Chapter Text
A usual day in the office, Kim Dokja sat bored out of his mind. It was too early to sneak away to the bathroom or break room to go on his phone, but late enough in the day that some of the higher ups were pacing around the building to work off some excess energy and catch the slackers so he also couldn’t go on his phone at his desk. As a certified slacker himself, Kim Dokja had already gotten an earful from Deputy Head Han Myungoh.
So, at the moment at least, he was typing up a report. While he was supposedly a tester as Minosoft, he usually ended up being shafted with the job of filling out the basic reports to send to the higher ups. He supposed this was revenge from his colleagues from never bothering to interact much, but it was a fair trade off in his opinion.
Sighing, he stretched out his arms from side to side. Sitting in a cubicle was hellish, but he would rather do this for hours every day than not have a job. Which, as far as he could tell from his interactions with his bosses, would not be a permanent thing at this point.
Still he ignored the depressing thought and began to stretch his hands. To type accurately on the keyboard he had taken off his gloves, and it felt good to not have them sweating all the time in there. The company-assigned gloves, while a welcome change from his usual lack thereof, were pretty heavy. It was better than being frowned at for not wearing any kind of gloves, so Kim Dokja didn’t complain outwardly.
On the inside, however, he complained a lot. Why did he have to wear these all day? Was it not enough to have sweaty hands, but it made it really hard to use his phone too! You would think they would give him gloves compatible with using touch screen technology, but Minosoft was cheap and just gave out regular gloves. Kim Dokja wasn’t rich enough to buy those kinds of gloves for himself, so in the end he was forced to make do or look desperate.
He wiggled his fingers one more time, then turned back to his report. Slowly, he began typing again, filling out the usual monotonous form with whatever information he needed.
“Oh, Kim Dokja!”
A soft voice from behind him made him jolt in place, and he warily turned around. To his surprise, a slightly familiar face stood behind him, clutching a few papers to her chest.
Yoo Sangah was a girl Kim Dokja kept running into since the day she first helped him find the orientation room. It almost seemed nonsensical, considering the vastly different genres of life the two led, but it still occurred. Kim Dokja would be hanging out somewhere, like hiding in the break room, and Yoo Sangah would show up and talk to him.
Just like every other time, Yoo Sangah flashed him a surprised-but-not-really smile and walked closer. He resisted the urge to lean away. There was no way someone like Yoo Sangah would be his soulmate, so he shouldn’t have to fret too much about her possibly touching him.
She blinked over his shoulder, looking at what he was writing. “Working on a report for the Deputy Head?”
He turned back to the monitor and shrugged, trying not to shrink in place. Why did she care so much? They were in different departments. Maybe she just never had to file a report like this before, and was curious.
With a hum, she flashed him a smile. “Actually, I have a favour to ask you. Could you write me the number of the Deputy Head? I have to call him for something later.”
An image of Yoo Sangah and Han Myungoh eating in a restaurant together and holding ungloved hands flashed in Kim Dokja’s mind for one terrifying second. He shook his head. It was likely for some kind of project. He was in charge of both of their departments, so it wasn’t odd that Yoo Sangah would have to talk to him from time to time.
He nodded, shooting a small smile at Yoo Sangah, and reached for his company notepad. Looking for a pencil, he accidentally knocked the small container he had to the floor.
Panicked, he pushed back his chair to stand up-
“Wait, don’t worry, I got it.”
-and froze when he felt a hand on the back of his neck gently holding him down.
As he blankly stared ahead, he almost felt the movement of Yoo Sangah’s body as she bent down and scooped up his pens with her one hand. The minute movement of her hand on his nape as her muscles responded, feeling foreign and odd against his skin.
It wasn’t… unpleasant.
The warmth of her hand contrasted with his usual cold skin, especially during this time of year. Her skin wasn’t too rough either. Still, he shuddered when she stood up and took her hand away.
Raising a hand to rub at the skin where it was as subtly as he could, he tried to fight any kind of possible rising flush on his face. Yoo Sangah didn’t seem to notice as she handed the pens to him, still making sure as usual to not have their hands touch. Even though it shouldn’t matter anymore.
