They only discover it after Jessica leaves. Taeyeon feels unwell, but then again she rarely feels well and she dismisses the fatigue, nausea and headaches to just another bundle of symptoms of the perpetual illness they call a career. How ironic, she thinks, that they make a living by essentially killing themselves day in day out. On some days, she wouldn’t mind if the process were greatly expedited. This is definitely one of those days.

It’s Tiffany (of course) who finally does something about it when she finds Taeyeon throwing up after dance practice. She had eaten nothing all day and so all that comes up is bile.

“You’re sick,” Tiffany says flatly.

“It’s just the stomach flu or something, whatever. It’ll blow over in a few days.”

“Taeyeon, you’ve been sick for the past two weeks. Since—” Tiffany doesn’t finish her sentence, but Taeyeon knows what she was going to say anyway.

She tries to give a smile; it probably comes out more like a grimace. “You can see why I might be feeling under the weather then.”

“You almost passed out on Tuesday.”

“I didn’t eat enough.”

“Then you had a migraine on Wednesday.”

“I couldn’t sleep the night before.”

“And now you’re throwing up.”

“I must have eaten something bad.”

“You haven’t eaten anything at all!”

“So I’ll feel better once I do,” Taeyeon says, not budging an inch.

“Look, I know we all go through periods of not feeling well but this is worse than that. Have you seen yourself? You look awful.”

“Thanks, Fany. Always knew I could count on you to feel better.”

Tiffany gives the frown that vaguely reminds Taeyeon of a Rottweiler. “You’re going to see a doctor.” It isn’t a request.

“I will if something serious happens.” Taeyeon holds up a hand as Tiffany opens to argue. “I can do this, okay? I know my body and its limits.”

“I’m not sure you do,” Tiffany mutters, but she lets the matter drop for now.

Taeyeon takes it as the smallest of victories.

It turns out that maybe she doesn’t know her body as well as she thought. She made sure to eat and tried to catch some close eye on the van and in the makeup chair, but as they’re preparing to step onstage Taeyeon has to brace her hands on her knees and draw in some sharp breaths so she doesn’t topple over. She has no idea how she can have a performance when she feels like she can barely stand up, but when Juhyun asks, “Are you okay, unnie?” she answers, “Yeah, I’m fine” in a remarkably steady voice.

“Taeyeon.” Tiffany’s hand is on her elbow and she’s grateful for the pressure. She manages to draw herself up and pastes a smile on her face. “You—”

She doesn’t let Tiffany finish her sentence. “I’m fine, really. Let’s do this, okay?”

Tiffany’s narrow-eyed gaze doesn’t leave Taeyeon’s face, but Taeyeon decidedly avoids eye contact.

“Unnie,” Juhyun says, and Taeyeon doesn’t know which of them she’s addressing.

A staff member gestures for them to take their entrance, and Taeyeon lets her body fall into routine. She’ll do this by muscle memory and sheer willpower if nothing else. Even if her vision isn’t completely clear and she hears an odd buzzing in her ears, even if her legs feel simultaneously hollow and like they’re filled with lead, she can do this.

She has to.

Somehow, Taeyeon manages to the second chorus before her legs give out on her. She even manages to finish her line as she collapses; of course, her voice has always been the strongest part of her. (Except for the times it fails when it matters most.)

She feels a firm, unfamiliar touch on her wrist, and she resists on instinct, remembering another stage and a stranger touching her, tugging her away from her members. But then that touch is replaced by Juhyun’s hand on the crook of her elbow and Tiffany’s on her back.

She can vaguely register screams from the fans and instructions from the staff, but through the noise she hears Tiffany’s voice, thick but steady.

“It’s okay, Taeyeon. We’ve got you.”

And she lets herself fall into the darkness lapping at the edges of her vision, untethered but unafraid, letting her girls catch her.

Taeyeon comes to one or two times, but never surfaces fully into consciousness. She thinks that she’s in someone’s arms at one point, and then maybe in a van, but when she fully comes to, she’s lying in a bed that isn’t her own staring at a white ceiling.

“You’re awake,” comes a voice from her bedside, and she might have started if she had any energy for that. She vaguely registers the IV drip connected to her arm, the bag of fluid hanging from a pole next to her bed. It’s been a while since she was hooked to one of these.

“Jooyoung oppa?”

He closes the folder on his lap and looks at her closely. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she says honestly.

