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Soulmates are stupid. Xiao used to think they were.
She didn’t like the idea of them. She didn’t like a single part about being bound to someone for the rest of her life, that even half a thought to it had her squirming in his chair. The entire idea of the universe finding one person who’s it for her didn’t make sense to her, because there were far too many people, and the world was too big for her soulmate to be anywhere close to her.
Since young, her mother would tell her fantastical stories about soulmates as she tucked her into bed, how life would seem so much brighter once she met the one for her. Her mother would watch with her her favourite movies, ones with tragic stories but happy endings, and she often found herself burying her face in a pillow to lull herself to sleep. She didn’t like how they were entirely coincidental and would leave no control of her fate in her hands. There was never a point in her life where she wanted a soulmate.
Her mother seemed to find the thought of sharing another’s pain quite romantic, but Xiao couldn’t see the appeal of it. She didn’t like the sadistic, nearly sacrificial nature of soulmates. She couldn’t understand why anybody would want to be hurt because of somebody else. But what she also didn’t understand, then, was the complex definition of devotion.
From what little she picked up over the years, she learned that soulmates happened by sheer chance—to everyone, at some point, but some much later—so the days of her childhood fluttered by with hopes that it would never happen to her. She was like this for a while, adamant on believing that there was no love she wanted in the world.
All until she woke up to the sound of her new neighbours knocking on her front door, and when she peered out of the window, she found a girl with long, blue hair and eyes like gemstones, waving brightly at her window.
I.
When Xiao turns thirteen, she starts waking up with bruises on her knees.
She doesn’t understand where they come from, or why they’re happening to her. She wakes up at the start of a new week to find her skin torn as though she scraped it, although she spent the entire weekend inside. She notices her pale skin darken with bruises as she brushes her fingertips briefly over wounded skin, pulling back when she feels the sting of pain that comes with a fresh injury. “Mama,” she calls out, eyebrows furrowed.
Having heard the soft cry of her voice, her mother peeks into his room to see what she needs her for. She pushes the door open and pokes her head into the room, the corner of her lips pulled into a smile. “Don’t stay in bed too long, you have to get to school,” she reminds like she does every morning, but when she finds Xiao looking down at her knees with a frown on her lips, she steps inside. “Is something wrong?” she asks, kneeling in front of her. She places her hands gently on either arm, head tilted in concern.
“Mama, my knees are bruised,” Xiao huffs, rubbing her hands against the curve of her kneecap in an attempt to soothe her pain. She isn’t anywhere close to being on the verge of tears, and she hasn’t ever been one to be worried about small injuries, but she wanted to know why they were happening to her.
Her mother pulls away from her, inspecting the injuries on her knees. Her lips part as she hovers a hand over the wounds, her face slowly settling into an expression of confusion. There’s a brief tension between them that Xiao can’t put her finger on, because it feels as though her mother’s searching for a reason to contradict whichever conclusion she previously landed on. She winces at the gentle pressure placed against her open wound, and quickly musters an excuse, “I didn’t go out yesterday.”
“I know,” her mother replies, looking into her eyes with a twinkle in her own that’s far from explainable. “We were watching a movie together.”
Xiao looks into her eyes, unable to muster a coherent explanation to her reaction. She knows what it means when her mother wears that particular sparkle in her eyes—a feverish excitement that she’s trying to hold back. It’s obvious in the way her hands have clenched up and her lips are hardly able to hold down a smile, yet Xiao can’t think of what might be so exciting about waking up with bruised knees. “I promise I didn’t sneak out of the house,” she adds, softer.
“Oh, I know,” her mother smiles, placing a gentle hand in her hair. She caresses her daughter, a soft smile playing on her lips that holds only a touch of wistfulness within it. “A-Xiao, you found your soulmate.”
For the first time in her life, Xiao feels her heartbeat in every, inescapable corner of her body.
II.
Xiao wobbles to school that day with green froggy bandages on her knees.
