Summary:

A bond between souls is ancient – older than the planet.

It’s a blessing and a curse to have a soulmate. It’s...complicated to say the least. Some are willing to argue to the death that everything you endure on the journey to forever is worth it for the love of your soulmate, but others would argue that those people have just been brainwashed by the soul connection. The constant arguing is only exacerbated by the existence of the unmatched, those without a soulmate, because for every happy soulmate pair there is a happy unmatched couple and for every soulmate connection that ends in tragedy there's an unmatched person leading a life that's just as hard and unfulfilled.

The debates surrounding soulmates always seem to focus on whether soulmates are a gift or a punishment for those who have them. Those who are matched.

The soulmate process is something that every person in the world has to learn about whether in school or through word of mouth. It takes over a month to cover all of the intimate details of the soulbond, but it's generally enough to convince a person of whether or not they want to finish their soul connection.

When a person is born they get to live a nice, calm uncomplicated life until the ripe age of thirteen which is when the soul connection forms and suddenly their head is invaded and they can hear the thoughts of their soulmate (if they’re older) whether they want to or not. It’s a constant unfettered look into the life of their soulmate. As they get older they learn to tune out the noise and focus on other things, but the first few weeks are so distracting that students have to give notice to their teachers when the connection is established and no one blames them for not coming to school and if they did no one blamed them for being constantly distracted.

Hearing another voice in their head is only mildly terrifying given how much preparation they're given beforehand, but the experience is made completely terrifying when the voice in their head is in another language, as it often is. There have been many tales of soulmates who never got to meet because they both speak such obscure languages that they can’t learn to communicate with one another because neither can recognize the other's language. In most cases, though, soulmates are able to identify one another’s language and one or both will learn enough of the other’s language to start talking. The cutest “my soulmates speaks another language” stories always seemed to be those where the soulmates are able to teach one another their language, slowly growing closer as they start understanding each another.

Honestly, if the whole business of soulmates stopped right there with the biggest obstacle being that the person might not understand them then more people would probably be willing to argue about the value of soulmates, but it’s absolutely everything else in the process that has turned many people off to the idea of being with their ideal match.

After soulmates start talking in their heads the obvious next step would be to meet, right? Well once soulmates meet they start having dreams, or nightmares rather, in which they have to watch their soulmate’s final moments. As if having to see their soulmate die isn’t bad enough they then have to do it every night until they imprint on one another, which means that if someone meets their soulmate and gets separated from them before they imprint they both get to suffer through nightmares until they reconnect and fall in love. This also means that after being forced to watch their soulmate die (probably multiple times) they have to spend enough time with them to fall in love or else they’ll have to keep watching them die every night for the rest of their life.

But it doesn’t end there, oh no, of course not. After the soulmates have imprinted on one another and they’re supposed to be riding off into the sunset while kissing on the back of a white horse they get to the last and final stage of the soul connection: The burning. Once a soulmate couple is matched and imprinted their touch to one another becomes so hot it’s almost like putting their hand to an open flame. Even the slightest touch results in an explosion of pain that takes weeks to properly calm and heal. This seems to be the stage of the soul connection that really sparks the most debate. The first touch after imprinting is basically like putting your hand on a pan fresh from the oven, but every touch after that is only mildly painful and allows soulmates to relive the feeling of imprinting which is often described as the most euphoric feeling a person can ever experience. But is the pain worth the feeling of imprinting or "The Glow" as it's often called?

At this point, after imprinting and getting past the first touch, their souls are humming in contentment and if they separate from their soulmate for too long they’ll get so ill that they die. It’s the reason why when one soulmate in a connected pair dies, even in a freak accident, everyone knows that the other is soon to follow. There are no widows after the soul connection is finished.

Now, if a person hasn’t been sucked into the idea of the soul connection because they have no interest in being emotionally, psychologically and physically tortured and doomed to death they may be thinking that they’ve gotten off easy and they can just live out the rest of their life in peace. Not at all. They have just condemned themself to a life of constant pain. The closest approximation the unmatched can come up with is an extremely aggressive form of rheumatoid arthritis. If a person doesn’t connect with their soulmate physically by the time they’re twenty one then they’re guaranteed to suffer joint and muscle pain for the rest of their life. This specific problem has been the bane of many people’s existences when they have a soulmate who is significantly younger than them. There was even one woman whose soulmate was twenty years younger than her and by the time he turned thirteen and they were able to meet her hands had become completely deformed and near useless. Stories like hers were why most unconnected soulmates made sure to always do their exercises (sometimes rubbing their body down in pain reliever to complete them).

Really there’s no choice about being in pain when a person is born with a soulmate. They either decide to live in constant pain with arthritis or get burned every time they want to touch the person they love which is apparently often given how many cases there are of couples being hospitalized after one too many touches. Love is supposed to be the the consolation prize for the pain which is why some people think that finding their soulmate is worth it, but for some it’s really debatable.