With a shaking hand, he robotically copied the number of the Deputy Head and handed it over to Yoo Sangah, who must have thanked him as she walked away without another word and her usual smile on her face. He stared dumbly after her, hand still on the back of his neck.
...Why wasn’t she wearing gloves, anyway?
That evening, Kim Dokja read his favourite story on the train ride home as usual. A new update came at 7pm, and he decided to dedicate the rest of his night to reading and rereading it until he practically had it memorized. To keep his focus, he had his headphones in, playing the private playlist he had crafted off of MeTube videos titled ‘Yoo Joonghyuk (fighting)(winning)’. True to the title, this chapter had a very intense fighting scene taking place in the late scenarios.
As he scrolled through the chapter, he ignored the sounds of the people around him. The car wasn’t too full tonight, so he had gotten a nice seat on the side by himself. The noises drained away with a combination of intense music and intense reading, a content smile spreading across Kim Dokja’s face as he read with excited eyes.
It felt like only a few minutes later when he was brought out of his fugue state by an insistent tapping on his shoulder. He turned to the side with a slightly annoyed gaze while taking out an earpod, ready to tell the kid to go talk to someone else, when he was once again struck frozen in shock.
Sitting next to him on the train was a happily curious Yoo Sangah, who giggled slightly at Kim Dokja’s expression. Hurriedly, he closed his mouth and tore out his other earpod, pausing the music with his ungloved hand.
He tried to inconspicuously look at the hand she had tapped his shoulder with, despite his shoulder already having been clothed. It was wrapped in a glove, like usual. The back of his neck tingled with the memory of her soft hand, but he resisted the urge to rub it raw.
“Dokja-ssi, do you take this line from work every day?” She tilted her head curiously. He could almost sense her gaze slowly wandering to his phone screen, and he quickly shut it off and shoved it into his pocket.
Sitting up straight, he nodded, clearing his throat. “Yeah, I do. I thought you, uh, were driven to work?”
After all, Yoo Sangah was a very desired person. Her stunning good looks and winning personality coupled with her amazing work ethic made her the model face of the company, not to mention how all the men (and some women) fawned over her. Though they had joined at the same time as part timers, he knew she was having no trouble getting a renewal of her contract. Likely, she already was hired as full time.
To his side, Yoo Sangah frowned a bit, looking down at her clenched fist. He worried for a minute he had offended her, and quickly went to explain.
“It’s just- I never see you on the train. But we must live the same way, since you’re on this one now. And a lot of people in the company- well. Sorry.”
A short silence permeated their area of the train car as the two looked away from each other. Kim Dokja, despite his desire to already end the conversation and leave, couldn’t help but feel bad. He was sure his assumption was right, as Yoo Sangah was someone who was blessed with many things, but he didn’t want her to feel bad about it. That was just the way life was. He would feel much better if she just owned it and enjoyed it.
And maybe, if she would let him, he could hear her story and imagine it all through her eyes.
After a few minutes of stewing in silence, in which Kim Dokja almost pulled back up his phone to just ignore the awkwardness, Yoo Sangah seemed to have recovered. She sent him her usual smile, though he imagined it was more fake than usual.
“No, I usually bike to work. But my bicycle got stolen today, so I’m taking the train home.”
He raised his eyebrow. Who would dare steal Yoo Sangah’s bike? Some overzealous coworker?
He sent her a small smile, hoping to make up for the previous mistake. “Ah, I’m sorry. How impressive that you bike to work every day. It must be a nice work out.”
Her smile seemed to turn more genuine as her eyes shined. With a start, Kim Dokja realized this was more engaged in a casual conversation than he had been in a long time. Usually Yoo Sangah just talked at him and then left, but the train ride was long and there was nowhere for either of them to go.
“Does Dokja-ssi work out?”
“Ah.”