Jooyoung’s expression is mildly reproachful. “You should have said something if you were feeling so unwell.”

Taeyeon almost squirms, feeling like a child with her hand caught in the cookie jar. Jooyoung has the disappointing parent look down to a tee; it no doubt helps that he has two young daughters. However, she knows not to mistake his concern, as genuine as it is, for parental affection. They all work for SM after all, and SM is a business above all, not a family.

“Never mind,” Jooyoung sighs. “I would say make sure not to do the same thing next time, but I certainly hope there won’t be a next time.”

Taeyeon says nothing. It’s not something she can promise.

“I know things have been…difficult lately,” he starts in a soft voice.

“Where are Tiffany and Juhyun?”

“They went to get some coffee and food. They were very adamant on staying with you, but I convinced them to take a break, get something to eat. They’re very worried about you, Taeyeon. Everyone is.”

She keeps her eyes on her bedspread. “I’m fine.”

“You’re clearly not, if you fainted onstage. Tiffany told me that you haven’t been eating, that you’ve been having headaches…”

Taeyeon’s head shoots up. “She said what?”

“Ah.” Jooyoung looks like his worst suspicions have been confirmed. “You’ve been sick for a while and you haven’t said anything.”

“I thought I could handle it.” Taeyeon swallows. “I was wrong.”

It hurts to admit that. There are many things she can’t control, but she always counted on being able to control her own body at the very least, but even that has let her down.

“Maybe we should finish TTS’s promotions early. You can take a well-deserved break.”

“No!” Taeyeon’s voice cracks. “No, I’m fine. I feel a lot better already. Don’t hold back the group just because of me.”

“That’s not what would happen, Taeyeon,” Jooyoung says in that soft voice again, and she hates that voice, because it sounds like he really cares and maybe he does but that’s not what she can afford to think. She also hates that voice because of the pity in it, and if there’s one thing she can’t stand it’s pity.

“I’m fine,” she says again, answering an unasked question. “I can continue promotions.”

He sighs. “We’ll talk about this later. Meanwhile, the doctors want to run some more tests.”

“What tests? I was just dehydrated, it’s nothing serious.”

“I think they would know better than you,” Jooyoung says mildly. “Don’t fight it, Taeyeon. The sooner we figure this out, the sooner you can go home.”

“Home,” Taeyeon repeats. “I’d like to go home.”

She wonders where that is, really.

Tiffany and Juhyun return, with bags of what Taeyeon assumes is food and expressions of what look like barely tempered concern, and Jooyoung excuses himself.

“How are you feeling, unnie?” Juhyun asks, and she feels like she’s been asked the same question a hundred times but this is Juhyun and she musters a genuine smile somehow.

“Better.” She gives the same answer she gave to Jooyoung and then adds, “Much better.”

“We got you food,” Tiffany says, hefting the bag in her arms.

“Trying to make up for what you did?” Taeyeon asks with narrowed eyes.

Tiffany blinks. “What did I do?”

“You ratted me out to Jooyoung oppa!”

“I don’t consider looking out for my best friend ratting her out,” Tiffany says, unfazed. “I don’t think even you can argue that this is something serious.”

“It’s not—” Taeyeon deflates. “I’ll be fine.”

“In the meanwhile, you should get some rest, unnie,” Juhyun intercepts, just as Tiffany looks like she’s going to say something sharp. “Do you want to eat or drink something?”

“No. Well, maybe some coffee.”

“You’re not having coffee,” Tiffany says.

“Tea?”

“We have some honey lemon tea here,” Juhyun says, reaching into one of the bags, but at that moment, the door is pushed open and a doctor walks in. He’s fairly young, in his mid-thirties at most, with glasses and a sombre expression.

“Kim Taeyeon ssi?” he says briskly, and Taeyeon has an urge to point at one of Tiffany and Juhyun and say, “That’s her,” as if she can pass off whatever news he’s about to give to someone else. She doesn’t, of course.

“Yes, that’s me.”

He glances at Tiffany and Juhyun. “If I could have a word with you in private.”

Tiffany gives Taeyeon a look that plainly asks do you want me to stay, and Taeyeon imagines the doctor trying to explain procedures to her and Tiffany bulldozing her way through it in that way of hers. The mental image almost brings a smile to her face, the first one since she woke up in this bland room.

