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It may have started sooner, but Jimin was seven when he first remembers noticing marks on his skin that he didn't put there. He was playing outside with his dog - a little fluffy thing he'd begged his mother to let him name Nabee and who followed him everywhere - when he caught a glimpse of something written on his hand.
It wasn't anything startling in and of itself, the note, a child's writing, maybe a little more precise than his own noting 'Min Yoongi's 10th Birthday @ 1PM Saturday.' The words were written in a dark, silvery gel pen that seemed to shimmer slightly in the soft afternoon light.
But though the note wasn't startling, its presence definitely was and Jimin had run into the house confused and crying, Nabee at his heels, calling, "What's this? What's this? I didn't write it Eomma, I promise, I didn't write it."
He wasn't sure if he'd expected his mother to become upset as well, or for her to be confused, or what, but Jimin had definitely not expected her to look at his tear streaked face and start chuckling. "It's not funny!" he insisted, shoving his hand closer to her face.
"No, no, it's not, I'm sorry Jimin," said his mother with a soft smile, reaching out to smooth his hair and wipe gently at his face.
"What's going on?" he'd asked petulantly, gazing up at her.
"This writing is from your soulmate," she said softly, still smoothing his hair. "Almost everyone in the world has at least one soulmate, and usually sometime during childhood it ends up that you share any marks that happen to their body and they share any marks that happen to yours. Well almost everywhere, faces seem to be exempt for some reason.
"No one's really sure why this happens or even why it happens at different ages for different people. I actually didn't start sharing marks with your father until I was nearly sixteen and I ended up meeting him a few weeks later. It's definitely not like that for everyone, though. My sister, your Auntie Miyoung, she started noticing her marks when she was eleven or twelve, but didn't meet her soulmate until she was ... twenty-six."
"My soulmate?" asked Jimin, much calmer now that he was starting to understand what was going on. He dragged a finger experimentally over the gel pen.
"The person who is best suited for you in the entire world. The person you're destined to be with," his mother explained, taking his hands in her own. "It's not a scary or a bad thing, I promise you, it's a good thing. Soulmates are wonderful. There can kind of be some strange moments, if your soulmate gets hurt or something, you won't get hurt but you'll be able to see the wound on your skin.
"It's just the way you two are connect, honey," finished his mother, kissing his forehead and standing to go back to whatever she had been doing. "You'll meet whoever it is eventually. Don't worry too much about it," she added, tousling his hair. And because his mother didn't seem worried and nothing was hurting, he went back outside with Nabee, sometimes stopping their play to admire the way the gel pen looked on the back of his hand.
He wonders if whoever it is picked the pen out themselves.
Years pass and Jimin finds himself falling in love with his soulmate little by little, feeling a fondness every time he wakes up and sees a reminder fading on his hand or his arm. It's a little like being inside their head, a little like holding their hand.
The only problem with this soulmate thing that Jimin has, really - besides not knowing who it is, though he trusts his mother's word and knows that he'll find out when he finds out - is that his soulmate seems to be incredibly accident prone. Jimin's woken up with more bruises on his arms and shins than he could ever accumulate by himself. Once, after dinner one night when he's thirteen, Jimin even notices that his leg has long, red road rash marks all over it, as though they've gotten in a real accident or maybe fallen off a skateboard. He wonders for awhile if his soulmate is alright, because just looking at it Jimin feels as though he should be limping, even if it doesn't hurt him at all. He considered writing "Are you okay?" in big block letter on his unmarked leg, but chickens out, too shy to draw attention to himself. The road rash fades eventually, leaving him with a scar that he can only see if the light's just right.
As he ages he starts noticing series of words he assumes are poems or lyrics on his arms, phrases filled with cheap insults and deep thoughts alike. Sometimes Jimin falls asleep while trying to think up a melody for them, his soulmates words meandering softly through his mind.
Sometimes he finds himself wondering what this soulmate is like, whoever it is who scrawls all over their shared skin, making it beautiful, marking it with confident letters and the occasional doodle of a bear, but he finds that he sort of already knows. He knows that they are talented and confident and goofy and clumsy and it's wonderful.