It’s the unmatched who get off easy. They don’t have a soul connection so there’s no one invading their head, no need for a physical touch to stave off physical pain, no nightmares about the death of a loved one and no burns. They can love whoever they want without worrying about their soulmate having a say. They can get married and even get divorced and married again. They can be widowed and though they may be sad they aren’t dead just because their soulmate is.

Continue reading...

~~

“Wow. This has only been up for twenty minutes and there’s already over fifty comments,” Hyunho said in amazement. He had been watching the stats like a hawk since the post had gone up. It was his first piece on the controversial topic of soulmates and Jungkook could see that he was nervous. Hyunho clicked the mouse again and lit up as he saw the comment count increase again. Even if people were just arguing in the comments every click was an incremental increase in the money they were going to make off of the article.

“Whoa it’s over a hundred now. People always get so riled up every time there’s a post about soulmates.”

Jungkook nodded at his words and rolled his chair over to read some of the comments over Hyunho’s shoulder. “Oh look, it’s our good friend mighty mouth 86.” Jungkook pointed at the yellow tinted screen name that seemed to always be present in every online discussion of soulmates to ever happen ever.

“You think he’s actually met his soulmate? I was talking to Daeun and she thinks he’s just an idealist. She said there’s no way he could have met his soulmate and still be this invested.” Hyunho was eagerly clicking open more comment links as the discussion thread got more and more heated.

“He definitely hasn’t met his soulmate. Probably some weirdo who goes on those online meet-up forums to try and get someone to pay for him to meet up with his soulmate because he can't afford it,” Jungkook said with a shake of his head.

The conversation was the age old argument of whether or not soulmates were more trouble than they were worth. Half of the comments were from people claiming they’d been ignoring their soul connection their entire life and they planned to continue through the suffering they knew rather than subject themselves to something that was possibly ten times worse. The other half was people insisting that being with your soulmate and in occasional pain was far preferable to constantly suffering alone.

Hyunho’s head moved slightly from side to side as he read a comment that was one of the biggest walls of text Jungkook had ever seen. “This dude is pissed. Apparently his soulmate speaks some language he can’t recognize and they don’t seem interested in learning Korean so he’s basically doomed whether he likes it or not. He’s only seventeen though so he’s got a few years before the pains starts.”

Jungkook nodded at Hyunho’s words and rubbed at his own shoulders annoyed that even though his birthday was still a week away he could already feel phantom pains creeping up on him.

He glanced over at his desk and noted that someone had drawn a bright orange circle around the first of september on his calendar. He wasn’t sure if someone else was alerting the office to his upcoming birthday or if something else was going on in the office. He hoped that no one was aware of his impending body aches because then everyone would start pitying him for not only being in pain, but also for not having met his soulmate yet.

Jungkook had zero plans to ever meet his soulmate. He’d decided almost immediately upon learning about soulmates that he didn’t want one. He would be completely happy with just himself for the rest of his life. He had started doing the exercises necessary to relieve the body aches when he was seventeen so that by the time he needed them he would be accustomed to doing them every night. In the last month he’d begun stockpiling pain reliever creams and pills and every high end heating pad on the market. He was ready to fight off every body ache that came his way.

~~

“I still think that you should just take a few lessons again so you can at least let him know that you don’t plan on looking for him. You said he’s still learning for you, right?” Jimin asked over the phone. Jungkook could tell that Jimin had him on speaker because of the echo in the background, probably doing his nightly stretches. Jimin was one of Jungkook’s best friends and they had known each other since they were in elementary school even though Jimin was two years older than him. Jimin was matched and proud. He’d been completely taken with the idea of soulmates from the moment his older sister got hers when she was thirteen. He’d watched as she, four years older than him, went through the entire process of connecting with her soulmate who was actually one of her classmates.

“I don’t want to get his hopes up. Last time I started learning English he got way too excited and started trying to help me. What if he thinks I’m trying to meet him? I don’t want him to get the wrong idea and come looking for me,” Jungkook argued. He was bending at the waist so his head was near his knees as he stretched his arms to walk forward on his hands.

