Summary: The lonely sun marked on Sana's neck makes seemingly separate partners destined for something greater.

~.~.~

Destined soulmarks evolve when its pair is found. A maze and its solution melds into one, just as a puzzle piece fits in the gaps of another to create a picture. The lonely sun that rests on the side column of Sana’s neck has never changed or evolved.

Sana could only scoff at the irony of a dim sun.

Soulmarks have always been confusingly finicky. Some were easy to match and pair, some were outright odd catches in left field. As the years came and went, Sana watched her friends find their soulmarks, watched how they changed, saw how love changed their lives. She aches for companionship, a partner to hold her hand through life.

The first time Sana meets Mina, she wishes so badly that her soulmark would change.

Momo had a dance showcase and Sana, being the loyally supportive friend that she is, attends. Sana is proud to boast that she has never missed a single showcase, recital, or performance in their past six years of friendship. (Momo likes to downplay her achievements in dance and the skills that she passionately labors over but Sana is more than willing to go through the lengths of getting and giving her friend the attention and praise that she rightfully deserves.)

After the showcase had ended and the copious amount of affection Sana showers over a playfully indifferent Momo, a girl that Sana remembers as Momo’s dance partner in one of her numbers approaches the duo. Sana remembers thinking that the girl looked beautiful, from the way her body spun to the way she elongated her arms. Sana remembers thinking that she painted art into the air with every movement she made. Closer now, Sana acknowledges that beautiful is simply not enough to define the dancer standing in front of her.

She wishes that she had words to describe her. Perhaps breathtaking? Stunning? But, all that floats through her mind is an unfathomable sensation lost in translation. Stuck between love at first sight and mindless attraction, Sana swears she feels her neck heat up but figures that the blush coloring her cheeks and the red tinting her ears is to attribute for the heat when Momo has to wave her hands in front of Sana’s face to gather her wandering attention.

“Sana, this is Mina. She was my partner for 24 Hours. I think she’s the best dance partner I’ve ever had!”

Mina slightly tilts her head down, flustered by her compliment but still mumbles her appreciation.

Sana’s heart flutters at the smile that Mina’s lips settle into.

When Sana offers her hand for Mina to shake, the heat she feels on her neck warms a little more when Mina’s soft hands holds hers.

The distant call of Momo’s name from Nayeon and Dahyun breaks the silent moment between the two. Somehow, holding her hand felt like lifetimes lived in seconds. When Mina pulls her hand back, Sana can’t help but to wish for it to come back. The heat at her neck cools. Placing a hand to her soulmark, her skin feels just as temperate as usual. Sana swears that the heat that blazed at her mark just moments ago would have warmed her skin at the least. Sana blames the haze of nerves and attraction for the illusion of heat that she felt.

The sight of Nayeon and Dahyun placing kisses on Momo’s cheeks and the new addition of flowers in her arms makes the lonely girl smile. She thanks the universe for letting Momo find her soulmarks early on into their college years. The memory of Momo realizing that the two girls beside her were the ones destined to her heart is one that Sana reveres. The moment of pure elation, how her eyes gleamed at the sight of her changed soulmark, how her shoulders sagged in relief to know that her love was returned.

When Sana and Momo pad into their tiny apartment, the first thing the younger of the two does is check the mirror in the bathroom. Shifting her blonde hair to uncover the right side of her neck, Sana couldn’t stop her heart from wanting to see the of her sun’s rays change. The hope for anything, an addition, a change, any indication that the feeling in her heart had any chance of being returned shatters when the lonely sun marking her neck remains unchanged. The swirly rays still stood motionless. Sana feels herself dim much like how her sun failed to shine.

Hope is a torch extinguished by the drops of reality.

Waiting for her food to warm up, Momo is keen to notice how her usually bright friend carries a shadow of darkness with her when she comes out of the bathroom. Putting her chopsticks down, she opens her arms and waits to comfort Sana.

When the girl silently settles into her arms, she doesn’t cry, just tightly fists at Momo’s sweater and buries her face into her neck.

Momo’s heart breaks to see how exhausted Sana looks. Every time the girl’s hopeful eyes dim into darkness, Momo finds herself talking to the universe, pleading for it to be kinder to her—to stop giving her hope only for her to be let down and to give her hope only when she had something to be hopeful over. Sick of seeing Sana’s light flickering out like a lit candle in the wind, Momo finds herself talking to the universe every night to just give Sana this one.

Momo has never asked for much, allowed for the universe to take her where it pleased, never fought destiny for giving her the life she has, but, she pleads for this. To see Sana happy, to know that her heart has someone to come home to was the one thing Momo wanted most. Already finding her soulmarks, Momo aches for Sana because the homes her heart has comforts her the most through life. Sana has always had a penchant for caring and loving that often she forgets she needs it too, needs a home to rest in.

As Sana lies awake at night, she finds it hard to gather her hope back into her arms. No matter how the universe has let her down and scattered her hope in innumerable directions, Sana has always been one to find every fragmented piece of her heart to put it back into place. But this time, she finds herself still endlessly searching for the pieces that got blown away.

She had really hoped that Mina would be the one.

Sana breaks the promise she made to herself. Her will used to be so strong but taking blow after blow from disappointment, she feels her heart’s exhaustion in fruitless hope. She feels her heart’s reluctance to hope and keep bright.

The next morning, Sana greets Momo with a smile but