#fic:aiat

[knjsagustd]

and it’s a tragedy | myg 01

You can feel your heart breaking.  You know, in your soul, that falling in love with this man would be easy.  You’re already halfway there.

Part One | Part Two

→ Yoongi x OC

→ w/c: 4.6k

→ idol!Yoongi, soulmate au

→ warnings: discussion of mental health, mention of sex (not explicit), oc is bisexual, angst (a lot of angst)

→a/n: i just need people to know that the first draft of this was written in one sitting between one and three am bc i thought of the first line and couldn’t sleep.  i wrote 3027 in that first sitting - which is probably more than i’d written outside of uni for the entire year - the re-drafting process added a further 1500 - so rip me i guess.  basically i have no self control, and it shows in how unnecessarily specific i am in this.  sorry.

You’ve always been fascinated by soulmarks.  To a certain extent you think everyone is.  It’s hard not to be when everyone has at least one.  And some people are walking canvases, covered in the brushstrokes of their love.  Everyone has words somewhere on their body, etched into their skin from the moment their primary soulmate’s birth.  But no one has just one soulmate.  That would be a stupid system.  The words are the person you are destined to meet.  It’s bond, usually it means love but platonic primary bonds exist.  A bond that has been proven breakable.  It’s difficult but primary soul bonds can be severed  Usually they are broken only by death, but irreversible heartbreak or harm can do it too.  There are whispers of people who specialise in artificially breaking primary bonds.  Then there’s the secondary bonds - so called because they usually appear after the primary one.  Not because they are any less important.  Soulmates aren’t just born, they’re made.  Chosen.  If primary bonds are fate the secondary ones are freewill.  Images blossom on your skin as you grow and create bonds.  Platonic soulmates are just as important, legally as well as socially and spiritually, as romantic ones.  But the secondary bond can also be romantic, usually in cases of death, betrayal or sometimes the primary bond just frays.  Sometimes primary soulmates aren’t what you thought.  Romantic secondary soulmates often occur when people find love again after a primary bond is fractured or broken, by death or life.

You are born, screaming, at 9:27 am on the twenty-fourth of January 1998 in Perth, Scotland.  On the inside of your thigh there is a tight scrawl in an alphabet that is not English.  No one in the room can read it.  Largely due to the unfamiliar characters, but also because its tiny, squeezed onto a tiny stretch of skin.  You’re a small baby.  As the midwife looks you over your dad presses a kiss to your mother’s forehead.  He is holding her hand with his right one and a bacon butty from the hospital cafeteria in the other.  He had almost missed your birth to get it - this is something you never let him forget once you learn it.  His words aren’t visible.  They sit on his chest, right over his heart, in your mother’s boxy handwriting. They read ‘How is he?’.  When you’re twenty, and home from uni for christmas, you find out that the first time your parents met your father saved your grandfather’s life.  They never said anything because at that point your mother was engaged to another man.  It’s not something they talk about.  Your mother is crying with relief, labour is hard.  Her hospital gown has slipped down her arm leaving her words, which are stamped on her shoulder, clear to see.  ‘He’s stable’ is there in your father’s messy scrawl - he is the epitome of doctor’s handwriting.  Your mother has a second soulmark, a watercolour willow on her left forearm - for her best and oldest friend, Amanda.  Apart from that they’re bare.  As you are handed back to your parents, gently placed in your mother’s arms with a whisper from the midwife calling you ‘perfect’, the door bursts open.  

You have an older brother, Andrew.  He’s two years and less than two months older than you.  He toddles in with your grandfather in tow.  Andrew has no soulmarks yet.  His primary soulmate has not been born and two year olds with secondary marks is unheard of.  Your Grandfather, though, has multiple soulmarks.  You only see them in summer, the rest of them time he wears large, misshapen sweaters.  There’s looping handwriting on the inside of his right arm, it’s not the deep black of most people’s words, but a faded grey.  It’s in cursive and you never learnt to read it.  But one day - when you’re old enough to ask - he tells you it’s your grandmother.  She died a month before Andrew was born.  Lung cancer.  As you grow up each of your grandfather’s secondary marks become faded, any colours turn grey.  The last one, a vibrant rose that looks like something out of a classical manuscript, fades a week before your twelfth birthday when Betty, his best friend, dies during a routine check up at the hospital.

Andrew’s words appear ten months after your birth.  You can walk by then.  There’s a video of you toddling around after the dog while Andrew sobs. Apparently receiving soulmarks hurts. His words are wrapped around his wrist, someone asking if he knows where the law section of the library is.  They’re in English.  When you’re fourteen you look into whether the placement of primary soulmarks means anything.  You thought that having your thigh on your inner thigh felt quite intimate - it makes you uncomfortable.  It doesn’t mean anything.  Placement is completely random and meaningless.  Less than a year later you feel like soulmates are too.

When you’re two years old you go to Disneyland Paris.  And, once you’re home, your mother gives birth to your little brother.  Adam doesn’t scream immediately when he is born, but he does have words.  The midwife fixes the situation quickly.  Within two minutes he’s crying, with healthy lungs that he doesn’t stop using for what feels like years.  When you’re allowed in you crawl up the bed to look at your baby brother.  He’s ugly.  All squishy and red and swaddled in a blanket.  But at least at that moment he’s sleeping.  His words are just visible, finishing at his jaw.  They’re in pretty handwriting.  At this point you can’t read.  Anyway, you think you prefer Disneyland.