Jungkook was matched and pissed. His soulmate spoke English of some kind, but because he wasn’t good with accents he had no idea where exactly his soulmate was from. When the connection was initially established it was like his soulmate had been waiting for him to turn thirteen. He was right there on the other side of the connection talking a mile a minute probably asking Jungkook every question imaginable, but he had zero clue what his soulmate was saying. After Jungkook told his soulmate that he didn’t know what was going on in Korean his soulmate had seemingly shrunk in his head. After a few days of his soulmate’s thoughts bouncing around the forefront of his mind in confusing English the voice had faded to the background clearly speaking more to himself than Jungkook. The only time Jungkook bothered to focus on the connection now was when his soulmate was playing videogames and he recognized a few of the English terms. Honestly, Jungkook thought his soulmate had given up on the whole soul connection thing because it had been literal years since any of his thoughts had been directed towards Jungkook, but a few months ago his soulmate had suddenly burst into the front of his mind with “저는 남준입니다. 만나서 반갑습니다.” (I’m Namjoon. Nice to meet you.) Everything about the clumsy Korean had made Jungkook want to run and hide from his own mind. Jungkook was even more terrified after recounting the event to Jimin and Hoseok because they’d pointed out that his soulmate was likely Korean if his name was actually Namjoon. Jungkook had been completely content with everything in his life up to this point and the thought of his soulmate showing up and ruining it was making him more and more worried.

“I still think it’s a bit cruel that you don’t want to at least help the guy out a little,” Jimin said between sharp intakes of breath. He was definitely doing his stretches.

Jungkook walked his hands back and rolled his back up slowly. “I think the benefits outweigh the cons here.”

“Whatever. Whenever Seokjin can afford to leave Australia we’ll finally meet and I can stop doing these stupid stretches,” Jimin muttered.

“And then you get to start having the dreams until you guys ******* imprint,” Jungkook reminded him as he took in a deep breath and held it.

“We won’t have to wait to imprint because as soon as I see him we’ll be madly in love. We’ll skip straight past the dreams,” Jimin told Jungkook in the matter of fact way he always did.

“Then you get to watch each other suffer through the burns,” Jungkook said in the same matter of fact tone.

“You know, Kookie, I just don’t get why you’re always so difficult about this. Your soulmate is literally made for you. That means no more meaningless relationships, no more breakups, no more heartbreaks. That doesn’t sound nice to you?”

“No. Not when I have to dream about how they die and then spend the rest of my life wanting to touch them and ending up burned every time I do. It’s easier to just take my pain meds and do my stretches.” Jungkook finally shook out his muscles as he finished the last set of stretches, ready for a nice long soak in the tub.

“Kookie...” Jimin’s voice was sad like it always was when Jungkook disparaged soulmates. Jungkook understood why Jimin was so invested in the whole thing, but Jungkook just wasn’t. Jimin and Seokjin were about as disgustingly in love as a couple could be without ever having actually met. Jimin was lucky in having a soulmate that spoke Korean, but he was unlucky because Seokjin grew up in Australia and given how broke both of them seemed to always be it’d be quite some time before they were able to meet in person and get rid of the body aches.

“Goodnight, hyung. I’m gonna take a bath. I sat at my desk all day and my back is screaming.”

“Goodnight, Jungkook.”

~~

"자. 지내세요?” (How are you doing?)

Jungkook stopped walking midstep and felt Hoseok and Jimin run into his back as they caught up.

“What?” Hoseok asked in confusion, pushing himself away from Jungkook and rubbing his nose where it had hit the younger’s shoulder.

“He’s speaking Korean again,” Jungkook told them in a slightly panicked voice.

“Ooooooo. What’d he say?” Jimin asked eagerly. He was completely convinced that Namjoon’s aborted attempts at Korean would somehow win his best friend over.

“Just asking how I am,” Jungkook mumbled, trying to ignore the way he could feel Namjoon waiting for an answer. He started to wonder how much Korean his soulmate knew. Would Namjoon even understand him if Jungkook said anything beyond “I’m fine”?

“Did you answer him?” Hoseok asked. He had begun walking again and was trying to pull Jungkook along behind him. They were all supposed to be going to the studio to practice the choreography teacher Sunbin had given them last week, but Jungkook knew he was going to be distracted for the rest of the day.

“No. I’m...gonna ******* block him...or something,” Jungkook told Jimin. He had been trying to figure out how to block out his soulmate’s thoughts since he was thirteen and a half when he realized that if he wanted to masturbate in peace he would have to get rid of Namjoon’s voice in his head, but after seven, nearly eight, years he was still mentally and sexually frustrated. It was really hard to do anything even remotely sexual with a random voice constantly talking in the back of his mind.

“Good luck with that,” Jimin laughed. Jungkook knew that Jimin and Seokjin had fallen into a routine of basically phone sex after figuring out that they couldn’t block thoughts from one another and frankly, Jungkook thought it was kind of disgusting, but at least Jimin had had an ****** in the last seven years.

“I feel horrible. Stop talking to me,” Jungkook thought back in annoyance. He knew Namjoon would probably have no idea what he said, but it made him feel better to at least try and get his soulmate to stop talking to him.

“나는 한국에 나쁜 다. 미안합니다.” (I am bad in Korean. Sorry.)

Jungkook stifled a laugh at his response. It was like listening to a three year old try and explain themself. Namjoon’s accent was absolutely terrible and he was taking weird pauses as he spoke.

