Chapter Text
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Early in the twenty-fourth century, the Chasm opened: a rift in the mortal realm through which came beings of great power and magic, ones infused with charm and charisma who extended treaties and friendships to the humans despite their mortal skepticism and fear. Helpless to fight off the ambassadors in the wake of their comparatively primitive technology, humans hesitantly agreed to the peace talks. And from there was born an era of prosperity for beings of all species – human and elf, vampire and werewolf, fairies and pixies and gollums and seelies.
Some objected to this new world. Battles began that were quashed, rebels rose up but quickly surrendered. The entire century became a time of transition.
But that is not this story.
As the twenty-fourth century gave way to the twenty-fifth, the surprise humans felt at no longer being alone in the universe faded. With the influx of magic through the open barrier to the mortal realm, the human world changed. The environment grew richer, damage wrought by climate change brought about by hapless selfish humans almost entirely reversed. With the sharing of technology and science, cures were found for cancer, alternative renewable energy sources were developed, pollution removed. Into the Chasm went humans to explore new mortal planes and establish new worlds. On planet Earth, renamed the Mortal Homeworld, human and animal populations flourished, the planet’s health and ecosystems restored.
The new world wasn’t perfect, of course. Humans as a species were mercurial, always striving for things out of reach, for power and wealth. The different classes persisted, poverty still ran rampant in cities, some people across the world suffered from hunger despite the renewed resources.
But the biggest change? Humans became infused with magic.
Life spans increased. The typical human lived to three centuries rather than less than one, though their childhoods and adolescent stages remained the same. And soulmates spiraled into existence.
Soulmates.
Designated by tattoos that swirled into existence on a human’s sixteenth birthday. Matched in size, color and location on their soulmate—or soulmates. Romantic or platonic. A trio of sisters sharing a spiral on their right ankles, a quartet of two boys and two girls with paw prints padding up their spines, a boy and a girl with a tiny matching heart behind their left ears, twin boys manifesting their parents' ankle bands on their sixteenth birthdays. The possibilities were endless.
No human was ever alone again.
Soulmates.
Jeon Jungkook had spent his childhood reading about them. Wondered whether he would have one perfect romantic match, or a few platonic best friends for life, or multiple romantic partners. Genders and romantic designations, a source of prejudice and bias in earlier centuries, no longer mattered to society as a whole. Not once humans realized they weren’t the only beings in the universe and understood there were better things to worry about.
Jungkook stayed up the night of his sixteenth birthday. With bated breath and trembling lips he watched the clock turn from 11:59pm to 12:00am. Stripped off his clothes and stood in front of the full-length mirror he had bought and hung for this specific occasion.
No tattoo.
Looking back, Jungkook felt shame at his behavior that followed.
He snatched up his phone, took pictures of every aspect of his skin, including the folds of his ears and beneath his fingernails and between his toes and even his privates. Everywhere. He came within inches of shaving his scalp—froze with the clippers in his hand in front of the bathroom mirror. Drowning in panic, he scoured the photographs instead, searched himself over and over again until dawn rose and his alarm went off for school.
Numb, he dressed. He went downstairs. His mother and father stood there with a cake that proclaimed Happy Soulmark Day!
His father asked to see the mark. Jungkook mumbled that he didn’t have one. His father said, “Speak up, boy, you know I hate when you mutter like that.”
“I don’t have one. Nothing showed up.”
What followed was probably the most embarrassing moment in his young life. His mother stripped him and checked him herself, his father watching almost clinically. They saw themselves the proof he had no soul mark, not even a new freckle. Their mirrored tattoos, a spiraling letter J in toxic green on the right sides of their necks, seemed to gleam brighter as they turned on Jungkook with pure shock and suspicion.
Then came the doctors. The soulmate specialists. The mocking and laughing and taunting and bullying from his classmates. No one would ever love an Unmarked. They called him strange, they called him odd, they called him an aberration, they called him unlovable.
Disgusting.
Abnormal.
By his eighteenth birthday, Jungkook had hardly spoken a word to anyone in six months.
By his eighteenth birthday, he lived on the streets, after his parents sold their house in the suburbs of Seoul and moved to Europe without him.
By his eighteenth birthday, Jeon Jungkook learned that he would live alone and unloved. As no other human in the mortal plane lived.
Forever.
