My mother told me about that too, near the end.
"Even after I broke it, I still wanted him sometimes,"she'd admitted, her eyes distant with memory."The bond was gone, but the ghost of it lingered. Some nights I'd wake up reaching for someone who wasn't there, someone I'd torn out of my own soul. That's the cruelty of it, baby. Even when you escape, you never really get free."
I tear my gaze away from the mirror, forcing myself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The way she taught me when I was little and overwhelmed by the world's noise. The way I've taught myself to survive every day since she left.
I can't change the mark. Can't make the flowers disappear. But I can control what happens next. I can be careful. Smart. I can go about my life, do my work, and avoid the connections that would activate these bonds. Maybe I'll be lucky. Maybe my soulmates are scattered across the world, living their lives in places I'll never go. Maybe I can outrun fate through sheer geography.
The thought feels hollow even as I think it, but I cling to it anyway. It's all I have.
Work. I need to focus on work. That's something I understand, something I can control. Music has always been my refuge—the one place where emotions are safe, contained within lyrics and melodies that belong to other people. I can pour everything I feel into my songs and still keep myself whole. Still keep myself separate.
I turn away from the mirror and force myself to start my morning routine. Shower—the hot water cascading over my mark, making me hyperaware of its presence in a way I've never experienced before. The skin there feels different now, more sensitive, as if the appearance of the soulmark has awakened nerve endings that were dormant before. I find myself tracing the branch with my fingers, following its path from behind my ear down to my collarbone, counting the five flowers that represent five futures I desperately don't want.
My mother's scar flashes in my memory. Ugly. Twisted. The price of freedom.
Would I pay that price? Could I?
Breaking five bonds would be suicide. The breaking of one nearly killed my mother, and she was strong, stronger than me, probably. Five would be impossible. The human soul simply couldn't survive that kind of trauma.
That option is off the table. Which leaves... what?
Completion or death by soul sickness. Those are my choices now. Complete the bonds and risk being consumed, or leave them incomplete and let the soul sickness slowly drain me dry. Unless I can avoid triggering them altogether.
The thought sparks something like hope in my chest. Soul sickness only sets in once a bond has been activated, once you've met your soulmate, made eye contact, established the initial connection through touch. If I never meet them, the bonds staydormant. Gray flowers that never bloom, promises that never have to be kept.
It's possible. Unlikely, but possible. I just have to be careful. Stay invisible. Keep my head down and my eyes averted and hope that fate doesn't find me.
I've been hiding my whole life. I can keep hiding a little longer.
Teeth brushed, hair dried and styled into soft waves that frame my face. Makeup—minimal, just enough to disguise the shadows under my eyes from a sleepless night and the pallor that seems to have taken permanent residence in my cheeks. Clothes, I pause in front of my closet, suddenly conscious of every neckline, every collar, every inch of fabric that will either reveal or conceal the truth now written on my skin.
I choose a soft cream sweater with a high neck that covers the mark entirely, paired with dark jeans and ankle boots. Professional but comfortable, the kind of outfit I wear to the studio when I know I'll be spending long hours hunched over a keyboard or scribbling lyrics in a notebook. As I dress, I'm acutely aware of the fabric skimming over the mark, the slight friction against sensitive skin that's never been sensitive before.
There. Hidden. Safe. No one will know just by looking at me that anything has changed.
Except everything has changed.
Before leaving I quickly take my suppressants, an omega necessity before II grab my bag from its hook by the door, slipping my notebook inside along with my phone, my wallet, and the small emergency kit I always carry. The notebook is my most prized possession, worn soft from years of use, its pages filled with fragments of songs and snippets of poetry and the raw emotional outpourings that eventually become hit singles sung by voices far more famous than mine. As I toss it into my bag, I pause, struck by a strange thought.
Even that feels different now. Each blank page is a reminder of the stories waiting to unfold, the emotions waiting to be captured. With my mark, will I write differently? Will the knowledge of five soulmates waiting somewhere in the world change the way I process feelings, the way I translate experience into art?
My mother was a musician too, before she got too sick to play. A pianist, talented enough that she could have gone professional if she'd wanted. But she chose love instead, first her soulmate, then my father, then the breaking that destroyed her ability to perform. I found her piano after she died, stored in the back of our garage, covered in dust and cobwebs. I couldn't bring myself to play it. Couldn't bear to touch something that held so much of her joy and her pain.
I became a lyricist instead. Words felt safer than music. Less like her.
The thought of my writing changing, of my art becoming something other than purely mine, it terrifies me. Music is my last refuge. If the bonds take that too, what will I have left?
I push the fear aside and step out into the cool morning air, closing my apartment door behind me with a decisive click. The hallway is quiet at this hour, most of my neighbors still asleep or already gone to work. I take the stairs instead of the elevator, needing the physical activity to burn off some of the anxious energy thrumming through my veins.
Outside, Seoul is just beginning to wake. The sky overhead is a soft gray tinged with pink, the sun not yet risen high enough to burn away the early morning haze. The air is crisp with the promise of autumn, carrying the scent of fallen leaves and diesel exhaust and something sweet from a nearby bakery beginning its daily bread production. I wrap my scarf higher on my neck—partially for warmth, partially to add another layerof concealment—and begin walking toward my favorite coffee shop.
The entertainment district of Seoul sprawls before me, glass and steel towers catching the early light, each building housing hundreds of dreams all struggling to reach the sky. This has been my playground since I was a child, back when my father first started climbing the ranks at his company and would bring me to work on weekends. I know this area better than the back of my hand—know which alleys are shortcuts and which are dead ends, know which security guards will wave you through and which will demand ID, know which cafés have the best wifi and which restaurants stay open late enough to feed starving artists pulling all-nighters.
My father. I should call him, probably. Let him know about the mark, about the five flowers that now adorn my skin. But the thought of that conversation makes my stomach clench. We don't talk much anymore—holidays, birthdays, the occasional awkward dinner where we both pretend we don't know why we can't look each other in the eye. He blames himself for what happened to my mother. For asking her to break the bond. For loving her enough to let her make that choice, even knowing what it would cost.
I blame him too, sometimes. In my darkest moments. Then I remember that my mother made her own choice, and he was just the reason she made it.
Love makes you do terrible things. That's the lesson I learned watching my parents.