You’re a curious child.  Your parents teach you to read before you start school in an attempt to sate it.  Largely it works.  Distracted by books you’re less likely to ask people invasive questions - too caught up in whatever story sits on the page in front of you.  But you’re still frustrated when nothing ever looks like the characters on your inner thigh.  You’d ask around but you learnt very early on that it’s rude to just show people your words in the hopes of them recognising them.  Plus no one in your limited social circle as a toddler speaks anything other than English.  Let alone a language with a completely different alphabet.  Your dad likes asian cinema, though.  He sits in the living room watching samurai movies with english subtitles.  He thinks they must come from around there - he doesn’t know enough to say more.  You can’t really say because you can’t read and unless you sit with your face inches from the tv screen or squint from the sofa it’s blurry.  At nine you’ll get your eyes tested for the first time and find out that trees have individual leaves.

At nine you change schools.  It’s the first somewhat dramatic thing to happen to you.  Andrew was moving to high school and the one your parents liked the most offered the last two years of primary school so they decided to move you too.  To make the transition easier.  In your first year there you meet Isla, she’s bigger than you and has just moved from South Africa despite being Irish.  But she has a wicked sense of humour and draws you pictures during maths lessons.  In the summer before high school you spend a week in the cottage her family has up north - on the, at this point unpronounceable, peninsula of Ardnamurchan.  After a day of running amok in the village you wake up with a burning feeling where your neck meets your shoulder.  When you check in the mirror there’s a stroke of soft blue paint there.  Isla takes to resting her head there when you’re watching TV.  A year after you meet her, Alexandra joins your class.  She’s quiet at first but her and Isla know each other from swimming.  You’re eleven and that’s more than enough reason to become friends.  On her twelfth birthday, three weeks before you start highschool, you, her and Isla are sitting on her couch with a sugar high watching bootleg musicals.  The burning sensation is on your arm this time.  Next to you, Alexandra is hissing because it feels like someone is holding a cigarette to her ribcage.  When you look down there’s a thin line art drawing of a mountain just above your left elbow.  Alexandra lifts her shirt and there’s a small golden feather that shines when the light catches it.  You know these are platonic bonds but they’re strong.  Sometimes your fingers brush over them and you feel comfort and joy wash over you.  You try not to touch the words on your inner thigh.  That makes your chest tighten and your heart race.  When you share space with Isla and Alexandra your group bond sings.  It goes taught, you feel peaceful.  

When you’re ten you start to learn guitar.  This grows into piano and ukulele as you get older.  You’ve been doing musical theatre as long as you can remember but you want to be able to make your own music.  Plus you really like Taylor Swift, so  logically if she plays guitar so should you.  It makes sense to a ten year old.  Sometimes you get frustrated because melodies and rhythms pop into your head but you just can’t make them happen.  You sit on your bed with a third hand guitar, your uncle had owned it since highschool and gave it to you when you started showing interest, muddling through music that exists only in your brain.  You feel like it has lyrics but you just don’t know them.

You work out the language marking your thigh when you’re fourteen.  It’s the middle of a sweltering summer, you’ve gone inside to get a glass of water and the London Olympics are on TV.  They always are, even if no one in your house is watching.  Right now the Judo matches are being shown and you stop dead in your tracks as the gold medalist takes the stand.  Because beside his name are characters that bear so much resemblance to the ones marking you.  You pull your phone out of your pocket and begin googling.

Hangul - that’s the alphabet that’s been a part of you since you were born.  It’s Korean.  You beg your parents for lessons.  They’ve always wanted the best for you, so of course they say yes.  If this is how you find your soulmate then who are they to stand in the way.  It takes a while to find them.  Unsurprisingly, there is little demand for Korean teaching in Scotland.  But there’s lessons in Edinburgh on a Saturday evening.  You take the train down in the afternoon and stay with your grandfather until he takes you home on Sunday morning.  He regales you with stories of his time in Japan.  It’s not quite right but the heart is there.  You feel like you’re on the right track.  In the evenings you take to stroking the mark, or even just looking at it.  That ache and breathlessness still come when you look at it.  But it’s easier to ignore when you feel like you are halfway to solving the riddle.  You are so full of hope.

Until you aren’t.  The night before you start your fifth year of high school you finally feel confident enough to read your words.  You sit with your Korean notebook on your bed and take a picture of the words.  Peggy, your dog, is watching you from where she’s curled up at the far end of your bed.  You can read Hangul, kind of, but you definitely can’t do it upside down.  It takes a second, it’s a messy, chicken-scratch scrawl unlike your teacher’s handwriting or printed text.  You have to refer to your notes a few times.  But you read it.  And you cry.  At this point you haven’t mastered the art of silent crying - that will come with time.  Your door is open from when Peggy nudged it open, and your mum hears you.  She walks in, concerned.  Peggy’s tail starts going at the sight of her.  That makes you cry more.  She gathers you into a hug.  Through shaky breaths and hiccups you tell her,

“They don’t want me.”

The words on your thigh aren’t the stuff of soap operas, like you parents.  They aren’t a meet-cute like Andrew.  Adam has something everyday, innocuous.  You have rejection.  The words on your thigh say,

I don’t want this.