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Jungkook hummed under his breath as he swept the mop in large, sweeping circles over the ugly linoleum flooring. The high school, buried deep in the tangle of streets in a rough part of Seoul, sat quiet and restful this time of night, the school day long ended. He had gotten the job as a night janitor a few weeks prior and was determined to do a good job.
His back ached from spending the night on a bench in the park, and he winced a little as he scrubbed determinedly at a large mud stain. Stain removed, he picked up the mop, dunked it in the rinse bin, squeezed it to drain the excess water, then applied it to the floor again. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. This was the last hallway, all he needed to do afterwards was collect all the trash in the building and haul it out to the enormous dumpsters.
Muffled voices nearby made him pause as he put the mop away in the janitor closet.
Surprised to find he wasn’t alone, he crept towards a classroom and hesitated outside the open doorway, keeping to the shadows. No one wanted to see a teenage delinquent with sweat on his face wearing ragged blue janitor overalls clutching a bundle of trash bags.
A tall man dressed in neat grey slacks and a white collared shirt with a grey vest overtop stood in front of the holoboard, typing in midair on the suspended hologram keyboard. A crowd of people looking to be in their thirties and forties watched him with expressions ranging from apathetic to interested, no more than twenty or so students in total, some with holopads open in front of them, others without even a backpack beneath their desk.
The differing attention spans didn’t seem to matter to the teacher, who stepped back from the board and clapped his hands together. Jungkook blinked, surprised. Behind wire-framed glasses that caught and reflected the fluorescent lights as he turned, the teacher looked younger than he had at first glance, maybe no more than a handful of years older than Jungkook. The man grinned a little when the clap seemed to stir awake some of his audience, and dimples popped out on his cheeks, making Jungkook want to giggle. He also felt a strange urge to touch the man’s soft-looking hair, colored a surprising teal that swept sideways over his forehead, but that was neither here nor there.
“So. Shakespeare,” the man said in a strong baritone, gesturing to where the holoboard now had Romeo & Juliet scrawled across it. “Why does he matter? Why do we study him?”
Some in the audience shifted a little. A couple of them yawned.
“There’s no wrong answer here,” the teacher continued, unsurprised and seemingly unbothered by the lackluster participation. “Some people simply enjoy the beautiful and entertaining way he spun his stories, even the more gruesome ones like Macbeth. Some people enjoy the riddle of the complex dialogues and mannerisms of his characters, enjoy trying to figure out the different meanings he intended.”
“Why doesn’t he just say what he means?” one young woman spoke up, brandishing a used copy of Romeo & Juliet. “Reading this gives me a headache.”
“Because Shakespeare, unlike a lot of our modern twenty-fifth century authors, is open to interpretation,” the teacher answered easily, rolling with the interruption. “He doesn’t tell us what to think. He teaches us how to think. Take this line.”
Without even peering at the open book—a real book, with paper and ink and everything, oh, Jungkook itched to touch it—on the podium, the man recited, “’These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die; like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume; the sweetest honey is loathsome in his own deliciousness, and in the taste confounds the appetite; therefore love moderately: long love doth so.’”
Jungkook shivered. He had not a clue what the pretty words meant, and clearly neither did the audience, but he thought he could stand here and listen to the man’s voice for hours without being bored. Smooth, deep, thoughtful, an edge of humor dancing along every word.
He dared to step a little closer, cocked his head to listen more.
The teacher repeated the lines again, then peered expectantly at his audience. “Any guesses to what he meant?”
Crickets.
Unfazed, the man shrugged and answered his own query. “Love gently. If you love too hard, too fast, it may not last.”
A pause. Then, “Well why doesn’t he just say that?” complained the same girl.
The teacher grinned easily. “Because then I wouldn’t be paid to teach English literature, among other things.” A titter of laughter rewarded his statement and he seemed pleased.
He swiped a hand in the air, summoned the keyboard again. “I’ll write it up on the holoboard then we’ll break it down together. Your assignment this week is to pick your own favorite quote from Romeo & Juliet and interpret it in your own words. How does it make you feel? What words would we modern folk use to convey a similar message?”
As he turned, the teacher caught sight of Jungkook hovering wide-eyed in the doorway. Their eyes met. Jungkook felt a lurch in his chest and he flinched, scuttling back from the classroom and darting down the shadowy hallway.
Somehow breathless, mind swimming, Jungkook clocked out then hurriedly fetched the bags of trash he had already piled together and hauled them to the dumpster. Then he jogged to the park, disappearing among the tangle of city streets.
