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Jeon Wonwoo can see connections between two people through different colored threads coming from their chests. Since he was young, he had stared at the glowing threads with awe and as time passes by, he teaches himself what each color meant.
He discovered what the color red meant first. When he was four, he saw it between his parents when they would kiss each other goodbye before going off to work. He also saw it between couples who held hands at the park where he and his friends would play. He knew what red meant.
It meant that they were in love.
He found out what white meant when his baby brother was born two years later. Two white, almost silver, lines coming from his mother and father’s chest that went straight to his brother’s body, and he knew it was on his chest even though he was all swaddled up in a periwinkle towel.
White means they were family.
Pink stood for friendship.
He saw this between his father and his assistant when his father brought him and his brother to work one time. He liked the rose colored thread flowing between his brother and the pretty lady after his father had introduced them to her.
Wonwoo then discovered that the threads can change color. He witnessed a boy holding out a bouquet of flowers to a girl and seeing the pink thread morph into red as she accepts it.
He’s seen threads flicker, too, as if losing their luster. He’d seen it between his parents when they would fight at night, thinking he was asleep.
Wonwoo hated that. He didn’t like seeing the ruby red flicker to a ghostly white so easily. He hated it even more when he saw that his father’s connection between his assistant turned from pale pink to a burning red the next time he had seen them together. He almost cried.
His mother definitely did.
He watched in horror as their thread faded from red, to white, to black. It was as if someone had drawn a straight line between his parents with a broad-tipped marker.
Black represented hatred.
It’s been years now. Wonwoo is nineteen and in his second year of college. Since that uneventful turn of events, Wonwoo had sworn to himself that he won’t let anyone have any black connections, especially when he discovered a new color.
It was white-gold and to Wonwoo, it was the most beautiful color he had ever seen connecting two people.
He saw it first when his mother had tagged him along to a relative’s wedding when he was twelve. The very second the groom turned around to watch the bride walk down the aisle, Wonwoo watched a blazing red thread shine into gold, before mellowing into white-gold. He was amazed, but at the same time confused. What did it mean? The old lady in front of him leaned to her companion and said, “Look at how they look at each other. They must be soulmates.”
Wonwoo doesn’t know what that meant exactly, but he knows it’s stronger than love.
In his university, he’s been known to be a matchmaker ever since. He didn’t mind at first, telling who goes well with who, but it was hard to explain how he does it since he’s the only one who can see the connections. His own family doesn’t know about his abilities. But if there was one person who knew, it was his best friend of eight solid years and it only took him the same number of years to tell him about it.
Kim Mingyu didn’t believe him at first and it didn’t surprise Wonwoo because how else was he going to prove it? As it turns out, he had accidentally proven himself when their friend, Seungkwan, had came running to them in tears, claiming Hansol had cheated on him with a girl. They asked him to show them where Hansol was after calming him down and when Seungkwan points to the girl, Wonwoo catches the pearly white thread between her and Hansol.
“She’s his sister.” Wonwoo stated, to which the other two question him about. He shrugs them off, saying he just knows and because he could tell for a fact that Hansol loves Seungkwan more than the latter thinks, pretending to joke that they were soulmates—when really, they were.
But of course, they don’t know that yet.
Days later, Seungkwan comes back to them, telling them that Wonwoo was right. The girl was Hansol’s sister and that her name was Sofia. She was merely visiting him after being separated for months because of school. When Seungkwan left them, Mingyu stared at Wonwoo and asked if he knew because of his so-called abilities. When Wonwoo nodded, Mingyu believed.
From then, Mingyu would ask about the colors and Wonwoo diligently answered them. When he got to white-gold and explained it stood for soulmates, Mingyu perked up.
“So do you see them only at weddings or what?”
They were sprawled on Wonwoo’s living room, playing his video game console while sharing a plate of cookies his mom made for them. Wonwoo pauses their game before answering.
“No, I see them when, well, I guess when those two people really do love each other or when they meet. There was a time I saw two complete strangers bump into one another and when they looked at each other’s eyes, the white-gold thread connected them.”
“So it’s like love at first sight? That’s really cool.”
“I guess.” Wonwoo nods his head at the screen before resuming the game.
“So have you met your soulmate?”