And there are a million options for what it could be.  You mess up someone’s order in whatever minimum wage server job you get during uni.  Or you’re canvassing for a charity or political cause.  But in your, for lack of a better word, soul you know it’s a rejection.  You are what your soul mate doesn’t want.  That’s why touching your mark feels wrong.  Why it fills you with panic and pain.  You’re not good enough.

You miss the first day back.  When you come in on the second day your registration teacher looks at you with so much pity you want to throw up.

Things change after that.  It would be hard for them not to.  Alexandra and Isla try to be there for you.  In the beginning you don’t let them.  They don’t get it.  Isla has cute handwriting - the kind that dots their ‘i’s with hearts - swirling up her arm talking about what must be a painting.  Alexandra has a cheesy flirtation on her collar bone.  They have romcoms lined up for them.  But fate gave you a tragedy.  The mark you used to love so much has always marked you as a mistake.  It’s almost Shakespearian.  And as a teenage girl it’s so hard not to let that rule you.

You learn to put on a brave face.  You’ve always been a quick study when it mattered to you, pretending to be okay is no different.  You throw yourself into school.  There are times when you make yourself sick with how ragged you run yourself.  Either no one notices or they don’t want to bring it up.  You get a B in Chemistry, and you barely sleep for a week studying to make it up.  You never get another B.  You’re a straight A student, in every show the school puts on, as well as volunteering and extracurriculars outside of school.  If you can’t be wanted you will be remarkable.  There are weeks when you’re up all night vomiting because you can’t keep food down.  It’s just stress.  You make yourself vibrant and extraordinary while people are looking, when they aren’t you wither.  You fade.

At sixteen you realise gender isn’t factor in how you love.  You fall for a girl, Callie.  She’s one of your closest friends.  One day you’re talking to some people, she pops her head between them and the whole world gets smaller.  All you can think is ‘shit’.  You think she likes you.  She’s your first kiss - you’re both a little bit drunk at a party.  It’s soft.  You want more but another friend is rolling around on the floor, and seems liable to throw up, after having drunk nearly two bottles of prosecco within an hour.  So you don’t.  You help the friend, trying not to focus on the way Callie keeps finding ways to touch you.  Something is making you feel sick, you don’t know if it’s how her hands keep ghosting over yours or the smell of vomit.  You liked kissing her, you chased her lips as she pulled away.  But there’s this weight in your stomach, guilt.  And you hate yourself a little bit more.  Your primary soulmate doesn’t want you but here you are.  Part of you wants them.

On Monday you explain it to Callie.  Her smile is sad but she understands.  She hugs you.  Her primary mark is on her hip, a sweet compliment.  That’s what she deserves - not the broken husk you’ve already become.  But you’re selfish, maybe that’s why your primary bond doesn’t want you.  So you keep getting drunk, you keep letting her kiss you.  Sometimes it goes further.  But even as her fingers find ways to unravel you they never touch the words written on your thigh.  Even as your lips discover her body you avoid dragging them over the characters on her hip.  At twenty you haven’t slept with her in a year.  But she’s one of your best friends, you don’t think you can remember a day when you haven’t spoken to her.  You wake up on a Thursday, you have class in two hours, and it feels like someone is holding a hot coal to your back.  You get your flatmate, Aodahn, to look at it.  There’s a bright, almost glowing, constellation on your left shoulder blade.  It’s pisces - Callie’s birth sign. When you check your phone there’s a series of video snapchats from Callie waiting.  She’s half crying while she shows you your golden feather on her ribcage.  You feel like crying.  It would be so easy to love her.  Not for the first time you wonder if fate made a mistake.

By twenty-one you are a collage of all the people you’ve loved.  But it doesn’t matter because despite how many people love you, there’s someone that doesn’t.  Someone fate decided to bond to you.  Someone that will take one look at you and say they don’t want you.

You’ve developed masochistic tendencies.  All those years of self-hatred had to lead to something.  It’s the only explanation.  You’re going to Korea.  You graduated from a top university with a first class history degree and you felt stagnant.  Trapped.  It was paired with your paralysing fear of things going wrong, because everything seems to go wrong for you.  You had a bit of a breakdown on a random Wednesday about it - you know, the usual.  So you did the logical thing.  You applied to be an English teaching assistant in Korea.  It’s all Callie’s fault.  You’d been speaking to her about how terrified you are of being normal and she floated the idea.  She found her soulmate at a comic con six months prior and was on the blissed out high everyone you’ve known to find their soulmate stays in for the first year.  Alexandra says you’re being dramatic.  That maybe this is the right thing and maybe you need to find your soulmate, to get some sort of closure.  She says this on facetime with her primary soulmate making dinner in the background, so you are not sure how much of an authority on primary bond heartbreak she is.  But still, you got a TEFL certificate last summer.  You applied during your final year of university and got a position in Seoul.  You’re going to Korea in three days.  You’re terrified.

