SIX YEARS LATER

“Sooo sleepy,” Minki groaned as they made their way through LAX terminal. “Of course we’d wind up on the plane with the baby trying to master its favorite high notes. We better not be meeting our soulmates today, I swear to god. My face is a disaster. I think I actually have a blemish forming on my poor, innocent nose.”

“Noona’s reading said September 1st for both of us,” Jinyoung reminded him. “We went back in timezones, so today is still August 31^st. Which means our destined encounters will be tomorrow.”

“Good. That gives me plenty of time to refresh my face and get some beauty sleep.” He stretched out his limbs. “Ah, this seriously feels weird. I can’t believe we’re going to be meeting the people we’ll be spending the rest of our lives with tomorrow. My brain is still in the ‘am I even capable of surviving university life’ zone. Like, my brain can’t even process all that eternity stuff right now.”

“Speak for yourself. I’ve been waiting for this my entire life. I’m 100% ready.”

“Well, congratulations. I hope your soulmate is equally prepared for you.”

After retrieving their bags, the two stepped out into LA for the very first time. It was scorching, in the kind of dry, baking way one would associate with an oven compared to Korea’s humid and moist summers. And it looked like an entirely different world. There were palm trees in plain sight, a massive clutter of cars and buses, and everyone was speaking in rapidfire English. Jinyoung had devoted the past six years of his life to mastering the language in anticipation of meeting his American soulmate, but even he was beginning to feel nervous hearing the natives at work.

“Taxi or bus?” Minki asked.

“Let’s just spring for a taxi. Hayer University is supposed to be only twenty minutes away from the airport, according to the brochures.”

“All right. So…foreigners hail taxis by flaunting their legs like in that one movie, right?”

“No. Considering there’s a line of taxis waiting over there, I think we just go to the first in line and hop in.”

“Boring!”

Boring though it was, Jinyoung gave the taxi driver the address of their new home, Baldwin Hall, an all-boys dormitory at Hayer U. It was the dinkiest on-campus housing option on offer, which was saying something considering Hayer U was a pretty dinky liberal arts college, but according to the pictures in the brochure, it was a pretty attractive looking place. It had been gifted to the University by a famous alumni named Jay Park as a special housing unit for Asian or Asian-American students who had been accepted into Hayer U’s Asian National Honor Society.

It was also the place where the coordinates of Jinyoung and Minki’s soulmates had been lurking over the past year. Jinyoung had banked on the assumption that both were students at Hayer U, and had accordingly arranged to study abroad there and live in the exact same dormitory. It had been a challenge—Minki in particular had struggled to make it into the Honor Society, and there had been plenty of agony in the process of getting Visas—but they had made it, and their destinies were just one day away from being realized.

“What if our soulmates are total dorks?” Minki was wondering as the taxi drove them to Hayer U. “I mean, we are going to the Honors dorm, after all.”

“I have nothing against dorks,” Jinyoung said. “Anyways, soulmates are the people who we are meant to experience the love of our lifetime with, so even if they are dorks or are ugly or not our regular type, it’s inevitable that we’ll love them anyways.”

“Hmmm. Still, I hope I can get one who’s my type. Someone who’s a slave to my charms and will let me boss them around a little.”

Jinyoung nodded. He didn’t really have a type—he was sure whoever his soulmate was would automatically be his type—but was hoping in his heart of hearts for someone who screamed “romantic lead.”

Twenty minutes later, they pulled up to Baldwin Hall and the taxi driver let them out. There was a small table set up in front of the dorm with a “WELCOME NEW STUDENTS” sign taped to the front and a guy with a bright smile sitting behind it. The upperclassmen—including Jinyoung’s soulmate, most likely—would be moving in tomorrow, and today had been set aside for the incoming Freshman students such as themselves.

“Welcome to Baldwin Hall!” the guy behind the table said when Jinyoung and Minki approached. “I’m Kevin Woo, your Residence Assistant. You must be the last two students we’re waiting for… Jinyoung Park and Minki Choi?”

“That would be us,” Jinyoung said.

“Great! Welcome to Hayer U. Actually, welcome to the US! How was your flight?”

“Terrible, quite honestly,” Minki said. “But we survived.”

“And that’s the important thing,” Kevin said with a nod. “We’re happy to have you, and we hope you’ll feel at home here. Most of the residents of Baldwin Hall are actually of Korean descent, but most of them don’t really speak the language much, myself included. But the other new student who arrived just half-an-hour ago, Joshua, said he’s pretty good, so if you ever feel homesick for your language…”

That was actually a pretty big relief. Jinyoung had gotten quite good at English over the years, but it still felt decidedly foreign to speak it. He would welcome the opportunity to switch it up from time to time, other than just with Minki.

“Here are your orientation packets,” Kevin said, handing them thick folders. “You’ll find information about our guest policies and dorm rules in there, as well as a campus map. Let’s go inside so I can give you the grand tour.”