She reaches half an hour earlier than she’s meant to, despite walking much slower than she normally does. Her mother holds her hand through the entire walk to school, chattering on and on about how wonderful it is that she’d now learn love in the way she learned it when she was a child, how it now means that there’s another person in the world for her and she’s not entirely alone.
Xiao doesn’t care about loneliness—maybe because it’s been a long time since she felt it. She hasn’t been alone since she became reluctant friends with the girl next door, Venti, who hasn’t left her alone for a day since they met each other. They’re nearing the third year of their friendship now, they’re in middle school, and Xiao doesn’t mind being her friend as much as she used to back then.
It’s not easily admitted from someone like her, but she cares about Venti. She cares about her like she cares about the bird plush on her bed, she cares about her like she cares about the butterflies that visit her mother’s garden in the afternoon, and she cares about her like she would a lifelong partner.
Venti’s a part of her now, a part of her life that she wants to keep.
When she’s with Venti, the world feels much less complicated than everyone makes it out to be. She doesn’t need to worry about stupid things like soulmates, or love, or friendship when she’s with her because it all feels the same when they’re with each other. Xiao doesn’t think it’ll ever be like that with anyone else. She doesn’t think there’ll be anyone else in her life who understands her like Venti does—that would’ve showered with her in the same bath until they graduated elementary school, that would’ve learned the names of the birds that sit on their roofs during spring, that would’ve worn pants with her instead of skirts even though their mothers would scold.
But she has to worry about it now, because she has a soulmate that isn’t her. The movies only show boys and girls falling in love with each other, and Venti’s not a boy. She’s not a boy either, even though she’d like to be if it means she gets to be with Venti for the rest of her life.
She doesn’t love Venti. Not in the way soulmates love each other, she supposes.
She doesn’t even know what that’s supposed to feel like, whether love is anything like what they show in movies. She doesn’t know it like the way they broadcast it on the television, or write about in books, or teach about in lessons at school. She loves Venti in the way that she won’t wash her hands when Venti draws on them, in the way that she’ll wear matching socks with Venti because she likes them, and in the way that she’ll paste the stickers Venti gives her all over her bag even if she doesn’t like them. She loves Venti in the way that she’ll wear frog bandages on her knees because they’re Venti’s favourite animal.
Xiao doesn’t want love to be any other way, whatever it is. She doesn’t want it to be kisses on the lips, or a white wedding with a man she doesn’t know with all her heart, or raising children for the rest of her life. She may not know much about love, but she knows it’s what she has with Venti.
So, when her mother drops her off at school and squeezes her shoulders to wish her a good day at school, Xiao looks at her in the eyes and mumbles, “What if I don’t like my soulmate?”
She doesn’t want a soulmate that she doesn’t like. She doesn’t think she’ll like anyone but Venti.
Her mother tilts her head, a small smile playing on her lips. “You don’t have to worry about that, A-Xiao,” she reassures her in that gentle, gentle voice of hers, and Xiao almost believes her. She nods her head stiffly and turns around, where she finds Venti waving at her with mud in her fingernails, and a flower in her hand.
Today, she notices Venti’s socks are pulled up to her thighs. She wonders, out of innocent curiosity, whether her knees are bruised too.
III.
It’s some time after that Xiao suspects getting injured is among her soulmate’s hobbies.
It’s been two weeks and she’s almost through her entire box of frog bandages, because somehow it’s always a new scrape on the knees or a gash near the calves when she wakes up in the morning, or between free periods at school. She doesn’t tell a soul about this discovery, apart from her mother who knows and asks for updates every time she comes home.
Venti asks about her soulmate too, slightly more than usual. There’s a hopefulness in her eyes every time she does, the same way girls look when they’re talking about the boys they like. But she doesn’t talk like other girls do with their crushes, because she doesn’t mention a thing about her own soulmate—she always asks, have you figured it out? Do you know who your soulmate is? like Xiao’s supposed to know. Xiao suspects she found hers too, but she doesn’t like the idea of it. She likes to pretend that they’re the same kids that they were before they found out they were bound to complete strangers; maybe then, it’ll feel like they have a chance at forever.