It hurts, because you like Korea.  No, you love Korea.  You can see a life here.  And it’s a shame because beauty is everywhere you look but all of it is tainted by the idea that anyone you walk past could be the owners of your words.  You live in a small apartment in Itaewon, the school you're working at owns a few for its language assistants.  When you aren’t thinking about the heartbreak etched into your thigh, your soul, you are some sort of happy.  The people you work with are amazing, fun and different.  It reminds you of the summer you spent working at an American summer camp after your first year of university.  Except you’re not trapped in the same 5,500 acres for three months.  You all hangout together.  One of them, a girl called Ellie from Leeds, makes you listen to Kpop.  You’d heard things here and there but once you found out the meaning of your words you avoided anything to do with Korea.  Until you made the big, potentially masochistic, decision that brought you here.  You find you like dancing around her tiny kitchen with her, singing along when you can.  She makes you watch hours worth of content on youtube.  Within a month, when she’s very drunk and you’re very not, she tells you the reason she got into all of this was because her words are in Korean too.  Hers sit just below her right breast.  They’re sweet.  She says that she knows it’s silly and childish but sometimes she hopes that her primary bond is with one of her idols.  You give her hand a squeeze.  You hope that for her too.  She deserves that happiness.

But it all comes crashing down.

Four months into your stay you’re walking through an almost empty park at two am.  You’d run to a convenience store after Ellie had decided you needed ice cream but she didn’t want to move.  So you had tugged the ratty sweater on she’d given you, because she’d spilt red wine on the one you had arrived in, and left.  The rain had stopped about ten minutes before and the world felt new.  You’d gotten the ice cream but decided to take the long way back, through a small park that always made you feel peaceful.  There’s been this buzzing under your skin since you stepped out of the convenience store.  As you walk further into the park your chest feels tight.  You try to ignore it.  Ahead of you there’s your favourite part of the park.  It’s a fountain that lights up when night hits.  You never get tired of looking at it.  It looks especially beautiful tonight, the puddles around it reflecting back its lights.  There’s a lone figure standing in front of it.  Something about him draws you in.  Your brain feels almost hazy as you come to a stop beside him.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” you say without thinking.  They all but fall out of you in English.  For a second all you feel is awkward at the thought of randomly speaking to someone in a language they may not understand.

Then the air changes.  You feel everything.  For a moment you are everything.  It’s electric, bolts of lightning sizzling under your skin.  He doesn’t have to speak, you know exactly what’s just happened.  What’s coming.  You refuse to look at him, yet.

“I don’t want this.”  It’s not how you thought the words would be said.  You thought they’d come with a sneer as the person took in your every flaw and decided you weren’t worthy.  But he seems sad, almost apologetic.  His voice is a deep drawl, almost lazy.  It reverberates around your chest, making you ache with an unfamiliar longing.  And the worst part is you know the voice.  Ellie has made you watch possibly hundreds of videos that feature it.  It’s your favourite part of so many songs.

So you turn your head, because you have to be sure.  He’s looking at you too.  There’s a hollowness in his soft, brown eyes.  He’s taller than you, though not by much.  What you can see of his hair - he’s wearing a beanie and hoodie, is dark.  Part of you yearns to brush away the locks that have fallen in front of his beautiful eyes.  There’s a disposable mask pulled down to cup his jaw.  You can feel your heart breaking.  You know, in your soul, that falling in love with this man would be easy.  You’re already halfway there.  Millions have done it just from watching youtube videos.  Your soulmate is Min Yoongi.  You want to cry.  You want to scream, because fate has been so cruel.

He stares back.  You want to believe he’s committing you to memory as you are him.  He takes everything in.  Your choppy hair - last week you and Ellie drunkenly cut it with her kitchen scissors and you haven’t had the time to phone a salon.  The day old, smudged eyeliner that you can’t be bothered to take off that’s hidden behind your thick rimmed glasses.  The oversized sweatshirt - it almost starts a laugh out of you as you remember it’s Ellie’s AgustD one - over the top of some ripped up mum jeans.  Everything about you is screaming at him that you aren’t good enough.  You close your eyes for a second, gathering any strength you have.  You’ve been prepared for this for seven years.  That doesn’t make it hurt any less.  

“Do I get to ask why?”  Your voice is smaller than you thought it would be in this situation.  But at least it doesn’t shake.  For a second it seems like Yoongi is going to reach out to you.  His arm twitches, the hand moving towards you almost imperceptibly.  It drops.

“You don’t want this either.”

The horrible thing is that he’s wrong.  Because despite the fact that the first time he broke your heart was when you were fifteen and you decided then that you didn’t need a soulmate, you can’t not want him.  No matter how many times you convinced yourself that you were better than the rejection that has always marked you.  Or the amount of lies you’ve told yourself that it doesn’t hurt anymore.  A part of you has yearned for what other people get.  The little girl who believed in the enduring power of primary bonds never really died.  You just painted over her.  Like a crack in the wall.

“You don’t get to tell me what I want.  You owe me an explanation.”  

It’s taking every ounce of pride you have left to not cry.  But your own anger and heartbreak aren’t the only things bubbling in your chest.  There’s sadness and a sort of loathing that feels both foreign and familiar.  You want to throw up.  You’ve heard stories, read things, about how some primary bonds, the strongest ones, allow their owners to feel each other's emotions after meeting.  Something about the words being said solidifies and strengthens the bond.  And you hate it.  Fate must be laughing at you, giving you such a strong bond to man that doesn’t want you.

“It wouldn’t work.  I can’t give you what you’re looking for.  I’d destroy you.”

“You already destroyed me,” You hiss. “I used to shine, you know, I lit up rooms with love and hope.  I was fifteen when I learnt that I had been marked since birth as not good enough.  You broke me and I’m still fixing it.  Why would I look for anything from you?”

