Soulmates are as common as flowers and sometimes just as hard to find, because they seem to hide in plain sight but in a large group. Finding the one can be difficult.

Some people see a new color or smell a certain scent or wake up to an unfamiliar hair color... There are lots of blogs these days written by people trying to share their experiences and what they found out their identifying feature meant.

The new color matched their soulmate's favorite or the color of their eyes. A certain scent was the natural smell of their other half or the smell of the place where they first meet. An unfamiliar hair color matches their soulmate's dyed hair. There are various takes and conditions, which makes it all much more difficult.

Chanyeol is part of the majority that has no idea what their identifying mark means, because his always seems to change. He'll write on his arms, because even though he knows he needs to remember things, he won't remember to carry a notebook with him, so he just writes whatever on his arms. Sometimes, there's so much that he has to try and switch to his other arm. He's noticed unfamiliar pictures for a while, though. They range from simple outlines of succulents and flower heads to intricately detailed flower arrangements that may cover his entire arm like a sleeve. Occasionally, they'll appear on his legs, too.

No clue what they mean. And they make it difficult to read his own notes.

He's a florist, so he appreciates the aesthetic, but he's looked up the various plants meanings, and they run the gambit from heart-aching romance to wishing for death.

It'd be so much easier if he knew what his marks meant, but that's what everyone says.

His close friends had easy identifiers. Since they were in grade school, Jongdae and Baekhyun heard the same voice singing. As they aged, the voices changed a little. They met at a mutual friend's birthday party and found each other when they sang before the cake. They've been together ever since.

Sehun is his bosom buddy in confusion. He doesn't have an identifier at all. No marks, no visions, no smells, no nothing.

“I still think it's better than random doodles showing up on my body,” he says. “I don't know how you can go around without sleeves. What if something gross showed up?” He's the one who freaked out when Chanyeol had an iris on his arm but couldn't say why he was so freaked out. Kyungsoo interpreted for him, and Baekhyun for weeks.

All Chanyeol sees is the flower.

All Chanyeol ever sees is flowers. They're a big part of his life, and even if he's alone, he's happy with the flowers.

 

 

Jongin has a theory about his identifying feature.

Whatever is written on his body will show up on his soulmate’s and vice versa.

It’s the only logical reason he’d have shopping lists and bullet points going down the inside of his forearm and on the back of his hand. Because he knows he didn’t write them.

From this theory, he theorizes about his soulmate themselves.

First, they’re forgetful. They carry a pen or marker but no paper.

Second, they work with flowers. Lists of vases, ribbons, and wire all point to a florist.

Third, they’re right-handed. Anything on his left arm and hand are relatively neat and legible, but anything on his right are deliberate and squiggly.

Fourth, they have no idea what their identifying feature means.

His fourth idea carries a bold question mark in his mind. It’s entirely possible he’s totally wrong. The ink could be or mean anything.

Just to hold out hope, Jongin embraces his working theory and doodles little cacti and attractive leaves on his arm and hand. Sometimes, he’ll scribble a little on the skin that shows between the rips of his jeans.

“You’re going to give yourself ink poisoning,” his friend says. Kyungsoo carries a similar identifying feature, but the mark on his skin appeared one day and never washed away, so the little dog portrait sits like a tattoo inside his right wrist.

Jongin spins the ballpoint pen over his fingers. “It’s non-toxic.” The cap flings off, striking the wall beside Kyungsoo’s leg.

“Maybe it means you’re actually poisoning your soulmate.” At the wide-eyed panic, Kyungsoo quickly shakes his head and drops the pen cap into the cup of miscellaneous pens on Jongin’s desk. “I’m joking. That’d be dumb. I’ve never heard of a harmful S.I.F.”

“Always a first time,” Jongin mumbles. He rubs at the ink on his arm, only succeeding in smudging it.

 

 

There’s a couple days where Chanyeol doesn’t find anything new on his arms or hands. It gives him more space to cover with his own notes and reminders, but he kind of misses the pretty drawings. He’s tried redrawing them himself, but they look like a child’s drawing. Charming, maybe, but definitely not pretty.

He hopes that keeping his lists and doodles contained to a particular part of his arm will prompt the other person to keep doodling, too. One morning, he woke up to use the bathroom and saw a dark smudge inside his wrist. Thinking he missed some ink earlier, he scrubs at it with his thumb, but it doesn’t come off.

He wonders what it was.

 

 

Classes take up a lot of Jongin’s time. He doesn’t regret becoming a teacher, but it doesn’t afford him a lot of time for his own artwork. There is the perk that drawing on his arms is excusable, because his students draw on their arms, too, as well as their friends’ arms and even his arms, if he doesn’t catch them quick enough.

Maybe the smears of colorful marker show up on his soulmate. If he ever meets them, he’ll have to apologize.

 

 

Chanyeol has dreams, sometimes.

He dreams a lot, but sometimes they seem to be significant.

This time, he’s lying in a field, staring at the sky and watching fluffy white clouds that don’t seem to move. There’s a breeze, and he imagines it smells like the flowers he’s lying among—amaryllis and azalea, camellia, hibiscus, poppy, lily of the valley. When he sits up, the field seems to stretch on forever, even carpeting far away hills with color.

Looking over his shoulder, he’s not alone, although he doesn’t see them at first with how tall the grass is. They’re picking flowers, he thinks, and he tells himself to remember this field and tell his boss, because importing flowers is expensive.