Jinyoung and Minki followed him inside. There was a little lobby area right through the entrance, where a student was lifting up a box marked “shoes” from a stack of similar cardboard boxes. His eyes lit up when he saw them. “Hey, are you guys the other two Freshmen? I’m Joshua Kim—it’s so nice to meet you.” He set down the box so they could shake hands.

As Jinyoung shook his hand, he saw the digital implant on his wrist that was counting down 4 years, 6 months, 2 days, 7 minutes and 40 seconds. “Is that a soulmate bracelet?” he asked excitedly. He felt disloyal to his sister, who still considered them to be faulty technology, but he was still fascinated by American soulmate tech.

“Oh, yeah, right,” Joshua said, looking down at it. “I almost forget I have it sometimes, since it’ll still be several years until anything happens. Soulmaters are still the big trend in Korea, right?”

Jinyoung nodded. “The benefit with Soulmaters is that they can get you the coordinates of where the end of your red string of fate is, along with a timeframe, though the timeframe isn’t down to the last second.”

“Huh. That’s pretty cool. I guess I’m a little curious about where my soulmate is, but I figure I’ll find them whether I know that info or not. But that’s not a huge priority right now. I’m just here to study.”

“We’ll let you finish up packing for now,” Kevin said to Joshua. “Let me know if you need anything in the meantime. I’ll be showing Minki and Jinyoung around, but just holler if you need me.”

Waving goodbye to Joshua, they went down the hall. “To your left is the kitchen and vending area,” Kevin said. “Hayer U does have its own cafeteria, but if you like to cook, the kitchen is always an option. Aron, one of our Seniors, often cooks dinners for everyone in the evenings. And to the right is our laundry room—it’s coin operated, so be sure to save up lots of quarters.”

They continued down the hallway. “Here we have our dorm rooms,” Kevin said, gesturing to them. “The Hayer U branch of the Asian National Honor Society is pretty small, so we each get our own room. Since you two and Joshua are Freshmen, yours are a little bit smaller than the others, but you’ll graduate to bigger rooms next year when you’re Sophomores. You two are at the end of the hall, right this way.”

As they walked past the other rooms, Jinyoung made note of all the names on the whiteboards attached to the doors. Aron Kwak, Matthew “BM” Kim, Peniel Shin, Mark Tuan, Vernon Choi. One of those names was the name of his soulmate. He felt shivers running down his spine at the thought.

Kevin brought them to their rooms at the end of the hallway and unlocked the one with Jinyoung’s name on the whiteboard. It was a small room with not much more than a bed, desk, and a closet, but it looked comfortable and homey. Jinyoung didn’t have much to fill it with yet, but with a little bit of time, he was sure he could make it a nice space for himself.

“What do you think?” Kevin asked.

Jinyoung closed his eyes, imagining the room decorated with his own personal touches, himself seated at his desk while watching his soulmate spread out on the bed, chatting about their day or beckoning him forward for a kiss in their arms. Sunshine spilling through the windows and the whole world glowing brightly as he basked in the joy of being with his other half.

“It’s perfect,” he said, lifting his pinkie to his lips. “It feels like home.”

The rest of the day was filled with a flurry of unpacking. When he, Minki, and Joshua had unloaded most of their things, Kevin took them over to the student union cafeteria where they had dinner and got to meet some of the other Freshmen who were moving in that day. After dinner, Jinyoung was so exhausted that he only stayed up another two hours to finish tidying up his room before passing out asleep on the bed.

He woke up at 10 am the next morning, much later than he’d wanted. The other residents were probably going to be arriving soon, and he hadn’t even showered and gotten dressed yet. He scrambled for his bathroom kit and robe to hop into the communal bathrooms at the furthest end of the hall for a quick shower and through moisturizing so his face would be at his best for when his soulmate first saw him. When he was finished, he went back to his room and dug through his closet for the outfit he’d bought specifically for his fated soulmate encounter—a nice pair of dark wash jeans, leather shoes, a crisp collared shirt with a subtle checked design, and the kind of bowtie accent he heard was en vogue with the hipster subculture.

Just as he’d finished, he heard a knock on the door. It was Kevin, accompanied by a yawning Minki. It looked like Minki had only just woken up judging by the rumpled quality of his shirt, but luckily for him, his face was so hardworking that it looked as handsome and well-rested as ever, without a blemish in sight.

“Good morning, Jinyoung,” Kevin said. “I hope you slept well. I just wanted to let you know that all our residents have arrived, and that we’ll be having a dorm meeting to go over the rules in more detail in the common area near the entrance in five minutes. Now’s a good time, right?”

“Sure,” Jinyoung said.

“Great. I’ll finish rounding everyone up. You and Minki can go ahead to the common room.”

“This is it,” Jinyoung breathed as Kevin went over to knock on Vernon’s door. “It’s finally happening.”