More than once Jimin falls asleep with a smile on his face, thinking softly to himself that this person, whoever they are, is perfect for him.
And more times than he can count Jimin has sat with a pen or marker poised above his own skin to write a note to whoever's on the other end. He marks himself occasionally for himself, of course. Just notes to remember to bring permission slips to school or for his friend's birthdays, sometimes drawing doodles of cats to amuse himself or writing things like "He who knows patience knows peace" and "Do not wait until you're thirsty to dig a well" to try and carry around some inspiration. But every time he considers writing something to his soulmate, he chickens out, leaving all of his stay safes and good lucks unwritten but on the tip of his tongue, or pen, rather.
Years pass with Jimin's pen poised just above his skin, not ready or able to take that last step towards actually communicating with whoever shares his skin. He wondered if his soulmate ever did the same thing.
He goes on with his life, eventually getting accepted into an arts college in Seoul on a partial dance scholarship which he travels to excitedly, ready for all the opportunities the large city might grant him. He hesitated, of course, pausing at the train station for a little too long, hair ruffling gently in the ever present wind at the station, thinking of how easy it would be to just turn around and return to his parents. But the train left with him, instead, and he finally started what felt like his life.
One Monday morning in his second year of college, he woke up to his alarm and after cancelling it and sitting up properly, closing the window so that the heat from the fall day won't permeate the apartment the way the gentle breeze had that night. Then, as he'd gotten into the habit of doing, he scanned his arms and legs for any damage his soulmate had left for him. That day, he'd woken up with a burn mark across the back of one hand, though it didn't hurt at all, and along his other arm a phone number written in large, erratic-looking handwriting. Jimin rubbed his eyes tiredly and smiled at the number, amused more than anything. The numbers all sort of ran together and it was hard to tell if that was a six or an eight, and if that down there on the end was a nine or a zero, and if those two numbers in the middle were supposed to be a pair of zeros or a single eight.
There's no jealousy or want tied into his amusement, as Jimin understood that his soulmate was a person, after all, and they have no way of knowing when they'll meet each other.
No, he definitely didn't feel any jealousy, instead, like so often now when he saw a note scrawled across his skin, he wanted to reply. Maybe he could write, "Are they cute?" below it. Maybe he could draw a winking face. He imagined a half dozen different scenarios where he wrote a message to his soulmate there below the messy numbers, his neat writing at odds with the sloppy scrawl of whoever wrote the number on his soulmate's arm.
But Jimin wrote none of those things. Instead, he turned to his other hand, the one with the burn mark, and wrote a careful reminder just below the burn mark so that he'd remember to meet with his choreography teacher at two to go over his final project for the class.
He hurriedly got his notebooks and bag ready, including a change of clothes for after dance practice that afternoon because he'd learned last year just how specifically uncomfortable it was to walk across campus completely covered in sweat. No thank you. Grabbing an apple and his phone, he rushed out the door, running, as usual, about two minutes late.
After his first two classes, Jimin went to meet his best friend Taehyung for lunch in the dining hall. He had always found something comforting about the long, low building near the middle of campus. Perhaps in that it was unobtrusive in its purposeful beige-ness. Maybe in that there were lots of people there but he was expected neither to work there nor interact with anyone there.
Taehyung already had a table secured, so after Jimin got a plate of rice and meat and cooked vegetables, he plopped easily beside his best friend. They'd met the second day of freshman year and been more or less inseparable ever since.
They made a strange pair, honestly. Jimin was rather short and even now that he was twenty, his face was round, and he was always thinking things through before he did them, sometimes to the point of inaction. Taehyung was not like that in any way. The boy was tall and willowy and covered in sharp edges and right angles. "Even your smile is square!" Jimin had said once to the boy, who'd answered in a fit of braying laughter. And he was impulsive to the point that he sometimes left a slurry of messes behind him.
"How was class?" Taehyung asked him, reaching for a bit of Jimin's food.
"Fine," said Jimin, pushing up his sleeves slightly so that he didn't get any food on them, and leaning into his plate slightly, the apple from that morning hadn't filled him up much. He continued between bites, "I didn't have much today yet, just that music theory class and that history class. I have some dance later."