“Awe, did he say something cute?” Jimin asked, suddenly standing very close to the younger.

“No. He’s just really ******* bad at Korean.” The smile that had been forming on Jungkook’s face fell quickly.

“Well, what do you expect? The guy is just starting to learn. I bet his Korean is still better than your English.”

“Hey, I’ve been told my English accent is great. Perfect pronunciation, hyung.” Jungkook had gone through a phase where he was semi-determined to become an idol which required that he take language lesson for a few years, but the spike in interest that he’d noticed from Namjoon when he started thinking short phrases in English was enough to make him give up that dream and just focus on dancing.

Jungkook was happy as a backup dancer and it came with a lot less pressure than he’d had when he was a trainee for those few months, but he knew that this career choice was going to be short lived with how bad the body aches were going to get. At best he would be dancing until he was twenty five then he’d have to get a job as a coach or something where his dancing would be minimal but still important. Jungkook wasn’t looking forward to giving up another dream because of his ******* soulmate, but he also wasn’t willing to give up his freedom for a chance to dance for longer. He had accepted his fate.

Summary:

“Soul mates are muses. The people in your life you despise, disrespect and desire the most.”

Notes:

Nate is Namjoon’s English name. Sean is Yoongi’s English name. I’ll only use them in dialogue so it's not confusing.

“Not a-fcking-gain,” Yoongi groaned, running a hand over his face in exasperation.

“I swear you’ll like this one,” Namjoon argued, scrambling out of his seat to play the track that he had queued up. He’d known Yoongi was going to react this way because the older always reacted this way to songs about soulmates, but Namjoon couldn’t help it. He was really ******* into the idea of soulmates even though his didn’t like him.

Namjoon had been waiting for his soulmate from the moment he turned thirteen and it had been just before his sixteenth birthday when he’d felt the soul connection for the first time. It was eleven o'clock in the morning when he’d suddenly become conscious of the fact that he was no longer alone in his mind. His first instinct was to begin firing off every question he’d been saving for that very moment, but it all came to a quick end when his soulmate had replied in Korean.

Namjoon was Korean, Korean American, but still Korean. His parents were happy at the prospect of a Korean inlaw because then they wouldn’t have to adjust to another culture like they had feared. Namjoon was mildly grateful for his soulmate’s ethnicity because he was sure that his parents would have disowned him if his soulmate was both a male and non-Korean. Thank the universe for small mercies.

“No, Nate, come on. I thought you had stopped this.” Yoongi immediately hit the stop button on the track before the intro could even play. He crumpled up the lyric sheet in his hand and stood up out of the seat. He patted Namjoon’s shoulder before walking out of the studio.

Namjoon sat back in his seat and sighed in annoyance. He had tried to write songs about other things and he was usually mildly successful. Well, he was successful enough that he had a few songs getting radio play, but he needed something new soon if he wanted to keep being able to pay his bills for the studio, his apartment and his parent’s condo. Like a good Korean son he had been paying his parent’s bills since he started making real money from his music. It didn’t stop his parents from thinking he was wasting his life, but at least they didn’t openly criticize him in front of the rest of the family and their friends anymore.

He picked up the lyric sheet and straightened it out before getting up and taking it over to the big dark blue binder he kept on a shelf near the door to his studio. It was filled almost completely with songs about soulmates. Mostly ones from the dark period he’d gone through when he realized his soulmate didn’t want him. He still had yet to write a happy song about soulmates, but he was working on it.

Namjoon’s soulmate was...odd. He seemed to spend a lot of time just sort of observing Namjoon’s thoughts mostly when he was playing video games or watching game plays online. He, for all intents and purposes, sat in the corner of their shared mind and took in what Namjoon was doing without contributing. It frustrated Namjoon to no end.

Namjoon understood Korean. He’d always understood Korean because his parents would often forget words in English and it was pretty much necessary to make it through life growing up in a neighborhood filled with mostly Koreans. He just didn’t speak Korean. His tongue just didn’t seem to be equipped to pronounce Korean and he’d long ago given up on actually speaking the language, but he was still very aware of what people said to him.

Early on in their connection Namjoon had tried to figure out how to convey to his soulmate that he didn’t speak Korean, but he understood it, but his soulmate had been dead set on being an asshole and Namjoon was going to let him.

At this point it was almost funny the things his soulmate would say to him sometimes. A few times he’d caught his soulmate literally screaming thoughts at him about how he couldn’t jerk off because he had another person hanging out in his head. It had taken everything in him not to start laughing because then it would give away the fact that he understood what his soulmate was saying.