“Sure is,” Minki said, fluffing his hair a little. “Still feels weird, if you ask me. I almost wish I didn’t even know what was about to happen.”

“Are you kidding? Do you want to go back to the old days when people couldn’t tell who they were meant for and just dated around indiscriminately and got divorced all the time?” He took a deep breath. “This is huge. Momentous. Life defining. The beginning of years upon years of breathtaking love.”

“I don’t know. Parts of the old ways looked fun in the movies. Like in Jerry Maguire, with the whole ‘You had me at hello’ line. It has a better ring to it then ‘you had me at my red string of fate tugging’ or ‘you had me at my countdown implant reaching 00:00:00:00:00.”

“Tom Cruise was divorced multiple times.”

“Yeah, but what about Jerry Maguire? I bet he and Dorothy didn't get divorced.”

Jinyoung was so invested in dismissing Minki’s ridiculous points (after all, Jerry Maguire had totally had a fiancee he'd ended things with before ending up with Dorothy) that he lost track of how close they were to the common lounge until they were already setting foot inside it and his eyes fell on the first group of residents sitting on the couch. He felt it immediately: the tug on his pinkie finger that he’d been waiting for his whole life, the sensation of his string of fate wanting to pull him closer to the person on its other end.

“Goodness,” he heard Minki saying next to him. “I didn’t know we’d be able to feel it so clearly.”

Jinyoung’s heart was pounding so much that he couldn’t even summon the focus to respond. All he could do was stare ahead of him at the assembled residents. One of them was the right one—but which? In the rush of wanting to meet his fated person, he’d completely forgotten that it would be hard for him to pick the right person out in a group setting. And then it hit him with growing horror that out of the group in front of him, there would be two candidates who would fit the appointed place and time. One would be his soulmate, and one would be Minki’s, but there would be no way of knowing by sight alone, even if they had a countdown implant. He and Minki had walked into the room and experienced their string tugging at the exact same time.

It’s OK, Jinyoung, he tried to coach himself, massaging his temples. It’s fine. You and Minki are two completely different people, so it should be easy to tell which person belongs with who…right?

But that was guesswork, and the whole concept of Soulmate science and tech was to eliminate the need for guesswork. If you guessed on something, there was always a chance you could guess wrong, and this was not something he was willing to make a mistake on.

After all his preparation and fantasizing, how could he have overlooked such an important detail? This was supposed to be his big moment of revelation, the sweeping, dramatic bombshell of his love story, and he didn’t even know which of the guys in front of him his heart was supposed to be pounding over.

“All right, guys, take a seat, take a seat,” Kevin said, entering into the room with another one of the residents, presumably Vernon since that was whose door he’d been knocking on. Jinyoung numbly dropped into a nearby armchair, eyes flitting from person to person, wildly thinking Is it you? Is it you? It wasn’t Joshua, Kevin, or Vernon, which left only four options. He racked his head for their names. Aron, BM, Mark, and Peniel. The four guys on the couch.

He studied them one by one, blocking out whatever Kevin was saying. All four were handsome in different ways. One was tall, rather manly looking, and buff as evidenced by his white muscle shirt. One had a buzz cut and a charming looking smile. One had clean cut, fresh good looks and a beautiful side profile shown as he nodded along to Kevin’s speech. One had hair dyed a pretty reddish-brown color and small, attractive features.

As Jinyoung looked back and forth between the four of them, the guy with the buzz cut lifted his hand to rub his forehead, revealing the implant on his wrist. Jinyoung couldn’t see the exact numbers, but it was clearly still counting down. Another suspect eliminated. He thought he could see an implant on the guy with the muscle shirt, but the numbers were covered by his other arm.

All right, Jinyoung, he coached himself again. You can do this. If you can just narrow it down to two, you can ask your sister what to do next. Maybe she can tell you where to buy that chemical and special light so I can make my string visible and find the right person that way. The moment didn’t go exactly as planned, but it doesn’t matter. The One is still in this room. You’ll find him, and it will all work out in the end.

Once he’d sufficiently calmed himself down, he refocused on what Kevin was saying, just in time to hear that they were going to go around the room and do ice breakers by giving their name, year, and one fun fact about themselves.

Jinyoung listened with mild interest as the non-soulmate candidates gave their fun facts—Kevin (Senior) was a Bible group leader, Vernon (Sophomore) often got confused for Titanic-era DiCaprio, Peniel (buzz cut guy, a Junior) was learning how to play bass guitar and apologized for any noise he made while doing so, Joshua was a chronic optimistic who would be happy to serve as everyone’s happy pill, and Minki worshipped at the altar of Lady Gaga—then listened raptly as they reached the three remaining soulmate candidates on the sofa.

“I’m Mark Tuan,” the first candidate, the one with the reddish-brown hair said. “I’m a Junior. A fun fact…I only just declared my major last week.”