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Namjoon froze at the sight of the boy in the doorway. Eyes wide like a doe, sparkling a little despite the clear exhaustion in the lines of his face. A janitor’s overalls had been pulled off his shoulders, sleeves tied around his waist, displaying distracting muscles beneath a stained and faded white t-shirt. Dark hair fell in a messy tangle around his forehead.
Cute.
As their eyes met the boy jolted back as if scared. Namjoon had to furiously stifle the urge to reach out, to call out for the boy to stay if he wanted to. He had been teaching this night class for adults for weeks now and had never seen such a look of awe and interest directed towards him from his students let alone a casual observer.
Hopefully the boy would be back.
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Jungkook worked nights cleaning the high school five evenings a week. It didn’t pay much, not enough to pay rent even in the cheapest area of Seoul due to the rising cost of living, but it was enough to contribute to a small pile of savings. He had been kicked out of his first apartment when the building had been condemned, and needed to save up before he could afford to find another.
From what he could tell, even as he kept to the shadows from the embarrassment of being caught that first night, the handsome teacher taught night classes three evenings a week to adult students intending to finish their high school diplomas.
Despite his innate embarrassment leftover from the first encounter, he just couldn’t stay away. He rushed to clean the other hallways and classrooms before the class began, leaving him to mop the hallway directly outside the room and take as long as he feasibly could in order to listen in. The teacher discussed a variety of topics, from English literature to math to science to history.
Weeks into his gentle stalking, he saw the lights go out in the classroom at the start of the lecture and a glow eke into the hallway from the holoboard, which had expanded to take up the entire front wall. Jungkook surrendered to his curiosity again. He finished his mopping in record time then crept, not to the door at the front of the room like last time, but the back door, and peered around the jamb. No one noticed him in the darkness.
On the holoboard shone a painting of a pond with pretty flowers scattered across the mirror surface. Jungkook gazed hungrily at the unfamiliar picture.
“Water Lilies, by Claude Monet. Painted between 1896 and 1926. Has anyone heard of Monet before?” Several nods and shakes of the head. “Monet is praised as one of the fundamental pioneers of the Impressionist art movement.”
“Impressionist?” called a voice.
Despite himself, Jungkook dared to take a couple steps into the classroom, eyes still fixated on the painting, on the sunlight dappling the water’s surface, the tiny blue flowers, the flat lily pads. He felt as if the scene were moving but that was ridiculous, he scolded himself. This was a painting, not a video.
“Impressionism. A style of art characterized by depicting the visual impression of the moment. The style uses patterns of light and color to convey movement, as opposed to stillness.”
Jungkook blinked. The pond was supposed to look like it was moving?
Cool.
An abandoned chair sat against the back wall, probably an overflow from the few desks in the room. Cautious, moving slow as a mouse with a cat nearby, Jungkook sidled over and dared to perch on the very end of the seat, every muscle tensed with the expectation of being called out. But none of the students turned to see or realized he had joined them. And the room was far too dark for the teacher to see this far to the back of the room.
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Namjoon suppressed the smile threatening to break out on his face.
After weeks, the boy was back, the pretty doe with curious eyes. He looked skinnier than last time but it may be the overalls now covering his shoulders, Namjoon considered. He deliberately avoided staring directly at the boy, wary of scaring him off, instead darting glances at him out of the corner of his eye as he moved on from Water Lilies to Bridge Over a Pond of Water to Woman With a Parasol. The boy’s eyes grew so wide and full of awe that they threatened to fall out of his head.
Namjoon wondered how to play it, thought about it even as he led the discussion. Wondered if he could somehow introduce himself without scaring the boy off, talk to him without bringing that look of abject terror back. Perhaps the boy hesitated in fear of reprimands for not doing his work, but Namjoon thought it was more than that.
As class wound down, Namjoon looked down to check the syllabus for the topic of his next lesson, looked up to review it with the class. The boy had already disappeared.
So it continued on.
Sometimes Namjoon would catch a blur of movement at the doorway, would sometimes earn an extra audience member on those rare occasions he projected images onto the holoboard. To encourage the boy, Namjoon worked more art discussion into his classes, solely to try to draw the boy out of his shell. Nothing worked, but he earned a more regular spectator.
Namjoon decided to try an alternate approach.