Wonwoo shakes his head.
“Not yet?”
The game freezes again and Wonwoo sighs, looking over at Mingyu. “I can’t see any of my connections. So it’s pretty hard to know if someone hates my guts, head over heels in love with me, or really my friend.” He playfully eyes him, making Mingyu defend himself.
“What’s that supposed to mean?! I am your friend! I believed you, didn’t I? I would have called you crazy and weird and left you.” He huffs, taking a cookie from the plate and shoving it between his teeth.
Wonwoo laughs, his deep voice echoing inside the room. “I’m just joking and you know it.” He watches Mingyu roll his eyes and he chuckles, “But it would be nice to know if I’ve already met my soulmate, you know? Or maybe at least know if someone’s in love with me.” Wonwoo’s eyes shift back to the television screen, not seeing Mingyu flinch at his last words. “If I knew someone loved me like that, I would really love them back. Everyone deserves to be loved back.”
When Mingyu didn’t react, he reaches over and breaks the cookie between his teeth, catching the other by surprise, and tosses the other half of the treat into his mouth. “Did I say something deep for you to stare off into space? All I said was everyone deserved to be loved back.”
“A-and I,” Mingyu clears his throat after eating the rest of the cookie. “I agree with you.”
“Do you want me to tell you when someone’s in love with you or when you’ve met your soulma—”
“NO!” He blurts out, shocking Wonwoo. “I mean, I don’t want to know because you’ll spoil the fun of finding ‘the one’ for me.”
“Suit yourself.” Wonwoo shrugs his shoulders before resuming the game.
But little did he know he wasn’t really spoiling Mingyu’s fun on finding his soulmate. The latter was afraid.
He was afraid to face the fact that his best friend isn’t his soulmate and that Wonwoo would never love him the way he did for him. He didn’t know how to react when he found out that Wonwoo couldn’t see his own connections. He’d be relieved to know that he doesn’t know how much he had fallen for him. He’d also be devastated to know that he wasn’t meant for him.
Days later, Mingyu appears outside Wonwoo’s house with a thick book in his hands and an excited smile on his face. In his English literature class, his professor assigned books to each student to study and he had gotten a translated version of The Symposium by Plato.
Wonwoo patiently waits while Mingyu flips through the pages and shows him what worked him up.
It was passage about how humans were created with four arms, four legs, and a single head, but with two faces. But in fear that humans would overthrow the gods, Zeus had split them in half. Now each with a pair of arms, legs, and a head with a single face, the humans walked the earth miserably, longing for their other half. There will come a time, though, when two halves will meet and through a silent understanding between one another, they would know that they are there other halves and they can unite, not in body, but in soul.
“Pretty cool, huh? I had to show it to you when I read it back in the library.”
“You were actually reading in the library?”
“Hyung!” Mingyu groans in exasperation. “Focus.”
“Okay, okay.” He laughs and lets the younger continue as they take a seat at the dining table.
“You told me that you wanted to know if you’ve already met your soulmate, right? This might help you!”
Wonwoo’s eyes go from Mingyu’s to the book repeatedly. “How exactly?”
The other boy grunts in frustration, dragging a hand down his face and Wonwoo watches in amusement. “Have you ever met anyone and felt connected to them? Like what it says in the book? A silent understanding… Have you…” He pauses, staring into Wonwoo’s eyes, “Have you ever looked into someone’s eyes, touched someone’s hands, or hear a person’s voice and felt, like, you were complete?”
Their pupils dilate and Wonwoo blinks, giving it a thought.
Mingyu holds his breath.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh.”
Mingyu left ten minutes later, excusing himself to finish the book, and Wonwoo doesn’t know it, and he probably never will, but Mingyu left as half of the person he was when he was with Wonwoo.
Weeks later, the best friends haven’t spent more than an hour with one another and somehow it affected Wonwoo. It felt nice knowing that someone knew about his abilities and helping him set up two people who were meant for each other, but Mingyu was always busy with school.
He was able to catch him in the library—of all places—with Jeonghan. Approaching the table, he spied the pink thread between them, and he smiles. But then Jeonghan leans a bit closer, his long hair falling against Mingyu’s shoulder and his lips inches away from the other’s ears. In seconds, the pink bleeds red.