He looked down at his own skinny arms, imagining his chest. Almost too skinny from lack of good nutrients his whole life, it had been a miracle Kim Dokja had grown as tall as he had. Jokingly, he rolled up his sleeve to show off his arm, having no idea why he was even doing this.
“I can lift 300 kgs.” He said with a blank face, flexing his scrawny arm.
Yoo Sangah stared at him incredulously for long enough that he slowly lowered his arm in embarrassment, rolling back down his sleeve. Suddenly, she burst into laughter. It was… not what he expected. There were a few snorts in there, no kind of tinny high pitched laughter he would hear from the female lead in the occasional kdrama. He would have thought it was mocking if not for the hand she placed on his shoulder to steady herself and the shaking of her head to calm herself down.
After a few moments where he forced himself to not be as upset about the touching or laughing as possible and tried his best to ignore the way her laughter made her look kind of cute, she once again composed herself.
Putting the gloved hand that was on his shoulder to her chest, she took a deep breath and smiled at Kim Dokja. “That… was a pretty bland joke.”
He immediately turned his head to the side. Ah, so it was mocking. “Sorry… I’m not exactly a comedian.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her shake her head. “No, I like it. Too many people think they’re comedians… it’s kind of refreshing.”
He turned back to her and rubbed the back of his head, wondering if he should be bashful or offended.
They fell back into a more comfortable silence. Kim Dokja took back out his phone, though angled the screen slightly away from Yoo Sangah, and tried to get back into the groove of reading.
After a few minutes, the world around him fell away as he was swept back up into the story of Ways of Survival. He couldn’t focus with the eyes on him, so he decided to read today’s chapter later. Starting from a random midpoint, he skipped over the tournament arc he had inevitably accidentally clicked into and read the interactions between Yoo Joonghyuk and his sword master.
Images of swords clanging together or eating delicious Murim dumplings were interrupted by a small clattering sound. For a second, Kim Dokja was confused. Did Yoo Joonghyuk drop something important? Wasn’t that a bit too plot convenient, author-nim? Then, he heard a quiet “oops” next to him.
The scenery around him faded away with a few blinks, and Kim Dokja was once again surrounded by a sea of silver and unrecognizable faces. Next to him, Yoo Sangah was trying to reach for something near his feet without disturbing his phone. Realizing his attention was already on her, she sat back up straight.
“Ah, I’m so sorry Dokja-ssi! I dropped my phone and it fell near your feet. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
He waved it off and bent over to pick it up for her, calling over his shoulder. “I can get it.”
A moment of silence, and when he sat back up with the phone Yoo Sangah was looking at him with a weird expression. She looked caught between some sort of smug expression and shock, though he wasn’t sure why. He had a sudden feeling that he had just fallen into some sort of trap.
Mentally running through possible scenarios as fast as possible, he tried to figure out what it could possibly be. He patted his shirt to make sure it was still properly buttoned up, and flicked his gaze to his shoes to see them still tied normally. Not some kind of physical prank…
He shook his head. Yoo Sangah… she wouldn’t prank him for being rude earlier. He had seen her do it just once when she… but she wouldn’t do it to him. Probably. Didn’t he make it up to her with a joke?
He handed over the phone with his gloved hand carefully, and her expression melted away into one of genuine thanks. He tried his best to discard his previous thought process.
The rest of the train car continued in the same silence as before, though Kim Dokja found it harder to focus on his phone. His mind continued to run through possible explanations, but came up blank. It didn’t help that occasionally he would hear Yoo Sangah giggle next to him, though she was always looking at her own phone when he looked.
As his stop was called, Kim Dokja began to pack up his things to stand up. Yoo Sangah noticed and put a hand on his forearm, making him flinch. Was Yoo Sangah always this touchy of a person??
“Dokja-ssi, let’s exchange numbers.”
“...Huh? Why?”
“Just do it.”
The forceful tone in her voice instinctively made him hand over his phone, making his heart jolt with panic. He watched carefully as she navigated to his contacts and put her name in, automatically sliding into place next to the numbers of a few cheap local restaurants and clients from work. She texted herself using his phone and smiled down at her own when she received it.
