Jaebeom vaguely remembered when he was around 6 years old and he had found a marker in his father's office. He had wanted to try the pen that was so different from his crayons. Back then he knew he couldn’t just write on the paper in the office or else he would get to hear something. And taking the marker with him to his own room was also not the best idea since his mother never liked it when he took stuff from other rooms to his own.

So he took off the cap of the marker and simply started to draw something on his arm. In his head it was supposed to be a cat, a cat he has wished for to get for his birthday. But in the end it wasn’t a cat, he wasn’t sure what he had drawn himself but if there would exist a cat that looked like his drawing, well then what a poor little thing.

It seemed like the minute he finished drawing the lines changed, even if it was just a slight change but it almost seemed like the lines got washed off his arm. Where the lines had been strikingly black, they faded with each second he looked at them.

Confused he stared at his arm and the drawing. Just a few moments later his drawing was gone, erased from his arm like it had never been there. Curious as little kids often were he started once more, this time trying to draw more prettily. His end product was maybe a bit prettier but still not the cat he imagined in his mind. The moment he was satisfied with his drawing and wanted to put back the marker to where he had taken it from, his mother stepped into the room. Her eyes went from his face to his hand where he still was holding the marker. Her eyes widened when she saw the black ink on her little son’s skin.

“Oh, my dear! You shouldn’t do this, that’s not good for your skin.” she had said. Later he found out what she had meant with not good for your skin. It was believed that writing with any kind of pen on your skin was leaving scars and was a risk for getting skin cancer. And so it came that he stopped thinking of this event, it was also overshadowed by his next birthday when he got a cat, Nora and believe me what a beauty she was nothing compared to his drawing.

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He forgot about the incident until one particular school lesson. The lesson was about soulmates, fate and what it meant for each of them. Utterly confused he had looked at his teacher. Soulmate? His parent’s had never mentioned anything like soulmates or that they met because they were soulmate. He saw the confusion in the eyes of his classmates. So was it normal for the parent’s to not tell their children?

“Until now your parent’s have tried to keep you away from this knowledge. Because it was once decided that children until a certain age should live freely without this knowledge. There have been cases where someone had no soulmate. Maybe he or she passed away at an early age and we haven’t heard of any cases where the soulmate left behind would find someone else. So imagine what it would do to this person knowing that they would never find their other half.” the teacher looked from one student to another. Jaebeom felt a shiver go down his spine. It made sense somehow to him that until a certain age the whole soulmate stuff was kept away from children. But like their teacher had just said what if their soulmate passed away during childhood? What if he or someone of his class could never meet their soulmate?

“Some of you might have already experienced some kind of interaction with your soulmate by accident, some not.” while talking their teacher rolled up his sleeve. Jaebeom could spot some ink on his right arm it was probably just one word but from his seat he wasn’t able to say what it said. Confused he looked at his teacher. He had seen him in a dress shirt before and then he had never any black ink on either arm. Had he gotten a tattoo recently?

“You all are able to talk to your soulmates even at this moment. And since showing is always better I will give you an example as to how that would go.” while talking their teacher had stepped behind the projector where he normally would lay papers behind so the class could see the page projected on to the wall behind him. Not so this time, he put his arm where Jaebeom had spotted the ink on underneath the light and so the camera.

‘Ready?’ was written on his arm and without further explanation their teacher wrote ‘yes’ right behind it.

Dumbfounded, Jaebeom watched the scene. What did the man try to show them with his arm?

‘Hello students of class 2-2. I sadly can’t tell you my name even if I wanted to my name won’t appear on the arm of my soulmate, the man who is your teacher.’ These words appeared out of nowhere on the entire length of their teacher's arm. He himself hadn’t gotten near the arm so he couldn’t possibly have written the words there himself. Also, the entire class has been watching him the entire time so there was no way he had tricked them somehow. After a moment their teacher stood up once again. Looking from left to right to all his students, he probably tried to grasp how the boys in the room were feeling. Jaebeom himself was just confused. Why did it seem to him that he had seen something similar once?

“As you were able to see, this sentence on my arm wasn’t written by me. It appeared out of nowhere on it. But it has an explanation to it. An explanation we only have gotten to realise a couple of decades ago.” And so their teacher explained to all the boys sitting in the classroom, how all those years ago it was first found that writings on one arm appeared on another arm, that these two people were destined by fate together.

“It was later on decided that the weight of the knowledge, of having a soulmate you all might want to meet at one point, would be hidden from you until a certain age. Until a time and age were you all are supposed to see the good but also the bad this whole soulmate fate brings with himself.” their teacher gazed from left to right while inhaling once deeply. He explained to them further that just because destiny put them together with another person it didn’t have to mean that they would naturally meet them. That it didn’t mean that they have to get to know their soulmates if they didn’t want to. That one person could still just live on their own, maybe find someone who wasn’t their soulmate but still made them happy. That it was just a possibility, an option that they had.

“It’s rare that a soulmate chooses someone over their specific other but the choice is still yours.”

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After their class ended, Jaebeom’s head hurt with all the information he had gotten and he itched to take one of his many markers and just try his luck. But their teacher had also made them act with caution. They didn’t know the other person just yet. Didn’t know in what kind of situation they were and most importantly if they have even been given the informations about soulmates, like they just have been. If their soulmate was younger than they themselves were, it was most likely that they knew nothing just yet. Only if their parent’s told their children earlier than it was recommended they would know about it. Yes, sometimes kids found out on their own when either their soulmate tried to contact them or they just happen