His soulmate had also told him some really fucked up stuff, but for all of the aggression his soulmate constantly showed him whenever he tried to make contact Jungkook had no problem ranting at him when he was feeling frustrated. Namjoon was like his soulmate’s own personal diary. Namjoon knew about every time his soulmate had completely screwed up in dance rehearsal, he knew about how frustrated he was when he was a trainee and he’d been there for every angry cry that his soulmate had during school exams. He probably knew more about his soulmate than most people because his soulmate made no effort to edit himself. Most soulmates tried to control their thoughts or at least filter poor thoughts to the background of their mind in an effort to make a good impression, but his soulmate had no qualms about leaving everything to bounce around in the front of Namjoon’s mind. And Namjoon kinda loved it.

In the last six months Namjoon had realized that his soulmate was fast approaching his twenty first birthday and he was once again toying with the idea of trying to start communicating with Jungkook. He’d been slowly working on his speaking abilities and trying to work his way towards telling his soulmate that he’d been aware of everything Jungkook said up until that point or maybe he’d just, you know, keep pretending that he didn’t really know Korean and spare his soulmate the embarrassment.

~~

“I heard you had a meeting with Sean.”

“Yeah.”

“I heard it was short.” Steven was sitting on the other side of the restaurant booth with a stupid grin on his face.

Namjoon rolled his eyes and went back to scanning the menu even though he always ordered the same thing every time he came to the little hole in the wall restaurant beside their studio.

Steven just kept staring at him with that stupid smile and Namjoon kinda wanted to smash his mouth in just a little. Steven and Namjoon were probably the epitome of frenemies. The two had studios on the same floor of the their company and were often put on the same projects because they had similar tastes. They both made the effort to go out to lunch with one another on a regular basis and act cordial inside the office for the sake of appearances. Namjoon hated every moment of Steven’s presence, but he knew that if they were openly hostile to one another the company would force them into competition with one another by playing on their dislike of one another.

Most of Namjoon’s hatred of Steven stemmed directly from the fact that he was an *** kisser extraordinaire. Steven was so far up Yoongi’s *** sometimes that Namjoon was sure Steven could taste Yoongi’s food before he did. Namjoon was more of the type to let his work speak for itself, but he’d been working long enough at this point to know that *** kissing was a talent within itself.

“Wrote another song about being rejected by your soulmate?” Steven asked, eyes still fixed on the menu.

Namjoon cracked his neck before going back to reading, not bothering to answer the question.

“Honestly, don’t you think there are already enough songs on the radio about soulmates? Rejected or not soulmates are kinda old news.” Steven tried to play his words off with a nonchalant shrug, but what he said was something that could only come from someone who was happily matched with a completed soul connection. He was speaking from a place that was painfully out of Namjoon's reach and they both knew it.

It was no secret around their company who had completed bonds and who didn’t because it was normally pretty obvious who was suffering from body aches and who wasn’t. And of course once everyone realized you were matched but the connection was incomplete they needed to know where you were in your search. Namjoon had simply stated that he and his soulmate were probably gonna stay incomplete and left it at that. Most people assumed his soulmate had died until he’d started presenting songs about soulmate rejection and then it became glaringly obvious what had happened to him.

“Soulmate songs are the top ten on every chart in every country,” Namjoon mumbled. It wasn’t an exaggeration because people were still finding their soulmates or dying without them everyday and that was beautiful and tragic. It was perfect songwriting, movie making and story creating material. Soulmates would never go out of style as a topic of discussion.

“I guess. Sean doesn’t want to play into the old cliches though,” Steven argued just as the waiter approached their table.

Namjoon just glared at Steven’s stupid smiling face as he started placing his order.

~~

“When are you going to Korea?”

Namjoon rolled his eyes at the question. This was part of the reason why he normally screened his mother’s calls. She was constantly pressuring him to go after his soulmate regardless of how many times Namjoon told her that his soulmate didn’t want him, didn’t want anyone.

“I’m not. I have work. I’m busy. A few artists are starting to work on new albums for the summer so I need to be in the studio working as much as possible. Sean is making the rounds and I need something radio friendly by next week. I don’t have time for trips to Korea.”

“Kim Namjoon,” his mother’s tone hardened as it always did about the topic of his soulmate. “How can you expect that boy to love you if you never give him the chance?”

Namjoon ran his hand over his face in annoyance. “I have given him plenty of chances the last few times I’ve spoken to him in Korean he told me to stop talking to him. I think he’s being pretty clear about not being interested in me.”

“He’s just intimidated because you’re smart and you know two languages. If your father had come to me speaking English when we connected I probably would have been scared too.”

That was always his mom’s argument. In her mind it wasn’t possible that someone would reject their soulmate.

“You know this is the problem with this new generation. When I was young we didn’t ignore our soulmate. The only people who didn’t finish the soul connection were people who literally couldn’t and now you kids are taking it for granted and deciding to ruin your bodies because you’re stubborn.”