“Well, goodbye!”
As the train came to a stop, Yoo Sangah swept up all of her belongings and elegantly made her way out of the car, the crowd parting like the Red Sea to let her leave first.
Kim Dokja gaped at her, holding his phone dumbly in his hand, before realizing the train doors were about to close. Hurriedly he rushed out of them before he could get stuck on the train for longer than he could afford to be.
It was a few days later when Han Myungoh called him out. During another round of scolding for being on his phone at his desk, the department head cut himself off with a choked sound, prompting Kim Dokja to raise his head questioningly from where he had bowed in apology.
“You-...congratulations Kim Dokja. I assume that was why you were on your phone, huh?”
Baffled by the turn of events, Kim Dokja nodded along instantly. Anything to get out of the situation.
The department head put a hand to his chin, face twisted with a weird jealousy that Kim Dokja couldn’t figure out.
“Well… I won’t punish you this time. But control yourself. You are cutting into company time. Talk to your soulmate after work. And send me those reports by the end of the day.”
With a callous wave of his hand, the head walked away with a swagger as if he had not just dropped a bombshell. Kim Dokja forced himself to choke out a reply before the man could disappear from his sight, mind almost frozen in shock.
“H-how, uh, did you know?”
The head chuckled at his shocked expression, pointing to the nape of his own neck with a smug face.
“I saw it when you bowed just now. A clever position for a soul mark, but I still saw it. You better not be using excuses from now on to leave and go talk to them. You’re still on company time.”
And with one last reprimand, the wiry man disappeared around a corner, leaving Kim Dokja to gape at where he stood with a hand on the back of his neck.
After a few minutes where his brain rebooted, he let his body lead him to the bathroom, which was blessedly empty. He slid down the wall to sit in the corner, just out of view of the entrance, and took out his phone with his free hand. He reached over and snapped a picture of the back of his neck, forcing his hand to move away from where it was clamped around the place where his neck met his back.
He held his breath as he brought his phone back in front of him and zoomed in on where a peculiar colour stood out against his skin. It… looked like a spool of golden thread, small enough to be hidden by the collar of his button-up but vibrant enough that he couldn’t explain it away as some kind of oddly-placed stain.
He rubbed at it, imagining a tingle where there was none. Another picture. No change, except the skin around it was a little red. He could almost pretend it was a tattoo he couldn’t remember getting, if it weren’t for the fact that he couldn’t feel any kind of raised skin where the ink would have been.
A notification appeared on the screen.
[Dokja-ssi? Did you get in trouble again?]
Then, another a few minutes later.
[Sorry.]
Right. He had been replying to Yoo Sangah, who for some reason texted him during work when she should be working like a model employee when he got caught by Han Myungoh. He should probably reply.
[It’s not a problem.]
The back of his neck tingled again, though he resisted the urge to keep rubbing at it and denying the reality of the situation. A reminder of the same tingling feeling from a few days ago popped up in his mind. Before he could think about it, he sent another text.
[Sangah-ssi has a soulmate, right?]
He held the phone to his face, watching the three dots of her typing with the intensity he usually saved for new chapters of Ways of Survival. The quiet ding rang through the empty bathroom.
[Yes.]
His shoulders slumped. He wasn’t sure if he was elated or disappointed. He forcibly reminded himself that he wouldn’t be soulmates with Yoo Sangah- they were from entirely different worlds. His life wasn’t an office romance- it was a cold, hard realistic angst.
Plus, Yoo Sangah wouldn’t be a spool of golden thread. She would be a mirror, or perhaps some kind of pretty flower. In all of the stories he read, the female lead usually had some kind of beautiful soul mark that you could tell immediately was meant to indicate her, whether or not the oblivious main character could notice it. A practiced reader like him could usually tell the kind of person the love interest was just by their soul mark. A melodramatic one would have something pertaining to their dramatic style, or maybe something cutesy would fit in with the moe gap love interest. A golden spool… did it mean perhaps his soulmate was rich? Or maybe a liar, who could spin tales so well anyone could get caught up in them.
