How was I supposed to start this conversation?

“Oh well, the thing is… you have to be forever young. To be with me. It doesn’t matter where you go, from now onwards I’ll always stand with you. Even if you run away from me, I’ll somehow find myself around you and appear before you. You will never be able to vanish from my sight. We’re meant to be.”

Well, wouldn’t that be awkward.

                                                                    ***************************************

How was I supposed to do this?

“Hero... or should I say Jaejoong? Yeah don’t think of me as a fool, I know you and your Arthurs are actually an upgrade of the Lost Boys. I just want some answers. Please don’t drink my blood.”

Maybe I should have just stayed at home.

Hero cleared his throat and I was awoken from my thoughts. He furrowed his eyebrows and gave an uncomfortable smile. He began raising his hands, opening his mouth to say something, only to sigh and shake away whatever he was about to tell me.

“Should we just,” I said, giving out a short laugh, “stick to the question and answer method?”

Hero nodded his head with a somber face.

“Okay,” I breathed out. “That day…. In college…Something happened to you.”

I waited, hoping for a hint that maybe it was a personal question, something I shouldn’t have to know. Hero nodded I figured that maybe I had hit upon the right question.

“You changed.” I paused, waiting for a reaction. Hero still didn’t say anything.

“You….” I tried to emphasize, using my hands, “transformed.”

Hero stared at me in an amused way.

“Your-eyes-turned-purple-and-your-hair-looked-golden-plus-your-skin-was-as-white-as-chalk.”

I blinked and looked away, frightened of his reaction. I was pleasantly surprised however, when Hero just laughed. And when I say laughed, I might as well include ‘out loud’.

                                                            *********************************************

“Your-eyes-turned-purple-and-your-hair-looked-golden-plus-your-skin-was-as-white-as-chalk.”

I was relieved. So I didn’t look scary. History was right. Soulmates who found each other generally saw them in their true form, the form no one else was allowed to see. I had been curious and now that I had been told, I felt like a heavy burden had been lifted off of my shoulders.

Still, Saya’s expression was priceless. After quickly rambling out the words, she squinted her eyes shut and clenched her lips together, as if some volcanic liquid was threatening to spurt out from .

I burst out laughing and she looked on as I continued with my hyena-like explosion. After what seemed like quite a while, I settled down, still sighing from the after-effects of the outburst.

"Well," I said. "Thank you for the compliment."

"Just tell me what happened that day and I will not ponder upon what happened right now."

I smiled. "I'm going to be very blunt, okay?"

Saya nodded. "Okay."

"Have you ever heard of the Red String theory?"

Saya shook her head. 

"Well, the theory is actually a mythological belief that since the beginning of time, one's soul is tied with another's by an invisible string that only Fate can see. A string that they can see as it is red in color, for them of course. We are blind to it."

Here it goes, I thought. 

"We're bound by the same string," I murmured and after a moment's hesitation, completed the sentence. 

"We're…fated."

                                                                       ***********************************

Something inside me told me not to scoff.

Something inside me told me that Hero was telling the truth.

But what was most strange was that something deep, just beyond my own dimension of comprehension, was telling me that I already knew this.

"What you saw that day was my 'true' self'," Hero continued. His eyes kept flitting around me and I turned to glance at any unwelcome presence. There was no one and I returned my gaze to him. 

"It had been confirmed by our ancestors and the millions of accounts recorded by members of our community that when a certain limit of intensity or passion is reached in the presence of one's Fated, they see each other's true self. They see each other's soul."

I blinked at him. "So… how does my soul look like?"

Hero smiled. "You don't need to have a true self. You already have a soul."

"What…."

"I…." Hero paused and a flicker of pain shot down the twinkle in his eyes. "I cannot be… reincarnated."

"So reincarnation exists??"

Hero gave that amusing smile again. "Well, yes. Whatever supreme power there is…"

"An atheist I see…"

Hero grinned. "Whatever supreme power there is," he repeated, "obviously does not have unlimited resources to keep recreating new souls. We believe that with each new life, the soul gathers karma and then when the bad and the good are balanced out, the soul reaches nirvana."

"Like Buddhism."

"That's because Buddha was one of us."

My eyes widened. "Did you just say Buddha was a vampire?"

Hero looked like I had just called him something foul and I slapped my hand against my mouth. I had said the forbidden word. More likely, the word that was not at all necessary. 

"Not the type you see in movies," Hero replied. I shook my head.

"So you're admitting that…. you're a vampire?"

Hero nodded. I gritted my teeth and gulped. .

"I don't blood though, that's just awful." Hero himself looked disgusted and again, that 'something' inside me believed him. 

