Chapter Text
Gyuvin was up at midnight when the day shifted to his birthday. He watched, one, two, three seconds as lines formed on his arm in elegant whisps and curls.
He hadn't expected anything but a couple hours after he'd said goodnight to his parents, he'd laid on his bed, scrolling on his phone under the guise of finding more San edits. His eyes darted up to the time every now and then, counting the minutes as it drew closer to midnight.
At 11:59, he slid off his bed, feet falling soundlessly as he made his way to the light switch. He watched as it ticked to a clean 0:00 and flipped the switch. He squinted his eyes as his room came into view: the messy covers, pillow slanted with his charger cord strewn across it. He looked down, nothing on his left arm, then to his right arm, and back before he felt a ticklish sensation.
On his left arm was a flower, a small one no bigger than his thumb as he laid it over the ticklish skin. At the center was a tiny dot and its petals were thin lines with even thinner strokes encased within. As he brushed his finger over it, another dot appeared, followed by a small stroke, another petal, and then another until another flower was complete. Gyuvin watched as the tiny flowers bloomed across his forearm, claiming the space for its own.
He reached a hand to his bookbag and pulled out his pencil pouch, unzipping it and grabbing his pen. On the outside of his forearm where the canvas was still clear, he wrote his first message:
안녕! [hello!]
For a few minutes, he sat there, waiting for a reply. Even as he put his pen away and turned off the lights, shining his phone on his arm, no reply came.
There were no new flowers, no new messages, no changes in the morning when he woke. His own little message stared up at him. He wrote a new one, this time next to the tiny flowers that had formed one big bunch:
hi
No reply. Maybe they were busy, he reasoned with himself as he stared at his uniform. Even though the weather was beginning to mild, it was still hot out and only got worse throughout the day... but it didn't feel right to wear his summer uniform with its short sleeves, not when the flowers were still there and he hadn't gotten a single word from his soulmate in response.
So even when he was sweating in his white button-up, the first button of his collar free but making little difference in the weather, he didn't regret it, not when prying eyes wanted to know everything about his soulmate when he himself knew so little.
At lunch he secretly checked, peering down his sleeve as he rest his elbow on the table like he was going to prop his head on his fist. Clean. Completely blank. Gyuvin pushed the cuff up but even when he got to his elbow, there was nothing.
"Oooh, did you feel your soulmate writing to you?" His classmate leaned over, head hovering over his tray.
Gyuvin made eye contact with a few girls over his friend's shoulder, covering their mouths as they looked away. He reached up and pushed the head that had snuck a piece of galbi from his tray under the guise of curiosity.
"No."
And with that, he stole away two slices of mango from the original thief's tray before hands came up to block his chopsticks.
Over the next few days, Gyuvin woke up to little doodles: flowers, music notes, fruits — one time, even a simple cat face — but never any words. Not until now.
He craned his neck to look at the characters in their brush script. The strokes were thick and obviously written with speed and familiarity. It kind of looked like... a 7 but also a 1? But there was also a line next to it that looked like grass and he wasn't sure if that was part of a word or a drawing.
作业 [homework]
Gyuvin had figured out his soulmate's schedule by now: by the time he woke up for school, his soulmate usually already had taken to the skin and left their mark; during morning classes, sometimes he would discover a new drawing; when lunch rolled around, the evidence would be erased. Unless his soulmate was taking the time to clean his arm in the middle of the day, they were definitely in a different time zone from him. And if they were in different time zones... they probably didn't even speak the same language. He wrote in large letters, covering the expanse of his whole forearm.
안녕 나는 너의 소울메이트!
Hi I am your soulmate
Better cover all his bases.
That day in the middle of math, he felt an itch on his arm. Absentmindedly, he scratched before realizing and rolling up his sleeve. Right below his English sentence was:
sorry your
| /
sryurhandwriting's bad, google can't read it
A second later followed:
hi
你好, 朋友
Gyuvin grabbed his pen:
hello! sorry I will try better
He slipped his phone out of his pocket and pulled up the translator app, setting it from Chinese to Korean and trying his best to write out the characters on his arm. His seatmate leaned forward, bent elbow stretching over to his side of the desk. Gyuvin leaned back slightly, glancing up between strokes to angle himself better, away from the teacher's gaze. Hi, friend, his soulmate had said.
