The name of your soulmate appears on your body only when they’ve fallen in love with you. Park Jimin and Jeon Jungkook have been enemies since day one. No one really knows why, but it’s clear that the two can’t stand each other. So what happens when they’re forced to work together and face the memories that they’d both rather have kept hidden?
Carrying two large bags of groceries, Jihyo walked into her relatively small apartment. As she placed the bags on the kitchen counter, the clinking of soju bottles could be heard as she continued to sing a song under her breath.
“Alright,” she mumbled. “This should be enough for the night.”
Methodically, she began to pull out bowls from the cupboards and transferred a variety of chips and salty snacks into them. As she did so, the small coffee table in front of her TV was soon completely covered.
Perhaps it was a bit overboard, considering they were really only going to be able to watch the first movie in the Lord of the Rings series. But really, who could say no to snacks? And if there were any leftovers, which there would be, she would simply pack them up and eat them on another day.
Tonight was about forgetting the stress of life and school. It was also to keep the promise she had made to Jimin to check up on Jungkook. Yet even then, a part of it was simply so that she could have a fun night in with one of her best friends.
Her phone buzzed with the notification of Jungkook’s text. “Here,” it said simply, and she rushed to buzz him in.
“That’s an insane amount of snacks,” commented Jungkook upon entering the apartment. He, too, had a grocery bag with him.
“We don’t really have that much time to have fun or relax, so I figured we might as well go big.”
He started taking out bottles of alcohol, and upon seeing that the space beneath the table was getting full, he stopped.
“Are you trying to kill us with alcohol poisoning?”
“It’s fine,” she replied. “We’re not going to drink everything today. Most of it is for my stash.”
With eyes that clearly didn’t fully believe her, he finally sat down. The next few minutes were a mix of complaints about the amount of work they had to do and attempts to figure out how to connect the laptop to the screen. Although technically they could have found the movie on one of the many streaming platforms they shared, there was a certain spark to piracy that they could never really escape.
“Ahoy matey,” Jungkook started. “Land ho!”
“Yar har har,” Jihyo continued. “The seas they be calm today.”
With a shared glance, both burst into uncontrollable laughter as the TV screen showed a website hosting the movie. They would not have to pay their corporate overlords today.
“Are there any hot single moms in your area?”
“Probably, but AdBlocker is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting.”
As their giggles died down, they settled into the couch and began the movie. As always, the ring passed from Bilbo to Frodo. Sam takes that one step that brings him further away from home than he has ever been. They and the group make their way to Rivendell, and off they go on their quest to destroy the One Ring.
“You know, there’s a funny thing about the fellowship,” Jungkook managed to say between handfuls of popcorn shoved into his mouth. “Frodo and Legolas never talk.”
“Are you talking about the bit at the end of the series where Frodo wakes up and calls everyone by name, but when he sees Legolas, he just goes ‘The elf’?”
“Yeah, yeah, I mean, can you imagine? Going through all that and not even knowing the name of one of your party members?”
“In all fairness,” Jihyo answered. “They had bigger things to worry about.”
“Meh, I guess you’re right.”
As the credits rolled, they quietly sipped on their soju.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of hungry,” Jihyo said, standing up.
“I’m not hungry enough for a full meal. So, ramyeon at the convenience store?”
With a simple nod, Jungkook got up as well. It was a short walk to the nearest one, and, thankfully, since it was late at night, there would definitely be space to eat there as well.
The bright white lights of the convenience store shone in the darkness as the two scavenged for ingredients for their ramyeon. Perhaps a bit of cheese, and oh look, there’s sausage and soft-boiled eggs. Maybe add a bit of dried seaweed and don't forget the kimchi. With their late-night dinner and snack ready to go, they paid and began the “cooking.” Hot water and a rolling boil while adding ingredients and chatting about the movie, and how Aragorn was definitely the hottest of them all.
“I mean true but also,” Jungkook said. “Hear me out, Gandalf.”
“Gandalf?” Jihyo sputtered out, nearly dropping her cheese. “You’re crazy.”
Once the chefs had finished their impromptu cooking, they found a table outside the store, illuminated by the bright fluorescent lights. Here, they were quiet for just a moment before their chopsticks snapped apart and they began to slurp their meals.
From his bag, Jungkook slipped out a water bottle that had been filled with soju back at the apartment.
“You know you could have just bought another one if the problem was someone thinking that you hadn’t bought it here.”
“Yeah, but we’re poor, and there's a bunch back at your place.”
The two friends sat across from each other in comfortable silence for a few minutes, each concentrating on their food, though one had her mind elsewhere.