He was so caught up in his mental tangent that he almost didn’t realize Yoo Sangah was still sending him texts.
[Dokja-ssi should keep it a secret. I don’t want the people at work to stop looking at me for having a soulmate. I want to make my way through life with all the advantages, even with people thinking they can date me.]
Kim Dokja blinked in another kind of surprise at her blunt admission.
[So… you are aware of how the people at work want to be your soulmate.]
[Kim Dokja.]
He winced.
[It’s hard to not notice that your coworkers are trying their hardest to touch you without gloves on.]
He wanted to curl into a ball in embarrassment. Once again, he had assumed ignorance where Yoo Sangah was anything but. It may have been what she intended for him to assume, but… he didn’t feel good about it.
[Sorry again.]
[I understand, Dokja-ssi. Remember not to tell anyone :)]
He slumped forward, covering his phone with his shoulders as he curled around it. He slowly typed out his response, mind still racing as he wondered why she was even telling him if she wanted to keep it a secret from people at work. Did she not see him as any sort of threat? Maybe that was what the smile meant?
[I will.]
Maybe it was a holdover from the shock from earlier, but Kim Dokja kept typing despite the conversation clearly being over.
[Are they someone at the office? Or maybe someone Sangah-ssi grew up with?]
A childhood friend trope would fit well with Yoo Sangah, in his opinion. A close and lifelong friend, fitting well into the myth that soulmates intimately understand each other. Yoo Sangah deserved someone like that.
[Oh? Is Dokja-ssi curious about my soulmate?]
He flushed, quickly replying.
[I was just curious about the kind of person who would be Sangah-ssi’s soulmate.]
A long pause. Long enough for Kim Dokja to realize he was sitting in an awkward position, and he straightened his back with enough speed to wince at the loud cracking of his back. He stood up and moved to the mirror in the bathroom.
Turning his head and pulling down the collar of his shirt, he tried to get a better look at his soul mark to no avail. What an inconvenient placement.
A ding from his phone brought his attention, and he flicked his finger to turn it back to silent.
[I met him around the time I joined the company.]
His mind flashed back to the absurd scene he had imagined the other day of Yoo Sangah and Han Myungoh holding hands in a restaurant. Could it have been true? The man had seemed jealous of Kim Dokja, though. And he was definitely not the type who would keep quiet about being Yoo Sangah’s soulmate.
With a shake of his head, he dismissed the notion entirely. He couldn’t think of anyone in the office who would successfully keep quiet about such a situation, but then again he refused to interact much with his coworkers. For all he knew, it was someone he had never even met. He should stop thinking about who it could be.
A loud creak indicated the door to the bathroom being open, and Kim Dokja jolted into action. He slid his phone into his pocket and shook his hands as if he had just finished washing them. He grabbed a few paper towels and wiped his hands off on them, throwing them out and rushing out of the door while his coworker walked into a stall without sparing him a second glance.
He could think about this later. Getting out of work today to get some space to think should be his top priority.
Days passed as Kim Dokja fell deeper into the mystery of his soulmate. After a long period of thinking, he figured he must have accidentally brushed against someone’s wrist in public. Meaning his soulmate could theoretically be anyone.
There were online forums for situations just like this, but he was resistant to the idea. The part of him that whispered in the back of his head that this was how it was supposed to be easily overtook the weaker forefront that would convince him to open up a forum once or twice and read through people looking for their soulmate, making him close the page after only reading a few posts.
It wasn’t like he was confident he would recognize his own soul mark. How do you know what image represents you before you see it?
...Plus, thinking more about it, he has no idea when he could have touched someone else to give them his soul mark. It was entirely possible this connection was one-sided at the moment and with his luck, he would never find the person who had brushed against the back of his neck.
Yoo Sangah continued texting with him regularly, not mentioning her soulmate again. He would often find himself with fingers hovering over the keyboard, contemplating asking how she had known who her soulmate was before stopping himself. Likely, Yoo Sangah noticed immediately and had already reciprocated with a touch. It was less common than you’d think to be accidentally touched by your soulmate in public… which of course is why it had happened to Kim Dokja.
