‪Seungwan doesn’t remember how she got her green sentence, the burn and ink spreading when she was just over two. Her parents tell her that her pink and yellow sentences were already there when she was born. They tell her that not many get so many soulmates, and that she should be thankful that so many people already love her.

She traces the sentences at night, stumbling over the way words form in , haven’t yet learnt how to read, purely making sounds the way her mother taught her. 

She’s barely turned five when her neck burns a little and her mother pulls back her collar, concerned eyes softening to tell her that she’s got a new sentence on her. 

And she’s been working so hard at kindergarten learning about colours and how to read. Purple, she thinks, is a very beautiful colour. In fact, Seungwan believes it is her favourite colour. Along with pink and yellow and green. 

She learns enough of her alphabet to piece together the sentence. Her father guffaws, deep and strong-like, when she reads it out loud for the first time, while her mother facepalms.

“This is a bad word, wan-ah,” she says, pointing at her purple sentence. “You can’t say this out loud, alright?”

At age five, Seungwan doesn’t know much about bad words yet other than how she isn’t supposed to say them or Santa won’t bring her presents. But every night now, she still censors herself when she goes through her sentences, worried that if she says it too often Santa won’t bring her soulmates to her.

Her daddy jokes that she’s going to be all the colours of the rainbow soon, and she laughs and laughs at the thought. She’d like that, she thinks. She’ll never be lonely again.

-

In the early mornings, just after her father gives her a kiss before heading to work, stubble prickly and tickling her, and her mother is bustling in the kitchen preparing their lunchboxes for school, she will sit by the living room window. Their window is huge, reaching up to the ceiling. Far down below cars go by on the highway, and Seungwan likes to watch them, wondering if one of them carries her soulmates, wondering when she’ll get to meet her best friends. Sometimes Seunghee unnie will sit by the window with her, her only sentence inscribed on the back of the arm that she presses against Seungwan. 

And even though Seungwan is a curious child, always rambling and asking questions and chatting, mornings like this are quiet, melancholy almost. On days when the sun hangs low, she feels something bubbling inside her chest, a longing, sadness, yet a silent type of love. She’ll glance down at the first sentence she’s ever memorized, the pink reflecting off the window, and get the overwhelming urge to cry. 

-

She leaves for Canada a few years into elementary school, the days flashing by in a blur. 

Canada is big, exciting. But it also terrifies her when she walks into school on the first day and realises the faces around her are unfamiliar and the language they speak she cannot fully understand. 

She calls her parents that very night after her first day of school, huddled into her sister’s arms, cheeks blotchy red and tears streaming. 

“I miss you,” she cries in korean, hicupping. 

The phone rustles on the other end, her mother cooing into the line. “Baby if you want to come home we will buy the ticket immediately, do you want to come home?” 

Beside her, her sister murmurs, worried. She shifts, slightly sweaty from her crying, and feels her sister brush away the hair stuck to the back of her neck. Seunghee’s fingers brush against a spot, and with a start, she remembers.

Her purple sentence. Her only sentence in English. It feels like something important, like this moment will lead somewhere. She takes a deep breath, her sentences flashing through her head. 

“No, it’s okay.”

“Are you sure, Seungwan?” Her father sounds worried, terribly so, even over the phone. 

Sniffling, she replies. “Yes, I’ll be okay.” And she knows she will. She holds onto her right arm absentmindedly, fingers tapping against the spots where two of her sentences lie. “It’ll be okay.” 

-

School away from home gets easier, her English improving. She still feels out of place, a strange little bit of longing in her chest, but she’s happy. She finds friends in her choir group, bakes in her free time and hands off little bits of her heart to everyone.

Her new friends are awfully curious about the hangul etched onto her skin, and most of the time she allows them to prod at the words, answering questions with ease, but some days she feels a little selfish, keeping them to herself, hiding under a jacket, sitting in the back of homeroom holding them close to her heart. 

Nobody calls her Seungwan anymore, not after her father chooses an English name for her. 

And Wendy is a friend’s name. 

“Everybody needs a friend,” he had said. “And my Seungwan, is a friend to all.”

