After bidding a good night to Taehyung, Haeun drove home with her mind in a tangled mess. If she hadn’t been driving, she would’ve dug her hands into her hair and nearly pulled it all out several times by now. There was no way Baekhyun was her soulmate. Absolutely none. She would’ve noticed by now.

But then again, if she wasn’t looking for her soulmate, she wouldn’t necessarily put two and two together. Dongwoo and Eunji hadn’t until they were literally in the same room with the rest of them after they had been fake dating for a bit. 

Right?

Haeun thought back to the party, and all she could remember was drinking, tripping over something, and Baekhyun catching her before Jeonghan ended up taking her home. That didn’t mean that Baekhyun was her soulmate, and there was a possibility that maybe it was someone in the vicinity. After all, as a lawyer, she knew better than anyone else that memories couldn’t be trusted. Over years, memories would fade and change, and for all she knew, maybe she had bumped into someone else before Baekhyun caught her, and the warmth had just carried over. There were so many different possibilities, and her mind was too much in overdrive to even consider them all.

She wasn’t even sure what she would do if Baekhyun was her soulmate considering he basically hated her. They had a few decent conversations, and there was a possibility that they could be friends after that initial conversation on her birthday, but things had just gone downhill again afterwards. Now it was just plain awkward, and they were simply tolerating each other’s existence. Her thoughts went back to the dinner where she’d met eyes with Baekhyun accidentally, and she couldn’t believe she was staring at him because of his food. What kind of person did that? They were already in this weird sort-of-statis, and now she’d be known as the girl who was staring at him while they were both on their own respective dates.

Finally getting home and parking, she stomped into the elevator, and as the doors closed, she resisted the urge to bang her head on the wall knowing there was a camera in there. She didn’t need any more embarrassing situations in her life. The last thing she needed was the security guard watching the CCTV cameras coming up to her tomorrow and asking if she was okay.

She walked into her apartment mere minutes later only to be greeting by a mewling Kai, and at first she picked him up by the scruff of his neck, annoying that he had caused such a scene with her boss in the morning, but she set him down gently on the kitchen counter to pet him under his chin. He immediately curled up around himself, his tail swiping back and forth on the counter as he purred. Sighing at how adorable he looked, she took her phone out to snap a few photos. Haeun glanced at his food bowl, finding it empty, so she knew that he had eaten dinner. Patting him on his a few times, she picked him up and walked over to her room and set him down in his bed. He mewed at her a few times to get her to go back to petting him, so she patted him on his again before wandering over to her bed and flopping back first onto it to call her mom because she missed her mom’s voice.

~~~

The next few days passed with Haeun just in a state of overthinking. She was constantly trying to remember what happened that night of the party and regretted drinking. She made a mental pact that she was never going to drink again, and she immediately knew that she was going to break that. 

At first, she didn’t tell anyone, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. She toyed with the thought of telling Jeonghan with the hopes that maybe he would know what happened, but she realized that she hadn’t been with Jeonghan during the time that she had ran into Baekhyun, and therefore, he wouldn’t know. Plus, she wasn’t sure how she’d take the fact that her soulmate might be so close to her, but she hated him. 

Or well, hate was a strong word. She strongly disliked him and disliked his mentality even more. 

Haeun was also tempted to talk to Eunji about the whole soulmate bond thing, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk to anyone about it if she didn’t want to talk to Jeonghan. 

It was probably the worst possible timing for her to be thinking about this since it was turning out to be an all consuming thought, and she had two trials to deal with for the latter half of the week. She sat in her chair at work, just spinning round and round. She was grateful that the door wasn’t see-through, so Siyeon (or her boss) couldn’t see her losing her mind in the middle of the work day. At some point, she was getting dizzy enough for her to slam her hands down on her table. Taking a deep breath through her nose, she exhaled through in an “o” formation, trying to center her thoughts. She had to forget about this; she had more important things to deal with. Besides Kim Sanghee’s case, Haeun had been assigned a robbery-homicide case where Chanyeol was going to be appearing as the detective on the case along with another detective named Choi Minho. The trial was later in the day, and she was supposed to be looking over the case files before.

It dawned on Haeun that if Chanyeol was showing up, there were chances that Baekhyun would as well, and she groaned out loud, her forehead joining her hands on the table. At this point, all she could do was hope and pray that Baekhyun was busy with a case or something.

There was a knock on her door, and Siyeon stuck her head in when Haeun let out a muffled “come in.”

“Uh, are you okay…?” Siyeon apprehensively asked. Haeun couldn’t actually see her, but she could hear Siyeon’s heels clicking on the floor as she approached the desk.

Haeun straightened up, running a hand through her hair and removing stray strands that had ended up  sticking to her lipstick. She debated saying yes, but she’d be lying. “No, I’m not. But what is it?”

Siyeon looked at her weirdly, but she sat down in the chair that was across from Haeun. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked slowly as though she knew it would take some time for Haeun’s brain to process what she was saying. 

Squinting at her assistant, she cautiously replied, “No. What do you need?”

“It’s about today’s trial,” Siyeon replied, setting a file down on the desk. “They changed the prosecutor yesterday.”

Haeun groaned at the news, and she had this creeping suspicion that she wasn’t going to like whoever the new prosecutor was. “Who is it?”

“Kim Hongjoong.” Haeun squeezed her eyes shut, and she squeezed her hands into fists to focus on her nails digging into her pain to stop herself from jumping out of the window behind her. Seeing Haeun’s reaction, Siyeon pressed further. “Why do you hate him so much?”

“This week has been absolutely fan-freaking-tastic,” Haeun muttered, picking up her pen and stabbing her notepad lightly, watching as the ink created blots over the page. “He’s a self-righteous who thinks he’s above everyone else. He antagonized me for two weeks in law school over the fact that I had won a scholarship for an essay, and he hadn’t. He tried to go to the school board and have them judge the essays again to make sure that me winning was legit and not me buying my win.”

“Wow, what an .”

“Tell me about it. I’m already pushing for the fact that the police found the wrong suspect, and he’s going to bite my head off if I win.”

“...don’t you want to win?” Siyeon asked, tapping her nails on the desk one by one.

“Yes, I do. But I’d rather not have to deal with a rabid goose-like prosecutor afterwards,” Haeun insisted.

Siyeon scrunched her face up at that. “Rabid. Goose-like?”

“Once a goose gets it into its head that it wants to attack you, that’s what it will do,” Haeun spoke with utter seriousness. She had been chased by a goose down the street once, and it was not a memory she wanted to bring up.

“Well, you better, uh, figure out what you’re doing,” Siyeon spoke, her face clearly showing that she thought Haeun was losing her mind. Which, to be fair, she was. “Remember to put your hair up in a bun or something,” she reminded her. Haeun absentmindedly nodded. She loved her navy colored hair, but as a lawyer, it was something that stood out too much in a room full of black, white, and beige colors. Under certain dark lighting, her hair looked nearly black, but it was clear that her hair was blue in court. It wasn’t exactly professional per se, but she was a human outside of her job. Granted, she did want to dye it red at some point, but she figured that navy would stand out less because she wasn’t trying to get fired for her hair color. 

Siyeon left the room, and Haeun stood up to stretch for a moment before settling back down in her seat to prepare for the trial later in the day. She looked over her case notes as she matched each section of the trial to evidence that she had prepared. There wasn’t much she could do from her side, but she could hopefully get the defendant acquitted on at least one charge that was against him.

The case wasn’t too complicated at first glance considering it was a ro