Initially, when she received Jimin’s text, she thought it was nothing serious, that Jungkook was no different from usual. Maybe Jimin was just overreacting, she thought to herself then. It wasn’t as though the two were close enough for him to notice any changes in Jungkook. They were enemies, and despite her attempts to close that gap, it had only widened. No one had expected the two boys to get into a physical fight, especially since they had been fairly civil until then. Alright, perhaps civil was giving them too much credit. But they certainly had never resorted to violence.
Now, as Jihyo sat across her friend, she noticed the lines that she had been unable to see before. Despite the buzz of the alcohol, she could see that there was something that had changed. He was hunched and his eyes empty. The hand that held the chopsticks were unsteady in a way that was uncharacteristic of his reaction to alcohol. No, it seemed as though he had been drained of all energy. Of all hope.
“You know,” he started, taking a sip from the water bottle. “I never thought you would like Lord of the Rings.”
“Why? Is it because I’m a girl? Or that I’m not a nerd?”
“No,” his small laugh lifted her spirits a bit as though appeasing the part of her brain that told her that something was very wrong. “I thought you wouldn’t be into it because there aren’t that many female characters.”
“Oh,” she muttered. “I mean, you’re not wrong, but I always thought the relationship between Frodo and Sam was cute. I know the movies and the book gave Sam a ‘happy’ ending by having him marry a woman at the end, but I was always in the camp that thought that Frodo and Sam were soulmates and should have gotten together in the end.”
“I think the ending was perfect as is,” Jungkook said, averting his gaze at the mention of the word “soulmates.”
“What? That’s impossible. Literally just look at the way that they interact with each other. They were meant to be soulmates. It was just Hollywood that wanted straight people.”
“They were fine without being soulmates,” he answered. “Not everyone needs to have a soulmate. Just because everyone thinks that soulmates are what completes a person, it doesn't mean that it’s true. I mean, what about the people that don't have soulmates? What about the people who have bad soulmates? I think the whole thing is stupid and shouldn't exist.”
At his words, Jihyo slowly brought down her chopsticks. He couldn’t possibly mean that. Soulmates were what made a person whole. Maybe there are bad people out there, but a person’s soulmate is meant to complete them so wholly that they are capable of change. That was what everyone knew to be true. Who could be a bad person when they find love?
“Why is it stupid?” she asked slowly. “It’s just love.”
“Yeah, of course that's what everyone thinks,” he scoffed. “Everyone is always talking about love and how it's so great and so perfect, but no one really looks at it. What good is love if nothing else matters? What good is love and soulmates if you’d destroy the world, everyone in it and yourself just to get it? I don’t get it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know my parents are soulmates, right?” he took a large swig from his bottle. “When I tell people, they’re always saying things like ‘oh you’re so lucky your parents love each other,’ and ‘at least they'll never get divorced.’ But no one ever wants to talk about what it's actually like growing up with people that are obsessed with each other.”
It was with this turn in conversation that Jihyo finally saw what Jimin had seen. This wasn’t the Jungkook who would joke around and poke fun at people. This wasn't the Jungkook who would smile and laugh at everyone and anything. This was a Jungkook that she couldn’t fully recognize, one whose voice dripped with a bitter venom.
“You know I was never allowed to watch movies that weren’t about soulmates or had soulmates in them?” He downed another swig of alcohol. “Everything from the smallest thing was always about soulmates. Every storytime, every book, every show, every toy, everything was always about soulmates.”
“It is a rather large part of people’s lives.” Jihyo started, but Jungkook either didn’t hear her or didn’t care.
“It was always ‘being with your soulmate makes you whole’ and ‘you should always be looking for your soulmate.’ As if a person can’t be whole on their own. It’s as if there’s something inherently wrong about people without soulmates.”
“You can be whole on your own, Kook,” Jihyo said, softly moving her hand towards the bottle, but her attempt to get it back was thwarted as he drank from it once more. “You don’t have to have a soulmate to be a person.”
“Tell that to my parents,” he scoffed. “All they ever cared about was when we would find our soulmates. I mean, it was fine when Joon hyung and I were young since we were both ‘imperfect.’ We could watch movies and shows together and just have fun, and it was great.”
“But he found his soulmate.”
“Yeah,” he laughed, the sound never reaching his eyes. “You can imagine just how thrilled our parents were when that happened. Hyung leaves for university, leaves me alone with them, and comes back complete.”
“Do you hate Jin?” Jihyo pushed the ramyeon towards him. The carbs would help with the drunkenness.
“It’s not that I hate Jin hyung,” Jungkook started. “He’s a nice guy. But man, I hate that he’s my brother’s soulmate. Did you know that when my parents found out about Jin hyung, he basically became their son? Everything Jin did was perfect. He was whole, because he completed Joon hyung. But me? I was just defective. No soulmate yet. And you know what sucks even more? Joon hyung became obsessed with Jin hyung. It was the only thing he could talk about. And Jin hyung? He was the only person who cared if I was still alive.”