Wonwoo thinks it that way because maybe somewhere inside him, he really was bleeding.
“So,” He says in the middle of the movie he and Mingyu were watching. It was a school holiday and Mingyu had promised to do some catching up with him. “You and Jeonghan?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Mingyu shrugs his shoulders. “Honestly, I didn’t see it coming.”
“Me neither.” Wonwoo fakes a chuckle. “But I did see it happening.”
Their eyes meet simultaneously, both leaving the ongoing movie playing in front of them.
“You did?”
He nods.
“H-how…?”
“I was looking for you the other day and found you in the library with him. The thread was pink at first. But then Jeonghan whispered something in your ear,” Wonwoo flinches at the memory, but Mingyu doesn’t seem to notice “And it just turned red.”
They let the movie’s music fill in the silence that fell in between them. A few minutes later, Mingyu starts speaking in a soft voice that Wonwoo can barely hear.
“We were there for our science project. One minute we were talking about alleles, then the next, he’s whispering that he’s always liked me and…” Mingyu’s voice cracks as he looks dead straight into Wonwoo’s eyes. “…did it… the thread, I mean, did it turn white-gold?”
Wonwoo can see fear beneath Mingyu’s hazel orbs, flickering with the light coming from the television screen, and he didn’t know what to do: hurt his best friend or hurt himself.
He chose the latter.
After Wonwoo had said yes, Mingyu’s chest tightened and he felt like the air has been taken away from him. Inhaling deeply, he fakes a laugh and says in a shaky voice “And here I thought he was cheating on me with Seungcheol.”
Wonwoo fakes his own smile. “Aren’t they best friends?”
“Yeah,” Mingyu swallows hard. “Like us.”
Mingyu slept over that night. They haven’t done it in a long time, but like always, they camp out on the living room floor with a mountain of pillows and a bundle of blankets. Mingyu fell asleep first. They were halfway through their sixth movie that night and Wonwoo got distracted by the younger’s snores. Amused, he pulls another blanket over the other’s body and tucks his arms. His fingers brush along Mingyu’s and he stops.
“Have you ever looked into someone’s eyes, touched someone’s hands, or hear a person’s voice and felt, like, you were complete?”
The words echo in his ears.
Slowly, Wonwoo wraps his hand around Mingyu’s. It was nice and warm, despite being exposed to the cold air from the air conditioning. It was surprisingly soft, too. You would think that Mingyu’s habit of smudging pencils, pastels, and paints for them to blend would create calluses. His fingers traces over Mingyu’s palm and memorizes the lines creasing it. Each straights and curves, he maps them all out and a small content smile finds its way on his lips.
He pulls his hand away and tucks Mingyu’s back into the blanket. He stops the movie and turns the DVD player and television off before he lies down, settling against the pillows. With one last glance at his best friend’s sleeping form, he closes his eyes.
Wonwoo wakes up first. He’s still on his side, facing Mingyu, who was still asleep. He rubs at his eyes and when he opens them again, Mingyu is awake and staring at him. Brown eyes slightly dilated, as if adjusting to the light.
“Hey.” He greets and Mingyu’s eyes widened by just a fraction.
“Your breath stinks.”
They both laugh hard enough to form tears in their eyes, something they haven’t done in a long time.
Months after, Wonwoo had gotten along with Jeonghan—but he refused to look at his connection with Mingyu. He and Seungcheol would play basketball with him and Mingyu. Best Friends vs. Best Friends, Jeonghan would say while shooting a knowing look at Seungcheol and Wonwoo would catch the pink thread between them wavering into a darker shade before settling back to its original color.
Jeonghan and Seungcheol won against them.
The next week, Mingyu had to attend an art conference required by his course and it meant he had to be gone for three days. For the length of those days, Wonwoo felt emptier than ever. Luckily for him, Seungkwan was also dealing with Hansol’s absence since he and Sofia went to visit their grandparents in the province.
“I always thought you and Gyu would end up together.” Seungkwan confesses.
Wonwoo snaps his head at him and observes the other dig his hands further down the pockets of his jacket. They were on their way to an open college party and it was only a couple of blocks away. “On what grounds?”
“You guys are always together.”