Words catch in his throat, all that comes out is a strangled noise.  With that you nod, spin on your heel and walk away.  You don’t cry.  It hurts more than you thought it would.  Whether that applies to meeting him, feeling the soul bond snap into place, or walking away from him you don’t know.  Everything in you is betraying you, screaming to go back.  There are moments, as you pause at the traffic lights, fumble with Ellie’s key when you reach her building, wait for the elevator to come, when you almost do.  You’re in physical pain and there’s this foreign lump in your throat that you know is him.  In the elevator you laugh, because the ridiculously shallow thought that you’ll never be able to look at the fountain again pops, unbidden, into your head.  Then you cry.

masterlist

[knjsagustd]

and it’s a tragedy | myg 02

“I don’t think I’ll survive being broken by you again,” “All I want to do is know you,”

Part One | Part Two

→ Yoongi x OC

→ w/c: 4.5k

→ idol!Yoongi, soulmate au

→ warnings: discussion of mental health, oc is bisexual, angst (a lot of angst), slight discussion of negative body image

Monday comes too soon.  For the first time since arriving in Korea you call in sick to work.  Ellie goes in, armed with a story about a really bad BBQ pork you ordered on deliveroo while drunk.  She knows the real story, but you swore her to secrecy.  You think there’s an argument that she was more heart broken by Yoongi than you were.  (She still believes in the fated happiness promised by primary marks.)  And besides, it’s not a hundred percent a lie.  You threw up five times, and can barely move other than to drink water.  The whole world feels like sandpaper against you.  You wonder if this means the bond is broken.  It’s a false hope.  When you force yourself to look at the words stamped on your thigh they’re still a rich black.  That causes you to throw up a sixth time.  Plus, even as you try not to think about it, you can feel him.  He’s everywhere, all consuming, even while you have no clue where he is.  You can feel his exhaustion as your eyes struggle to stay open while you apathetically watch Grey’s Anatomy in a vague attempt to feel something.  You can feel his frustration, welling up randomly while you eat a bowl of cereal because you don’t have it in you to cook right now.  You can feel his regret.  You try not to dwell on that one.  The ache it fills you with.  How it makes you want to find him.  To forgive him.

Time passes slowly.  You speak to your parents.  They listen as you give them half the story.  You don’t tell them who your soulmate is, only that you met them.  It doesn’t matter, and they don’t really know who BTS are anyway.  You tell them that the meeting went exactly as expected.  They try to offer comfort, you just nod.  Once again they don’t understand.  A week later they phone to tell you that Adam has also found his primary bond.  A girl in one of his labs, who asked whether he’d done any of the summer reading.  Adam, ever the unobservant, had replied and not realised what was happening until the girl was almost fainting.  You said congratulations, plastered on a smile.  After the call ended you didn’t cry - the tragedy of you life has led you to use tears sparingly.  You wanted to scream, but in the middle of Seoul there's always going to be someone who hears.   You don’t tell your friends back home.  A part of you hurts when you look at their marks and think about how shit of a soulmate you’ve been lately.  You’ve all been so busy that your communication has dwindled to memes and the occasional check.  Sometimes, you think they’re better off without you.  They all have their primary bonds - they don’t need lonely, tragic you.  Ellie stops playing BTS when you hang out, stops showing you videos.  That sick masochistic part of you wishes she still did.  It craves any scrap of Yoongi it can get.  Even that’s watching videos on Youtube or feeling that ache his raps always gave you.  One time you come over early and her phone is sitting on the counter with BTS’s most recent interview paused.  You stare at Yoongi.  He looks sad, tired.  You know he is, you feel it near constantly next your own exhaustion through the bond.  Ellie sees you looking.  For a second she hesitates before picking up her phone and closing the app for good measure.  Then she turns on Taylor Swift.  You dance while unpacking groceries, pretending everything is fine.

Nearly two months later you feel restless.  Ellie tries to get you to come along with her and the other language assistants, they’re spending the day shopping and then clubbing.  You say no.  Today you feel like bursting, too full and too empty at the same time.  If you go with them you’ll do something you regret - you know yourself that well.  In Scotland when things got too much you used to get in your car and drive.  Just kept going until everything felt far enough away to breathe.  You’d get out and just let the emptiness of where you ended up overwhelm.  But you can’t really do that here.  You live in the heart of Seoul and don’t have a car, even if you felt confident driving in a different country.  So instead you pack a bag, hop on the metro and climb Namsan.  You can pretend you aren’t in the middle of a city that feels like a testament to how fate seems to despise you.  For a day you can pretend that you don’t constantly feel about to fall apart.

It’s late but here, staring out over the city, feeling too close and so far away at the same time, you finally feel some semblance of peace.  People are milling about, heading down the mountain.  You’ll join them soon.  But you want to spend a little while longer with the lights.  The cold air swirling around you makes you feel lighter than you have in a long time.  You can see your breath in front of you and it reminds you that you’re alive.  And you don’t hate it.  You stare, letting everything fall away but the constellations of city lights in front of you.  A tidal wave of feelings washes over your, all consuming.  You don’t notice the presence that slopes up next to you until they speak.

“It’s beautiful isn’t it,” a heartbreakingly familiar voice says in English.