He tried to imagine himself as some kind of clueless protagonist. Fate was supposed to make them meet, at least so he would touch his soulmate, but how long was he supposed to wait? He refused to sit around in subway stations or at restaurants without gloves on. The kind of reputation you could get for doing something like that… Kim Dokja had some form of pride, you know.
He kept going to work as a week passed by since his revelation, despite his growing certainty that he would be laid off when his contract ended in a month. Knowing that there was no point was no kind of motivator, but Kim Dokja needed to keep putting food on his table.
He really didn’t want to be homeless again…
As he daydreamed at his desk, it was interrupted once again by his phone buzzing in his hand. By now he was well used to Yoo Sangah’s text messages, so he opened it and quickly denied her offer to get lunch. She asked daily, but he didn’t normally have the money to pay for lunch. Just dinner everyday usually helps him get by with minimal exhaustion.
He tried to focus on the screen of his computer or phone, but for once both completely disinterested him. His mind kept trying to conjure up the image of his soulmate, but all he saw was Yoo Joonghyuk. He was not gay, Yoo Joonghyuk was just supposed to be attractive! Plus… Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn’t have a golden spool for a soul mark. He would definitely have a watch or something.
He didn’t even know their gender. Or if they liked to read. If they were a writer, he could read their stories every day. Maybe tls123 was his soulmate? He shook his head. That was stupid.
“Dokja-ssi, let’s go.”
A hand knocked the top of his head harshly to get his attention, and he raised his hands defensively to get it to stop. Looking up, he met with the slightly irritated face of Yoo Sangah, and began sweating. He whirled around in his seat to face her.
“Yoo Sangah-ssi, I-”
“It is time for your lunch break. You can’t avoid me forever, Dokja-ssi.”
He waved his hands in front of him, sputtering out a response. “I-I wasn’t! I’m just too-”
She lightly bonked him again over the head with a click of her tongue.
“I’ll pay for it if I have to. Skipping meals isn’t good for you. You don’t have a choice.”
And with a tug on his arm, Kim Dokja was swept up into the whirlwind that was Yoo Sangah on a mission. His jacket was put on, his briefcase stuffed into his hands, and he was helplessly looking into the eyes of his shocked coworkers as he was dragged out of the room. The final sight of an approaching Han Myungoh was cut off by the slam of the door.
He finally turned forward, trying to walk to keep up with Yoo Sangah’s pace. It was then that he noticed that she was holding his wrist with her bare hand, and he ripped it out. This finally got her to stop to look at him.
He rubbed his wrist and looked around worriedly before leaning in to whisper to her. “The whole testing office just saw you drag me off with your bare hand!”
She looked at him for a moment before smiling sweetly and taking his wrist in her hand with a gentler grip. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Now let’s get going, I know a nice place.”
Right. They probably wouldn’t think that he could be Yoo Sangah’s soulmate, so she was safe to grab him without any gloves. For a while there he was caught up in the moment, too comfortable with this person who was way out of his realm of reality that he seriously thought that other people could believe that they were soulmates.
The cold dose of reality dampened his spirit, and he silently let Yoo Sangah continue to drag him out of the building without much more fuss. She brought them outside where she finally let go of his wrist and began to lead him down the street. Clearly from her cycling she was quite comfortable with the layout of the city.
She led him to a smaller restaurant that was cheaper than he had been expecting. Few people were around, and the noise pollution from the cars on the street almost seemed quieter.
She guided him to a seat outdoors and sat down, taking off her jacket and immediately focusing on the menu. He wondered why no one had come to seat them, but found himself taking his place on the other side and picking up the menu as well.
The restaurant, named Olympus, seemed to serve a variety of street food from countries in Southeast Asia. The name was quite awkward considering the food being sold, but he didn’t question it as he quietly ordered some omurice to the server who had just as silently arrived with some tea.