“We were always together.” He corrects, but Seungkwan didn’t have any of it.
“Like, as in, always together. I felt like I was third-wheeling. You guys have known each other for like, what, ten years?”
“Eight.” Wonwoo corrects again.
“Round it off and you have ten!” Seungkwan exclaims, making Wonwoo laugh. “Don’t you see how Mingyu would look at you?”
The laughter stops. “What do you mean?”
“Oh my gosh, are you kidding me?” The shorter of the two stops in his tracks and blocks him. “He looks at you like you’re his hero or something, like you’re his entire world, like, like,” Seungkwan throws his hands up in defeat as he loses examples to say, “Like you’re person at the end of the wedding march.”
Time ticked by slower as Wonwoo processed the words coming from Seungkwan’s mouth. That couldn’t be. Mingyu wasn’t in love with him. He’s in love with Jeonghan. He saw it with his own eyes.
“To be honest, when I met you guys, I thought you were already dating.”
“That was six years ago.”
“Exactly.”
Wonwoo shakes his head. “Are you trying to tell me that Mingyu’s been in love with me for that long?”
Seungkwan blinks up at him “I’m telling you what I saw.”
They make it to the party but Wonwoo wasn’t in the mood anymore. He had used the remaining block they had to walk to the party to think about what Seungkwan had told him.
The house was filled with music, booze, and people. There were a handful of people Wonwoo didn’t know, but the rest, he was acquainted with. He would nod his head at them, flashing them a quick smile as he weaved through the house. He spotted a familiar mop of hair in the crowd, followed by the face framing it. Jeonghan was here.
Wonwoo was about to say hi, until he stopped halfway over.
Seungcheol’s here, too.
And they were kissing.
With a white-gold thread glittering in the little space left between their chests.
“What do you think you’re doing kissing your best friend? Do I have to remind you who you’re dating?” Wonwoo shoved Jeonghan as hard as he can the moment he and Seungcheol snuck out of the house.
“Wonwoo, wait.” Jeonghan stumbles back, but catches his balance.
“You’re dating my best friend remember.” His throat burned and his eyes itched. “You’re dating Kim Mingyu, right? Why the hell are you kissing someone who isn’t him?”
Seungcheol grabs his shoulder. “Wonwoo, listen to us first.”
But he pushes him away, making Seungcheol fall to the ground.
“Seungcheol!” Jeonghan tries to run to him to help but Wonwoo stops him, grabbing his shoulders and spinning his body to make him face him.
“Don’t you know how lucky you are to be loved by someone who loves you back?” His voice cracks and the tears blur his vision. “Mingyu loves you, you lucky bastard!”
“And he loves you, too! But guess who didn’t love him back?”
Wonwoo’s jaw tightened at the revelation he refused to hear out loud. He takes Jeonghan’s collar with one hand and makes a fist with the other, swinging it to Jeonghan’s face with as much power as he can. He watches him fall down with a hard thud.
“Say that again.”
“Jeonghan!” He could hear Seungcheol scream and felt knuckles coming into contact with his right eye. Wonwoo could feel the bruise forming as he staggers a step, but remains standing up as he watches Seungcheol run to Jeonghan.
With a determined face, Jeonghan stares back up at Wonwoo, his lips bleeding while Seungcheol helped him up. “Do you want me to scream it out?! For years, Wonwoo, years, Mingyu has been in love with you but all you ever saw him as was your best friend. You match all these people up, helping them find love, when you’ve neglected the love he’d been giving you the moment you two met! Do you know how much he cried over the fact you told it to his face that you have never, not even once, felt how he feels for you? I had to hold him, when it should have been you!”
The tears were hot against Wonwoo’s cheeks as they trickled down and left a cold trail when the night air blew against it. “Fine!” He snaps, “I know! I’m stupid for not knowing Mingyu was in love with me! I’m an idiot for realizing it too late because now he’s in love with someone else! I’m stupid, stupid, stupid for letting him go even though I knew I had a chance to tell him I did!”
“Wonwoo,” Jeonghan says in a softer voice. “Mingyu’s not in love with me.”
He bitterly laughs, “I know for a fact that he does love you. I saw it with my own two eyes.”
“A week after I told him that I liked him in the library, Mingyu rejected me.”