She had laughed and called him cheesy but the name stuck, his words ringing in her.  

At night she lies awake, wondering about the interests, the hobbies her soulmates have. Each sentence is of a different colour, the words a different tone. She can almost feel the personalities oozing from the different sentences. She wonders if they will call her Seungwan or Wendy.

She decides she’ll like them both.

-

On the first day of high school Seungwan meets someone else with more than one sentences on their skin. Amelia is nice, friendly, a warm smile on her face whenever she greets someone. One of her sentences is printed delicately across her collarbone, peeking out every time her shirt shifts. The other is bold, scratchy letters running across the entirety of her arm. 

Unlike Seungwan’s, Amelia’s sentences are both in a pretty shade of green. And unlike Seungwan, Amelia tugs along another girl, one of her soulmates. 

Seeing the same sentence printed on both of their skins, seeing them wait patiently for their other soulmate together, her heart aches, happy and sad all at once. 

-

It’s not the first time she is in a new environment and having to stay in an unfamiliar place, but it still doesn’t get easier. The company is humungous and the frazzled intern bringing her around, barging into random rooms and introducing her to more people than she can remember, does nothing to settle her nerves. 

SM Entertainment is big, and SM Entertainment is quick. And Seungwan is still rolling her oversized luggage around the company as the intern continues spewing out information and rules. The girls that walk by, long black hair in ponytails, eye her in what she hopes is just curiosity, whispering to each other. She tries to smile and do quick bows whenever people walk by, but all it does it cause her to stumble in her step, something that the intern doesn’t seem too pleased about, glancing at his watch impatiently. He has an anxious way about walking, more like a scurry. She has to stop herself from laughing out loud when she realised that he reminds her of the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, forever late. 

The intern scuttles to a stop in front of a glass door, finally looking up from his clipboard and into Seungwan’s eyes. 

“Here,” he says, “is the practice room. You will be spending a lot time in one of our many practice rooms, so I suggest you make yourself comfortable in them as soon as possible. I will email you the company’s rules again, and your schedule, so please read through them when you have the time tonight.”

Seungwan must look terrified, throat bobbing, knuckles white as she grips onto her luggage handle. She can see the bodies in the room, through the frosted glass, a mass of girls, all competing for the same few elusive spots. And her trepidation must be oozing out, so much so that even the intern softens visibly, a quirk of his lips - an attempt at a comforting smile, she supposes. 

“They’re really nice, really. And I watched your audition tape, you’ll fit right in.” That’s all the intern says before he opens the door, the bustle of the room immediately quieting down, all heads turn to her. 

The intern clears his throat, fidgeting. “You can leave your luggage here for now, a car will come for you at six, wait for him at the receptionist.” He says it quickly, soft yet stern, before turning to the other girls and speaking in a louder voice. “This is Wendy, a new trainee from Canada, please take care of her.” 

All the eyes turn to her the moment he leaves, and suddenly, all the years in Canada, singing on stage with her club members just fade away. She stares at a pair of faded sports shoes right at the front of the row, and croaks, “Hi, my name is Wendy, please take care of me.” 

The murmurs start again, loud enough that she knows they are talking about her, but too soft for her to decipher exactly what. There are about ten or so girls in the room, and to her happiness, some of them wave at her and give her small smiles, which she happily waves back (maybe a little too excitedly but Wendy has always loved making new friends).

A middle-aged woman walks in, her shoes making no noise as she basically glides across the floor, holding a stack of papers. And Wendy feels awkward, still standing right by the door, away from the other girls. She glances up, and makes eye contact with another girl, who immediately smiles, beckoning her over, and there’s a rush of warmth in her chest, when the girl’s eyes squint shut as she smiles. Her smile is cute, she thinks, squishy warm, her monolids forming eye smiles. 

She wants to thank her, when she reaches the girl’s side, and is about to ask for her name, but the woman at the front of the room speaks up, telling them to pair up and practice some songs together. Immediately the girl turns to her, and they both laugh a little awkwardly when they just gesture at each other in an attempt to get the other to speak first. 

