Chapter Text
“It was pink.” Wooyoung nudged his friend in the shoulder. “Mingi, you’re not listening. I could tell it was pink! I saw it!”
Mingi nodded. Here it was finally. Wooyoung had found his soulmate. Gone was probably the last person who didn’t want to spend all of their time talking about their other half, and the rainbow of colors that that special person enabled them to see. So forgive him if he was less than enthused.
“I have to find him again.” Wooyoung continued. “He just kept walking. He could be anyone! Oh god, what if I never find him?” The sheer panic on his face almost made Mingi laugh. Like that would be the worst thing in the world to have happen.
“BRO. Relax.” Mingi bro-ed him a little louder than necessary, but it was enough to snap Wooyoung back to reality. “You said he bumped into you when you were leaving your lecture and he was going in, right?” Wooyoung nodded and Mingi continued. “Then just stay late next class and wait to see if you see him again.”
Wooyoung blinked a few times in rapid succession before his mouth formed a small ‘O’. His shoulders relaxed and he chuckled. “You’re not as dumb as you look, you know that?” He dodged Mingi’s incoming fist with a laugh. “But dude, did you know that your hair is blue? And like, it’s got purple too. That’s cool.”
Mingi sighed. “Yeah, man, I knew.”
Mingi had watched so many of his friends find their soulmates. He was happy for them, really he was, but with every one, the sadness crept a little farther in. Still, he enjoyed watching the light in the faces of those closest to him when color finally burst into their vision, transforming their world from greyscale to technicolor. He wished that he could experience that.
He would never be able to see a blue sky for the first time, never marvel at a garden in spring. And he would probably never find his soulmate, either. He knew they were out there, somewhere, unlike the other sad, sad people on campus. You know, the ones who meet to talk about how the cosmic process of soul matching is total bull, convince themselves that they’re better off alone, and then drink themselves stupid to forget? Yeah, Mingi wasn’t one of them.
If only for the simple reason that he had already met his soulmate. Long before he could even remember. All of Mingi’s memories were brightly colored. His blue sash at his high school graduation. The red smear of blood on a scraped knee from a failed skateboarding attempt. The golden fur of his family dog.
He had stopped mentioning it to people a while ago. His teachers got mad when he would talk about things he couldn’t possibly know. His drawings were always colored accurately (they said he was cheating somehow), and though he hated using the special greyscale crayons that all the other kids used, he learned.
So now, when people asked, no, Mingi hadn’t met his soulmate yet. Yes, he was sure they were out there. Yes, thank you for the encouragement. He’s sure that he’ll find them someday. (He isn’t.)
Wooyoung was one of the few who knew that Mingi saw in color. As roommates, they were both privy to quite a bit of personal information about the other. Including a great deal of blackmail material, if they were being honest. And now, at the start of their second year of university, they had gathered quite a bit of information.
Wooyoung was a marketing major with a penchant for parties. As such, he knew almost everyone on campus. Except, apparently, this pink-haired stranger. Scratch that. His pink-haired soulmate. Mingi assumed that it must be a freshman, as he didn’t know anyone with pink hair either. Well, that didn’t mean much. Mingi kept to himself a little more than his roommate did. As Wooyoung always said, ‘the best thing to market is yourself!’ Mingi was pretty sure that wasn’t how that worked.
Mingi himself preferred graphic design. He liked to figure out how the colors and designs worked together to make a cohesive image, and thanks to his many years of color vision, he wasn’t bad at it. It meant a lot more solo time, though, and he wasn’t complaining. He was fine by himself. He always had been, and always would be.
Yunho stopped to take a few deep breaths. The campus was hillier than he remembered. He guessed this was one way to build up his strength again. Slinging his bag back over his shoulder, he resumed his trudge along the narrow path lined with color-changing trees.
Back at his new dorm room, he plopped down on his bed and turned to his roommate. “Sang. Sangie. Yeosang!” The other finally popped an earbud out. “What did you do to your hair?”
Yeosang flushed, making the birthmark near his eye stand out more. “It was supposed to be red.”
Yunho snorted. “It’s not.” He dodged a pillow with skill. “But it’s cute.”
“Fuck off.”
Yunho hopped off the bed and took the few steps over to his roommate’s desk. “Sangie, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Yeosang turned back to him, and his eyes shone with what could have been unshed tears, but Yunho wasn’t going to assume. “Yun. It’s pink.”
“Shit.” Yunho breathed out. It hit him then that Yeosang could tell what color his hair was. That could only mean one thing. He had met his soulmate. He pulled the smaller boy into a crushing hug, and wasn’t ashamed that a few tears leaked out. He had only known Yeosang for a few weeks, but he already felt like they were close friends.
Both were held back in school, Yeosang for his grades, and Yuhno for health issues, but it made for a quick bond. Yunho had always made friends quickly due to his open and warm personality, but keeping them was the hard part. When he was younger, no one wanted to friends with ‘the sick kid,’ and though he no longer looked sick on the outside, he still had to be careful of his heart, so no sports, to the chagrin of his teachers, who always wanted him to play basketball.
Yunho figured this level of excitement was fine for his heart. After all, wasn’t that what the surgeries had been for?
“So, Sangie, tell me all about them!”
“I, uh, I can’t…” Yeosang sighed. “I didn’t get a good look. We were being pushed around by everyone. He was leaving a classroom I was heading into.”
Yunho laughed and clapped his hands. “A mystery! I love a good mystery!” He also loved soulmates. He had long ago resigned himself to the fact that he probably didn’t have a soulmate. There were rumors, legends really, that a soul could be born whole, but the body wouldn’t be able to handle it. Yunho was pretty sure that’s what happened to him. Why else would he have always been able to seen in color? Nothing else made sense.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t live vicariously through others. He fully planned to be that creepy roommate that was too involved in this new relationship. He rubbed his hands together.
“Sangie, I have a feeling that things are about to get verrrry interesting.”