“What…?”
“He said he can’t accept my feelings because he was still in love with someone else.” Jeonghan smiles, “He said he was still in love with you. I understood how he felt because, well,” He glances at Seungcheol, who smiles back at him. “I guess I was trying to escape the fact that I was in love with my best friend, too.”
Wonwoo watches their hands intertwine and grip one another. “So why didn’t he tell me? So I would just keep assuming you two are still in love and I just die of jealousy?”
Seungcheol shakes his head, chuckling, “No, that’s too cliché. He asked us to hang out with you guys to help remind the both of you what being best friends felt like.”
“Didn’t you notice how Seungcheol and I were always teammates, and not me and Mingyu? I guess he had settled on the idea that if you two didn’t end up together, he’d be fine with being just best friends.” Jeonghan explains.
Silence falls over them and Wonwoo’s tears have ceased as he processes everything they’ve told him.
Mingyu was still in love with him.
“Have you ever looked into someone’s eyes, touched someone’s hands, or hear a person’s voice and felt, like, you were complete?”
The answer wasn’t no. It’s always been yes. And it was him. It was Mingyu. He was the answer to the question he, himself, had asked that day.
When he held his hand while he slept, when he looked into his eyes after they woke up, when he hears his laugh, Wonwoo had never felt more complete when he was with Mingyu. How could he be so dumb to not realize it before?
“He comes back from the conference tonight, right?” Jeonghan’s voice snaps him back to reality.
Mingyu hops off the school bus and onto the sidewalk in front of his house. “Bye!” He waves to his classmates before turning around and walking past the front gate, but he stops short to see Wonwoo sitting on the steps leading up to the door.
“Hyung?”
Wonwoo looks up and Mingyu gasps, seeing the purple bruise decorating the corner of his right eye.
“Hyung, what happened?!” He drops his bags and runs to kneel in front of him.
“Seungcheol happened.” Wonwoo lightly presses down on it, flinching when he had exerted too much force, and he chuckles “I deserve it for busting his boyfriend’s lip.”
“You punched Jeonghan?!”
“So you know that they’re dating?” He laughs when Mingyu looked like a deer caught in the headlights, eyes wide and cheeks red. “They told me, you know. What you were trying to do.”
Mingyu’s lips part to defend himself like he always does, but Wonwoo cuts in.
“I’m sorry for lying to you about your connection with Jeonghan turning white-gold. I just wanted you to be happy because, well, because you’re my best friend. You’ll always be my best friend, Mingyu. You don’t have to worry about that.”
A frown graced Mingyu’s lips before it pulled up into a small smile and this time, Wonwoo caught it.
“You came to me one day with that book you had to read for class and told me about how humans were created with four arms, four legs, and a single head, but with two faces.” He pauses, “But they were split in half and walked the earth miserably, longing for their other half.”
There was a shift in the air and Mingyu’s hair fell just above his eyes. Wonwoo reaches over and brushes them away.
“If two halves are lucky, they’ll meet again and through a silent understanding between one another, they would know that they are their other halves and they can unite, not in body, but in soul.” The corner of his lips quirk up into a half smile. “They’re soulmates.”
Mingyu nods his head even though he was still unaware of what was happening.
“When I see a connection turn white-gold, I know that they’re soulmates… that they complete each other. I see all these connections around me, telling me what people are to other people, yet I can’t see what they are to me.” Tears find themselves pricking Wonwoo’s eyes for the second time tonight. “And maybe that’s why I’ve been so ignorant about other people’s feelings towards me.”
He sees the younger boy’s eyes widened just a bit.
“But then thanks to you, I don’t have to keep guessing anymore.” Wonwoo takes Mingyu’s hands and holds them tight. “Because I know for a fact that the thread between us isn’t just pink for friendship, Mingyu, it’s not even red.” He shortly laughs, “It’s white-gold and I know it’s the brightest one ever.”
Mingyu’s jaw drops just slightly as he stares into Wonwoo’s eyes, seeing the sincerity behind the tears. “Hyung, I—” He chokes out, feeling his own tears stream down his face.
“Everyone deserves to be loved back and Mingyu—” He cuts him off again, proudly smiling despite the rush of tears as he continues,
“—I love you.”