"You have that meeting with your choreographer later, right?" asked Taehyung, flicking his bangs out of his eyes.
"Yeah," said Jimin, raising his hand with the burn mark to show his friend, "I wrote down a reminder for myself."
Taehyung reached out and ran his finger over the burn mark. He knew by now that Jimin wasn't the culprit and that instead it was his accident prone soulmate, but seeing the bright red burn on his friend's skin was still mildly alarming. "They need to take care of themselves better," Taehyung said quietly, "You're both going to be covered in scars any day now."
Jimin laughed at that, soft and tinkling, "Agreed. It seems they had fun though, I woke up with a phone number on my other arm." He reached and shoved his sleeve the rest of the way up, exposing the sloppily written phone number, smiling at the sloppy writing.
Jimin had expected his friend to laugh, or maybe sigh, because though Jimin had told Taehyung a hundred good things about his soulmate as well, it did seem to be that Jimin's soulmate was kind of a mess sometimes. However, Taehyung did neither and instead groaned and ran a hand down his face.
"What? What is it?" asked Jimin, an uncertain smile spreading across his face. Taehyung mumbled something and Jimin had to ask him to repeat whatever it was, because he hadn't caught any part of the sentence his friend had said.
Taehyung took his hand away from his mouth and said quietly, looking anywhere but at Jimin, "That's my phone number."
Jimin's eyes opened wide, nervous smile breaking across his face before he could do anything about it. "Wait, what?"
"Yeah, that's my phone number. I'm so sorry Jiminie," Taehyung said, covering the blush that was spreading across his face with one of his hands.
"What do they look like, Tae, I need to know, oh my god, you met my soulmate," said Jimin overwhelmed, looking around, eyes wide, trying to properly process what he was realizing. "Oh my god, you gave my soulmate your number, Tae. Are they cute? What are they like? I can't, oh my god, Tae ..."
Suddenly the whole soulmate thing felt much more immediate and much more real than it had in all those years since he'd noticed the gel pen on his hand. Jimin's stomach felt like it was in his mouth.
Taehyung spoke from behind his hand, face continuing to redden, "I have no idea. I remember writing my number on like a dozen different guys last night, but I don't remember what any of them looked like, honestly. I didn't even go home with anyone, I just wrote all over a bunch of boys then Hobi guided me home." Taehyung was laughing behind his hand now, squinting out from behind it to see if Jimin would be upset with him.
It took a minute to process, but Jimin found that he wasn't upset with his friend at all, just amused with his late night escapades. He'd gone from overwhelmed to excited and nervous to amused very quickly, and he felt that if he tried to feel for his pulse it would be racing like it did after a particularly long stretch of choreography.
After a moment and a deep breath, Jimin said, "Well, at least I know he's here somewhere and not like studying abroad or something." Taehyung nodded carefully. "And I know he's a he now for sure, because you sure as hell don't write your number on girls." Taehyung nodded again, lowering his hand slightly.
"You're not mad?" he asked, more quiet than Jimin had ever heard him before.
"Of course not," Jimin said, smiling and bumping gently into the other boy's shoulder. "You didn't know, you couldn't have known." Jimin paused for a moment, looking as though he'd like to say something else and eventually deciding on, "Take care of yourself, though, you should probably remember who you're writing on."
Taehyung let out a reluctant chuckle at that, bumping his shoulder back against Jimin's, and went back to his lunch.
The next few days passed quickly and uneventfully. Jimin met with the choreographer in a mostly positive interaction, Taehyung succeeded in acing some odd biology quiz he had, and Jimin's soulmate seemed to be recovering from his weekend. Jimin watched the number scrawled onto his arm fade little by little and no new notes or doodles to replace it.
"Wouldn't it be funny I wrote my number on your arm after that one fades completely?" remarked Taehyung, taking a sip of his wine cooler, not looking up from the anime they were watching in Jimin's apartment.
"Yes," Jimin said giggling, raising his hand to cover his mouth slightly. "Oh my god, that would be hilarious."
"I'm hilarious," said Taehyung nodding.
They were slumped together on the couch, performing their weekly ritual of anime and light drinking while pretending they didn't have to study for a few hours.