“I’ll talk to you later,” she says. Tiffany frowns slightly but nods. Juhyun takes out a bottle of honey lemon tea and sets it on Taeyeon’s bedside table.

“I hope you feel better, unnie,” Juhyun says, squeezing Taeyeon’s shoulder for a moment. She casually loops an arm through Tiffany’s and walks with her – practically guides her, really – towards the door.

“We’ll be waiting for you,” Tiffany says. “Just let us know if you need anything.”

“I will,” Taeyeon says, and then they’re gone and it’s just her and the doctor.

“I’m Dr. Lee Jaewoo.”

“Dr. Lee,” she says politely, and prepares herself for his diagnosis.

“I’m a specialist in soul bonds and the effects they have on—” He trails off when he sees the look on her face. “Taeyeon ssi?”

“Sorry, you’re a specialist in what?” she asks, sure that she heard wrong. He couldn’t have said what she thinks he did, can he?

“Soul bonds,” he repeats. “I take it you’re not aware you have one?”

Taeyeon falls back into the bed, suddenly feeling weaker than she did even onstage. How? she wants to ask, except she knows the basic theory of it, they all do. For how long? Why now?

The question she musters is, “Who?”

“Well, I was going to ask you, actually.” He looks surprised. “Surely you know the identity of your soulmate.” When Taeyeon gives him a blank look, he adds, “I assure you, Taeyeon ssi, that information will remain confidential.”

“It’s not that,” she says. “I have no idea who my—who that person is. Aren’t there some tests you could run to find that out?

Dr. Lee gives her a look of what can only be described as disbelief, before his expression smooths out into something composed and professional. “There are certainly some tests we want to run. We might have to move you into another room for the night and then—”

“Wait,” Taeyeon interrupts. “I have to stay overnight?”

“I would recommend staying for the rest of the week. Your body is in a frail condition right now, and if you don’t get reunited with your soulmate then there could be…”

He continues talking, but she can no longer hear him. She only hears rest of the week and reunited with your soulmate. This can’t be real. She can’t have a soul bond or a soulmate. This kind of thing happens in books and movies and dramas, to girls dreaming of romance, of finding their One True Love, their soulmate. She is not one of those girls, and her life is not one of those dramas. Nobody would want to watch the dreary show of her life, except for whatever cosmic power who apparently loves watching her suffer.

“Taeyeon ssi?”

She looks up and sees Dr. Lee Jaewoo staring at her with an expression of concern. “Perhaps there’s someone you want to talk to?” he says tentatively. “A friend or family member or…” He lets the sentence trail off, and she wonders what should be at the end of it. Does he think she has a secret lover she’s trying to protect? Or maybe he thinks she’s been scorned and is trying to protect herself. Can you reject a soul bond, even?

“Yeah,” Taeyeon says. “There is, actually.”

Somehow, she ends up with seven other girls crowded into her room, Sooyoung instantly occupying the only chair and Sunkyu perching on the edge of her bed and the others squeezing around.

“I’m fine,” Taeyeon says, a little too loudly. She wants to field off the how are you feelings and are you okays before they come.

Yuri clears . “I feel like I’m getting sick just being here. There’s something—unwell about the air.”

“I think you’re picking up your own aura,” Hyoyeon says, and Yuri scowls at her.

“Want me to call you a doctor, Yul?” Sooyoung asks. “Hey, didn’t you say you wanted to marry a doctor? We can find you one here. Fany, did you see any good-looking ones around?” When Tiffany doesn’t reply, she prompts, “Fany?”

Tiffany, however, is busy staring at Taeyeon. “What did the doctor say?”

Taeyeon swallows. “He.” She can’t get another word beside that.

“Taengoo?” Sunkyu asks softly. “You can tell us.”

Wordlessly, Taeyeon reaches into the drawer of the table beside her and pulls out the report Dr. Lee had given her. She had only skimmed it and barely understood any of it, but the two words on the front page underneath her name are self-explanatory. She had pressed down on them so hard with the pads of her fingers that she left some oily residue behind and almost tore through the paper.

She hears a chorus of exhales, gasps of disbelief, some sharper than others, a cacophony rising around her while she stays steeped in her own silence, tucked away in the eye of the storm.

“Unnie?” It’s Yoona who speaks first, and when Taeyeon wearily raises her head she sees Yoona looking at her with wide eyes. “Are you…do you know who it is?”