A rough elbow knocked against his arm and he slid his phone into his desk on top of his textbooks. The tips of his lips fell as he leaned forward, pretending like he was flipping a page in his notes as the teacher walked down the aisle, talking about some formula.
"Rare to catch you distracted like that," his seatmate said in the break between classes. He looked over to where Gyuvin was rapidly typing into his phone, a curious glance but not demanding answers.
Gyuvin looked up, "Thanks for covering though." He sent a nudge in his direction before pushing his sleeve up and copying the text from his phone:
你的字写得真漂亮 [your handwriting is very pretty]
Or well, it looks close enough to what he meant to write, he hopes. There's so many lines and the text on his phone is small and he might've drawn a hook upwards where there wasn't one but it's big enough that it should be legible... right?
He gets a reply a few minutes later.
감사합니다 [thank you]
you can write in Korean, just write it a bit neater and I can translate anything
ok! you can also write in English, I can translate too
The weeks following, Gyuvin learned a lot about his soulmate, mostly from his own initiative.
이름이 뭐에요? [what is your name?]
the pinyin is quanrui but I go by something else in school since no one can pronounce it over here
뭔데? [what is it?] wait let me guess
Kevin
Jeffrey
George
John
really? John?
제 한국 친구들은 모두 이런 종류의 이름을 가지고 있어요 [all my Korean friends have these kinds of names]
말하지 마, 제가 맞춰볼게 [don't tell me, let me guess]
sure, but I don't think you'll get it
One day — he gave himself that amount of time and even then he still couldn't get it.
I give up, what is your English name?
I'm not gonna tell you anymore :P
:O hey!
tell me your name though, you never told me yours
김규빈 but in English it is written as Kim Gyuvin
google pronounces it like Q-bean
I am not a Q-bean D: what is a Q-bean
ur a Q-bing
야! [hey!]
He'd also brought up moving online since his friends had all ended up with Korean-speaking soulmates and it was more convenient.
sorry I don't know about that
Ah, he wrote back. That's ok! I mean, we are technically strangers. Besides, there's something pretty romantic about communicating only during these hours and connected through our own skin.
it's also messy and slow
그래도 멋지지 않나요 ( •́ ^ •̀ ) [still, isn't it cool]
we meet like this and we are tied by fate
마치 우리가 로미오와 줄리엣 같아요 [it's as if we're Romeo and Juliet]
운명적인 연인처럼 [like fateful lovers]
aw already falling for me?
??? 야! 아니, 근데, 뭐 [??? yah! no, i mean, well...]
you can be my dirty little secret if you want to
not planning to end up like romeo and juliet though
After one of Quanrui's bigger doodles (a shading-heavy dragon that wound around his arm and attempted to make it to the back of his hand), he'd asked Quanrui if he could, maybe, just...
ah sorry I kind of forget it also shows up on your skin
sorry I won't draw that much
no I like it! but school is strict
oh lol did it look like you got a tattoo or something
맞아! 학생은 문신가 금지되어 있는데, 제가 무슨 양아치가 된 줄 알더라고요 [yes! tattoos are not allowed as a student, they think I became a delinquent]
do you wear shorts
not for school
ok, then that's my art space
what color does this show up as though
? is it not black for you?
no? it's like an yellow orange color, like a mango
oh mango! i like mango!
oh, so it's like our favorite colors
I like red too but red ink on your skin could look kind of like blood... so it's good that it's black
black ink is cool
Sometimes when he didn't really have anything to say but still wanted to talk, he'd draw a little smiley face. Sometimes Quanrui would respond, other times he wouldn't, mainly because of the time difference. In the coming weeks, Gyuvin would occasionally ask some questions about English and Quanrui would respond with his own questions about Korean.
And then one day, instead of waking up and seeing Quanrui's art, he saw blank skin.