Chapter Text
you can count on it
i’m where you left me
i can count on you
to show me the way
- hold on, flor
*
Retrospectively, he’s not sure why it takes him quite so long to notice that his mark has manifested. Why he just keeps rubbing at the consistent, pulsing itch on his left wrist without ever actually looking at it, yawning his way through his morning routine and dismissing his discomfort as some kind of bug bite. Never mind that the skin is a little rough, a little raised, would be a cluster of bug bites if he thought long and hard about it.
(Which, of course, he doesn’t.)
Maybe it’s so he can have this precise moment—hair sticking up in fifteen different directions, toothpaste dribbling out of the corner of his mouth, and the pale morning light sneaking through his bathroom window curtains to highlight the garish red lines on his wrist.
Then again, in a world where soulmates exist, it’s not exactly hard to believe in things like fate.
Seokjin’s toothbrush falls from between his lips and clatters in the sink, and he definitely gets spit on his mirror, not that he cares enough to even really notice. He’s pulling his wrist up to eye level, squinting at the scar that had etched itself into his skin sometime between when he went to bed last night and now.
It turns his stomach a little more than he’s expecting—Seokjin knows that no one came in overnight and carved up his skin, but it certainly looks like they did. It’s honestly surprising when he pushes his thumb against the mark and it doesn’t start to bleed, the skin whole and slightly textured and itchy as fuck.
The writing itself is nearly illegible, and Seokjin almost goes cross trying to read the bright red, uneven characters. He almost wants to laugh—leave it to his soulmate to have horrible handwriting. Although he’s thankful that he’s even capable of reading it. As hard as it might be to make out exactly which characters they are, at least Seokjin knows for sure that they’re hangul. He knows not everyone is lucky enough to have a soulmate mark in a language they understand.
“Kim…Tae… Hyung?” he sounds out slowly, a little unsure at first. His heart beats a little faster, and a smile is starting to tug at the corner of his mouth (the one where his toothpaste is drying). “Kim Taehyung,” he whispers to himself, more certain this time. “Kim Taehyung,” he says again, and the name feels right in his mouth in a way he’s not expecting, in a way he finds he really likes. “Kim Taehyung!” he announces to the bathroom at large, the sound ringing against tile and porcelain before coming back to him.
An almost giddy feeling is starting to bud in his chest—a burning, hopeful excitement—and Seokjin needs to… He needs to call his mom, he needs to call Namjoon, he needs to call work and tell them he can’t come in today because him and Kim Taehyung have to—
Realization hits him fast, a rush of cold dread that has him going completely still.
Kim Taehyung. He doesn’t… He doesn’t know a Kim Taehyung
Oh god, Seokjin met his soulmate and he has no idea who or where they are.
*
“You need to calm down,” Namjoon is saying to him over the phone approximately twenty minutes later. It’s just after seven in the morning, so the fact that he doesn’t sound at all groggy means he probably hasn’t even slept yet. “We can figure this out if you just breathe.”
“I am totally calm, Joonie,” Seokjin lies, his thumb working over his soulmate mark as he wears a path behind his sofa. “I am totally, one hundred percent fine with the fact that I met my soulmate sometime in the last twenty four hours and had no idea it was them.” His voice tips up, slightly hysterical, but seriously, how does Namjoon expect him to be calm at a time like this?
“Being sarcastic isn’t helping anyone, Jin-hyung,” Namjoon reminds him, and Seokjin has to disagree—it’s helping him. A little. “Do you remember when the itching started?” Namjoon asks, sounding one hundred percent done with the whole conversation despite the fact that they haven’t even been talking for longer than five minutes.
“What?” Seokjin asks, still rubbing at his mark. It’s still so itchy, and still so red. Seokjin thinks of his parents’ marks, and how they’d always looked so soft and delicate. They’d seemed like such quiet statements—ones that you wouldn’t even see if you didn’t think to look for them. As a child he used to think that maybe marks reflected more than just who your soulmate was. That maybe there was something else to be seen there. Like maybe his parents’ marks were quiet because their love, itself, was quiet, too.
Nothing like that has ever been confirmed, but it makes him feel a little nervous looking at his own marks. He’s never seen marks like his—the puckered skin, the bleeding, angry red. Do all marks look this hellish at first? He doesn’t remember learning anything about this in school.
“Do you remember when the itching started?” Namjoon repeats, syllables broken apart in deliberate slowness. Seokjin can’t help but pucker his face in annoyance. He might be a little panicked, but that doesn’t mean Namjoon has to put on the kid gloves. “On your wrist?”