The stranger keeps their head bowed, completely absorbed in their work. It makes Chanyeol curious. When he walks to where they are, they’re no longer there. A circle of white egret flowers sits where they had been, and Chanyeol realizes this field is strange. These flowers have no business growing here. They have different needs and necessities—

He wakes up confused but doesn’t know why.

He thinks about a gorgeous field of flowers for the rest of the day.

 

 

The air is smoggy and thick. An industrial boom overcame the environmentalists’ caution and warnings. Some days are better than others, but anyone without a mask outside is stupid or suicidal or both.

Jongin waits by the inner doors every morning to help his students with their backpacks, jackets, and masks. They were born into the smog. Jongin still remembers fresh air and spring breezes. He wonders where the other person whose ink he sees gets their flowers. Growing anything outside results in an ugly, shriveled thing, although he’s heard of expensive rooftop gardens with air filters and solar panels and hydroponic beds.

He draws a field of flowers without lifting the pen while the students are napping. It’s not the cleanest drawing, but he thinks it fits.

 

 

Mid morning is slow for business. Most people are at work and stop by in the afternoon and evening. It gives Chanyeol a lot of time to tend to the little greenhouse plants, check stock, sweep the floors, and play on his phone. His charger is sitting on his bed at home, so his phone dies before noon.

“Lunch time, Chanyeol.” His boss flips the door sign to CLOSED. “Remember to lock the door if you go out, okay?”

“Yes.” He waves. His boss leaves. He sprawls across the counter. His wallet is with his phone charger at home. If he gets desperate, he can eat some of the flowers. The bright, funnel-shaped flowers of nasturtiums have a savory sort of flavor. They make a beautiful garnish for cakes, pastries, and salads, but he thinks he can hold out before eating any products he’s supposed to be selling.

His boss bought new calligraphy pens to write the notes that go along with ordered flowers. The old pens are free to be used wherever, and Chanyeol likes how they make even the simplest things look fancy.

Free handing the name of the shop along the outside of his left forefinger, he decides it would actually make for a neat tattoo, although he doesn’t plan on staying for his entire career. He’d like to open his own shop.

Next week, his hours are changing for the holidays. With his phone dead, he writes his schedule on his palm and stamps it on the back of a pad of order forms to dry the ink faster.

He doesn’t look at it again and misses the intricate vines bordering his schedule.

 

 

After finding what appears to be a schedule and store name on his hand, Jongin worries.

He copied the words down on paper, just in case, but he’s pretty sure they’re not meant for him. All this time, either one of them could’ve started a conversation, in theory. He’d written a simple hello, drawing out the end of the last character to make a plain, friendly daisy but wiped it off after his head went fuzzy with nerves.

The time doesn’t matter. Ideally, they’d meet sooner rather than later, but Jongin can wait. He has waited for this long. He’s content with the snippets of life shared on his skin.

 

 

Sehun teases him about the teddy bear on his knee, rightside up as though drawn by someone sitting facing him. Chanyeol found it while getting dressed and thinks it’s really cute, although it’s a weird place to draw.

He tries to write upside down on his knee, with a curly-tailed arrow pointing to the bear. Cute. It’s disastrous; he can barely make it out. In the time he reaches for a tissue and water bottle, however, a little smiley face balloon has appeared, tied with a bow to the teddy bear’s paw.

 

 

“If you’re curious, you have the address. Go.” Kyungsoo doesn’t see the point in waiting when Jongin has a clue to his soulmate. “You don’t have to say who you are or what you’re doing. It’s a place of business. Just go buy a flower.”

He makes it sound easy. Jongin picks up another colored pen to add more spirals to his wrist. They reach all the way around, like a bracelet. Much more, and it’ll start to look like a shackle.

“What if—”

“Soulmates are paired for a reason, Jongin. They can’t not like you.”

When Jongin looks at his friend to make a solid rebuttal, Kyungsoo has his wallet, phone, and mask in hand.

 

 

Chanyeol is backing down the aisle with a box of orchids when the loops of his apron catch the corner of the cardboard a vase rests on, pulling it and jolting the vase off-balance. It shatters behind him, and Chanyeol is so glad he's alone as his ears burn.

The pieces are pretty big, at least, so he can gather them carefully by hand, but he'll need to sweep the floor just to be safe.

Chanyeol reaches for a larger piece of the leaded vase and notices dark lines across his skin. The characters are neatly in the center of his palm.

“You need a hand?” A man stands beside him, holding out his left hand, showing a matching message: Found you.

Chanyeol stares dumbly at the man's hand, then at his face, completely dazzled.

All he sees is Jongin among the flowers.

 

---

 

a/n: Written for the ChanKai fic fest that kind of fell apart, unfortunately. (prompt no.84 Soulmates—"in which when you write something on your arm with pen/marker whatever you want, it'll show on your soulmate's skin as well or: A forgetful Florist Chanyeol keeps on scribbling his schedules and flowers he needs to pick up, and Artist Jongin who's busy drawing artistic designs and flowers on his arms sees the schedule and thought why the hell not go there as well? Chanyeol was flabbergasted seeing ""Found you"" in his palm after breaking a vase.)

“Life is the flower for which love is the honey.” – Victor Hugo

The flowers mentioned in Chanyeol's dream have meanings I took from Hanakotoba, the Japanese language of flowers. Amaryllis means shy. Azalea means patient and/or modest. Camellia means, depending on color, in love (red), longing (yellow), or waiting (white). Hibiscus means gentle. Poppies mean fun-loving (red), rejoice (white), or success (yellow). Lily of the valley means sweet. The white egret flower means "My thoughts will follow you into your dreams."