Sometimes, it feels like they do.
One of these days, when she’s baking an apple pie, she scalds her finger against a hot metal tray.
The day after that, Venti comes to school with a bandage on hers.
IV.
“Do you like my duck bandages?” Xiao asks when they’re sitting in the playground after school, waiting for their mothers to pick them up. It’s been a month since she found out she had a soulmate, and she’s currently close to finishing her second box of animal bandages.
They’re seated on the foam padding of the playground floor, hands pressing into the unsteady surface of the ground, wind blowing into their hair, and suddenly, the day isn’t as bad as it started out. Venti’s beside her, knees pulled up to her chest. She’s picking the dry skin around nails, a telling sign that she’s nervous. She hasn’t smiled much all day, and the few times that she did, there was an obvious strain in them that made it appear as though it was forced. She’s never like this, never without reason.
Xiao nudges her in the shoulder, catching her attention.
Venti turns to her, mustering yet another insincere smile. “Yeah?” She starts to rub her knees like they’re sore, and there’s a hint of teariness in her eyes that suggests she’s in pain. Although not easily noticeable to most, she’s been limping all day, but it’s one of those injuries she keeps to herself. She doesn’t usually do that.
Xiao’s frown deepens as he notices the socks still pulled high over Venti’s legs, making it impossible to discern what happened to her. She’s been asking all day, but she hasn’t gotten any response back apart from excuses that make little sense, or an attempt at dodging her earnest question. Her shoulders sulk when it dawns on her that nothing she’ll do will ever get through to her friend. “I found my soulmate,” she blurts.
And it’s the first time that day that Xiao notices Venti truly paying attention to her. She turns her head to look at her, and their eyes meet for a long, silent second before either one of them thinks to speak up. They try, end up speaking over each other, then clamp their mouths shut. They snicker, bumping into each other’s shoulders, when Venti asks, like every other time, “Do you know who it is?”
“No,” Xiao exhales, looking down at her bruised knees. “I don’t think I want to,” she sulks.
When her eyes flicker back to Venti, she notices her eyes void of the enthusiasm they once used to carry. She blinks, hoping she’s mistaken, but for as long as they look at each other like that, the feeling which once made a home out of his loving eyes has since dissolved into murky blue. “You don’t want to?” she echoes, laughing, but not in a way she means it. “You still think they’re stupid, right? Soulmates.”
“Yeah, they’re stupid,” Xiao sighs, leaning back into the bush behind her. She looks to her side and rolls a loose twig between her fingers, almost in contemplation as though the words aren’t sitting on her tongue. I don’t want a soulmate, who isn’t you, she wants to say but it doesn’t sound right—doesn’t feel right. She shouldn’t be saying this to her closest friend. It sounds almost selfish, because they’re destined to love other people. Her heart aches at the thought, but she convinces herself it doesn’t. So, she asks, “Did you find yours?”
“My—? Oh,” Venti trips over her words, cheeks flushing red. She averts her gaze and places a hand at the nape of her neck, the way she does when there’s something she’s trying to hide. “My soulmate,” she whispers to herself, and the momentary smile on her face slips away.
Xiao looks away too. “So you found him.”
“I guess,” Venti replies insincerely, almost as though it doesn’t matter to her. It’s nearly as surprising as the fact that she got herself injured and didn’t immediately come crying in her arms, as though she was trying to keep it a secret from him. She’s been maintaining her distance too, pulling away when Xiao tries to come closer, or pushing backwards whenever they come too close. It’s never been like this between them, but things aren’t the same anymore and Xiao desperately wants them to be.
“It doesn’t matter. My soulmate doesn’t like me,” Venti sighs, picking up a pebble and throwing it.
Xiao struggles to find an answer. “How do you know that?”