Your breath catches in your throat.  Hearing those words repeated back to you, in that voice, draws another crack through your already shattered soul.  You realise that waves of emotion weren’t you finally allowing yourself to feel.  And they weren’t all yours.  It was him, the soul bond.  It’s thrumming, ecstatic at the two of you being so close again.  You allow yourself a moment to breathe, it feels easier than it has in years.  Finally you turn.  Yoongi is wearing an oversized coat over a hoodie that is just as ill-fitted.  A beanie is pushed low on his head and a mask sits over his face.  People wouldn’t give him a second glance.  But you know it’s him.  The way the bond feels electrified is enough to tell you that.  His dark eyes scan your uncovered face, following the way your tongue darts out to lick your lips before you speak.  You remember a New York Times article that said sometimes people are more themselves in a second language.  How they are unburdened by the baggage of who they’ve always been.  It’s a nice thought.  But all you know is that right now you can barely think, let alone translate your thoughts.  

“Don’t,” you half-whisper, your voice barely audible above the wind and people, shaking your head. “What are you doing here?”

Once again you feel like you’re being memorised.  You look better than you did slightly tipsy and completely broken at 2 am.  At least that won’t be his only visual of you.

“I don’t know.  I...I needed to get out.”  He speaks slowly, hesitantly, his voice hardly more than a whisper.  It was the soul bond that called you both here, you can feel it sitting smugly in your chest.  You wonder what he’s been getting from you since that night.  How powerful your presence is in it, whether he is as aware of you as you are him.  “I..uh…”

You just blink at him as he trails off.  There’s nothing you want to say.  Honestly, a large part of you is screaming to walk away.  But the bond is taut between you, you don’t think you could leave if you tried.  You settle for looking back out to the city.  Taking solace in the lights and the insignificance of life at this scale.  It reminds you of standing at the top of the Empire State building at sixteen - your parents had paid off their mortgage and used the extra money to go on a massive holiday to the States.  You’d looked down and thought the cars looked like beetles.  Admired how the avenues curved as they stretched into the night.  From a 102nd story or the top of 262 metre mountain everything that usually seems overwhelming feels small.  Unless it’s right next to you.

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi says finally, barely audible over the wind.  A lump appears in your throat at the words, but you refuse to look at him.  He continues on, “Nothing I say can make you for what my bad night has done to your life.”

“You’re right.”

Despite your words, relief surges through the bond after you speak.  You glance to the side.  Yoongi’s mask is still firmly over his nose and mouth, not willing to risk being spotted.  But his eyes are wide and imploring as they look at you.

“Please let me try though.”  That makes you turn.  You feel an awful cocktail of anger, sadness and confusion course through you.  It must go down the bond because Yoongi flinches.  The movement is so small that normally it would go unnoticed.  But you are hyper-aware of everything about him.

“Who put you up to this?  You didn’t want me, what changed?” The words come out just as sharp and harsh as they felt on your tongue.  

“No one.  I’ve been looking for you since that night.”  He looks so regretful, almost shuddering at the mention of your first meeting. “I don’t even know your name, but I can feel you all the time.  You are everywhere.”

You know he’s telling the truth.  He felt you these past months just as you felt him.  You feel sorry for him.  You live with yourself, learned to do it over the past twenty-two years, you can’t imagine having to have it pressing against your psyche like a foreign object.  No wonder he looked so tired.  As you stare into his eyes they draw you in.  They’re so earnest and you can feel your painstakingly built resolve crumble.  It’s the bond, urging you to trust him.  Even as every sane part of you screams no.  You don’t know when but you have stepped closer.  His hand reaches out slowly, ghosting over your arm but not touching it.

“I don’t think I’ll survive being broken by you again,” you say, cringing at how your voice catches in your throat.  Staring into his eyes you think you see his heart break too.

“All I want to do is know you,”  Yoongi’s soft drawl makes your heart ache.  You’re weak.  You nod.

He walks you down the mountain, keeping a careful distance between you.  The bond is still suffocating, it tries to pull its owners together but the two of you are stubborn.  Once you’re away from the terrace and the two of you are the only people around he pulls down his mask.  He looks tired.  But also, you can’t help notice, more beautiful than he does through a screen.  Conversation starts slowly.  Hesitantly he asks why you’re in Korea.  It comes out short, from anyone other than him it would have felt rude. Embarrassment and alarm show on his face.  Hurriedly he amends the question, adding that not many tourists are still around after two months.  An awkward laugh forces itself out of you.  Your voice feels stiff, stilted, as you tell him you’re working as a teaching assistant.  He tilts his head, asking if you want to be a teacher.  Your stomach tightens.  The idea fills you with anxiety.  And you don’t know why - you blame the bond - but you end up telling him about how trapped you felt.  How you are so terrified of spending the rest of your life in one place, doing one thing and never being extraordinary.  You tell him how your friends urged you to do this.  How you thought it was a horrible, terrible idea, but a part of you wanted to do it anyway.  And now you’re here.  In a lot of ways you’re running away, it just happened to mean you ran to the one thing you were most afraid of.  Him.  You don’t say that last part.  But you feel like he understands.  You also don’t tell him that your time in Korea has an expiration date.  One that seems to be rapidly approaching - even before you met him the first time you didn’t know how you felt about leaving.  