Taeyeon shakes her head wordlessly.

“Didn’t the…symptoms start about two weeks ago?” Sunkyu asks, putting down her fingers like she’s counting.

“I think so,” Juhyun says. “That’s when unnie started getting sick.”

“Headaches, loss of appetite, nausea, fatigue – those are things that happen when somebody is separated from their soulmate for too long,” Sooyoung says. She would know; she had once starred in a drama about soulmates. “Judging by how strong Taeyeon’s reactions are, it has to be someone she’s never been away from for very long.”

Sunkyu glances at Taeyeon and then away. “And two weeks ago was when…”

None of them say it, but they don’t need to. Taeyeon can feel the name beat against the cavern of her skull, lie in wait on the tip of her tongue. Jessica.

Of all the people in the world, of course it has to be her. Someone up there must be having a great laugh at Taeyeon right now.

Tiffany stands up, suddenly. “Well,” she says, and her voice is brisk, business-like. Manager Hwang is at full force. “Who’s going to call her?”

Six pairs of eyes look at her blankly. Taeyeon is too busy staring at the bedspread.

“What do you mean?” Sunkyu asks.

“Assuming she doesn’t know – and she probably doesn’t, or she’d be here right now – someone has to tell her, right? And do you want it to be someone from the company? Can you imagine how that would go?”

“The company?” Taeyeon rasps, finally finding her voice.

“You have to tell them, TaeTae,” Tiffany says gently. “If you don’t, it’ll get out anyway and they can at least do some damage control.”

“Can they get rid of it?” Taeyeon says in desperation, like a drowning person clutching at a life preserver. “Is there a way?”

“Get rid of the bond?” Yuri gapes, like it’s sacrilegious.

“I mean, there’s a treatment,” Sooyoung says slowly, “but it’s long and painful and expensive and may have further harmful effects. And it has to be mutual. I don’t think anybody gets it, really.”

Taeyeon chews on her lip and falls back into silence. The duration, pain or cost doesn’t bother her. It can’t be worse than the alternative, anyway. The only problem is that it has to be mutual. She’d have to convince Jessica somehow. That shouldn’t be too much of a problem; she’s sure Jessica would want to get out of this as much as she does.

“Taeyeon,” someone starts. She can’t quite identify the voice even though she knows all of their voices as well as her own, better even, voices she’s heard singing and talking and laughing and crying for the past ten years, voices telling her we love you and we’re worried about you until the two have blurred together.

“I want to be alone,” she says. “Could you just…give me a minute?”

They look at each other, look at her, faces uneasy and eyes worried. Loving. They care so much about her that it makes her feel sorry she did this to them, she somehow got herself into a soul bond and got them all into a mess.

“Okay, unnie,” Juhyun says. “Just message us when you want us to come back.”

“And if you don’t send anything in an hour, we’re coming back anyway,” Tiffany adds.

Taeyeon nods, feeling too tired for words, like however many she had spoken since they came has totally drained her.

They pat her on the arm or shoulder or back before they leave, squeeze her hand, make some form of contact. Yuri ruffles her hair. Hyoyeon flicks her forehead. Yoona hugs her, firm almost to the point of crushing, and Taeyeon wants to hide her face in her hair, is reluctant to let her go.

“You’ll be okay, Taengoo,” Sooyoung says, and Taeyeon wonders if she’s trying to convince Taeyeon or herself. “You’re the strongest person I know.”

Taeyeon doesn’t feel very strong right now. She feels like she might cry, but she’s dry-eyed. She brings a hand to her chest, where there’s a dull but persistent pressure, and pushes down on her sternum like she can give herself CPR. She had lied when she said she wanted to be alone, but it’s not like she can have what she wants anyway. She recognizes the feeling in her body. It’s as familiar as it is foreign: familiar because she’s been feeling it for the past two weeks, foreign because she hasn’t recognized it until this moment for what it is.

Her body misses another’s. Not just anyone’s but hers. Jessica’s. She resolutely frames it in such terms: her body misses Jessica’s. It’s some twisted form of biology gone wrong (or, as some would insist, very right). She definitely doesn’t miss Jessica. Not one single bit.

If she repeats it enough times, maybe she can believe it.

When Taeyeon wakes up again, she’s not alone. There’s someone standing by her bedside like a vengeful ghost in a horror movie, staring at her with hollow eyes. She almost jumps, but then realizes she’s tied down with dozens of fine strings of a delicate pink that reminds her of their earlier concepts.