Yoo Sangah watched him as he spoke, making him self conscious, and nodded to herself. She put up two fingers and the server nodded, taking their menus and leaving just as swiftly as he had arrived. He raised an eyebrow.
“You… like omurice?”
She shook her head with a small smile, wind shifting her hair around without getting too in her face. “I wanted to try it, since Dokja-ssi likes it so much.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he turned his gaze to the street instead. The occasional car passed, throwing up wind that ruffled up their hair. It felt… nice. It wasn’t often that he sat outside and simply enjoyed his time observing the world around him. The people passing by on the street talking created a nice background noise that was comforting. It was certainly a nice day for this time of year.
“I come here often during lunch. I’m very into other cultures and languages, even if it’s just our neighbours. It’s very nice here, isn’t it?”
He looked back to Yoo Sangah, who smiled at him affably. Her folded hands were supporting her chin, elbows on the table as she watched him. He reached back and rubbed the back of his neck, trying the best to ignore her gaze, when a flash of something black caught his attention.
There, on Yoo Sangah’s upper right arm, was a symbol. If he squinted, he could see something square glowing brightly peeking out from under the sleeve of her shirt.
“You…” He spoke before he could think. All of a sudden he felt bashful. Wasn’t it rude to stare at a soul mark? He was forced again to turn his gaze to Yoo Sangah’s face, where she still sat watching him. “...You’re wearing a short sleeve shirt?”
She waved a hand. “It didn’t seem like it would be cold today.”
He guessed it made sense, though it still sounded weird. She continued on after a short pause.
“...You want to see it, right?”
“I… yes. If you don’t mind.”
Wordlessly, she reached over and rolled up her sleeve, leaning forward.
A black rectangular box glowed white. Oddly, it wasn’t very colourful. Usually black and white marks had a touch of colour to them, maybe as an outline against the skin, but it was only Yoo Sangah’s slightly tan skin tone that showed the edges of the white glow. With a start, he realized it was a phone. His own sat heavily in his pocket.
After a few moments, Yoo Sangah spoke up. “Have you ever touched one before?”
He raised a hand to the back of his neck, and her eyes lit up in interest. She rolled back down her sleeve and moved back to her previous position, watching him carefully. He swallowed.
“Technically… Yeah. My own, I guess.”
And with that he turned around and pulled down his collar so she could see the golden spool lying on the nape of his neck. Against his doughy white skin, there was no need for an outline. After taking countless pictures in multiple lightings, he realized the gold basically glowed on his skin, giving it another layer of separation from his skin.
After a few seconds he turned back around, face practically glowing red from embarrassment. He didn’t meet her eyes as he rushed to explain.
“I, uh, don’t know who it is. I think I must’ve brushed against them while on the train or something. It’s an odd placement.”
Yoo Sangah hummed at him, eyes practically glowing with interest.
It was then the server arrived with the food, and Kim Dokja looked down at his omurice. There was a heart in ketchup drawn on it. He resisted the urge to grimace. He would have to eat around it, then. The food underneath was irretrievable.
The meal continued in silence as he took the time to enjoy the first omurice he had that didn’t come from a convenience store in a long time. Yoo Sangah across from him seemed to be just as invested in the meal, and there was a nice peace as the sounds of the city washed over them. He wondered how long he could get away with staying on break.
As the meal wrapped up, Yoo Sangah finally spoke back up.
“You… didn’t eat the heart?”
He blinked, not expecting the question, and answered it with a questioning gaze. “I don’t… really like tomatoes, even as ketchup.”
Yoo Sangah stared blankly at him, and he wondered what he had said wrong. Suddenly she sighed loudly, almost making him jump.
“You’re way more dense than I expected.”
“Huh?”
She reached over and grabbed his hand, once again making skin contact and forcing him to resist the urge to pull away. She brought it to her shoulder, rolling up the sleeve again, and forced him to touch her soul mark.