“I know my soulmate a little too well,” Venti elaborates, spreading her legs out against the ground. She places her palms against the ground and holds her body up by her arms, staring dazedly at the sky. Her skirt flares out against the ground, hiding most of her skin except the some bruises on her thigh. “It’ll ruin our friendship, if he finds out that we’re soulmates,” she confesses in a shaky breath, then looks back at Xiao with something like desperation weighing in her eyes.
Xiao wasn’t even aware she had any friends but her. “Does he know?”
“That we’re soulmates?”
“That you like him,” she clarifies.
“Oh,” Venti makes a sound, but doesn’t pull her eyes away. She smiles sadly, and says, “No. I don’t think so.”
“Don’t you want to tell him that you’re soulmates?”
Venti lets out a laugh. “No. He hates them.”
Xiao watches as she sinks into herself after her laughter dies, once again resting her chin in the valley of her knees. She averts her gaze, searching for a way to comfort her, when a thought comes to mind. She stands up, brushing the crumbs of dirt off her skirt and starts walking towards the pavement. Venti calls out to her, but the sound of her voice eventually softens till it can no longer be heard from that distance away. Xiao’s heart drumming in her chest, she searches for an open patch of grass along the fencing that separates the pavement from the road. I need to cheer her up, she thinks, and in that moment, she couldn’t care less about the fact that they’re destined for different people—that, by the books of fate, they’re not meant to be.
Xiao kneels on the ground, patting her hand against the grass in search of the small grass flowers that Venti so loved playing with when they were younger. They’re small, and impossible to find unless it’s in the dim lighting of the early morning sun and reflection of dew, but she’ll find one. She doesn’t know how long she spends searching before she finds a flower hidden among the bushes—not the little, white ones that Venti loves, but one with yellow petals and a stalk that’s longer than her hand.
The flower tight in her grasp, Xiao returns to the playground with a triumphant smile. By the time she does, however, there’s a scuffle in the playground. She hears a discord of screaming voices, then the harsh sound of pushing, shoving and falling down. Xiao doesn’t care at first, till she notices Venti no longer crouching at the corner where she was a few minutes ago, instead at the feet of a couple boys from school.
Her hand loosens its grasp around the flower as she witnesses the scene, her eyes widening at the sight. She trembles with rage at the sight of Venti being pushed to the ground, teary-eyed and helpless, holding a hand over her body in defence. Xiao balls her hands into fists and tramples on the flower as she lunges towards the boys, overcome with rage and a burning sense of duty towards her friend. With her bare hands, she yanks the two boys back by their collars and forces them to face her.
Sparing no second for them to react, she deals a punch to their faces, then a kick to their shins, which sends them tumbling onto their backs before they can react. Venti gapes as she watches the school’s most notorious bullies collapse beside her, rubbing their bleeding noses and aching jaws. She then looks up at Xiao, at the blood on her knuckles and her dark, dark eyes overcome with a kind of rage she has seen only in soldiers. She crawls onto her knees, coiling her fingers around Xiao’s hands in a feeble attempt to calm her down, only to be pushed away.
“Don’t touch my friend,” she bellows, kicking one of the boys in the stomach. Another one tries to pick himself up and pull her by her pigtails, but she’s quick to nudge him off her and shove him back against the ground. “I’ll never forgive you if you hurt her again!” she yells in warning.
“Who do you think you are?!” one of the boys dares to shout, holding his jaw. “I’ll tell my mom and she’ll get you expelled from the school!”
Xiao kicks him again, shutting him up. “I’ll show you,” she says through gritted teeth. She bends over him and punches him square in the jaw, making him choke up against the ground. She punches him again, then again, and again until her knuckles start to bleed from the impact. His friend tries to pull her away, but by this point, the boy is lying on the ground with a broken nose, barely hanging onto consciousness. “I’ll rip your—” she yells as she fights out of the grasp of the other boy.
Venti pulls her off the boy, holding her back by the underarms so she’s forced to move. “Stop it! You’re hurting them,” she screams, her voice shaking. Xiao doesn’t seem bothered by that; in fact, she doesn’t think she hurt them enough. “You’re hurting me,” she cries.