“My name is Seulgi,” the girl says. And alarm bells immediately start ringing in Seungwan’s head, her skin prickly, the place where her orange sentence is stamped heating up.

This is it. 

Orange. 

She must look confused, eyebrows flying up to her hairline, that Seulgi stutters, blushing. “Do you- can you speak Korean?”

Seulgi is so adorable, head tilted, an unconscious pout on her lips. 

“Yea I can. My name is Wendy, or Seungwan,” she giggles. “Do you have my…” Her words trail off, worried, not knowing if it’s okay to be openly asking about Seulgi’s soulmate marks.

But she doesn’t need to worry at all. 

Seulgi immediately brightens up, lifting her shirt and wow, it’s there. Her sentence. It’s small, little blue letters in her writing, stamped on Seulgi’s body, right above the waistband of her shorts. 

Sixteen years. She waited sixteen years, travelled through countries, and now she’s finally met her. Feelings that she can and can’t describe grow within her, like waves crashing against her heart. She stares up at Seulgi, a little lanky and a whole lot pretty, and thinks she’s definitely worth the wait. 

Seulgi is older than her by 11 days, has lived in Seoul her whole life, and makes Seungwan’s heart feel like it’s running a marathon every time she holds her hand. 

And Seungwan finds out that Seulgi really likes holding her hand, in the three hours they spend together in the practice room. She promises a sleepover that weekend, “after you’ve settled down in the dorm, and I convince my parents to let me stay!” And of course Seungwan agrees.

She thinks there’ll be pretty much nothing she won’t agree to if met with Seulgi’s smile. 

-

Life is overwhelming. 

It’s stressful and she misses home again. Only this time  she goes back home after a long day of singing and dancing and singing and dancing, to a quiet dorm, and nobody to turn to. 

Seulgi, in the day, eases the hole that gapes in her chest, but Seulgi is busy and Seulgi has her own practice schedules. 

And now, at night, in her bed that is too small, in a room that is too cramp, the hole tears itself open again, and Seungwan just feels so heartwrenchingly sad and lonely. 

She buries her face in her pillow, shaking, silent tears streaming into the soft cloth. And wonders if this time will be the time she gives up. Lets go. 

She doesn’t call her parents. She isn’t seven anymore, away from home and wanting her mommy and daddy, they have enough to worry about. 

And so she lies there, face down, crying silently into her pillow, tired from the world and the exhaustion, until she feels a small hand on her back, startling her. She quickly turns over, immediately trying to swipe away her tears, and sees her roommate. 

They haven’t spoken at all in the few days Seungwan moved in, practice schedules different and always too swamped after their long days to do anything more than a tired wave before retreating into their rooms. 

She knows her roomate’s name is Joohyun, and that she’s older than her, trained longer than her. And now, in the moonlight, that Joohyun is very pretty, dainty hand rubbing her back, easing her, soothing her. 

Joohyun feels almost like an angel, a faint glow from the moon bracketing around her. “Hey, you’ll be okay.” Her voice is light, husky enough to soothe her, the cadence just right. “It’ll be okay.”

And there it is. 

Pink. 

Her heart beats, strong and unwavering, finding another home, as she lies on her side, curled into Joohyun’s touch. She looks up at her, sees eyebags and worry, and even now, even so fast, Seungwan thinks she already sees love. She reaches out, pulls back her long sleeve, showing her the pink stamped on her arm. She watches Joohyun’s eyes widen, and whispers back. 

“Joohyun,” she doesn’t wait for an answer. “You’ll be okay too.”

--------------------

hello everybody!! It's Christmas over here so merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone! I hope you are having fun and staying safe!! 

I'd initially wanted to finish the whole fic before posting it, but ive been stuck at this last part for ages, so I decided I'll split it up into 3 parts (provided I actually finish this...) so here's the first part on Christmas! I hope you enjoy!! :D

Pls don't mind the weird way the story progresses, or any plot holes :/:/ this can probably be considered an au of an au since everything's a mess but I hope you enjoy anyway :')

happy holidays! I'll see you guys soon :3