Chapter Text
Her tiny fingers trace over the identical lines sitting on the wrists of both her parents. Their soulmarks lay in its inky grey tone just under the thin skin on the side of their arm, both an exact replica of each others’ in its pattern and placement.
“Byul-ah,” her mother gently drew her attention to what she’s saying, “do you know what these lines are for?”
“Soulmark!” Byulyi’s eyes lit up, and she looked at her mother eagerly for acknowledgement.
“Such a smart girl!” Her cheeks were pinched fondly as her father rained praises on her.
She sat and listened in absolute fascination as her parents explained it all to her. They painted her the most vivid of images, of soulmarks, Fated ones and love. Throughout it all, Byulyi thought that the prettiest image of all, was the one of the three of them in that very moment, hand in hand, with the love between her parents so palpable Byulyi could almost understand what it meant.
“In this world, everybody is half of a whole. That means, to make one whole Byulyi, you will need to find your other half somewhere out there. Your Fated one. See this mark? This will be different for everyone else in the world, except for your Fated one, who will have the same as yours. Now, this will only appear on your wrist when you turn 21 years old, and only if you’ve already met your Fated man. This is how you know, you’re meant to love this man forever and ever.”
“What if my Fated one doesn’t like me?”
“Well, he will, because that’s what Fate means, that he will love you just as you will love him. Understand?”
Ten years later, and Byulyi doesn’t think she understands. The picture perfect image of the soulmate bond in her mind gets tainted each time there are vicious words thrown around their small home, when vases shatter onto the ground in anger and the dinner chairs get knocked out of their place at the table. When there is nothing but frozen silence clinging onto the walls, and home doesn’t feel like home.
Byulyi shrugs the thin jacket tighter around herself, focusing on putting one feet ahead of the other and keeping her vision unblurred by her tears. Around her were the bustling night crowds of Seoul, passing her by in pairs and groups.
There was also this one voice, carried high above the throngs of people into the night sky. Byulyi follows it, drawn to the lulling and sweet tone like a moth to a flame. There, in the centre of a circle of onlookers, was a girl engulfed in a blanket of a coat almost bigger than she was. Her fingers nimbly plucked out the notes of the song, as she sings the words that seem to find their way into the etches of Byulyi’s heart.
Maeil bam cheot beonjjae byeoreul bomyeonseo
geudaega jal jinaegil gidoreul haeyo
beoreusi dwaebeorin haneul bogi
geureohge nan maeireul geudael chajayo
Byulyi sat at a bench just shy from the crowds of people, but still close enough to hear the busker’s voice loud and clear. She closes her eyes, letting the tender voice numb the turmoil in her.
The busker sings another set of songs, and as it gets later into the night, her audience thinned out until just a few stood by to listen to her whilst eating the steamed sweet potatoes from the stall nearby. She lets the last notes of the guitar ring out, before timidly thanking her audience.
“Hey, are you alone?” The same voice that almost sang Byul to sleep brought her out of her thoughts, as the busker from earlier now stood in front of her, guitar on her back. Now, up close, with the moonlight shining through the loose strands of her hair from behind, she looks even more ethereal than ever.
Byul nods quickly and the girl sits down on the bench next to her, just an inch too close for someone who was practically a stranger.
“It's almost midnight, why are you here all alone?” Byul had to tear her eyes away from that girl’s face just to focus on answering the question.
“I don’t have anywhere to go.” Byul replied, tucking her hands into her pockets.
“What do you mean? You look like you’re my age, don’t you have to go home to your parents? Aren’t they worried about you being out so late?” The girl asks, the look in her eyes so earnest and sincere that Byul forgets her fear of this girl being anything but just friendly and curious.
“I’m 16,” she starts, before bowing her head to hide a sad smile that followed, “and as for my parents, they would have called yesterday if they really were worried.”
“You’ve been here for two days?”
“Walking around these streets, mostly, but yeah. Two days.’
The girl shifted her gaze away, looking at war with herself as to whether or not to probe further about that fact.
“Just ask it.” Byul laughed internally over the way the stranger wrote her struggle all over her face.
“Well,” a sharp breath, then she continues, “want to talk about it? Apparently it’s easier to talk to strangers about your problems than it is to open up to people you know. I have thirty minutes till my sister picks me up anyways.”
So Byul talked all about it. About the way her parents were so overcome by their anger for each other that they forgot to care about her. How fights get started as if there’s always an open flame in a room full of combustibles and at some point, her attempts to stop these fights backfired and she’s somehow dragged into all the malicious words they throw at each other. In the midst of all the fighting, she left, and it’s like they never noticed.
Byul stopped talking abruptly, realising that there was a coat draped over her shoulders, and she had stopped shivering from the cold. She felt her heart swell at the sweet gesture, sweeping her fingers over the soft faux fur lining.
The busker had her eyes on Byul’s tiny smile, having listened to the entire story without interrupting once.
“I used to believe in this whole soulmarks thing with your Fated one. But look at my parents. They are fated to love each other, but it just seems like they don’t anymore.”
“That doesn’t mean that soulmates aren’t real. Humans may be flawed, but Fate is never flawed.” The other girl tried to be as gentle as she could with her words. “You’ll find someone one day who will prove that to you.”