Ugh, a slacker, Jinyoung thought. How could people live like that? University in America was so expensive that it was even more of a pea-brained idea to be so lax about choosing a field of study, since it pretty much assured you wouldn't be able to graduate in the standard four years.

“I’m Aron Kwak,” the second guy said. “A Senior. My dream is to work as an investigative reporter on a national scale.”

Plus points for being the exact opposite of a slacker, Jinyoung thought. He admired people who set goals and saw them through with passion.

“Call me BM,” the final candidate said. “I’m a Sophomore, and I just wanted to let everyone know that I found my soulmate this summer and am now an eternally taken man!” He flashed his implant, which read 00:00:00:00:00. Everyone gave him a round of applause, and the upperclassmen whopped and smacked him on the back. Another candidate eliminated, Jinyoung thought as he clapped. Which means my soulmate is either Mark Tuan or Aron Kwak.

He looked back and forth between the two of them again. They were both gorgeous—there was no losing when it came to visuals with them. Mark had the exact kind of face Jinyoung tended to like, but his ensemble of a loose black hoodie with red writing down the arms and ripped up jeans indicated, paired with the fact that he’d been undecided for half his university career, that he was probably the overly chill, informal, and carefree type that Jinyoung did not care for as much. Aron, on the other hand, looked really put together and on top of his game, which Jinyoung majorly approved of.

Still, he knew better than to get too attached to one option over the other when he didn’t really have any proper clues as to which one was actually the one. He didn’t want to completely write off someone only to have them wind up being his soulmate after the fact.

As their mini-meeting wrapped up, Jinyoung leaned over to Minki. “It’s either Aron or Mark,” he whispered.

“Goodie,” Minki said, lackadaisical as ever. “The hot ones. Which one’s mine?”

“That’s the problem. How are we supposed to know? We saw them and had our reaction at the exact same second, so it could be either one of them.”

“Oh.” Minki blinked. “Well. That complicates things.”

“Tell me about it. As soon as this is over, we need to call my sister.”

“Can’t we at least say hi to them first? These are our soulmates, after all. I can test out my flirting abilities.”

“But how are you going to know which one to flirt with?”

“I can flirt with both and see which one responds the most?”

“Don’t you dare flirt with my soulmate, Choi Minki!”

Minki sighed. “Fine. No flirting. But let’s at least see what they’re like, after all. I’m super curious.”

Jinyoung was wary of the idea of talking to them without knowing which was which, but Minki didn’t really give him an option. As soon as Kevin wrapped up his spiel, Minki rocketed up and plopped down on the coffee table in front of the sofa where Mark and Aron were sitting.

“What’s up, hyungs?” he said.

“Hyungs?” Mark repeated, brows furrowed.

“It’s a Korean thing,” Aron explained. “No need to do that here, Lady Gaga Boy. Everyone’s a friend here in America.”

“That’s good to know, since we are too new here to have any friends. Are you guys in the market?”

“Are you kidding? This is my Senior year, so it’s like my job to take care of you baby Freshmen.” Aron grinned. “For starters, a piece of advice: you have to be a little careful with Mark over here. He may look like an angel, but he likes toying with people. Pranks, practical jokes, mind games, you name it. If you really want to be friends with him, take precautions.”

Jinyoung frowned. He knew American universities were famous for hazing, and wondered if that was the kind of thing Mark did. If so, that was going to earn a few more minus points, soulmate or not.

“Don’t scare them,” Mark said, elbowing Aron in the ribs. “It’s nothing bad, just all in good fun.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Minki said. “I love a good joke. Don’t you, Jinyoung?” When Jinyoung didn’t answer immediately, Minki patted him on the arm. “He may not look like it, but he’s actually really playful. He’s just a little uptight at the moment because one of you is his-”

Jinyoung lunged forward to clap his hand over Minki’s mouth, cutting him off. Both Mark and Aron looked at him in confusion.

“Um,” Jinyoung said quickly. “I’m sorry, but Minki does this thing where he makes up embarrassing stuff about me when we meet someone new. It’s not mean-spirited or anything, it’s just his way of getting me to open up quickly. So yeah, just ignore him, please. Actually, we need to finish setting up our rooms, so we’ll catch you later, all right?” He pulled Minki away before he could let anything else slip.

When they were out of the common room, Jinyoung hissed, “Do not talk to them about the soulmate thing until we get this sorted out.”

“Why not?” Minki asked. “I mean, they must know already since their pinkies also did the tuggy thing when we walked into the room.”

“Look, if Americans all knew about the pinkie signal, they might be a little less likely to invest in a clock implant, so big businesses here don’t really share that factoid, OK? In fact, they probably tell them it’s Eastern superstition and doesn’t really mean anything. And neither of those guys had a clock implant, so they probably don’t even know they’ve reached their 0 hour.”

“Oh. So…shouldn’t we tell them?”