“They’re bonds,” the figure says softly, and she recognizes her with a start. It’s Jessica, except it can’t be because Jessica isn’t so pale and thin and wasted. She looks like a ghost of her former self, like she’s a skeleton with only the facsimile of life.

“Are-are you okay? You don’t look so well.”

“They’re bonds,” Ghostly Jessica repeats, like Taeyeon had said nothing. She raises her hand, and Taeyeon sees the thin string tied around her wrist, connected to the ones around Taeyeon, only this one is a vivid red. The colour of blood. “Do you get it? We’re bonded.”

She smiles; has only teeth and no lips. It’s more of a skull’s rictus than a smile. “’Til death do us apart, soulmate.”

Taeyeon wakes up gasping and drenched in sweat.

She has a missed call from an unlisted number. She turns her phone over and over in her hand, like she’s trying to unwind a spool of thread. She almost expects to see one tied around her wrist. The feeling is back in full force; she misses Jessica so much she literally aches with it. Correction – her body misses Jessica’s body. The distinction is very important.

The call can’t be from her, can it? Taeyeon takes a look at the time and realizes it’s almost been an hour since the girls left. She sends a message to their group chat: I just took a nap and I’m feeling better. Give me a little more time?

She’s not lying to them, she tells herself. Everything she said was true, even if she didn’t tell them the whole truth. Sunkyu sends back a thumbs up, and Taeyeon closes Kakaotalk. She returns to staring at the missed call and ponders whether it’s worth it to call the number back.

Before she has to make the decision, her phone rings. It’s the number again.

“Hello?” Taeyeon answers, gripping her phone so tightly the edges of her case dig into her hand.

“Where are you?” It’s the strangest sensation: it’s like there’s a hook attached to her ribs that is being tugged. She yearns for that voice and its owner in a way she can’t ever remember feeling. Maybe when she wanted a first win or a first concert or a first daesang she felt this way, but those felt like so long ago and this is so sharp, so present, so painful.

“I’m—at the hospital,” she says on autopilot.

Jessica makes a sound of impatience. “I know that. It’s all over the news. Which hospital?”

How can she sound so casual, so—annoyed, when Taeyeon feels like she might float out of her body?

“Taeyeon?” Jessica asks, and her name has never sounded so right.

Taeyeon tells her, because – how could she not?

“I’m leaving the airport now.” Airport? Jessica had left the country? No wonder Taeyeon has missed her so much. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes tops. See you soon.”

She hangs up and as Taeyeon slowly lowers her phone from her face, reality hits her like she had plunged her head into a basin full of ice cold water. God, what the hell had come over her? It’s like she had suddenly been reduced to a star-struck fangirl.

It’s the bond, she tells herself. It’s not you. You don’t want her. You’re definitely not one step away from jumping out of this bed because she’s coming.

Thank god she told the girls that she needs more time. This is not exactly the time or place for a reunion.

Taeyeon doesn’t know what she expected from Jessica, but it’s definitely not for her to look at Taeyeon like a cockroach she stepped on.

“You look awful,” she says, like Tiffany had the other day, except it’s much worse from her, somehow.

Taeyeon bristles. “You don’t look so great yourself.” She looks much better than in Taeyeon’s dream, thankfully, but there are dark circles around her eyes and her jawline definitely looks sharper than Taeyeon remembers.

“I’ve had better days,” Jessica says with a twist of . “I was supposed to attend an event in Hong Kong but I had to rush back here.”

“I’m so sorry I held you back from your important schedule.”

“Oh you’re sorry for that, are you?” Jessica says acridly, and Taeyeon looks away. “I felt it when you fainted,” she says abruptly.

“What?”

“When you passed out onstage, I almost did too. I mean, I didn’t know it had anything to do with you when it happened but I just felt. Terrible.” Jessica shudders, like just recollecting the memory is making her sick. “I talked to a friend afterwards and she said that my…symptoms sounded like a soul bond and she referred me to a specialist who confirmed it for me.”

“And you knew it was me?”

Jessica gives her a strange look. “Who else,” she says, and Taeyeon’s heart gives a strange lurch. Who else. Taeyeon’s mind had certainly not jumped to Jessica when she found out, but Jessica makes it sound like she never even considered another possibility.

Taeyeon chews on her lip again.