A quip rests on Seokjin’s tongue, but he bites down on it—sarcasm isn’t helping—and instead chooses to concentrate on the actual question Namjoon is asking him. When had the itching started? He tries to remember the day before, if he’d even noticed an itching sensation, if he can pinpoint a moment when he may have subconsciously rubbed his wrist against the inside of his coat or picked at the skin with the edge of his nail.
He thinks of washing up before bed and rubbing at the skin on his left wrist for a little longer than necessary, but other than that—
“No?” He winces. “It was itching before bed last night, but—” That doesn’t really help. Marks always manifest within the first 24 hours, so of course it had itched before bed last night.
“Have you called your boss yet?” Namjoon sounds more tired now, like tackling Seokjin’s soulmate problem has sapped him of the last of his energy.
Five minutes into panicking and ten minutes before he’d broken down and called Namjoon, Seokjin had sent his boss a text that had simply said, GOT MY MARK!, followed by far more exclamation points than was probably professional. He’s honestly lucky—not just that his boss loves him, but that she is generally a pretty understanding person. Her response had come not a minute later: jealous! happy for you! go get ‘em! want to hear all the details tomorrow! And he’d figured that was her way of saying the day was his.
He hopes he has details to share with her tomorrow. At this rate, Seokjin will have a name on his wrist and no sickeningly romantic story to go with it.
“Hyung?”
“Yeah?”
Namjoon sighs, and Seokjin can just imagine him rubbing his temples.
“I know you’re distracted, but you need to concentrate.”
“On what, exactly?” Seokjin bites. His thumb presses against his mark again—he’s still marginally fascinated that it doesn’t even hurt. “I’ve been thinking about it all morning, but I don’t know when the itching started and I certainly don’t remember ever meeting any Kim Taehyung—”
“You don’t have to meet someone to be their soulmate, hyung,” Namjoon reminds him. “They just have to touch you.”
Seokjin stares at the wall of his apartment, expression blank. There’s an imperfection in the paint that his eye catches on and can’t look away from.
Oh.
Oh.
That—
“You just have to—start at the end and work backwards,” Namjoon says, right as Seokjin starts to freak out that his soulmate could be any of the dozens of strangers he so much as made eye contact with yesterday. It halts his panic so quickly that it leaves him a little disoriented.
“Huh?”
“Retrace your steps,” Namjoon clarifies. “If you know for sure that the itching had started last night, I would start with what you were doing last night and then just… Work your way backwards through your day.”
“Work my way backwards,” Seokjin whispers to himself, blinking furiously. It doesn’t sound all that difficult, actually, especially since Seokjin’s day had been altogether uneventful. “Yeah.” He nods to himself. “Yeah, that could work,” he mutters, surprised at the simplicity of it. He just has to redo everything he did in the last twenty four hours, and there’s a good chance he’ll run into his soulmate again. “You’re a genius, Joonie.”
“So they say.” Namjoon definitely sounds tired now, but at least he seems more amused than frustrated. “Call me when you figure it out, all right?”
“Of course.” First thing. After his mom. Shit, she’ll be pissed when she finds out Seokjin didn’t call her initially, but it seems pointless to call her now when he doesn’t have anything to say. Hi Eomma, I met my soulmate but I don’t know who they are because I wasn’t paying attention! He rolls his eyes just thinking of the lecture that would follow. It feels like all his life his mom has been scolding him to pay attention, and now his habit of overlooking details is truly biting him in the ass.
Shit, and it could keep biting him in the ass, too.
“Wait, Namjoon-ah,” Seojin says suddenly in a panic. “What if it’s not that easy? What if I don’t—can’t—remember everything? Or everyone? What if it’s someone I bumped into on the train? What if some random person in the street just grabbed my hand and I didn’t notice? What if—”
“Jin-hyung,” Namjoon cuts in, voice level. “You don’t take the train.”
Okay, that’s… Fair.
“And people don’t make a habit of touching each other in public spaces. I think if someone had grabbed your hand randomly even you would have realized. Give yourself some credit.”
That’s… Also true. Accidental touching isn’t really something people do. In fact, most people even go as far as to make sure every centimeter of skin is covered when the risk of contact is higher. There’s always the possibility that his soulmate is the sort of person who purposefully seeks that skin-to-skin contact, but Seokjin doesn’t want to humor that idea.
“Thanks, Joonie.” Seokjin looks down at his mark again. Kim Taehyung. Seokjin wants to think the best of them, whoever they are. They are his soulmate, after all.