Jinyoung shook his head, pushing Minki in his room and shutting the door behind him. “No. Not yet, anyways. Because it’s not like they’ll have any idea which one of us belongs to who any more than we do, and four confused people are more liable to make mistakes than just two. As soon as we sort it out on our end, then we can tell them.” Jinyoung pulled out his cell. “Let’s get in touch with my sister and figure out what we should do.”

His sister picked up after a few rings. “Jinyoung? How did it go? You’ve met your guy by now, right?”

“Yeah, noona, but it didn’t go as planned.” Jinyoung explained the situation to her. “There’s some kind of quick trick we can use to figure out the right person, right?” he asked. “Like using that spray to make our strings visible?”

“They don’t actually sell that stuff on the market,” she explained. “If anyone could just make their string visible whenever they felt like, we’d risk losing out on a lot of business. You have to have a license to buy one of the chemical components, on top of it.”

“Well, are there soulmaters in LA we could contact?”

“Jinyoung, you know that Americans don’t buy into our methods. The clock implant industry has a monopoly on American soulmate tech. Soulmater readings and European touch sensors are both banned.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Jinyoung wailed. “Noona, if we’re left to figure this out on our own, we could make a mistake and choose the wrong person and just set ourselves up for heartbreak the way people did back in the old days.”

“I don’t want you to have to do that either, but it’s not completely hopeless. You know who the candidates are, right? When you come home from winter break, I can take a look at your string and get the coordinates of where your match is spending the winter holiday, and you can compare that information with the candidates when you get back.”

“Noona. That’s in almost four months.”

“You’ve waited this long to find your soulmate. What’s four more months?”

An eternity, Jinyoung wanted to say, but he knew he was verging on coming across as whiny at this point. He wasn’t happy with the situation, but he knew in his heart of hearts that it could technically be a lot worse.

Minki was as unshakeable as ever when Jinyoung hung up. “It’s not such a bad thing,” he said thoughtfully. “We can spend this time getting to know them, right? And since we don’t know which one is which, it won’t be all forced like it would have if it was like ‘I know you’re my soulmate so we MUST fall in love NOW.’ Who knows, maybe we’ll fall in love before we even know for sure and have that kind of old-movie experience.”

“But what if we fall in love with the wrong one?” Jinyoung reminded him.

“What’s wrong in the long term might still be right in the short term.”

“Don’t you think it would be uncomfortable if I dated your soulmate before handing him off to you?”

Minki shrugged. “Anyways, one of them might be a total ‘No way in hell’ that is so obviously not anyone we’d ever come to love that we can cross them off safely. That’s not so impossible, is it?”

Jinyoung shrugged. He got the feeling he was going to have to allow for some guesswork, whether he wanted to or not. It wasn’t a bad point either—the existence of soulmates didn’t factor out the existence of people you’d rather swallow a nail than be with.

Minki picked himself off the bed. “I’m starving—I haven’t eaten since I woke up, and I’m probably going to pass out if I don’t get food. I’m going to hop over to the kitchen to see if there’s anything, or else go to the cafeteria. Don’t beat yourself up over this, Jinyoung. We’ll be fine.”

“Hungry, hungry, hungry,” Minki sang to himself as he waltzed over to the kitchen. He wasn’t expecting to find anyone inside since everyone else but him, Jinyoung, Joshua, and Kevin were in the middle of unpacking, but to his surprise, soulmate candidate Aron Kwak was inside loading some shopping bags.

Minki poked his head in. “Will I be getting in your way if I come in and make a sandwich or something?” he asked.

Aron shook his head. “Be my guest. I brought some groceries with me, so I’m just unloading those before moving on to my room. Actually, feel free to use whatever I’ve got for your sandwich.”

Minki popped the rest of the way in and joined Aron behind the counter. “You’re the one who Kevin said was supposed to be a good cook, right?” he asked. “Aron Ramsay?”

Aron shrugged. “I’m OK, but not that good. But I’m probably less verbally abusive, so there’s that.”

“In that case, I have to show off my own culinary skills. I’m probably Picasso level.”

“Picasso was an artist, not a chef.”

“Exactly.”

Aron lifted an eyebrow. “Well. You’ve piqued my curiosity. If you want to make me a sandwich too, I’ll give it a bite, Picasso.”

“You’re on.” Minki took a moment to review the ingredients he had to work with. As a soulmate candidate, Aron could very well be Minki’s one-and-only, but according to Jinyoung, he wasn’t allowed to tell him that outright. Maybe he could just drop a subtle hint with a sandwich concept that suggested “Hey, I’m gay, and a possible love interest, just so you know!”

While he sorted for ingredients, he decided to try for a subtle verbal hint as well. “So, I noticed you don’t have one of those clock implants,” he said. “Not excited to meet your soulmate?”

“Oh, I’m plenty excited to meet my soulmate. Aren’t you? Because you don’t have an implant either.”

