“How does it feel?” Sooyoung asks Seulgi when they are eight years old, sitting in the yard boarded by their elementary school and the stream that runs through their town. This is the year that they are attached by the hip, mostly because Sooyoung is new and shy and not yet the obnoxiously (depending on who you ask) loud teenager she would become, and Seulgi likes being the bold one for once. “To find your soulmate?”

It is also the year that Seulgi meets Seungwan and the quarter notes on the inside of her left wrist that just perfectly match Seulgi’s on the right and that is when she knows; Seungwan is her soulmate. 

There’s not much that Sooyoung knows about soulmates– she is eight years old and her primary fascination is with horses, although she has never seen one in real life. They are pretty, though, and in all of her favorite picture books, and she wonders if her soulmate will like horses too. Seulgi does not like horses. Seungwan does, though, and that is why Sooyoung does not understand why the universe has destined them for each other. 

“It’s nice,” Seulgi shrugs, pulling up grass from the yard and twirling it between her fingers. “Wannie understands a lot of things about me.”

“But she likes horses. You don’t like horses.”

“That’s okay,” Seulgi laughs. “I like her.”

That’s gross, Sooyoung thinks, but if Seulgi likes Seungwan despite their core difference, there must be something to this soulmate thing.

(Still, she really wants hers to like horses.)

// 

Sooyoung is 20 years old. She will punch you if you ever mention anything about her childhood horse fixation.

Seulgi and Seungwan had it easy, with their soulmate marks so prominently displayed on their wrists. Sooyoung? Not so much. When she was younger, she had cherished the horse head mark on her right upper back. Now, she shudders when she sees it in the mirror after showers. There’s no easy way to ask a woman you’re into if she happens to have a horse head on her back, either. Sooyoung’s pretty lonely, if she’s being completely honest– to put it lightly.

God, Seulgi and Seungwan had it so easy.

It’s not all bad, though. She’s found comfort in the small bits of their society that reject soulmate culture completely– these people don’t see any need in trusting a universe that has never shown any love to them. And she likes it, she supposes. There is always someone to kiss there, someone who is just as rejected as she is, just as hurt and twisted and burned where their soulmate marks meet their skin. 

She’s at one of her friend’s places in the seedy part of town, laying on the couch with some girl named Yeri who she hardly knows. Yeri is cute, but young, even younger than Sooyoung is, which is saying something. Fresh out of high school, if she were to guess. “Where are you branded?” Yeri asks; Sooyoung can’t see any marks on Yeri’s skin.

Maybe she’s the one?

“On my back. You?” Sooyoung treads careful