"But you just said you're a vampire."

"Vampires blood, vampires hate werewolves and vice versa, vampires can be killed by garlic and a stake through the heart plus some holy water and a cross…. That is all bullcrap."

"Wow, um… okay, this just sort of… changes things."

Suddenly Hero took hold of my hand and lead me out towards the sea. The weird but reasonable possibility of him having a tail and declaring that vampires were actually code names for mer-men hit me in the chest, until Hero sat down right next to where the sea bed began. 

"The sun was staying away from us," he smiled and patted the space next to him. I glanced up at the warm rays and seated myself, propping my knees close to me.

"As the world changed," Hero sang---no really, his words just sounded like prose poetry---, "the souls of humans hardened. It became impossible for the Fates to tie people together since humans started finding other ways to satiate or substitute the missing space next to them. There are three basic needs -- food, security and love. But man began wanting more. So divorce happened, often with the right one to move on to the Fated one, more often with the Fated one to move onto the wrong one. The Fates got tired and stopped tying the strings altogether."

"That probably explains the rise in single women nowadays," I muttered.

Hero nodded. "Half of the changes that have taken place in the new century are due to the lack of faith in humankind. From a cynical but realistic point of view, there's no hope for humanity."

"I'm part of that humanity you know?"

"Not now."

Hero glanced at me and I could not help but stare back. Not in a 'you backdown first' sort of way. More like a comforting reply to his seemingly troubled words.

"I'm surprised you're taking this so well," Hero said. "You don't seem freaked out by this Fated thing."

"I'm open-minded," I shrugged. Hero laughed but I saw a sincere nod of appreciation too.

"That's true," he whispered to himself. He looked down at his hands then looked back down at me.

"But there's one thing in common between us and humans. We have Shades."

"Oh of course! The fear of being harmful UV rays does not discriminate…"

"No, not those shades. Shades. Colours. Every being on this planet has its own unique color which only we can see. We can read humans' feelings by seeing the shades around them shift from one level to another. The core shade remains but the change of feelings and conflicts helps us understand what the person is thinking."

I remembered how Hero and Hoya's eyes would always linger upon something above my shoulders. I touched that space and looked at Hero with a careful glance. "Is it there?"

Hero smiled. "It's all around you. Your core shade is…. well… a midnight blue."

"Aw shucks, I was hoping for a maroon."

Hero grinned. "You wouldn't want that shade, trust me. This midnight blue tells me that you're a patient but determined, empathetic but headstrong, helpful but careful and an epic romantic…."

"Hey!"

"Really! Not kidding!" Hero laughed and I figured that my face had contorted into a mix of embarrassment and ridicule. "You have a beautiful shade though. Also, only I can see you."

"Why?"

"When a human is Fated with one of us, that particular human's shade becomes invisible to the rest of our members. It's for safety reasons of course, apart form the age-old belief that no one needed to know the mind of a human who was a Fated with a vampire. Seeing a vampire's Fated one's shade is equal to an extra-marital affair."

I bit my lower lip and nodded. I was taking it all in, one by one and my body began likening the process to eating. I was chewing off each and every syllable with care and then digesting it, only to find out that a 20 minutes had passed and I still wasn't full. I still had not realized, despite my understanding, that I was sitting right next to my so-called soulmate. 

The echo of the word in my thoughts made me turn to look at him. A want arose inside me. I couldn't call him Hero anymore. That was his disguise, something I knew when I read the real names of the other Arthurs in a small journal owned by Key's ancestor.

"Jaejoong," I said. Well, it came out more like 'J-j-jae-jooj-joon-oong' but the smile on his face gave me the reassurance that I sort of had a strange right to be stupid in front of him and yet not be judged.

And it felt wonderful. It was the most fulfilling feeling in the world, being able to act and say whatever and however in front of someone so beautiful and yet not be judged, simply because in his eyes, I was beautiful too. 

There are certain moments in life when no matter how close you might be to someone, both emotionally and physically, there’s another level of connection which is left deserted and dying. You push your affections and your intimacy to at least border upon that connection but after all those attempts, you’re exhausted and ultimately, you give up. You might still be with that person but not with them. Everything the two of you say vanishes into thin air and you’re left with the satisfaction of unspoken promises remaining unbroken.

With Hero, it seemed I had skipped those two levels to win the final prize. The sun set and just like the previous time, the last light broke apart and made his hair golden, his eyes purple, his skin ivory…

And I, I transformed from a half-hearted me into something whole. 

Somewhere between looking for answers and finding them, I had fallen for Jaejoong.