“No problem. I’m going to try and get some sleep, but call me if you need anything.”
Seokjin laughs—doesn’t want to confirm the fact that Namjoon will probably be hearing from him sooner rather than later, when his panic inevitably starts to well up again.
“And hyung?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m happy for you.”
*
There’s a bakery three blocks away from Seokjin’s apartment that he frequents every morning, and despite the fact that it wasn’t his last stop before going home last night, it’s still his first stop before he begins his search. He’s been going to Simply Sweet every morning for over a year, and he isn’t about to break that tradition.
Besides, knowing Seokjin’s luck, it would somehow be the one thing that ended up throwing off the rest of his day—maybe even the one thing that kept him from meeting his soulmate entirely.
“Ah! Seokjin-ssi!” Hoseok greets as Seokjin walks through the door, all sunshine smiles and far too much energy for just after 8:30 in the morning. It’s later than Seokjin usually comes in, and while the bakery is never that crowded at his usual time, it’s practically empty now.
He should’ve known something was different in the universe when this place had been filled to the brim yesterday morning. There’d been so many people piled into the tiny shop’s front lobby that Seokjin had spent a solid fifteen minutes shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers.
If he hadn’t had his coat turned up to protect his neck and his bare hands hidden in his pockets, there would be a very real chance that someone in that crowd could be his soulmate. But he had been careful.
Maybe that’s the worst thing about this whole ordeal—Seokjin is always careful. How had he slipped up?
Something tickles at the back of his mind, a memory of a memory of a memory, but the second he acknowledges it, it disappears—fleeting, forgettable, frustrating as fuck.
“You’re late today,” Hoseok comments lightly, successfully jarring Seokjin from his thoughts. Hoseok pulls a glove from his hand with a snap as he straightens up from behind the display case. “I was so worried when you didn’t show up this morning I almost called the police.”
Seokjin cracks a smile, although he can tell it’s a little more brittle than normal.
“You care about me so much, Hoseok-ssi?” Seokjin presses a hand to his chest, playing along, and Hoseok rolls his eyes.
“I care about your business,” he replies, turning up his nose in an attempt to seem haughty, and Seokjin laughs. Hoseok is one of the friendliest people Seokjin has had the pleasure of meeting, and while he wouldn’t go as far as to call them friends, Seokjin knows that Hoseok is one of the main reasons Seokjin started coming here regularly. Well, that and—
“Your usual?” Hoseok asks around his smile, folding his arms on top of the case.
“Please.” The word comes out a little more desperate than Seokjin intended, and Hoseok raises an eyebrow questioningly in response. Usually, Seokjin has himself under much better control than this, and it’s a little embarrassing that he’s hardly started his day and he’s already a complete mess.
He shakes his head—nothing, it’s nothing, he tries to convey—and forces a smile.
Hoseok’s stare lingers for a few seconds longer, but then his face relaxes and he shrugs, turning around to start prepping Seokjin’s order.
It might have been Hoseok’s warm morning greetings and smile that made Seokjin take note of Simply Sweet, but it was the pastries that kept him coming back. The coffee was nothing special, but the pastries. Well—one pastry, in particular, and Seokjin would feel guilty about not trying any of the dozens of others Hoseok has tried to offer him if he wasn’t more or less prepared to propose marriage to what is unquestionably the world’s most delicious cheese danish.
His eyes track Hoseok as he moves behind the counter, fixing Seokjin’s americano and toasting his danish to perfection. Seokjin has admittedly added a centimeter or four to his waistline since he swapped his granola out with a danish of all things, but he can’t find it in himself to regret the choice. Even on his worst days, the pastry is always able to bring a smile to his face.
“So did you oversleep this morning or something?” Hoseok teases, but there’s a brief flutter of anxiety in his eyes as he holds the lilac-colored pastry bag across the counter. Seokjin takes it gratefully, cradling the warmth to his chest, and gives Hoseok a tight smile.
“Ah—or something,” Seokjin evades, tucking the pastry bag in the crook of his arm so he can reach his wallet. The sweater he wore today has sleeves that hang down to his knuckles, effectively keeping his freshly obtained mark from prying eyes, but it still feels like some sort of beacon against his skin. Like Hoseok can tell it’s there just by looking at him. It’s a strange, invasive feeling that has Seokjin pulling his sleeve a little lower.
It’s not taboo to show people your marks, even when they’re as fresh and new as Seokjin’s, but something about the idea makes his stomach turn.