Namjoon sighed. Talking to his mother was like a constant loop of the same arguments over and over again. He was currently finishing his stretches because he’d found that the calm he felt as he finished the exercises mixed with the drowsiness he felt from the pain meds was the only time he could put up with his mother without wanting to punch himself in the face.

“I’ll be sure to keep all of this in mind as I plan my trip to Korea,” Namjoon muttered, lowering his face towards his knee while sitting in a partial split.

“I just want you to be happy. You’re my 첫째 (first born).” his mother said more calmly.

“I know. I’m working on it,” he told her as he stood up and shook out his muscles, “His twenty first birthday is coming up maybe I’ll try and figure out how to send him something.”

“He is like this because he is an Ox. If you had been born one year sooner then you two would be most compatible, but it can’t be helped. You’ll win him over don’t worry.”

Namjoon hummed absently at his mother’s observations before telling her he was going to go to bed.

~~

Namjoon wouldn’t call himself obsessive, but that was the perfect word for the way he kept track of his soulmate. Whenever he had time he loved tuning into his soulmate’s thoughts and taking down notes on whatever he thought would be helpful to him in the future. Well, in the future he’d created in his mind where they were supposed to meet.

He’d compiled a list of all the things he’d learned about his soulmate over the last few years. At this point he’d completely filled several notebooks with information about the stubborn *** he was matched with.

He was currently sitting with his notebook open as he listened to his soulmate rant about the terrible day he was having. Apparently the younger’s body was starting to show signs of body aches and that meant he was having a hard time doing the choreography for his latest show. Namjoon knew that Jungkook had begun doing the nightly exercises a while ago, but the younger hadn’t been prepared for how the actual pain would feel once it started.

Jungkook was lamenting about the many ways in which he wanted to kill whoever had decided that soulmates were a necessity. Over the years he had, many times, brought up how jealous he was of his friend Hoseok for being unmatched and Namjoon had just come to accept that his soulmate’s interest in dancing took far greater precedence in his life than a soulmate. If Jungkook didn’t have a soulmate he would be able to dance until nature took away his ability. He wouldn’t have to do extra exercises to combat the body aches. He’d just be able to live his life.

Sometimes Namjoon wondered why he couldn’t stop trying to connect with his soulmate. Jungkook had made it abundantly clear that soulmates were stupid and he didn’t need one, but Namjoon was still here seven, almost eight, years later still listening intently to everything and still writing down anything he deemed important. He looked down at the notes he’d made so far and sighed, he was whipped. His soulmate didn’t even want him and he was still completely taken with the man.

Summary:

“There is no such thing as a soulmate… and who would want there to be? I don’t want half of a shared soul. I want my own damn soul.”

For his twenty first birthday Jungkook had decided to take a trip home to Busan for the weekend. He figured a bit of fresh beach air was warranted given how badly his body aches seemed to be gearing up to be. He felt like his back had been on a mission to kill him for the last two days.

At midnight on his birthday he found himself sitting in the middle of his family home bedroom applying icy hot patches to his back with varying success in getting them to line up all the way across his shoulders and lower back.

“생일 축하합니다.” (Happy Birthday) His soulmate’s intrusion made Jungkook roll his eyes. He wondered what time it was where Namjoon was. Every year he seemed to be on top of his game with wishing Jungkook a happy birthday right at midnight.

He bit his lip as a cramp jolted through his left hand and he struggled to get his fingers to relax.

“몸이 아파요?” (*your body* Does it hurt?)

“Fuck off,” Jungkook thought back, gritting his teeth as he rubbed at his hand. He could feel tears pricking in his eyes and he was truly wondering how other people lived like this every day. How had Jimin been dealing with this for the last two years? How had Namjoon been dealing with this for however long he had been? Jungkook realized as the thought crossed his mind that he had no idea how old Namjoon was or when his birthday was. He didn’t really know anything about Namjoon other than his name and that he spoke English and very poor Korean.

“잠들다.” (Get some sleep.) Jungkook chuckled. Although he knew what his soulmate was trying to tell him Namjoon had chosen the wrong form of the phrase and now it sounded like he was telling Jungkook that he himself was going to sleep or maybe going to die.

“You go to sleep,” Jungkook thought back as his hand finally calmed down enough for him to straighten his fingers. He sighed in relief and wiped the tears that were coming down his face.

Jungkook stood up and grabbed the purple blanket he’d gotten in the mail the day before he’d left on his trip. It was express mailed and he’d assumed it was a gift from his parents, but neither of them seemed to know what he was talking about when he’d shown them the package earlier.

It was an Ostrich brand heated blanket that was specially developed to combat the body aches of unconnected soulmates. As Jungkook turned the dial to the highest setting and slipped inside the giant purple monstrosity he wondered where it had come from, but his thoughts were cut short as he felt all of his muscles relax in the soothing heat that was covering his entire body. He would probably actually be able to sleep now. He’d thought the pain would keep him up.

