“Holy . Am I high? I think I’m high.” Woohyun waved his hand in front of his eyes. “Okay, who drugged me.” He stared down at his cup. What the was this. It had tasted the same as normal. Lifting it, he peered at its contents. There didn’t seem to to be any residual powder or even a sickly looking film sitting on top of his cocktail. Then what the ... Words couldn’t even begin to explain what was happening. It was like, things were ‘normal’ and then they weren’t. It was weird. Too weird. Woohyun didn’t like it. Looking around, it didn’t seem as if anyone else was affected. He really had been drugged, hadn’t he—

“Wait, it was you?” Woohyun turned to face the guy that had spoken.

“What?”

“You see it too right? Just now, you saw the change right?” He didn’t know the man who was questioning him. In fact, Woohyun had literally only just saw him for the first time when he first walked up to the bar a few minutes ago. But, he was glad not to be experiencing this crazy... phenomenon, alone.

“Whoa, whoa, so it’s not just me? Are we poisoned, like what the . You’re not ting me right? You really see this too?”

“No. What? We’re not poisoned. No. Are you drunk?”

“No. No! Being drunk doesn’t do this!” Woohyun made a quick gesture to everything around him. “I would know. I’ve been drunk.” He dragged a hand across his face and sighed. “I think I’m going to die.”

The stranger huffed. “You’re not going to to die.”

“How do you know? Does this happen to you often? Do you this for fun or like—wait. Are you the one that drugged me?”

The man’s tiny eyes grew marginally wider. “Do—do you really not know?” he asked.

“Know? Know what?” Woohyun nearly slammed his drink down onto the bar counter, and the beverage within it sloshed violently. “Know what the is going on? No, I don’t.”

“Oh .” He glanced quickly around the establishment, as if looking for something—anything else to do. When he turned back to Woohyun he took a deep breath. “Look, man, this is going to sound sudden but, you’re my soulmate.”

What the ing . “Dude, whoa, chill. I think maybe you’re drunk.” They had exchanged all of two words before the drug trip started. Just who did this guy think he was? And Woohyun had only said anything because they made that awkward accidental eye contact when the guy had came over to get his drink. It was literally just a friendly, “hey” from Woohyun, then a head nod and a “sup” from the other guy, and then What the ? And now they’re supposedly soulmates? Uh, no. “If you’re not going to be of any help, then I’m going to go home and die now.”

“Don’t—ugh—I already told you you’re not dying. This is a normal thing man, it can happen to anyone.”

“You mean like, oh I don’t know, death?”

The man ran his hand roughly through his hair, and heaved a long sigh. “I am trying to tell you that this has nothing to do with death. Every human being is connected to one other person in this world. Everyone has a soulmate, and when they meet said soulmate, you gain the ability to see color. That’s what’s happening. You can see color now because you met your soulmate—me. You weren’t drugged, you weren’t poisoned, and you aren’t going to die. Jeez, did you really not learn this in school or something?”

Woohyun’s face was blank. He could not comprehend what this strange dude was telling him at all. Like, what the was a ‘color’ supposed to be. “No, I didn’t learn about your witchcraft, bull lies in school,” he retorted. “Who told you that mess, huh? What kind of pick-up scheme is this?”

A frown came over the squinty-eyed face before him. “No one told you anything about this? About this crucial human function? Even if your school was ty, why would your parents hide this from you?”

“Wait, you’re really serious?”

“Yes, I’m really serious! This is a serious thing. People dream about this moment their whole ing lives. If your parents found each other, why wouldn’t they tell their kid about soulmates?”

Woohyun snorted. “, my parents didn’t even love each other. I doubt they were soulmates. So I doubt that they even know what the a color is.” Woohyun took a sip from his drink, now that he was at least not completely sure it would kill him. “What the is a color?”

“How did they not cover this in your school?”

Woohyun shrugged. “I don’t know. Schools are dumb. Wait, are colors used in , because I skipped Ed like, all the time.”

“Should I even ask why...?”

“Let’s just say I didn’t need it, since I was already an expert in by the time they gave Ed in grade nine.”

“Apparently not, you dip. You don’t even know that colors have nothing to do with ,” the man rolled his eyes.

“Well, I was an expert in straight . Colors could be something for gay . I don’t know.” Woohyun scratched at the inside of his ear.

“You.... Colors are what you see. Don’t you remember how you saw before? The difference from then and now is that you see color. There are like, different colors and stuff too.”

“And you know this because... you what, learned it?”

“Yeah, my parents told me all about it.” He pointed to Woohyun’s not poisoned cup. “Like this color is.... Well, I’m not sure because it was hard to understand when all you see is grays. But they told me about it. It’s normal.”

Woohyun took a moment to process what he was hearing. It was all a bit much what with the colors and the soul mates and this guy’s eyes that were just too tiny to even—

“Okay, so let me make sure I understand this. Somehow, in human genetic coding, there is something that blocks the ability to see these ‘colors,’” he air-quoted ‘colors.’ “But that’s completely cancelled out once you meet your soulmate.”

The other man nodded and took a sip from his own drink. “Sounds about right, yeah.”

“What the , dude, like I don’t even know your name. How does this even make sense?”

The man out his hand. “Sunggyu.”

Woohyun stared at the appendage before him. “First name basis already?”

Sunggyu shrugged. “You’re my soulmate.”

Woohyun heaved a sigh and muttered something that sounded vaguely like another ‘what the ’ under his breath. After an additional moment or two, he took Sunggyu’s hand and shook. “Woohyun.”

“Glad we finally finished that,” Sunggyu said as the released one another.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Woohyun turned back to his drink. The two drank in a sort of companionable silence for a number of minutes before Sunggyu spoke again.

“You know, before, I probably would have complained if I had known it would be someone like you, but now that I can see colors I don’t even care. I can finally dye my hair now.”

Woohyun immediately took offense.“What? What’s wrong with me? There’s nothing wrong with me. Are you crazy? Did I get stuck with a psycho?” There was a pause. “What’s ‘dye’ thing you plan to do with your hair?”

“It’s when you change the color of your hair,” was the matter-of-fact reply.

“Again with these colors….”

“Are you kiddin—look, see how dark my hair is?” Sunggyu ran his fingers through the locks on his head to further demonstrate.

Woohyun nodded slowly. “Yeah….”

“If you dye your hair, you can make it look the same as like, that right there.” He pointed to some girl’s cosmopolitan resting farther down the bar. Woohyun looked at the drink, studying it for a split second.

“Holy , you can do that?”

Sunggyu nodded once. “Yup.”

“Well, what the are we waiting around here for then?”

“No clue.”

Within minutes, the two had paid their tabs, gathered their things, and headed off to the nearest salon together.