“Or something,” Hoseok hums thoughtfully, giving him a significant look, and Seokjin suddenly looks very interested in the blueberry strudel muffins he’s never spared a second glance at before. He holds out his card without making eye contact, and then feels it pushed back towards him. “You know, you look like you’re having a rough morning—it’s on the house today.”
“Oh—” Seokjin blinks furiously, shaking his head and holding his card out persistently. “No, really, I’m fine, let me—”
“Seokjin-ssi.” Hoseok gives him a knowing look that Seokjin wilts under. “Just take it. I know my boss won’t mind.” Strangely enough, Hoseok winks at him, and Seokjin falters, feeling flustered. “And if you want to talk about it…” he trails off hopefully, eyes sparkling almost expectantly, and Seokjin can’t help but chuckle at that.
Hoseok has a way of worming himself into everything, it would seem.
He wonders, suddenly, if Hoseok has been through this—well, not exactly this, Seokjin imagines most people have a vague inkling of who their soulmate is when they get their mark. It’s a sensitive topic for most people, and it’s generally considered rude to even ask about it.
Seokjin glances as surreptitiously as possible at Hoseok’s wrists, but the left one is blank and the right is covered by a thick-banded watch.
“Hoseok-ssi…” Seokjin pauses, bites his lip, deliberates. A few of Seokjin’s coworkers have matched, and his parents, of course—but all of his close friends, including Namjoon, are still single. It would be… Nice to talk to someone who actually has.
Not that he knows for sure that Hoseok is one of those people, but he won’t exactly know if he doesn’t ask.
“Have you… Met? Your soulmate?” He finally forces out, face immediately flushing, and Hoseok stares at him in surprise, lips puckered.
And then he grins.
“Trying to see if I’m single?” Hoseok asks teasingly, tipping his head to the side, and Seokjin splutters in response. Hoseok laughs at him, shaking his head and fanning the question away with a wave of his hand. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding—is that all you wanted to ask?” Hoseok wrinkles his brow as if he’s not quite sure why Seokjin had looked so nervous over the whole idea, before holding up his right wrist—the watch covered one—and gently shaking it so that the band inches down his arm. There, faintly etched into his skin, is his soulmate mark. It’s too obscured for Seokjin to make out exactly, but he can tell it’s in hangul—and that Hoseok must have had it for some time.
When Seokjin glances at Hoseok again, he’s staring at his mark, his face a little softer, his smile a little fonder, and suddenly Seokjin feels like he’s trespassing on something immensely private.
Will he look at his mark like that one day? Will his soulmate stare at Seokjin’s own name on their wrist and have the same adoring look in their eyes that Hoseok had just now?
“Did you want to hear the story?” Hoseok teases lightly, because why else would Seokjin have bothered asking? But Seokjin’s flush just deepens as he insistently shakes his head.
“No, I—”
Something flickers across Hoseok’s face, and then he’s reaching across the counter, hand curling around Seokjin’s wrist over the sleeve of his sweater. Seokjin immediately jerks at the touch, recoiling backwards, and Hoseok doesn’t even try to hold him—lifts his hand placatingly, eyes wide as he stares at Seokjin.
“Did…” Hoseok’s eyes flick worriedly across his face. “Did you meet yours?” There’s something too serious about the way Hoseok asks—too much concern in his voice, a need for reassurance in his eyes. It’s not the kind of reaction anyone expects when the topic of finally meeting your soulmate comes up, and yet here Hoseok is, looking like Seokjin finding his in the worst possible thing in the world.
“When?” Hoseok asks, eyes round. He forces a smile, but it looks… Wrong. Off. “How did it happen? Who is it?” Hoseok persists, each question slightly more intense than the last and certainly more intense than Seokjin is expecting, and he carefully takes a step back.
“T-thanks for the pastry and the coffee, Hoseok-ssi,” Seokjin stutters, afraid that at any moment now Hoseok is going to vault over the counter and pull his sleeves up his arms. Like his soulmate mark is something incriminating. Seokjin swallows. “I-I’m late for work,” he lies, walking further and further back. “I need to get going.”
Hoseok’s eyes keep darting to his right, towards the kitchen doors, like they’re the only things keeping him behind the counter and out of Seokjin’s space—somehow. It doesn’t make any sense, but neither does anything about Seokjin’s entire morning.
“See you tomorrow.” He gives a quick bow and then turns on his heel, slipping out of the door just as a mother comes in with two of her children. Seokjin bows to them and then abruptly takes a left. He’s not quite sure where he’s going yet, but he’ll figure it out somewhere else.