After that you grasp around for less dangerous topics.  Asking about BTS is the first thing you think of, but it doesn’t feel right.  You want to ask him about music and writing, because you love those things too.  Somehow that feels too personal - even after you just explained the breakdown that led you to Korea.  You want to ask him why, and get a real reason this time.  Every so often you think he wants to tell you.  In the silence you steal looks.  Every time Yoongi is looking at you already.  He always seems to be taking a breath to speak but nothing ever comes out.  So you talk about the weather, because you’re British.  He smiles as you awkwardly comment on the cold - using some of the first Korean you learnt.  You can’t tell if it’s a sympathy smile or if he’s endeared by your struggle.  But he agrees with you, asking in return about the weather back home.  The long walk is filled with stilted silences as the two of you try to work out how to be around each other.  Slowly, as you muddle through a story about university, it becomes a strange sort of comfortable.  The bond feels less oppressively present.  The world is quiet.  Everything fades into background noise as it feels like you and him are the only people in existence.  You remember being sixteen and feeling the dizzying sensation of the world shrinking down so all you could see was Callie as your world rearranged itself.  That is the closest thing you can think of.  The only point of reference you have for the way everything seems to have fallen away except Yoongi, his voice and his warmth.  His hand is swinging dangerously close to your own.  Sometimes your hands brush, only for a moment.  You get the feeling he wouldn’t dare for more.  Even through the gloves you’re both wearing you feel an electric shock.

At the end of the trail, once you’re back in the city proper, Yoongi stops and asks how you’re getting home.  He pulls a set of car keys out of his pocket.  Awkwardly, fidgeting from foot to foot, you mumble about planning on getting the metro.  He looks concerned as he takes in the information.  It’s late - you’re not particularly fond of the idea either, you lost track of time on the mountain - but you bought a return ticket.  Plus you find public transport a strange sort of peaceful.  Enjoy is a too strong a word, but you like getting to exist in a liminal space with your headphones in, having a moment wherein all you have to do is be.  You don’t say that - you think it may be too weird and personal.  But he just swallows down whatever he was going to say and offers to walk you to the closest metro station.  You nod.  It’s not a long walk.  Yoongi fills it by slowly telling you about how hasn’t taken public transport in a long time.  Sometimes he misses it.  Misses feeling normal and getting to do normal people things.  But he also voices what you were too embarrassed to; he misses how people just exist on public transport, allowing the world to move around them instead of them moving through it.  You feel seen, and for the first time you can see why fate decided on the two of you.  But only if you squint.

As you come to a halt in front of the metro entrance he tentatively asks for your phone number.  Neither of you are really sure how this works.  What the boundaries are.  All you know is that this isn’t like your friends and their primary bonds.  There were no pre-broken hearts or worldwide fanbases to worry about in their situations.  No one was terrified of saying the wrong thing and everything crashing down, they were just caught up in the joy of what was meant to be.  But the two of you can’t have that.  It’s too complicated.  You’ve been heartbroken since you were fifteen and Yoongi is one of the most famous men in Korea, possibly the world.  These thoughts don’t stop you from giving him your number, promising to text him when you get home safely.  They do, however, follow you into the station.  You look back on the escalator and see him still standing there.  You give him a little wave, just a hand stuck in the air.  He replies in kind.  You disappear before he leaves.

On the walk home from your metro stop you phone Alexandra.  It’s been too long and you need your bestfriend.  It’s five in the afternoon in Scotland, she picks up on the first ring.  She isn’t angry.  No matter how much you deserve it she rarely gets angry at you, only happy you called.  Over your jacket your hand brushes the soulmark she gave you while you speak.  You tell her everything and she listens.  The first thing she says afterwards is sorry, then asks if you’re okay.  This gets a tear strangled laugh from you - somewhere along the way you started crying and you’re only thankful you didn’t put make-up on today - because you don’t deserve her.  Not after how you moved around the world and disappeared.  But you feel lighter, maybe this is why her mark appeared on your body.  It’s not a long walk to your flat but Alexandra stays on the phone the whole time, talking you through the situation.  Telling you that you deserve to be happy.  Reminding you to let yourself be happy.  She knows too well that sometimes you forget.  Sometimes you think you never learned how.  The call ends when you’re through the door of your apartment, toeing off your shoes.  Once you hang up, after promising to call more, you fulfil your promise; texting Yoongi that you are home safe.  He replies almost instantly.

It goes like this; you wake up to ‘good morning’ texts from Yoongi and you send him ‘good night’ ones.  The man is always awake before you and asleep after.  He does it with an almost religious observance.  You find yourself texting him during the day, unable to hide the little smiles his words pull from you.  He pays full attention as you talk about the kids you’re teaching.  He remembers things and asks about them later.  You do the same.  You like hearing about his music, you don’t understand the technical side but it’s interesting.  His passion is palpable through the screen.  Or maybe it’s the bond.  Either way, one of your favourite things has always been listening to the people you care about talk about their passions.  Texting becomes near nightly facetime calls.  You perch your phone anywhere you can in your tiny kitchen as you make dinner.  They last hours.  The man is ruining your sleep schedule.