“Stop doing that,” Jessica says.

“What?”

“You’ll bite right through your lip at that rate.”

“What does it matter to you?”

“It doesn’t,” Jessica says forcefully. “It’s just annoying.”

“You’re annoying.”

“Thanks, I learned it from you.”

And, for no reason at all, Taeyeon snickers at that. Jessica’s mouth twitches up at the corners. They look at each other, and then burst into laughter, loud and raucous. Taeyeon’s ribs hurt by the end of it.

“Don’t freak out,” Jessica says carefully, “but I’m going to try something.”

“What?” Taeyeon says, already tensing like a dog with its hackles up, but all Jessica does is reach her hand over and rest it on top of Taeyeon’s.

Oh. All the tension in Taeyeon’s body, the conscious and the subconscious, starts to drain away just with that simple contact. She has no idea where it goes, certainly not over to Jessica because she visibly relaxes as well, the sharp set of her shoulders loosening, her eyes fluttering shut for a moment. Taeyeon takes that moment to drink her in, the pallid tone of her skin and the shadows around her eyes that Taeyeon wants to kiss away—

Wait a minute. What the hell was that? She tries to press Backspace on her mind frantically, but the thought refuses to be erased.

“Stop freaking out.” Jessica’s voice is lazy, relaxed. “It’s just the bond. It’s normal.”

“How do you know I’m freaking out?” Taeyeon says, when she meant to say, I’m not.

She expects Jessica to say it’s written all over your face or doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, but she says, “I can feel it.”

“You can feel it?”

“Empathic bonding is part of the bond,” Jessica says, calm and almost offhand, like she’s just stating a fact from a textbook.

“You mean…” Taeyeon says slowly. “…that you can feel what I feel?”

“Only sometimes, and it’s not as strong as what you’re feeling, I’m sure.”

“How come I can’t feel what you feel?”

Jessica gives her an unreadable look. “I don’t have all the answers, Taeyeon. I’m not a soul bond encyclopedia.” Her voice has become sharper, snippier, and it would make Taeyeon’s hackles rise again except she can feel something from Jessica. Literally, she can feel an emotion – emotions – that’s not her own, although it feels like it’s still a part of her, oddly. Hurt, mixed with…frustration? Impatience? She can’t quite pinpoint it. And then she realizes that she’s hurt Jessica. It makes a bubble of something rise within her: guilt, perhaps, or shame. She knew that she’d be a terrible soulmate, and she’s proving it ten minutes in.

Jessica frowns. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop beating yourself up. And no, I’m not saying it because I feel it – I can see it written all over your face.”

“Do you want to get the treatment?” Taeyeon blurts out. She can literally feel Jessica putting a wall up; whatever vestiges of emotion had been trickling over from her slam against a barrier and Taeyeon can’t feel them, can’t feel her. It leaves her feeling oddly bereft, even though she was panicking at such a thing mere moments ago.

“Is that what you want?” Jessica returns in her coolly polite, professional voice, like they’re two agents negotiating a deal.

“Well, I don’t really know much about it. Sooyoung said it might have other repercussions. And that it’s painful,” she adds like an afterthought. “And expensive. I can pay for it though. Since it was my idea.”

Jessica looks at her like—well, technically her expression is completely blank, totally unreadable, but there’s something about it that cuts into Taeyeon. The wall is standing but it’s trembling, fighting against something, some barrage of emotion Jessica is trying very hard to hold back.

“I guess we should ask a doctor about it,” Jessica says in an overly calm voice. “Unless you’ve already spoken to someone? Do you have an appointment penned in and you were just waiting for me to agree?”

“I wasn’t…waiting. I’m not saying we have to get it. I just—what do you want?”

“What do I want?” Jessica repeats. “Does that matter?”

“Of course it matters.” Taeyeon frowns. “You’re my—you’re a part of this too. It’s not like I have more say than you do.”

Jessica makes a sound under her breath.

“So what do you want?” Taeyeon asks again.

“I want…” Jessica starts, but then the door is thrown open and Yuri and Sooyoung practically tumble into the room like two roughhousing puppies.

Taeyeon was wrong. This is the worst possible time for a reunion.

“So you two are soulmates,” Sooyoung says in a voice that’s slightly too loud and too bright.

Jessica shrugs. Taeyeon fidgets. They make a great pair, she thinks. It’s hard to tell who’s more excited.