Out of all the people in the world, Seokjin never expected Hoseok to react to the possibility of him finding his soulmate so—Seokjin doesn’t even have a word for it. How can someone who looks at their own mark so fondly react like that at just the suggestion of Seokjin’s soulmate? It doesn’t make sense.
Hopefully, whatever is going on with Hoseok doesn’t persist into tomorrow. Seokjin would hate trying to find a new bakery with a cheese danish even half as good as the one at Simply Sweet.
With a sigh, he shoves his hands in his pockets, looking both ways as he jogs across the street. Maybe, with any luck, him and his soulmate can get cheese danishes together tomorrow morning.
Or a cheese danish and whatever his soulmate’s favorite pastry is.
Seokjin smiles softly, striding around a corner and completely missing the way Hoseok darts out of the alleyway beside the bakery, his shouts being eaten up by the sounds of the city.
*
Seokjin is beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, Kim Taehyung doesn’t actually exist.
(That, or maybe Namjoon’s plan is actually just ridiculously stupid.)
Retrace your steps. It had sounded so stupidly simple and foolproof to his panicked mind, and yet here he is, hours into his search without even a crumb of an idea of who his soulmate might be. He’s already called Namjoon twice, but he’d only suggested that maybe Seokjin try social media instead of trying to track his soulmate down in person.
As if the first thing Seokjin hadn’t done that morning was search for Kim Taehyung on Facebook and realize that it’s an annoyingly popular name.
So he’d retraced his steps—and then retraced them again, and again. Because when he really thinks about it, his days are generally pretty mediocre and uneventful. He works an office job and is on a first name basis with everyone in the building, even the overnight security guard.
(On his second go-through of his day yesterday, he’d actually gone and checked to see if maybe a Kim Taehyung did work in his building. He’d checked in with secretaries and visited websites and charmed the building manager, but none of his attempts had been fruitful. He’d even searched the surrounding office park and still had come up empty.
If a Kim Taehyung does work at any of the businesses within a block of Seokjin’s workplace, he simply doesn’t want to be found.)
He eats lunch at the same café nearly every day, and he has a solid rotation of take-out places he frequents for dinner since he’s almost always too tired to cook by the time he drags himself into his apartment.
He’s pretty sure the place he got dinner from the night before—cheap, quality japchae—has added him to some sort of do not serve list after the amount of times he’s called them today. Apparently no matter how many times Seokjin calls, no one named Kim Taehyung is suddenly going to be employed there. Not that the man he had spoken to on the phone had been particularly helpful. Even when Seokjin had carefully and calmly explained his predicament, the man (who Seokjin is fairly certain might have been the owner) had just hung up on him!
…and, okay, maybe Seokjin had accused him of using random people on the street as delivery boys, but he was desperate! He was looking for his soulmate! Couldn’t he understand?
(No, no he could not, and now Seokjin has to find a new place to order good japchae from.)
Seokjin had spent over an hour at the café where he normally has lunch, eating as slowly as possible and receiving sympathetic (pitying) looks from the girl at the register who told him that they don’t have any regulars named Kim Taehyung. But still, Seokjin had persisted until he’d been there so long it had felt downright uncomfortable. Now he doesn’t know if he can go back, although that has more to do with embarrassment than anything.
By his third attempt at retracing his steps, Seokjin started visiting places he hadn’t even gone yesterday—the convenience store he frequents, his dry cleaner, his favorite market, the butcher shop. But Kim Taehyung wasn’t at any of them. No employees, no regulars, and no spark of recognition when he even uttered the name.
It was almost like Kim Taehyung had appeared just long enough to touch Seokjin and manifest his mark before disappearing to… Well, wherever they’ve been for the last twenty-six years.
Seokjin wonders if maybe Kim Taehyung was doing the exact same thing that he was—wandering around the city practically blind, trying desperately to try and find the person who matched the name on their wrist.
Maybe that’s how Seokjin ended up here, in a park he’s visited only a handful of times, staring at a crack in the sidewalk where a dead weed is curling in on itself. Like maybe if he just stays here, his soulmate’s own search will criss-cross with Seokjin’s own.
He groans, folding forward on the bench where he’s been sitting for… Seokjin pulls his phone out of his pocket. Wow, it’s only been half an hour. It feels like years. In fact, this entire day could have spanned a decade and Seokjin is sure it would have felt the same. He’s tired, and he’s cold, and he wants to go home and eat something greasy and curl up in his pajamas and just all-around feel sorry for himself. But he can’t give up—he owes his soulmate more than that.