“That’s because I don’t need one. I’ve had my red string of fate read by a soulmater, so I know the date when I met—er, or will meet—my soulmate. Plus, you still feel a little tug on your finger when it happens, regardless of the clock.”

“Oh? That’s funny. I felt a weird pull on my finger today.”

“Interesting.”

“I think it happened around the time of our dorm meeting.”

“Fascinating. Still, it could be just one of those things.” Or not.

“Yeah. Maybe. If every time my finger felt weird meant I’d found a soulmate, I’d have quite a few.”

“True that. So if you’re eager to meet your soulmate, why no implant?”

“Because it’s an implant. Just the idea of getting something implanted inside me like that weirds me out.” He shuddered. “I mean, it would be nice to know when my soulmate’s coming, but if I’m going to meet them anyways, there’s really no point in suffering through implantation, right? Hopefully the other person will have one that will go off when they see me so I’ll know that way.”

“Yeeeaaaah, that doesn’t always work out, though,” Minki said. “Especially in big groups. In fact, you may have already met your soulmate, but they can’t be sure if it’s you or not because the reaction happened when a lot of people were around.”

“Oh. That would .”

“Wouldn’t it, though?”

“Minki…why are you putting orange slices into the sandwich?”

Minki looked down at his budding sandwich masterpiece. He’d laid down a slice of turkey as the backdrop, and was building a rainbow on top of it with the ingredients. For red, he was using tomatoes, and now he was working on orange.

“It’s a concept,” he explained.

“A concept.”

“Yes. All visually appealing foods have a concept, right?”

“I suppose. But not all edible foods do.”

“Oranges are edible.” Minki moved on to yellow—shredded cheese.

“All right…I’ll go with it this once, but I’m getting the feeling you’re pulling a prank on me. But maybe that’s because I’ve been around Mark so long.”

“I am dead serious, Aron. This is art.”

“Or is it Art Pop?”

Minki grinned. “Lady Gaga reference! I like.”

“You liked it? I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t read your poker face.”

Minki laughed and gave Aron a little push. “OK, now you’re just being cute, hyung.”

“Seriously, you don’t have to ‘hyung’ me. I’m a fake Korean. I’ve only been one or two times.”

“You should visit some more. Seriously. We need more tourism.”

“Would you show me around?”

“Maybe. I’ve practiced a tour guide routine, so I could totally do it.”

“Minki?”

“Yeah.”

“I could tolerate you adding celery to the sandwich, but I may have to draw the line at you adding blue M&Ms.”

“But it’s a concept.”

“It’s a concept that’s slowly turning poisonous.”

“Excuse me, but chocolate isn’t poisonous. And I’m making a rainbow, and rainbows need blue, and the only thing blue in this kitchen are these M&Ms. It’s your own fault for not buying blueberries.”

“Oh god. Blueberries in a sandwich with oranges and shredded cheese. You’re almost making me grateful for the blue M&Ms.”

“I haven’t even gotten to the finishing piece yet.” He grabbed for an eggplant in the fridge. “It’s not exactly indigo or violet, but it will do.”

Aron stared at him, brows furrowed. Then he shook his head and started laughing a little. “You’re a true original, did you know that?”

“That’s what I aim for.”

“I almost want to root for you and your cooking since it seems to be making you happy, but you’re actually going to make me eat that, aren’t you?”

“You said you would.”

“Thank you for taking time to teach me a valuable lesson in watching my mouth.”

Minki finished chopping up the eggplant and arranged the pieces along with the other colors of his masterpiece. “I call it ‘Rainbow Mosaic in the Desert’.”

“Desert?”

“The turkey is the desert. The whole thing represents how love brings color to a colorless place.”

“Uhhhhh….right. You know, I barely know you, but somehow that sounds exactly like something you would say.” Aron studied the sandwich grimly. “I am going to regret this.”

“It can’t be too terrible,” Minki said encouragingly. “All the ingredients are yummy.”

“Individually, yeah. But together…let’s just say this will make for an interesting combination.” He picked up the sandwich as if it were a wet sock. “All right…let’s…just get this over with.”

Minki watched him excitedly. He knew in his heart of hearts that the sandwich was a disaster, but it had been so fun to make it that he hoped that somehow Aron would be able to like it.

Aron bit into it and chewed slowly. It was hard to describe the look on his face—maybe ‘bombarded’ was the right word. Minki could hardly imagine which of the flavors would win out, or if Aron was experiencing them all at their fullest simultaneously. Whatever the case was, he got it all down and swallowed before setting the sandwich back down on the plate.

“A…a true original…” he said hoarsely, covering his mouth. “Wow.”

“Amazed?” Minki asked. He went to the sink and poured a glass of water for him in case he needed to wash it down.

“That’s one word for it.” He closed his eyes, his mouth twitching. “You know…how people always say…’I’d do anything for you, even swim with sharks’ or ‘jump off a cliff’?”

“…yeah?”