“Do you feel better now?” Tiffany asks, eyes locked on where their shoulders are pressed together. Taeyeon wants more than that, wants to lean her entire body against Jessica’s, curl around her, bury her face in the crook of her neck and take in the scent of her, utterly surround herself with Jessica. She also wants to run away and take shelter in a corner of the room farthest possible from Jessica. It’s—far from pleasant, to be caught between those two polarizing feelings.

“Yeah,” Taeyeon admits. “It feels good to touch her.”

Then she starts and wants a hole to open up in the ground and swallow her. Why the hell did she say that?

Jessica shifts so her hand brushes against Taeyeon’s, her pinky curling around hers. It’s a silent reassurance, an it’s okay and it feels good for me too. It makes Taeyeon’s breathing settle, and then hitch again.

Hyoyeon clears . “That’s—good. For you.”

Yuri nods. “You should touch each other more if it feels good.” Then she registers the way everyone is looking at her and hurriedly adds, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded! I just meant you should, um, make physical contact if that satisfies your needs. For the bond! Needs for the bond.”

Hyoyeon puts a palm against her forehead. “You should stop while you’re ahead, Yul.”

“Don’t worry,” Jessica drawls. “I’ll give Taeyeon what she needs.”

Taeyeon flushes all the way to the tips of her ears, and she feels a wave of smugness through the bond. It seems that the wall is down.

Not funny, she wills the words, or at least the indignation behind them, to reach Jessica.

Jessica raises an eyebrow at her, clearly saying, Oh, come on. That was great.

Taeyeon purses her lips. You think everything you do is great.

Jessica’s mouth quirks up at the corner. That’s because it is.

“So this is what a soul bond in action looks like,” Sooyoung says. “It’s not so different from my drama, after all.”

Jessica snorts. “Are you taking notes for your next role?”

“I think I can write my own movie. It’ll be about two women who bond without realizing and only find out after an extended period of separation. They’re called Taelor and Jennifer.”

If Taeyeon were drinking water, she would have spit it out. Fortunately, she wasn’t, but unfortunately, Sunkyu was and she spits it out all over Yoona, who was standing across from her.

“Oh my god,” Sunkyu says, appalled. “I’m so sorry.”

Juhyun hands her some napkins, and she starts dabbing them over Yoona’s shirt. Thankfully, she had missed Yoona’s face, which isn’t exactly at the same height as hers.

“Is this revenge for my aegyo voice?” Yoona says dolefully. “Your Plan B if pushing me down the stairs doesn’t happen?”

“You got me,” Sunkyu deadpans. “That was my evil masterplan.”

“Next time, drink something colourful,” Hyoyeon advises. “Fanta would be good. The grape one refuses to come out.”

Sooyoung is furiously typing on her phone, and when Juhyun asks her what she’s doing, she replies without taking her eyes off the screen, “Taking notes for my movie.”

Thankfully, nobody was drinking any liquids at this time, or their laughter would surely have resulted in several more spraying incidents.

Dr. Lee returns and if he’s surprised by the addition of eight more people in Taeyeon’s room, he doesn’t let it show.

“Can I have a word with you, Taeyeon ssi? And”—his eyes go right to Jessica—“your soulmate, if that’s all right?”

Taeyeon wants to ask how he can possibly know Jessica is her soulmate, when she hasn’t said anything, hasn’t done anything. It’s not like she’s wrapped around Jessica or looking at her lovingly. How does he know?

Jessica is the one to speak. “I think that would be good,” she says to him before turning to the girls. “Can we have a minute?”

They look at Taeyeon, who gives a curt nod, before filing out of the room. Taeyeon misses them already. It’s different from the way she misses Jessica and maybe it’s not as potent but it’s just as strong.

“There’s no point,” Jessica says to Taeyeon, answering an unasked question. “We would have to file paperwork, put it on our medical records. They would find out anyway.”

“I guess those tests weren’t necessary after all,” Taeyeon says to Dr. Lee. She can’t help herself. “How did you know Jessica is my—how did you know?”

Dr. Lee blinks. “It was rather evident,” he says, which isn’t much of an answer at all but she feels too tired to press further. “However – with your consent, of course – there are some more tests we would like to run. Both of your conditions require further monitoring.”

“Is that really necessary?” Taeyeon says. “I feel a lot better.” Physically, anyway.