Byul smiled. This girl seemed to hold actual light in her eyes, and it made everything she said sound like the gospel truth. Though Byul had doubts on Fate and how it all works sometimes, there’s no denying that the girl was right. There was still so long to go in life, so many more people to meet and so many things to experience. It was way too early to give up on Fate, and she promised herself to not lose hope in all that.
“Thank you for lending me your coat anyways.” Byul said after a short but comfortable silence. “I don’t know why I said all that, I don’t usually open up to-”
“Yongsun!” A female voice sounded from a distance. Both girls’ heads shot up at the same time towards where the shout came from.
Another girl half-jogged towards their bench. She was tall, flowing with elegance despite not looking much older than the busker herself, and their resemblance was undeniable - that’s her sister she was talking about earlier.
“Unnie!” The girl jumped up from her seat, flinging her arms around her sister’s neck. Byul let out a shiver when she realised how much warmth she got with the girl sitting so close to her, and how cold it felt to realise that it had come to the end of this really short albeit sweet meeting.
Byul put a smile on her face when the girl said her goodbyes. The coat was back in it’s owner’s arms, as the pair left just as quickly as they seemed to arrive.
“Hey!” The girl was running back towards her, a grin wide on her face, and her poor sister being dragged behind her by her arm.
“Unnie said okay!” She took a big gulp of air to make up for the sprint. “You can stay at my house for the night! You don’t have to sleep out here.”
Her smile was blindingly bright, and it took several breaths for Byul to take in what she was saying. Her lips parted in surprise, but no words came out.
“Come on, it’s cold out here, you don’t have anywhere to go and besides, it’s only me and my sister. No guys. You don’t have to be scared.”
“It’s not that I’m scared, it’s just-” Why are you so kind to me?
“We barely know each other, it’s such a huge inconvenience and-”
“It really isn’t, we have a spare mattress anyways.” The older sister chimed in, her soothing voice such an amusing contrast to the energy-filled rambling of her younger sister.
“Come on, let’s go before it gets even colder.”
“What possessed me that night I managed to let a stranger talk me into going to her house to stay?”
A pillow flies across the room.
“The same demon that possessed me enough to invite a girl I didn’t even know the name of to my house to spend the night, maybe?”
The pillow flies right back.
“You put. Worms. On my side of the bed.”
“Plastic worms. And you put it on mine. First.”
“Because you put a snake in my pillowcase last week?”
“Because you put a rat in my bolster last-last week?”
“Fuck you. That rat looked so fake I laughed at it in the shop. It’s on you for being stupid.”
Yongsun’s jaw dropped open. That was it.
Byulyi swore she saw her soul ascend from her body when Yongsun crashed headfirst into her, tackling her onto the bed.
It almost gave them both whiplash, at how it went from tickling and chuckling, to the situation they found themselves in. Yong’s long hair rained down from one side of her head as she raised herself above where Byul was staring up at her.
Their breaths intermingled and the air became more charged between them. Everything about the way Byul blinked so slowly and delicately, to the way her eyes kept flitting down to Yong’s lips, to the fingers trailing up her spine, just kept sending Yongsun into a more intense high.
As soon as their lips collided, it was as if Yongsun’s only mission was to make the night last as long as time allowed it to, wringing out highs after highs from the girl below her.
Yong dropped onto the space next to Byul, the two of them trying to catch their breaths. The air smelled like sex and sweat and euphoria and Yong thanked the fucking Gods that her sister no longer lived with them.
“Yong-ah.” Fingers intertwined with her own, and she looked over to meet the younger girl’s eyes. The years spent together meant years of learning each others’ every reaction, sensing every emotion and knowing every unspoken word said. And in that moment she knew her Byulyi held the weight of the world on her shoulders.
“I know.” She squeezed her hand back, sighing.
“It’s scary, I know. I love you. That’s all we need, right?” Yong lifted their joined hands, bringing into sight the scribbly marking on her wrist. It was shaped like an abstract impression of a flower, and Byul always thought it was charming in its simplicity.
Ever since it had appeared on Yongsun’s wrist when the morning light poured in on her 21st birthday, there had been a hope that overfilled itself in Byulyi’s chest.
A mark. Which meant that the person Kim Yongsun was fated to love for a lifetime, was already someone by her side. And that someone could so very well be Moon Byulyi.
It had to be.
In the five years since they met on that bench in the city streets, they’ve spent so many firsts together - Yongsun’s first ever picnic, Byulyi’s first time learning an instrument, the first time Byul played the guitar for Yong during another one of their picnics, the first awkward but incredibly endearing date after they both admitted that what they shared couldn’t just be friendship, their first kiss, the first time they made love, their first ‘I love you’, and more.
Byulyi spent many nights wondering if there could ever be anything that could outshine what Yong and her had. If all these years were a mistake when they couldn’t even know for sure they were each others’ Fated.
‘But we have to be.’ She thought. There was no way anyone or anything could feel this real, this nebulous in its enormity, than the way Yong made her feel.
So it had to be. Tomorrow, she would wake up to the same scrawl on her own wrist, erasing every bad thought she ever had for the past five years.