The tingling feeling he occasionally felt on his own soul mark intensified into a slightly unpleasant current both at the back of his neck and where his hand made contact with her mark. It was like a line going through his body, connecting both of the marks with a surge of electrifying emotion. Kim Dokja was overwhelmed by the feeling, having never felt something this intense before. Even when Yoo Sangah let go of his hand, he didn’t move it, staring and trying to focus on this feeling to identify what exactly he was feeling.
“The day I got this mark was during orientation for Minosoft.” She spoke with a soft voice, the sound drifting into his ears as the rest of the world fell away from him. “I was wearing a sleeveless dress, and some idiot must have brushed against my arm sometime that day. I was… pretty upset, at first.”
He took his hand off of her mark and cradled it to his chest, meeting her serious gaze and swallowing thickly. The current disappeared with a sudden sharp snap, but he refused to let himself mourn any kind of loss.
“I didn’t want a soulmate. I hate the idea of being constrained by fate, especially by someone I didn’t know. Of course I easily figured out who had touched me, but I didn’t want to talk to him.”
He shook his head and clenched his fist at his chest. “I don’t want to hear this. Stop.”
She kept barreling forward, eyes gaining more intensity as she spoke over him. “I kept watching for him from a distance, and waiting for him to look to me and gloat or immediately assume we were a couple. But he never looked my way.”
Kim Dokja took a deep breath, still shaking his head. “You’re mistaken. It wasn’t me. I’m sorry. I can’t be your soulmate.”
She reached for his other hand on the table but he pulled it to his lap, feeling the outline of his phone in his pocket for comfort. Her face screwed into an expression of exasperated frustration he had never seen from the unflappable Yoo Sangah before. Her hand instead curled up, crinkling her napkin with enough force to make her knuckles white.
“...Why? Why are you denying it? I thought you were dense, but you’re not that dumb. You know.”
Kim Dokja lowered his hand from his chest and fully clutched at his phone with the other. He looked down at the table, watching the tension in her hand and remembering how it had felt on the back of his neck. Remembering other hands that had touched the back of his neck.
Kim Dokja had never had a happy life, or happy things in his life. They would come in the form of short term happiness that would be crushed for one reason or another. One day, even his favourite web novel would end, and he would be stuck finding something else to keep going. A person tied to his soul would have to reflect him in some sort of way, right? What did it say about Yoo Sangah if he was her soulmate?
It would be selfish to pull someone else into his life, or make them drag him around and fix his mess. The course of his life was decided that day two decades ago, and he has never been in control ever since. The least he could do is not force someone like Yoo Sangah to join him in being dragged out with the tide.
As usual, he couldn’t help but explain in his own way, despite knowing Yoo Sangah wouldn’t fully understand. She wasn’t a reader- she was a success story.
“My life… is a different genre than yours. It can’t mix.” He fumbled his way through his explanation, almost losing steam at the beginning.
Instead of mocking him or rearing away, Yoo Sangah’s eyes narrowed as she tried to understand the meaning behind his metaphor. Her hand unclenched and she sat back straight.
“Kim Dokja is cruel.”
He flinched, but nodded and bowed his head, accepting it with a passive face.
They sat in silence for a few more minutes. His gaze was eventually brought back to the road and people all around him. He wondered how many of them knew or found their soulmate already, and if they were happy with theirs. Most likely. Usually most stories are those with happy moments, the narrative high being when you find your soulmate. Of course this was why Kim Dokja’s was so painful. It was just the latest in the list.
She caught his attention again with the screeching of her chair on the asphalt as she stood up. She picked up her purse and took out her wallet, pulling out a few bills and putting it on the table. Silently, she turned and grabbed her jacket, putting it back on and once again fully hiding her soul mark.
As she slipped her purse over her shoulder, she looked at Kim Dokja with a piercing gaze. He realized with a sinking feeling that her eyes were shining.
“We don’t have to date. I don’t want to date. But don’t deny me. We will get to know each other, whether either of us like it or not.”
She walked away from the table with a sense of finality, once again using her aura and impassive expression to make the crowd part around her to give her space. After only a few moments, the gap in the crowd closed back behind her, and Kim Dokja could no longer see her receding back.