Jeonghan had never really given much thought about when, where, and how he would meet his soulmate. By the time people started to seek theirs out, he was fully integrated into trainee life, seeking to debut rather than seeking his soulmate. He never actually considered his soulmate might be someone he knew already. And why would he? His parents had not previously known each other before they realized they were soulmates and his sister had met hers when she tripped jogging one morning. Soulmates weren’t necessarily romantic anyway. His sister and her soulmate were inseparable best friends, platonic. Besides, being a trainee took way too much time for him to worry about what kind of relationship he and his own soulmate would have, much less worry about actually meeting them.

It all started when Jisoo asked for help with his Hangul and like the nice person he is, Jeonghan agreed to help him (not that he was using this as an excuse to spend more time with Jisoo or anything).

At first Jeonghan wasn’t even paying attention, head fuzzy from tiredness, until he hissed and flinched when the pads of his fingers on his right hand burned with the raging fire of a nasty paper cut. Jeonghan swore under his breath when the cut started bleeding.

“,” Jisoo muttered, right hand clenched in a fist, frantically looking around for a towel. There was a drop of blood on the upper corner of Jisoo’s workbook. Jeonghan stared at Jisoo’s clenched fist and then his own and was only jolted back to reality when Jisoo nudged him and asked if there were any more tissues here, wrapping a few he found around his fingers to staunch the bleeding.

Jeonghan ripped the tissues from Joshua’s hand. “Hey! Hannie, what are you doing? It’s still bleeding...”

Jeonghan had taken away the tissues from Joshua’s hand and opened his fist, holding up his hand next to Jisoo’s to compare. Jisoo fell silent when he saw their cuts were identical. A few moments passed and Jeonghan didn’t dare to look at Jisoo, because what could he do? What could he say? He was not prepared to meet his soulmate, never thought he would even meet them in the first place, and certainly never expected to be fated to someone like Jisoo.

Jisoo, who after those few beats of silence gathered his backpack with left hand and opened it clumsily, pulling out a travel sized pouch of tissues. Jisoo, who after gathering a few in his hand walked calmly back to Jeonghan and began dabbing at Jeonghan’s hand instead.

‘Ever the gentleman’, the part of Jeonghan’s brain that hadn’t imploded on him provided.

Jisoo cleaned Jeonghan’s fingers and only when the bleeding stopped and he was placing a bandaid on the cuts did he glance up. Jeonghan’s eyes had never left him; their gazes met.

Jeonghan almost didn’t want to look at him. He knew that Jisoo deserved someone...well more than whatever Jeonghan could ever provide him with so he wasn’t expecting Jisoo to tilt his chin up to meet his gaze and smile a smile that embodied all the softly sung Sunday Mornings pointed directly at him.

“I’m so happy that it’s you.”

Jeonghan couldn’t stop the blood rushing to his cheeks. He tucked a lock of hair behind his ear a few times too many. “You deserve-”

“You,” Jisoo said. “I deserve nothing less than you, Jeonghan.”

Jisoo’s smiled was cotton candy soft and Jeonghan wanted to taste it. So, he did.

(“Oh, and call me Joshua, please,” Jisoo requested later as they were clearing the table of Hangul workbooks and conjugation charts. Jeonghan smirked at him. “Joshuji.”)