"I've never done that, though," Jimin said, tipping his head back slightly.
"Done what?" asked Taehyung, glancing over at his friend.
"Written something, like, to or for my soulmate to see specifically," Jimin said.
"Wait really?" asked Taehyung, sitting up a little straighter.
"Yeah, I mean ..." Jimin shifted, curling his legs beneath him, "I write notes on myself fairly often, but they're always just reminders or doodles of cats. Do you write things for your soulmate?"
"All the time!" said Taehyung, excitedly, "Yeah, I write him jokes on my leg a lot. He doesn't ever write jokes back or anything, but almost always he'll put little laughter symbols by it. He does the same thing when I get hickeys," said Taehyung with a fond smile. Jimin laughed loudly, throwing his head back, eyes crinkling into crescents, and holding his stomach.
"That's adorable!" said Jimin through his laughter, smile wide across his face.
Taehyung nodded, a soft smile curling the edge of his lips, "Yeah he's ..." Taehyung didn't seem to have the words to finish that sentence, but instead said, "I can't wait to meet him." That fond smile sat gently on his face and Jimin knew that that smile was so much more special than his usual box smile.
When he'd collected himself a little, Jimin said, "I've always kind of wanted to, you know, talk to him or comment on things but I've just been too ... too nervous." He ran a hand self-consciously through his hair.
Taehyung nodded, but his expression said that he thought Jimin was being kind of silly. And maybe he was, honestly, maybe he didn't have anything to be afraid of. There was nothing stopping him from contacting this boy who shared his skin, who would eventually share his heart. Nothing but himself.
The thought was sort of jarring and Jimin took another careful sip of his drink to try and wash it away.
"Speaking of your soulmate," Taehyung said, gesturing towards Jimin's arm, the one without the phone number. Jimin looked down to see what his friend meant, and sure enough, the first line and a half of what was sure to be several lines of lyrics were appearing on his skin, one character at a time. Jimin admired the lines, always impressed as how easily the lyrics seemed to come from his soulmate. "Here's your opportunity," said Taehyung, reaching for a Sharpie Jimin had left on the coffee table and handing it to him.
"What? Write to him now?" asked Jimin, eyebrows shooting up in alarm.
"Yeah," said Taehyung, glancing at his phone to check the time. "I've got to get going anyway if I want to get a start on my paper tonight," said the taller boy, standing and stretching.
"I don't know," said Jimin, uncertain. He played hesitantly with the marker, rolling it carefully between his fingers.
"I do," said Taehyung, reaching to tousle Jimin's hair as he walked past, towards the door. "I'll see you tomorrow for lunch."
"Yeah, yeah," said Jimin, waving him out, still staring at the lyrics appearing on his arm. There were three lines now, composed of thoughts about living life without the influence of other's thoughts. He'd done this before, watching while his soulmate wrote. There was something really intimate about it, that made the back of his arms tingle, as though he were looking into his eyes or reading someone's diary.
He smudged a thumb over the lyrics, considering. If Taehyung could write to his soulmate, surely Jimin could write to his. He took a sip of his drink and waited, watching the careful construction of each letter for a few moments, wondering vaguely what the hand that held the marker looked like, how it held the marker.
His soulmate wrote five lines before stopping and Jimin's hand tightened around the marker he still held.
Taking a deep breath, Jimin moves the tip of the marker just to the right of the lyrics and writes simply 'Hi.'
He could have written a million different things. He'd thought about saying that the lyrics were beautiful, or maybe drawing a cat beside them so that his soulmate would know he'd been watching, but if Jimin was going to do this, he might as well be direct.
He wasn't sure if he expected anything in response, honestly. He'd thought that maybe he'd be ignored or that his soulmate would continue on with his lyrics. Maybe his soulmate had already gone on to do something else and wouldn't look at his arm again for hours.
But in the time it took Jimin to take another sip of his drink, a Hi! had appeared next to his own and the beginning of what looked like a doodle of Ryan from Kakao Talk had begun to appear next to that. Jimin's eyes widened and a smile jumped onto his face as he watched his soulmate draw in the rest of the character. The bear's eyes were too big and the face was a little off center, but it was certainly very cute. He felt that familiar warmth of fondness spread down his limbs and picked the marker back up.