Shock rang through Jihyo. It was normal for newly found soulmates to be obsessed with each other. So Namjoon being that way toward Jin wasn’t particularly shocking. But that last sentence was strange. It wasn’t normal anymore.
“What do you mean by ‘he was the only person who cared if you were still alive’?”
“My parents never cared for any interest that wasn’t soulmate-related.” Jungkook seemed to be going on a separate tangent. “I used to do photography back in high school, you know? I never told them because then they’d try to make me find my soulmate with it. And that wasn't what I wanted. It was something just for me.”
“And then one time, I was busy in my room editing some photos to send to the next exhibition or competition I was joining. Mom said that we were going out for dinner since it was late and she didn’t feel like cooking. Guess who came over just as everyone was getting ready?”
“Jin!” he shouted, throwing his hands up and nearly tumbling out of his plastic chair. “And guess who got left behind?”
“Yeah,” he giggled into the bottle as he nodded. “Maybe they thought I was in the car with them and didn’t notice I wasn’t there. Or maybe they didn’t care. Either way, if I hadn’t gone over to Yoongi hyung’s place that night, I wouldn’t have eaten anything. Funny, right?”
Jihyo sat in front of her friend of four years with her head in her hands. He hugged the bottle of soju tight as if it was his one saving grace. In all their time together, Jihyo had never known much about Jungkook’s past. He had never been one to talk about himself. Although he seemed like an open book most days, often it was as if that book had been written with invisible ink, visible only to those who dared look closer. Yet he had never given anyone the light to view this ink. Even now, describing his childhood was an accident.
As the white light of the convenience store filtered through the glass and shone on them, Jihyo could see the shadow of the neglected and abandoned child he had been. She saw in his eyes, glossy with the haze of alcohol, the pain of being forgotten.
“Jungkook,” she started, then noticed that as he hummed in acknowledgment, he kept sipping. “Give me that,” she said, snatching the bottle from him. “What happened isn’t funny.”
“But kinda,” he answered, making grabbing motions for the bottle.
“No, it’s not.” She kept the bottle out of reach. “You shouldn’t have been left behind like that. Didn’t your brother notice? Didn’t Jin?”
“If I had to beg them to come to my graduation, do you really think they noticed me missing dinner?”
With every little bit that Jungkook let slip, the portrait of his family and of his life became clearer and clearer.
“That’s so fucked up, Kook.”
“It’s fine,” he managed to say. “I could have made them care about me. If I’d told them about Jimin, they would have cared.”
To that newly clear picture, the mention of Jimin immediately blurred it.
“What does Jimin have to do with your family?”
“We used to go to high school together,” he said, smiling softly in a way uncharacteristic of the mention of the other man. “Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but we used to be friends.”
Jihyo couldn’t believe it. Jimin and Jungkook? Friends? How had that even been possible? They had been left alone together, and Jungkook came out of it with a black eye. What could have happened for them to hate each other that much? Sana had never mentioned their connection outside what was known. They had met each other in university. Hadn’t they?
“You were friends with Jimin?”
“Yeah, for a bit during that last year of high school.”
In one swift motion, Jungkook pulled up his sleeve and showed it to Jihyo.
“This happened,” he said, pointing at his wrist. Somehow noticing the confused yet concerned look on his friend's face, he laughed. “Right, it’s not there anymore. His name was here.”
“Wait,” she started, finally processing what that motion, the pointing, and the mention of Jimin had been. “He’s your soulmate?”
“Was,” Jungkook answered. “He was. Found out a couple of months before graduation too. Couldn’t have that happening, so I erased it.”
“You can’t just erase a mark. It’s not like a tattoo.”
“You can if you make them hate you.”
Silence stretched between the two of them as Jihyo realized exactly what had happened and why. The small details were still a mystery, but the picture was clear. Jungkook hated the idea of soulmates because of his family. Jimin was Jungkook’s soulmate. Somehow, like a horrific joke, the mark had appeared on Jungkook, and now it was gone.
“Is that why you’re such an asshole to him?” Jihyo asked tentatively.
“Can’t love someone if you hate them, right?” He slumped onto the table and rubbed his wrist devoid of the mark. “He is cute, I’ll give him that. And super talented too. I liked him back in high school too. I thought about asking him out once. Didn’t end up doing it. So now I’m an asshole. His number one enemy. And it's better like that. If I’m nice to him again, then maybe it’ll come back. I don’t want that. I don’t want them to love me because of him.”