The sun is on its way to setting already, the failing light casting the park in lengthening shadows and catching gold against the trees. All around Seokjin, leaves are beautiful russet shades of brown and yellow and orange. He can’t help but think that it would be a stunning backdrop for meeting his soulmate, if Seokjin is ever able to find them.
God, what if Seokjin never finds them? He presses his hands over his face and wonders why fate is so cruel.
“Um.”
Seokjin looks up so quickly he’s surprised he doesn’t hurt himself, and a stranger is standing there, hand hovering awkwardly in the air just over Seokjin’s shoulder.
“Are… Are you okay?” He asks delicately, eyes skirting around nervously like he’s regretting approaching Seokjin at all. Not that Seokjin can really blame he. If he saw some man practically curled into the fetal position on a public bench, practically in tears, he’d probably give him a wide berth, too.
“Not really,” Seokjin admits, but plasters a smile on his face anyway. There’s no need to burden this stranger with his problems—his mistakes. “But it’s fine. I’m fine. Really.” He presses his hand to his chest, going for sincere, even though the more he speaks, the further his words stray from the truth.
Have you ever found your other half just to immediately lose them?
His heart aches in his chest and he drops his gaze, gripping his own elbows like he needs to hold his ribs together.
“But thank you,” he whispers, averting his eyes. It’s nice that this man decided to stop and speak to him, but Seokjin doesn’t think there’s much anyone can do for him right. Not unless they’re Kim Taehyung.
He watches the man’s shoes disappear from his immediate line of sight, lets his posture wilt until he’s resembling that dead weed more than an actual living, breathing person. At least he’s alone again.
(Seokjin sighs—he’s alone again.)
At least, that’s what he thinks until he’s very aware of the fact that someone is sitting next to him. When he looks, it’s the same stranger, who—for some reason—didn’t take the very obvious dismissal that Seokjin had given him like any normal or sane person would have. No, this guy is just sitting beside him on the bench—keeping a good amount of distance between them, of course, but Seokjin is just floored that he didn’t just smile politely and walk away like most strangers would have.
Seokjin is staring at him unabashedly, but he can’t even bring himself to care.
The guy has a box set on his lap that, even in the light of the setting sun, is a familiar lilac color—even without seeing the logo, Seokjin knows it’s from Simply Sweet. What a small world, although apparently not small enough that Seokjin can accidentally run into his soulmate again. The guy slides his finger beneath the sticker sealing the box, and then pulls out a perfectly round, beautifully cooked chocolate chip cookie.
Immediately, he holds it across the no-man’s land between them, a friendly smile on his face.
“Cookie?” He offers, and any other day of the week, of the year, of his life, Seokjin definitely would not accept food from a stranger in a park.
But today isn’t like any other day, and Seokjin doesn’t hesitate.
Oh dear lord, can cookies cause orgasms? Seokjin nearly slaps a hand over his mouth when he moans around the first bite, and the stranger beside him giggles.
“Yeah,” he says, pulling out a second cookie—this one chunkier, dusted in a perfect layer of cinnamon sugar. “I agree.”
They eat their cookies in silence. Seokjin almost feels embarrassed about catching any spare crumbs in his palm just so he doesn’t waste a single part of this cookie, but then the guy beside him will let out a particularly satisfied hum and it’s hard to feel all that ashamed.
It’s a good fucking cookie.
Seokjin wonders why he’s never thought to visit Simply Sweet on his way home—they don’t have cookies in the morning, and even if they did, he’d hardly give up his cheese danish for one. Maybe he’ll have to make a point to stop by before he starts his walk of shame and defeat back to his apartment.
“Thank you,” Seokjin says when he sadly finishes his cookie. He can see a crumb on the knee of his jeans but doesn’t dare eat it when people can see him. “For sharing your cookies.”
“Oh, no problem,” the guy responds happily. “My soulmate always scolds me for buying way too many, so you’re probably doing me a favor.”
Seokjin can’t help the dip of disappointment he feels—there goes his hope that maybe, maybe, maybe this guy would turn out to be Kim Taehyung.
It must be a noticeable shift, because the guy is suddenly biting his lip.
“Plus, you looked like you needed one.” The guy shrugs, shifting awkwardly, like he’s struggling against something. “If you want to… Talk. About anything. I’m a pretty good listener,” he offers with a much more hesitant smile. “Well, or so people tell me.”