“I’m sure you do, after being in close contact with your soulmate again, but there is a lot more you have to be aware of.” He produces a clipboard and a pen. “Now, can you update me about your symptoms? Have they disappeared or just lessened in severity? Have you noticed any other changes: physical, emotional or psychological? Have you…”

She watches his mouth move and can’t take in the words. He might as well be speaking gibberish. Taeyeon feels oddly detached from the situation, like she’s having an out of body experience, looking at herself like she’s watching a character in a movie, like this is happening to someone else entirely.

By the time she zones back in, Jessica is wrapping up.

“…haven’t been apart since.”

Dr. Lee nods, his pen flying over his clipboard. Taeyeon absently wonders why he isn’t inputting the information electronically; it would seem much more efficient.

“What do you think, Dr. Lee?” Jessica asks.

“Well, from what we’ve gathered so far, it’s clear you two have a particularly strong bond. That’s why you both reacted so negatively to being apart. The sudden separation after years of proximity would be a big shock to your bodies. And then once you reunited, the bond is settling very quickly, which is probably why you have unusually powerful empathic bonding and potentially volatile emotions.”

“Great,” Taeyeon says dully. “Sounds fantastic.”

“Is there anything we can do to—calm it down?” Jessica asks.

“Well, you should avoid any prolonged period of separation. That would probably be one of the worst things for the bond. You might end up even sicker than last time. Also, you would probably feel better if you made more physical contact, the more frequent and prolonged the better.”

Jessica nods, like she’s filing this information in her mental catalogue. Taeyeon feels too numb to move.

“Do you have any questions for me?” Dr. Lee asks with an expectant look.

Taeyeon has about a hundred questions, but she doubts he can answer any of them. She doubts anyone can, least of all herself.

“No,” she says, and Jessica says the same thing half a beat later.

“Thank you for your help,” Jessica adds.

“Of course, it’s my job.” Dr. Lee tucks his pen away into his pocket. “I’m going to input these observations into the system and work out a regimen of recommended tests. In the meantime, please let me know if you think of any questions.”

“We will,” Jessica says politely, and he nods before leaving.

“He sounds unusually interested in our case,” Taeyeon says. “Maybe it’s a medical wonder or something.”

“That’s great. I’ve always wanted to be a medical wonder.”

“Here’s your chance.”

Jessica doesn’t reply, and Taeyeon looks at her. Her expression is pensive, with a shadow of worry cast over the planes of her face.

“Jessica?”

“Yeah?”

“You never got to finish what you were saying.” Jessica gives her a blank look. “About, you know. What you want.”

“What I want,” Jessica repeats, like she’s rolling the words around in .

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t ask him about the treatment,” she says, a total non-sequitur.

“I-I didn’t.”

Jessica stares at her like she’s trying to look into her mind. “Why?”

“It didn’t occur to me to ask,” Taeyeon says, feeling strangely defensive.

“It didn’t occur to you.” Jessica sounds unconvinced. “Well, if it occurs to you, he did say to talk to him anytime. You should ask him as soon as possible. It’d probably spare us from some unnecessary tests.”

“Do you want me to ask him?”

Jessica turns her face away. “It doesn’t matter.”

Taeyeon lets out a breath of utter frustration. “Of course it matters! Stop saying that what you want doesn’t matter. It matters to me. You matter to me.”

Only when Jessica gives her a look of total shock does she realize what she just said. She wonders if it’s too late to take it back, but she realizes that she doesn’t want to.

“Well then.” Jessica swallows. “I don’t want you to ask him, but I’m not going to try and stop you.”

“Okay then,” Taeyeon says. “Well, I can’t think of anything I want to ask him.”

“Me neither,” Jessica says, and they grin at each other like doofuses for no reason at all.

Taeyeon lets herself lean into Jessica, just her elbow pressing against Jessica’s like two awkward middle schoolers at a movie, and even that minimal contact sends what feels like an electric current down her arm. Her body tells her this feels good and do it again, and if she weren’t so busy trying not to let her eyes roll back in pleasure, she would tell it don’t be so pathetic.

And if she glanced over at Jessica, she would see that Jessica’s expression looks very similar.

A/N: I started this about a month ago and wrote a lot at 5am, aka my typical modus operandi. I've hit a bit of a block - I have the end of this fic all written out and I'm just stuck at the middle. I thought posting the first half might help me move past it.