“They really need to change that phrase to…to…’I’d do anything for you, even eat the Rainbow Mosaic in the Desert.”

With that said, Aron clamped his hand over his mouth and bolted over to the nearest trashcan and started retching up the sandwich.

Oh god, Minki thought, throwing his head back and looking up to the heavens that had cursed him with these inexplicable tendencies to be ridiculous. This cannot be my soulmate. Because if it is, I have just given my love story the most terrible beginning in history.

After Minki left to go to the kitchen, Jinyoung immediately started feeling antsy. It was hard to function knowing his soulmate was in the same building as him, but equally hard to function without knowing with exact certainty who that soulmate even was. He was pretty sure he would torture himself with thinking it to death if he didn’t make the effort to distract himself with something else.

For lack of anything better to do, he grabbed the shirts that had gotten wrinkly during the overseas flight to take into the laundry room for a thorough ironing. When he arrived inside, he was greeted by the sight of soulmate candidate Mark Tuan sitting cross-legged on top of the dryer, his cellphone lifted up towards the ceiling as he waved it back and forth.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to sit on those,” Jinyoung said, staring at him for a moment. “I think it even says that in the instruction manual.”

Mark glanced over at him, remaining exactly where he was. “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever read an instruction manual for a dryer, so I can’t back you on that. But no one’s using it, and it’s where the internet signal is the strongest, so permission to continue with my rulebreaking until I finish what I’m doing.” He looked at Jinyoung for a moment as if he actually expected him to say “permission granted,” then shrugged and carried on with fiddling with his phone when he didn’t.

Jinyoung stared at him a moment longer. He really did have one of the best faces Jinyoung had seen in his life, so he wondered why something about Mark instinctively grated on him. He wasn’t usually the type to make snap judgements about people, but something about the person in front of him set off warning signs of trouble best averted. Which wasn’t exactly how he wanted to feel about a potential soulmate candidate, though perhaps it indicated that Mark wasn’t at all the one he was looking for and should set his sights on Aron instead.

Still, you know better to write off an option for no reason, he scolded himself as he grabbed for the ironing board. Especially one with that face. Heaven wouldn’t be so cruel to craft a literal angel only to stick a devil inside him.

Jinyoung set up the board and got the iron ready, all the while keeping a cautious eye on Mark. He seemed immersed in whatever was going on in his phone. Whatever it was must have been important if he was skipping out on unpacking.

“So,” Jinyoung said, when the silence got to be a little too much even for him. “What major did you wind up declaring?”

“Huh?” Mark glanced up from his phone. “Oh, that? Business.”

“And what are you going to do with your degree?”

“Web store stuff,” he said vaguely. He could have meant coding, selling on eBay, or doing handmade stuff like Etsy for all Jinyoung knew. His attention was already focused back on his phone, and it didn’t look like Jinyoung was going to get any more out of him.

Rude, Jinyoung thought. He hated when people were so into their phones that they ignored the actual human beings around them. With a sniff of disapproval, he ignored Mark in return and focused on his shirts.

After about five minutes, Mark yelled “Hallelujah!” and lept off the dryer. Jinyoung head snapped up in alarm. What, did he just get a high score in Candy Crush, or something?

“Glad that’s over with,” he said, shoving his phone into his pocket. “Sorry for spacing out there. I was in the middle of something. You’re Jinyoung, right? One of the Freshmen? From Korea?”

Jinyoung nodded warily.

“What brought you to the US?”

Jinyoung was not intending on informing Mark of the role that he had played in bringing Jinyoung and Minki to the states, but there was one aspect of Mark he wasn’t turned off enough not to be curious about, and that was the absence of a clock implant on his wrist. As a Junior in university, surely he had enough money to get one by now, and Jinyoung really wanted to know why he hadn’t. He wanted to know how Mark felt about soulmates in general, and saw this as an opening to find out.

“I came to the US to find my soulmate,” Jinyoung said.

Mark snorted. “Seriously?”

If there was one thing he could have said to solidify Jinyoung’s dislike of him instantly, it was that. “What?” Jinyoung snapped. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Mark waved his hands defensively. “No, no, sorry. It’s just kind of beside the point, right? You’re destined to meet your soulmate no matter what, or so they say, so isn’t deliberately coming all the way out here for that a little much?”

“What’s wrong with giving fate a nudge? Besides, it seems like I was destined to make that decision to come out here, given the..um…timing.”

“Timing? You don’t have a clock implant.”

“We do things differently overseas. Besides, it’s not like you have one either.”

“That’s because I really don’t give a crap about the whole thing.”

The dislike had been solidified already, but now Jinyoung felt it intensify further. “You don’t give a crap about the existence of your soul’s other half?”