Seokjin isn’t generally the sort of person who talks about his private affairs, especially with complete strangers, and yet he can’t deny the fact that he wants to. But this man has already been kind enough to give Seokjin a cookie, to sit beside him and keep him company. Seokjin couldn’t bear to burden the man with all his problems, too.
He’s already embarrassed himself enough times today.
But even as the no sits curled on the edge of his tongue, just like it has been every time someone has offered their ear today, Seokjin ends up swallowing it at the last second. Maybe—maybe he could use a new perspective.
He breathes, his fingers pressing against his wrist over the sleeve of his sweater.
“I… Lost my soulmate,” he says, and he presses a little too hard against his mark. Like every other time he’s touched it, he doesn’t miraculously have some sort of soulmate vision that tells him who exactly Kim Taehyung is and where exactly Seokjin can find them.
“Oh,” the boy beside him says, voice strangled and high—and awkward. He coughs delicately. “I-I’m sorry, that… I can’t even imagine. God. That’s—that’s horrible. I’m so, so sorry. Were you… Were you together long?”
What?
Seokjin frowns, looking at the guy, and is stunned to see that his face has slackened with pure grief.
Why does he look so sad?
Oh. Oh wait.
Oh fuck.
“Oh, oh, no, no, no. They didn’t—my soulmate didn’t die, shit, sorry, that was… A stupid way of putting it, I’m sorry.” Seokjin twists his fists against his eyes. The day is finally getting to him. His brain has no doubt melted out through his ears. “I’ve had a long, stressful day, I’m so sorry.” He decides to open up to a stranger about his soulmate, and somehow makes him think that Seokjin’s soulmate died. What is wrong with him? “I mean that I literally lost them—I can’t find them.”
“Oh,” the strange boy drawls in understanding, pressing a hand to his chest (his heart) in relief. “Thank god, that’s not nearly as bad,” he says, tailing it with a little laugh. Technically, he’s right, but that doesn’t stop Seokjin from wanting to contradict him. Not knowing who your soulmate is isn’t exactly a wonderful feeling. In fact, they could be dead and Seokjin wouldn’t even know!
…oh shit, is it possible that his soulmate might have actually died in the last twenty four hours? Panic wells up swift and sudden in his throat because dear god, that would definitely explain why Seokjin hasn’t been able to find them. Why didn’t he think to call any hospitals? Can you file a missing person’s report if you don’t technically know what someone looks like?
“Funnily enough, that happened to me, too,” the boy continues, and Seokjin startles, confused—his soulmate was also presumed dead? But then he realizes that just because his head is slowly starting a long, dangerous, nihilistic journey, doesn’t mean that this guy is along for the ride.
It takes him a second too long for the guy’s words to fully register, but once they do, Seokjin finds himself gaping. Screw retracing his steps. Apparently all Seokjin had to do was sit in this random park and wait for someone to come along with the answers.
“And?” He urges, unable to stop himself from shifting slightly closer. “How-how-how did you find them? What did you do?”
“Do?” The guy’s face pinches, and he looks almost lost when he meets Seokjin’s eyes. “I didn’t do anything. Fate led us together the first time, and I just kind of… Waited for fate to do it again. I guess.” He seems to think over his answer for a few moments, and then nods, like he approves of it. Like it’s the simplest, most obvious answer in the world.
“But…” Seokjin flounders. That’s it? That’s the great cosmic advice fate decided to hand to him? To wait? “How did you know that would work? How did your soulmate know that would work? Didn’t it drive you crazy?”
“No.” The boy blinks at him innocently, and then laughs to himself. “My soulmate, maybe. Definitely. He… He said he scoured the entire city looking for me, that first day.” The guy smiles softly, and it reminds Seokjin of the smile he’d seen on Hoseok’s face earlier. Just like before, it makes Seokjin’s chest feel a little tight.
“So how did he find you?” Seokjin finally asks, watching the guy’s face closely as it seems to shift through emotions. The idea of just waiting is—terrifying. After all, it already feels like fate has screwed him over once—can he really trust that it’ll come through for him now?
The guy gives him a sheepish look.
“I have a feeling you aren’t going to like this answer, but… He stopped looking.”
Of course. Of course that’s how it happened. Blind trust. Blind faith. Seokjin is just supposed to believe that if he just goes about his life that someday, somewhere, his soulmate will just—what? Pop up out of the blue? What if they just spend the rest of their lives passing by each other and never knowing? Despair feels like a thick, leaden wait in his stomach.
Even when it comes to soulmates, Seokjin doesn’t believe in fate that much.