He grabbed an art history book from his collection, took the time to refresh himself on the material, left scribbles in the margins and dog-eared some of the pages. Then he deliberately left it on the chair in the back of the room that had become the janitor’s chair, and left a post-it on top saying simply, For you. An extravagant gift, no doubt. Books with real paper had become coveted antiquities with the onset of the technological revolution that occurred once the Chasm opened, but Namjoon’s parents had been avid collectors of old-world technology. He had been passed their collection when they died a couple years prior.
That night he led a discussion on Da Vinci with his heart in his throat and sweaty palms, wondering if he had gone too far, worried that the gesture would make the boy uncomfortable. He noticed the boy sneak in as per usual only to hesitate by the chair. He scrubbed his palms viciously with the towel draped over his shoulder, making Namjoon grin, and eventually picked up the book before sitting down. On edge, worried, Namjoon wrapped class up earlier than he usually did to the delighted murmurs of his students, and turned the lights on. He turned back from the switch, gazed sadly and expectantly towards what would surely be an empty back wall, only to see wide eyes and a quivering mouth staring back at him.
That mouth shakily mouthed the words, Thank you, before the boy blushed scarlet and all but ran out of the classroom, hugging the book to his chest.
Namjoon felt warm to the tips of his fingers.
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A book. An actual book!
Jungkook finished his shift and clocked out, hefting his backpack and jogging home towards the park. He wondered which bench would be close enough to a streetlight to read yet far enough to still hide in the shadows, mentally calculating and muttering to himself.
He nearly ran into a shorter boy with ocean blue hair that made him blink in surprise before hurriedly muttering an apology and sidestepping him.
Jungkook read all night. About famous artists and their inspirations and their paintings. Stared at the paintings so hungrily and traced his fiercely scrubbed fingertips over the pictures so delicately that he imagined he could feel the pattern of oil and watercolors under his skin. He had never before held a book. He had access to holopads and the large holoboard in his parents’ house growing up but never a real book made of paper and leather and ink and memory. To his shock, there were notes scribbled in the margins, snippets of poems and musings about the paintings.
How many books must the man possess, to treat them so casually?
For days, he did nothing but work and study the book, hungrily memorizing all he could, knowing he would have to return it. When he thought he had held on to it for a time bordering on impoliteness, Jungkook arrived at work and steeled himself. He would thank the teacher in person when he returned it. That’s what a normal person would do.
Determined, Jungkook worked harder than he ever had before, finishing his duties in enough time to stalk the classroom. Nausea twisted his belly and sweat broke out on his forehead but he had to do it, had to thank him. It had been a long time since someone had shown him such kindness and the teacher deserved better than no acknowledgement.
The teacher dismissed the class and Jungkook hid behind the door as the adults left, chattering amongst themselves. When the coast was clear, Jungkook moved into the front doorway, hugging the book, and cleared his throat.
“Yes?” Distracted from piling his small personal holopad into his shoulder bag, the teacher looked up. Then he froze like a statue.
Unnerved by the reaction, Jungkook tensed even further, knuckles shining white on the book. “I-I…I just…”
The teacher came no closer, perhaps sensing his nerves. “It’s okay. Take your time.”
Jungkook took a shaky breath, summoned enough bravery to step forward into the room. “Um. I-I wanted to say thank you. For the book.” Though it hurt, he offered the book to the teacher.
The teacher made no move to take it. He reached up to take his glasses off, tucking them in his collar to dangle by the earpiece like a gentleman. “You read it already?”
Was that strange?
“Um. Yes?”
The teacher’s grin grew so wide that Jungkook just stared at him. “You liked it then, I’m so glad.”
“Um. Y-yes. I wanted to say th-thank you,” Jungkook managed to say, and offered the book again, confused.
“It was a gift,” the teacher said, with no pity or sympathy in his voice. Just fact. “You may keep it, to do with as you wish.”
Jungkook felt his eyes widen even further. “What? You’re giving it to me? Forever?”
“Yes,” he said kindly. “I noticed you had an interest in my lectures about art, so I thought you’d enjoy it.”
Suspicion came first. “This is a book.”
“Yes.”
“A real, actual book. I could sell this for millions of won in the street, why would you give it to me?”
An elegant shrug. “I don’t think you’re the type of person to do that with a gift so geared towards your interests.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“Call it instinct.” The man peered at him, then gently, so gently, smiled a little. “It’s okay, really. I want you to have it.”
Suspicion gave way to joy, air and light cascading in his chest and Jungkook felt like he could fly. “Really?” He sounded breathless to his own ears. “I can keep it?”