Jimin wasn't sure yet if Taehyung was right, that he should be doing this, but that little burble of validation that came from seeing a positive response was coaxing some of the worry from his stomach.
'These are lyrics, right? They're really beautiful,' Jimin wrote beneath his soulmate's greeting, not sure of how to start a proper conversation or if that was something he even wanted to do just yet.
Yes, thank you. I'm glad you like them came the response almost immediately again and Jimin felt that worry in his stomach ease just that little bit more.
While Jimin was thinking of what to say next, his soulmate started writing again. You've never responded before.
Jimin considers for a moment before smirking to himself and writing, 'A bit of liquid courage, but I've wanted to write back for ages'. However, the second the Sharpie left his skin, he wondered if that wasn't too forward. If his soulmate would think him too eager and lame at his admitting he had valued their limited interactions. He wondered how much his soulmate guessed from those words. If he was the kind of person to consider the implications at all.
Why didn't you? appeared along the curve of his wrist as he finished his drink, setting it heavily on the coffee table.
'I'm kind of a nervous person' Jimin wrote. His marker hovered just above his skin for a moment before he added a blushing face just beneath it.
I know appeared on his arm and Jimin laughed slightly to himself, there, alone in his apartment. He ran a nervous tongue along his bottom lip, wetting it.
'How?!' Jimin wrote, hoping it conveyed his surprise and confusion accurately. He wondered absently if maybe he should add more question marks and exclamation points, maybe a few ones for good measure. He wondered if his soulmate would laugh. He decided not to ask, though, and shifted back against the couch so he could get more comfortable.
You write inspirational things to yourself sometimes. Nervous people tend to need more inspiration came the reply, with a smiley face drawn at the end of it.
Jimin laughed to himself and went to start writing a reply to the left of it, but it seemed that his soulmate wasn't done yet, because below the first line another started to appear I actually used a line in some lyrics I wrote a bit ago.
And there was that trickle of fondness again, accompanied by curiosity, ebbing down his limbs. A warmth spreading throughout his body that had nothing to do with the alcohol he'd consumed. He realized suddenly that he was smiling, that he had been smiling for quite awhile now.
'You write a lot of lyrics,' Jimin wrote, 'Are you a singer?'
The response came immediately, a slurry of little laughter symbols peppering the back of his hand, covering the remnants of Jimin's reminder to meet with his choreographer but careful to avoid the burn that he'd written the reminder beneath. I can't sing at all, I rap some but I'm a production major.
'That's so cool!' Jimin wrote. 'That fits you.'
What do you do? came the response and they continued like that for a long while, getting to know one another much more directly than they had for the last dozen or so years. It was a bit like meeting someone new and a bit like running into an old friend. Both like going somewhere new for the first time and coming home after a long trip.
This was more than Jimin had ever hoped for.
After awhile Jimin realized that his eyes were itching with sleep and that he was more or less quite literally covered in Sharpie. His entire left arm was covered almost completely, only small strips of skin visible between lines of conversation. His right arm had a chunk of lyric written on it in a valiant effort by his soulmate and a quite terrible drawing of a pair of cats by himself. His left leg was covered almost completely from the knee down, with little snippets of conversation nudging above his knee as well. And his right leg had a good portion of the shin covered when he started yawning from exhaustion.
He checked the time on his phone and realized with some embarrassment that it was nearly 3 A.M. and he'd neglected all of his responsibilities for sitting on his couch for hours, writing to his soulmate.
A large part of him realized that it had been worth it, but man was this going to be a pain to wash off later.
When he sets his phone back down, he sees his soulmate writing I'm exhausted, but we should get coffee Saturday @ 1. Gloria Beans? Jimin smiled sleepily to himself when his soulmate added I'm Namjoon by the way with a little smiley face beside it.
He had a name for this boy, finally, and it was like learning something that he'd forgotten he'd known. Jimin said the name softly aloud to himself, enjoying the taste of it on his tongue. He replied one last time before he headed to bed, 'Jimin - I'll be the person completely covered in Sharpie.'