“I take it from the look on your face right now that that isn’t what you were hoping for,” the guy continues, his small fingers curling around the edge of the pastry box. Seokjin gives him a tired, weak smile.
“Not really, no,” he whispers, and then twists away to look at the darkening sky through the branches of the trees above. He wonders what his soulmate is doing right now—are they out there in the city, looking for him? Are they waiting for Seokjin to find them? Or—or are they like this man sitting beside him, content with the idea that fate will do all the heavy lifting and by some miracle they’ll just find their way back to each other one day?
“But—” Seokjin exhales a long, slow, deep sigh, and it feels a little too much like giving up. “Maybe that’s exactly what I needed to hear.”
“Oh.” The guy seems genuinely surprised by that, his hand slipping into the pastry box to pull out another cookie—this one is cut into the pretty shape of a flower and is covered in some kind of shiny, yellow glaze. “Well. Glad I could help…?” He shakes his head, laughing breathily to himself, his eyes crinkling pleasantly at the corners. Well, if nothing else can be said for today, at least Seokjin met a kind stranger. All the soulmate business aside, it actually wasn’t a horrible day.
Maybe Seokjin will even stop by the bakery on the way home and get his own box of cookies.
“If there’s anything else I can do for you, though, let me know,” the guy offers, breaking off a piece of his cookie and holding it out for Seokjin to have.
He takes it with a smile, and wonders what this guy’s soulmate is like—what kind of person balances someone who is so easily kind and friendly? Seokjin can’t imagine ever sitting next to a stranger and listening to their problems, sharing his food, but—maybe after today, he should make a point to do it more often.
“Thank you.” This cookie is made of short bread, covered in a smooth lemon icing that is a perfect mix of sweet and tart when it explodes across his tongue. Is there anything from this place that won’t make him want to cry from how good it is? The guy beside him giggles slightly, and Seokjin doesn’t even want to know what his face looks like right now. “I… I think I’m good, though. Having someone to talk to… It helped a lot.”
The guy blushes prettily, and tacks on a quiet and perfectly earnest, “Any time.”
Seokjin wonders how often this guy visits this particular park bench and smiles. The sun is dipping lower and lower, and Seokjin’s coat isn’t thick enough to brave the cold fall nights yet. He needs to be getting home, needs to call Namjoon and admit his defeat, needs to stop putting off calling his mom.
Needs to wait for fate to get its ass in gear.
“…you’re sure you don’t need anything else?” The guy hedges, and once again, Seokjin wonders how pitiful he looks. He chuckles dryly, shaking his head
“Really, I’m good.” He pauses, lips quirking up in the corner. “Unless you happen to know a Kim Taehyung,” he says half-heartedly, mostly joking.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Seokjin shakes his head. “Time for me to… Head home and wait for fate, I guess.” He goes to push himself off the bench—but is immediately halted when a small hand curls around the bend in his elbow. Seokjin stares at the guy in surprise.
“Did you say Kim Taehyung?” He asks, slowly, carefully, his eyes wide.
(Seokjin’s heart thumps in his chest.)
“Y-yes.” Seokjin licks his suddenly dry lips. “W-why?”
The boy holds up the box in his hands, turning it around to the Simply Sweet logo. Seokjin’s eyebrows knit together—what do the cookies have to do with anything?
“Because I do know a Kim Taehyung,” the guy answers, his voice shaking somewhere between anxiety and excitement. “This is his bakery,” the guy tells him, shaking the box so viciously that the cookies rattle around inside it. “He… He owns it.”
Seokjin stares at the box, and then at the guy holding it, and his mouth falls open. Kim Taehyung, his possible, probably, maybe, most definitely soulmate… Owns Simply Sweet? The bakery he’s been visiting for a year?
…the one he was literally in this morning?
“Hey!” The guy snaps his fingers in front of Seokjin’s face, snapping him from his sudden trance. “What are you waiting for? Get out of here!”
“What about fate?” Seokjin asks dumbly, his voice barely more than a mumble as the guy practically shoves him to his feet. He stumbles, feeling disoriented and unbalanced.
“This is fate!” The guy laughs, eyes delighted. “I’m fate, apparently. At least today.” He gives a push against Seokjin’s lower back until he’s tripping into a walk. “Now go meet your soulmate! He’s waiting for you!”
Seokjin’s stumbling walk quickly becomes a run, and he belatedly remembers to yell a very-deserved thank you! over his shoulder.
He hopes he sees the stranger again. Apparently, Seokjin owes him more than a few cookies.