Mark shook his head. “Not that. The whole thought of that is…beautiful, I guess, in its own way. But the whole thing about knowing exactly when you’ll meet them is bull. It totally misses out on the enjoyable parts of figuring things out for yourself and falling for someone with no sense of obligation. And it makes people do crazy things like refuse to date people they’re attracted to just because they’re not ‘The One’. I’m totally fine with the fact that I’ll meet my soulmate one day, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stake them out or deny myself the pleasure of the opportunity of dating the people I want to date.”

“You date around?” Jinyoung asked in horror.

“Just ended a relationship this summer, in fact. The guy in question found his soulmate, so I gracefully stepped aside. It was a bit of a shame, but I’ll manage.”

Jinyoung’s stomach roiled at the thought. The whole soulmate system was supposed to eliminate pointless behavior like that, and here someone was engaging in it willingly? Someone who would subject themselves to dating someone who was only going to find the right person later?

“Well, you look like you’re about to vomit,” Mark said nonchalantly. “You must be one of those soulmate devotees who would never stray from the righteous path of destiny. I’m sorry for offending your delicate sensibilities.”

“Don’t mock me,” Jinyoung snapped. “As if your way is superior. Excuse me for not going around throwing my affection away at people who aren’t even meant for me.”

“I didn’t throw my affection away,” Mark said mildly. “I gave it to the person who caused it. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with affection?"

"But it wasn't real. That wasn't your person, it was someone else's."

"It was real, and he was my person for the five months we dated, thank you very much. I'm going to let you saying that go this time because you're probably just as brainwashed about the whole thing as everyone else is these days, but just so you know, back in the old days, having this kind of commentary about someone else's love life would be considered quite rude, Park Jinyoung."

Jinyoung flushed. He cared about defending his opinion, but the last thing he wanted to be thought of as was rude. Maybe he was crossing a line, but wasn't Mark crossing a line, too, with how he'd spoken of Jinyoung's feelings?

"I'm sorry," he said gruffly. "But you saying I'm brainwashed is something I consider rude, too. I'm not. The system works. And it did for the person you went out with, didn't it? They found their soulmate. Shouldn't you be thinking of finding yours? Maybe that person is close by, closer than you even know, and knowing how little you care about it would make them unhappy."

"And isn't the whole point of them being my soulmate that they'll love me anyways, in spite of the fact that I have an ex-boyfriend?" He shrugged. "Anyways, happens. Breaking up was unfortunate, but I enjoyed my time with him while it lasted, so yeah, if you don't think that's real or genuine because society tells you that no relationship matters but being The One, I call that brainwashing. I have no regrets about it, all right? I hope you’ll live your life with no regrets, too, doing things your way. Whatever makes you happy, OK? And I’ll keep doing whatever makes me happy.”

I do not get this person, Jinyoung thought. I do not get this person at all. He is the exact type of person I will never be able to understand in my entire life. And there is no way, absolutely no way he could be my soulmate. I doubt I even need my sister to confirm to me that this guy goes with someone freespirited like Minki, and I belong with someone grounded and focused like Aron.

“Whatever,” he muttered out loud, focusing on his shirt so that Mark would get bored and leave. But when he glanced up, Mark was still staring at him, an amused smile on his face. A smile that spelled out trouble as clear as day.

“So, I think I figured it out,” Jinyoung announced to Minki after he’d excused himself from the monster in the laundry room. “Mark is 99.9% not my soulmate, so I’m thinking he must be yours.”

“That’s fine,” Minki said. “Considering I just poisoned Aron with Rainbow Mosaic in the Desert, I don’t think I have a shot with him to begin with.”

“Rainbow Mosaic in the Desert?”

“A sandwich I made him.”

“Aren’t you legally obligated to not cook at this point given how many people you’ve nearly killed? I hope he’s OK.”

“He should be. I did stick around to make sure and apologized like a billion times. He told me not to worry about it, but I feel pretty terrible.” Minki sighed. “Anyways, before that whole incident, he was proving to be charming, funny, intelligent, and a big fan of soulmates in spite of being too chicken to get an implantation, so I suppose he’s up your alley. How about Mark?”

“Well for starters, he doesn’t care about the soulmate system, is fine dating people without caring if they’re his soulmate or not, and I’m pretty sure he gets off on trying to make people feel like an idiot.”

“All things I can live with,” Minki said decisively.

“Even the dating around thing?”

“Sure. I mean, I can understand the compulsion. I totally would have dated Kang Dongho in high school if I’d had the opportunity. I mean, did you see his muscles? Roar.”

Jinyoung groaned under his breath. Why did people have to be so bullheaded about things when society had already given them a clear-cut solution to the horrors of dating and breaking up? It was like they wanted to get their hearts broken.

Still, it wasn’t his problem. He wasn’t like that. Apparently Aron wasn’t like that, either. He was going to enjoy his life with someone rational and yet romantic and love every minute of it. He’d let Minki deal with the mess that was Mark Tuan and stay 100% out of it from now on.

A/N: For reference, if you're not as familiar with NU'EST. This is Ren's cooking...

It's called "Forest Diffuser" T^T