As he slipped off to sleep he vaguely heard his soulmate. “잘자.” (Goodnight.) And his brain registered that that was the first time Namjoon had said something to him in panmal (without honorifics) despite the fact that Jungkook was younger than him.

~~

“Jungkook-hyung? Jungkookie-hyung? Kookie? Kook!”

Jungkook sat up groggily and looked over towards his bedroom door. His younger brother, Jungsik, was standing in the doorway staring at him with a wide grin.

“Shouldn’t you be at school?” Jungkook asked as he rubbed his eyes and stretched. His eyes widened as he realized that his body felt amazing. He hadn’t been completely ache free since he was nineteen and he hadn’t expected to ever feel like that again, especially not after his twenty first birthday, but here he was feeling like he could do a few back flips. He gripped the purple blanket and stared at it in amazement.

“I told you not to bother him,” Jungkook’s older brother, Jungwoo, came up behind Jungsik and looked into Jungkook’s room, “ Oh, you’re awake? Come get breakfast.”

Jungkook nodded absently, still wiggling around trying to gauge just how pain free he was.

“What are you doing? Do you need some more muscle relaxers or pain killers?” Jungwoo asked as he took in Jungkook’s weird behavior. Jungkook knew that Jungwoo had a stash of pain killers and creams that would put his to shame because Jungwoo's soulmate was completely uninterested in meeting him. The two were decent enough friends, but Jungwoo's soulmate thought that if they met they’d just end up trapped in the dream stage because there was no way they would really fall in love. Jungkook felt bad for his brother sometimes because his soulmate also lived in Busan in the Namcheon which wasn’t far from their place in Haeundae so distance couldn't even be used as an excuse for their separation. Early on in Jungwoo’s connection their mother had offered to take Jungwoo to see his soulmate whether the girl, Sooyoung, agreed or not because she couldn’t accept that her son was being rejected so cruelly.

Jungwoo’s experience was part of the reason Jungkook had simply told his parents that he didn’t know what language his soulmate was speaking when he’d turned thirteen. It was really just a little white lie because Jungkook knew what language Namjoon was speaking, but he really didn't have any idea what he was saying.

“No, I feel great,” Jungkook said as he stood up and walked over to the door.

“How? I think I cried for three hours straight when I turned twenty one and I definitely didn’t sleep,” Jungwoo said incredulously, “Did somebody slip you some dilaudid?”

“I got an Ostrich blanket,” Jungkook told him simply as all three Jeon brothers started moving down that hallway towards the kitchen where the delicious smell of bacon was pouring out.

“You got a what? You know those cost like 1000 dollars, right?” Jungwoo asked in shock. His eyes had gotten comically wide. “Where did you get that kind of money?”

Jungkook stumbled forward into the wall next to the kitchen doorway and choked on air at his brother’s exclamation. “What?”

“Those things are expensive as shit. Where did you get one?”

“I don’t...I don't know. Somebody sent it to me. I thought it was mom and dad."

“Fuck. Somebody must love you,” Jungwoo said with a faux disgusted shake of his head.

All of the brothers sat down at the table and their mom began serving the food, but Jungkook was feeling slightly light headed at the idea of owning a blanket that cost 1000 dollars.

~~

“It’s an 800 dollar blanket,” Jungkook said into the phone, confusion evident in his voice. He was talking to Jimin because he didn’t know what else to do with the new found information about his blanket. He’d looked up the model number and although it wasn’t 1000 dollars it was still the most expensive thing he now owned and that included his laptop.

Jungkook wasn’t really sure what to do about the blanket. Everyone that he knew was just as broke as he was and even if they weren’t they had no reason to spend 800 dollars on him.

“What? Who would even have the money to give you that?” Jimin asked. His voice went up several pitches in shock.

“I don’t know, but I’m afraid to use it again,” Jungkook told him. It had been two days since his birthday and his body was locking up again, but he didn’t want to use the blanket for fear that it had been sent to him by mistake. Who’s to say that it wasn’t meant as a birthday gift for some other Jeon Jungkook who went to Konkuk University.

“Just call the company and tell them the numbers on the box. They can probably tell you the info for the person who ordered it and then you can send it to the right person.”

“But, Hyung, I already used it. It smells like icy hot,” Jungkook whined. He was lying on the floor of his room at his parents' house after having rubbed himself down in muscle relaxing cream so he could do his stretches.

“Just call the company so you can at least give the person an apology. It’s a ******* 800 dollar blanket, Kook-ah.”

Jungkook knew that Jimin was right, but he felt embarrassed at the prospect of having to explain that he’d assumed such an expensive *** blanket was for him.