Then, her body relaxes. Xiao turns around, nothing but worry in her eyes for her friend when she was overwhelmed by some kind of terrifying, monstrous fury only minutes ago. She holds Venti in her hands, checking up the sleeves of her arms, then her legs for any injuries. She’s mostly unscathed, apart from the scratches on her calves because of the impact of her fall.
Xiao lifts Venti’s hand to her eye level then, and on her knuckles, she finds bruises.
Oh.
V.
“You didn’t tell me we were soulmates.”
Venti’s still standing at the open door of their bedroom, her hand closed around the doorknob. Since their mothers found them at the playground, standing in front of two bleeding boys, they were dragged back to their rooms to deal with the weight of a dire situation—yet none more serious than the revelation that might change their friendship as they know it.
Her arm falls to her side as she stares at Xiao, sitting on her bed with bandaged knuckles and the bandages on her knees torn off. She looks up, her shoulders slouched and her hands fidgeting in her lap.
She had an hour to herself but it feels like too little time to have to process the heavy realisation that her best friend is her soulmate—the same best friend that she kept in her prayers every night, the same best friend that she begged to keep as her own. It all makes sense now, because who would it have been if not her? She feels the urge to bury her head in her hands and sink into the ground, because she has spent far too long waiting for the worst to happen when there was never any impending doom. Why—
Because even fate could tell in the way they held each other that they deserved to be each other’s forever.
“Didn’t you want me as your soulmate?” Xiao speaks up, looking her way, but when she does, she sees tears streaming down Venti’s face. She’s looking down at her feet, and her hands are clenched around the fabric of her skirt like she’s trying to hold herself back. She chews on her bottom lip, forcing back the sounds of her crying, even trying to forcefully wipe her tears out of her face.
Xiao’s hardened gaze softens at the sight in front of her, and the buried sense of protectiveness comes crawling back out like a beast. She stands, but Venti takes a step back, now on the other side of the open doorway.
“No, it’s because you wouldn’t want me as your soulmate,” Venti sobs, finally meeting her eyes, and oh, Xiao has never seen them so dispirited since the day they’ve met. Her entire body looks like it has given up, like there’s not a single bone in her body fighting to hold hope. She looks much smaller even though she’s standing, like she’s trying to curl into herself. “I never told you because I thought you’d hate me. Everyday, I ask if you care about soulmates, hoping that someday you’ll say, yes, they aren’t so bad, but you always think they’re stupid! Stupid! And I never wanted you to think that I—we—were stupid so I didn’t want you to know.”
And there it is again—the ache in her heart that Xiao tried so hard to evade. She takes a step forward tentatively, and when she notices Venti doesn’t try to run, she takes another. And another after that, until she’s standing in front of her first of many things, on the inside of the doorway. They’re separated only by a bump in the floor that marks the border between inside and out, yet it feels like they couldn’t be farther apart.
Xiao tugs on the seams of Venti’s sleeve, lowering her head against her shoulder. She pauses, listens to the unsteady rhythm of a heart, untamed, then feels as her own matches its pace. “I thought soulmates were stupid, because I thought mine was anybody but you,” she confesses. “I didn’t want it to be,” she adds, softer.
And something clicks, like the flicker of a fire against wood. Venti tenses up, tears glossing over her eyes like the way colours distort in a kaleidoscope. She glances at Xiao, whose head leaned is against her shoulder, whose body is only a few centimetres away from being pressed against hers. She chokes out a sob and wraps her arms around Xiao’s body, pulling her into a tight, long-desired embrace. “I waited for you for so… so long. I waited.”
“I didn’t know it was possible,” Xiao mumbles into the collar of her shirt, now holding back tears. “Two girls being soulmates.”
Venti tightens his grip, nearly squeezing the air out of Xiao in the process. She lets out a laugh from the bottom of her heart, though breathless, and buries her head in the nape of her neck. “Aren’t you happy that it is?”
“I am,” Xiao mumbles, and smiles into the warmth of their childish levity.