s hot.”

“He is, right?”

“Really hot,” Joohyun promises and Seulgi smiles into her coffee cup as she takes a sip. “I hope you get to meet him.”

“I never thought I would,” she says quietly and Joohyun nods, almost like she understands. “Do you have one? We’ve never talked about it and I know it’s rude to ask, but—“

“Nope,” Joohyun answers, cutting off Seulgi’s rambling. “Neither did Jongin, so I kind of always thought he was mine. Like we were two leftover people that weren’t bound by fate to anyone else. I thought we got to choose who we loved. I thought we chose each other.”

Seulgi feels guilty every single time the subject of Jongin comes up, but never more than this moment. She fell in love with the one person Joohyun chose to love. The only one she’s ever chosen. “I’m sorry,” she says for the thousandth time and she means it. She always means it.

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. And it clearly wasn’t meant to be. We were young and I was naïve. You didn’t do anything wrong. You just fell in love.”

Seulgi smiles tightly and nods, closing the book in front of her. “I’ve got to get to work.”

“Did you even sleep?” Joohyun asks her and Seulgi laughs until it turns into a yawn. “So, no?”

“Not really, but if I don’t serve coffee, who will?”

“Sooyoung? Chanyeol? Literally anyone else you work with?” Joohyun asks, but Seulgi just shrugs. She needs the money. She can sleep later. “Okay. But do you mind if I come with you? I can’t work here anymore. I get too distracted by the internet and TV.”

“The café has wifi, you know,” Seulgi reminds her, but Joohyun just narrows her eyes, waiting for an answer. “But of course you can.”

--

The café is quiet, like it always is, because it’s a Thursday in July in a pretty small college town, but Seulgi keeps herself busy. She brought her sketchbook with her and starts another drawing of the same face. She’s never done two so close together, but something told her to bring the book and a pencil. And because she is desperate to know more about this face and what it could mean, she listens to that impulse.

Joohyun is the only constant in the café, so it’s ea