~~

After chasing down the information of the person who had bought the blanket Jungkook was staring at a number he'd gotten from the company. According to what the woman on the phone had told him the person who ordered the blanket was from overseas (more reason for Jungkook to be freaking out). The company had been hesitant to give out the number of customer until Jungkook told them that he'd ruined the blanket and wanted to directly apologize to whoever had spent so much money on a gift. They also probably thought it would take some pressure off of them for making the mistake of sending it to the wrong place.

He stared down at his phone with the newly acquired number typed in. An account had come up when he typed the number into line, but he was hesitant to push the add or call button because what if they thought he was some type of creep adding random people?

He took another deep breath and finally just hit the call icon. It only rang for a short moment before a groggy voice mumbled something that Jungkook couldn’t understand. He panic ended the call as he realized that he had no idea what time it was wherever that person was. And now he was going full blown freakout as he realized that he had woken the person up only to hang up before actually saying anything.

This was fine. Completely fine. He would just move out of his dorm, dropout of school, throw his phone in the river and leave the blanket in an unmarked dumpster. He could live the rest of his life off the grid. It was fine.

Except that the line number was calling him back and he was close to crying as he stared at his phone.

“Uhm...hello?” Jungkook braced himself for a tirade, but only silence met him on the other end of the line. He pulled it back and stared at the screen worried that the call had disconnected, but the timer was still running at the top of the screen. “Who is it?” That was a stupid question given that he had called this number first.

“Ah...uh...Hi,” came the reply from the phone.

“I-” Jungkook stopped talking as he realized that he knew this voice. He wasn’t sure why he knew this voice, but he did. He stared at his phone in suspicion because if he knew the person's voice then the blanket might actually be meant for him, but he still didn’t know who he knew that would possibly be able to afford a 1000 dollar blanket. “Who is this?”

“Ah....uh...Nate.”

Jungkook definitely knew this voice, but it was speaking in a language he couldn't understand and he couldn’t seem to place it. “Do you speak Korean? I can’t understand you.”

There was some shuffling on the other end of the phone before a different voice came on speaking in Korean.

“Who is this?”

Jungkook was sure he didn’t know the new voice and this person sounded far more hostile than the first voice. “Uhm...My name is Jungkook. I was..I was calling...uhm...because...I.”

“Kid, it’s like four o’clock in the morning. I’m gonna need you to get to the point. I’m tired and I just got woken up out of my sleep. I’m not in the mood to listen to you stutter at me.”

This only succeeded in making Jungkook more nervous and he tried to think of things to calm himself down. As he focused on pictures of puppies in his mind he suddenly noticed that his soulmate was awake and his soulmate was almost never awake in the middle of the afternoon. As this thought occurred to him he was suddenly able to place the first voice from the call and he dropped his phone in terror.

“Hello?!” Jungkook could hear the anger from the person on the phone, but he was panicking. He couldn’t even runaway because the problem was in his mind. His soulmate was observing his thoughts and he could just tell that he knew. His soulmate knew that Jungkook knew and he could sense the way his soulmate was scrambling for some Korean to calm Jungkook down.

“괜찮아?” (Are you okay?)

Jungkook was most certainly not okay. He was pretty sure he couldn’t breathe. The call finally ended and Jungkook was quick to turn the entire phone off as if that would sever the soulmate connection in his mind. He struggled to push his soulmate out of his mind, but of course that wasn’t working.

~~

“Jungkook, are you okay?” Jungwoo was watching as Jungkook quietly panicked on his bed. He had been loudly playing music and singing along for the last two hours in an attempt to block out his soulmate’s voice trying to talk to him.

“No, hyung, he found me. He sent me the blanket. He’s coming,” Jungkook wailed at his brother.

Jungwoo stared in concern as his brother started crying and trying to pull him into the bed. “Who’s coming? You sound like you’re about to be murdered.” Jungwoo pulled his arm out of his brother’s grip and stepped back from the bed.

“Namjoon,” He yelled. It was the first time he’d told his brother anything about his soulmate and he could see the confusion on his brother’s face. “My soulmate. He sent me the Ostrich blanket. He knows where I live. He’s gonna come here and ruin everything. Hyung, what do I do?”

Jungwoo was completely taken aback by the abject terror in his brother’s voice. Jungwoo had always wanted to meet his own soulmate, but she had made the decision for both of them that things wouldn’t work out so he had to deal with it. He wasn’t really sure why Jungkook sounded so scared of his soulmate.

“Calm down. How do you know he sent the blanket? Why are you crying?” Jungwoo put his arm out to comb down Jungkook’s hair.

“I lied," Jungkook cried, "My soulmate speaks English. He’s been learning Korean for a few months and I think he’s planning to come here. I don’t want him, hyung. I don’t want a soulmate. I just want to dance with my friends and finish school.” Jungkook was hyperventilating and his head was starting to feel light. He stared up at his brother with tear filled eyes and Jungwoo stared back with wide confused eyes.

“What?”