It hits you one night, as you sit in a peaceful silence with him fiddling with a track in the studio while you’ve lent your phone against your laptop screen and are typing away, that you were right.  Falling in love with Yoongi is easy.  And you kind of hate it.  Loving a man who broke you twice already, even if he didn’t mean to, shouldn’t be as easy as breathing.  It shouldn’t take less than two months.  You understand why your friends acted how they did after finding their primary bond.  It’s intoxicating.  You haven’t seen him in person since that night on Namsan, he’s so busy and it’s not like you can go on dates, but you can’t imagine not talking to him everyday.  Not seeing his name lighting up your phone screen constantly.  People weren’t lying about primary bonds.  They feel all consuming.  You didn’t think it would be like this for you.  But you’d spent seven years thinking that you wouldn’t get any sort of relationship with your primary soulmate.  Trying to convince yourself to hate them. And now, here you are, falling in love with them through a phone screen.  All your damage felt so easy to forget for a while there, while you were caught up in him and the way he makes your heart beat faster.   But as you sit here spiralling, your fingers frozen over your keyboard, it comes rushing back in.  You need him here, you need to know this is real.

“Yoongi?” You say quietly, before you can decide against it.  He grunt, eyes meeting yours through the screen.  Swiftly his peaceful expression morphs into worry.

“What’s wrong?”

You hesitate, now unsure.  You weren’t even sure what you wanted to ask.  What if he says no?  What if he says yes?  Taking a deep breath you speak;

“If I sent you my address, would you come over?” You’re being cryptic and you hate yourself for it.

“Do you want me to?”  He’s speaking slowly, concern laced through each syllable.  But there’s a glimmer of something else in his eyes.

“Yeah… I think I do.  I… uh, want to talk to you.  In person.  Unless you’re busy.”  The last part comes out in a garbled rush and you feel like an idiot.  Your soulmate is one of the most famous people in South Korea, potentially the world if you’re being generous.  Why would he have the time to just come over to your apartment?

“Send it.”  He cuts off your spiral, already moving around, packing his stuff.  So you do.

It takes less than an hour for him to arrive at your building, heralded by your buzzer making you jump out of your skin as he asks to be let in.  You use the time wisely.  By making and eating toast with nutella and mashed up banana on top (it was your comfort food at uni when the three things were all you had in your cupboard during exams) because you don’t know if you’re hungry or going to throw up.  Normally, it’s the former, you’ve found.  And if it’s the latter, at least you have something in your stomach.  The familiar anxious, sick feeling has made a home in your gut.  It’s coiling and tightening.  Multiple times you seriously think you will vomit.  But you don’t.  Instead, you sit at the tiny island that doubles as a dining table and eat the combination that has won you a lot of weird looks.  Which is understandable because it is not the most attractive looking dish.  You try to convince yourself that this wan’t an awful idea.  That you haven’t just destroyed whatever delicate balance the two of you have built.  You’ve spent so much of your life waiting for other shoes to drop - so scared of something going wrong that for a while there you just chose to do nothing instead - and this feels no different.  What if you’ve just ruined everything?  What if this is how he decides he made the right choice that first night?  You think you’d take a life with him on the other end of the phone over one without him.  And god does that feel so pathetic.  There’s an unfamiliar thrumming in your chest.  You don’t know if it’s the bond or you’ve somehow unlocked another level of anxiety.  You always were an overachiever.

What you do know is that the buzzer is going off and on auto-pilot you are buzzing your primary soulmate into the building.  It hits you that this is the first time he’s going to see you with proper lighting, without layers of clothing and smudged day-old makeup.  You’re standing, lost, in the middle of your apartment wearing an oversized t-shirt you got for free at that summer camp you worked at and pajama shorts.  It’s so incredibly shallow but, even as you know he’s in the elevator, you’re freaking out.  You have never made a good impression on Yoongi.  A man who has been surrounded by the most attractive people in the world since he was twenty. And you’re standing here with every last one of your imperfections on show.  In the harsh lights of your apartment they seem glaring.  The moles that litter you, you used to trace them like constellations but now they seem ugly.  The small scar under your eye from when you fell off a chair when you were two.  The stretch marks on your thighs that the shorts don’t hide.

There’s a knock on the door.

Everytime you see Yoongi is different.  You open the door and for moment the two of you just stand there.  The thrumming that has made a home in your chest softens.  He looks so nervous, shuffling from foot to foot.  And you love him.  Which, honestly, is not new information.  It’s not why you asked him to come, but the thought hits you all the same.  It feels important.  You think there’s an argument that you’ve always been so full of love.  Even through your brittle, broken teen years when you triedo hard to be unreachable and unattainable, you still leaked love like a broken sink.  So full of it that it spilled into writing love stories for strangers on public transport, making up romance in a class mate laugh at your silly joke, or that time you fell semi-in-love with one of your best friends.  You think that it was all because you had nowhere else to put it, with a primary soulmate you didn’t think would ever want you.  But here he is, standing in your doorway with sparkling brown eyes that you could just fall into.  And it hits you that all those examples you gave were just practice.  How could you not fall in love with Min Yoongi?  Especially when he’s looking at you like that.  Like you’re the most amazing thing he’s ever seen.

“Hi,” you breathe.  Your hands fidget at your side.  All you want to do is reach out and touch him.  Just to know that he’s real.  Unconsciously your hand twitches.  But you can’t.  Instead they just stay there, shaking with longing.

“Hey,” he replies, sounding almost breathless, following as you turn and walk further into your apartment. “This is much better than facetime.”

A strained laugh jerks out of you.  But you agree.  Before, when he was just an image on your phone, you could convince yourself it didn’t mean anything.  But you think you like this better.  It’s awkward and stilted, as everything seems to be each time the two of you take a step forward.  You’d think you’d get used to feeling the world rearrange under your feet.  Spoiler alert: that’s not how world shifting moments work.

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