“Yes.” The teacher showed no impatience at the repetitions. He stepped a little closer, the pair no more than an arm’s length from each other.
This close, Jungkook could see the sparkle in his eyes, the red divots on the bridge of his nose where his glasses sat, the darker roots of his teal hair. “Thank you. Thank you so, so much.”
“I’m Kim Namjoon,” the teacher said, and offered his hand.
Jungkook stared. Skin to skin contact between strangers was not a casual thing. Contact between soulmates would trigger the flash of heat from their matching tattoos. Jungkook could see the infinity symbol on the inside of Namjoon’s right wrist, bared by the rolled-back sleeves of his collared shirt, but his own wrists were hidden beneath his uniform. Namjoon couldn’t know that he was Unmarked.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to,” said Namjoon gently when Jungkook didn’t move.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. Jungkook loved skinship, but only with those he trusted, and those individuals were few and far between since his parents left him here. But somehow, for reasons Jungkook didn’t want to dig through, he didn’t feel that familiar instinctive urge to run away.
So Jungkook wiped his hand thoroughly on the somewhat-clean pants of his overalls and gripped the hand, marveling at the strength and how big it felt compared to his own, then bowed a perfect ninety degrees. “Thank you, Namjoon-ssi,” he chirped as he straightened.
If Namjoon showed any disappointment at his infinity symbol remaining cool to the touch, he didn’t show it. He just smiled expectantly, and kept holding his hand, and Jungkook blinked. “Oh, I’m Jeon Jungkook.”
“Jungkook,” he repeated softly, and butterflies danced in Jungkook’s stomach.
He had never felt this fluttery before. Unnerved, he dropped his hand and stepped back, hugging the book again, pleased when Namjoon looked proud at the gesture.
“You’re welcome to sit in on my classes whenever you wish,” Namjoon said next, as the pair turned in easy acquiescence and left the classroom.
Not really thinking about it, Jungkook ever so gently laid the book in the folds of his cleanest shirt and tucked it carefully in his backpack, unaware Namjoon watched him with another small smile. Jungkook hefted the four large trash bags awaiting him as they walked along, marveling at the offer. “Oh, I couldn’t, um, I couldn’t pay tuition—”
Namjoon waved that away, keeping easy pace. Jungkook thought the older man’s eyes traced the silhouette of his biceps but maybe that was wishful thinking. “I wouldn’t ask for money. And if your boss would have a problem with it, send him to me. Looks like you manage to get your work done before my class starts regardless.”
“You’re a good teacher,” Jungkook admitted shyly, as they walked through the big double doors into the warm night and paused as Jungkook locked up behind them. “I-I was never a good student.”
He could sense curiosity in Namjoon but the older man seemed too polite to ask about his background.
“All that you need to be a good student is curiosity, an interesting subject and a halfway decent teacher. So I’d say you’re a wonderful student already.”
Jungkook blushed, busied himself with tossing the trash bags into the dumpsters. He pulled hand sanitizer from his pocket and doused his hands liberally, hating the imaginary dirt and slime he could feel clinging to his skin. Namjoon already showed far too much deference to a mere janitor. Jungkook didn’t want to disgust him any further.
“So I’ll see you at my next class?” asked Namjoon when they paused again on the sidewalk.
Jungkook peered up at him. “You really don’t mind?”
“I wouldn’t offer if I minded, Kook-ah.”
The nickname brought warmth to his cheeks but Namjoon immediately waved his hands and stuttered, “S-sorry, that was forward of me—”
“It’s okay,” said Jungkook quietly, hoping against hope that his instincts weren’t wrong. He liked him. Liked the respect Namjoon treated him with. For now, at least.
“It’s okay,” he admitted more shyly, before fixing his eyes on his ripped sneakers.
“Okay. Then you can call me hyung.”
Jungkook felt a flare of warmth. “Namjoon hyung.”
He could have sworn Namjoon blushed. “Kook-ah. Get home safe, okay? You live nearby?”
Jungkook nodded vigorously. “A few blocks that way.” He gestured broadly, reasoning to himself that it wasn’t a lie.
“Okay,” repeated Namjoon. “I’ll see you soon, then.”
Jungkook started to walk off, then hesitated and peered back. “Thanks again for the book, hyung,” he said, and blushed violently again, before scurrying away, bravery gone.
“You’re welcome, Kook-ah,” Namjoon called after him as he disappeared down the street.
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