⇜ prologue ⇝

Growing up, I have heard of so many make-believe stories which groomed me to be dubious of almost everything. Anything that I have never seen or experienced myself, to put it simply, was pure fiction to me. To name a specific example, perhaps one of them was when someone told me how I'm going to meet my soulmate.

Or at least, that's how I understood it.

I never believed in such a thing—at least with the manner how one would be able to figure out that this certain someone is their other half. Unfortunately in my universe, unlike those fiction stories my ridiculous friends have persuaded me to read, writing on your skin won't leave the same mark on your soulmate's skin. It's absurd. If my soulmate is the type who would constantly forget about carrying a notepad with him or her, my skin would probably be filled with scribbles of dates and to-do lists everyday. Although on the contrary, it's possible that my other half can be like Taeyong hyung—a total clean freak. Which would mean my skin would forever be scribbled-free. The only downside is that if I was living in that universe where skin communication—or whatever you call it—was possible, a soulmate like my hyung won't even leave me clues.

That started bothering me ever since I met an old lady while I was on my way home from school. I was 17 that time. I remember that day, a pretty awful one to be specific, since my exam results were worse than the last semester. It was a big thing for me as I was trying to at least keep my rank of being the 3rd in my batch, and the pressure from my father wasn't a least bit motivating at all.

I was wallowing in self pity when someone suddenly blocked my path and touched my arm. I would've normally snapped and cursed given with the kind of mood I was in; grumpy, frustrated but completely clueless on how to relieve the stress when I was too mentally drained to do anything