Chapter 2
YOU’VE BEEN MATCHED
ROWAN
If your heart were a landscape, would it be a forest, a desert, or the sea?
ChaosInPurple: My heart would be a forest, alive and welcoming. There are winding paths, unexpected clearings, and places where sunlight spills through just when you need it most. It’s not always neat or predictable, but it’s full of stories, soft moss, and magic that grows over time.
It’s 12:12. An hour when silence thickens and the only thing louder than the quiet is the thud of your own heartbeat.
The pale light of my laptop screen casts a faint silver over the curve of my hands. Outside, the storm has passed, leaving behind glistening leaves and a restless hush.
I stare at the sender’s email address, fys_admin@. A site I first opened on a night not so different from this one, when loneliness had once again wrapped itself around me like something I couldn’t shed.
I had heard about FYS, or Find Your Soulmate, from the mouth of the very owner of the dating-slash-matchmaking website, Vincent Belmont. Vincent walked in as my cousin Chloe’s fake date at a family function.
No, they didn’t advertise themselves as a fake couple, but to every one of us—except for my cousin Alex, who was too busy grunting and groveling to see through the facade—it was clear they were fake as cardboard.
Despite the fact that he’d decided to join in on Chloe’s craziness to mess with Alex, Vincent wasn’t bad company, especially when he began talking about Find Your Soulmate and how much traction his company had gained since they’d launched it a few months back.
As the CEO of one of the biggest media conglomerates in the country, it has become second nature to see what kind of content is holding people’s attention these days.
Vincent boasted about the algorithm behind FYS and how it looks beyond the stated answers to fulfill the company’s promise of finding someone their perfect soulmate.
All one has to do is take a personality questionnaire and their profile is cross-referenced with tens of thousands of members. FYS only notifies you of a match when the algorithm thinks you’re a 99.9% fit for someone else.
After hearing his pitch, I wasn’t surprised to find that FYS was becoming increasingly popular. After all, who would know better than me the pain of finding someone in a world where everything else seems to be at your doorstep in the snap of a finger, except for the stuff that really matters.
Unlike what one might expect from a dating-slash-matchmaking website, FYS is not a blast of glittery pink and red. It’s a sleek black, white, and gold website, and I still don’t entirely understand what prompted me to click on the button and take the test.
What the hell was I even searching for that night?
I definitely wasn’t sold on the promise of love. I might be hopeful, but I’m not delusional.
The questionnaire was the kind of thing that should’ve made me roll my eyes and close the tab.
Which part of a book are you—the prologue, the climax, or the quiet chapters in between?
If your heart were a landscape, would it be a forest, a desert, or the sea?
God. I should’ve backed out.
But I didn’t. Instead, I replied to every single one of those questions.
Maybe it was one of those crazy nights, or maybe, just maybe, I was chasing the smallest chance that there’s someone out there for me.
Someone whose voice wouldn’t need mine to echo it, because they’d know I couldn’t, and they wouldn’t try to fix that. They’d just…find comfort in my silence.
So yeah, maybe it wasn’t about love but about possibility. Sometimes, that’s enough.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that a week later I’d be getting emailed a match.
“Congratulations, SilenceInMidnight. We’ve found your 99.9% compatibility match.”
I’m a businessman. I know what 99.9% means. It’s a number that sells impossible fairy tales and invites lawsuits, if you’re not careful.
“You’ve been matched with user ChaosInPurple.
Your answers aligned with hers in all core categories—emotional resonance, psychological patterning, and philosophical values.
We believe this is the beginning of something extraordinary.
We guarantee 100% anonymity until both participants agree and are ready to meet each other.
The next step is for you to get to know each other! If you press YES below, we will share your answers to the questionnaire with her, and if she also agrees, you will receive her responses as well.
Your name and contact information will remain anonymous, and your only contact will be through the FYS platform.
You have a choice of the mode of communication you’re open to using—texts, emails, calls, or all of the above.
However, your face and identity will remain hidden.
After three months of communicating, we’ll ask both of you if you’d like to move on to the next step, which is to meet each other in person!
FYS will arrange a dream date customized to the two of you, based on the data we’ve collected from your answers.
By the time I first finished this email, my eyebrows had risen up my forehead. Interacting with someone for months without knowing their identity or sharing mine? That’s insane.
Why would someone in their right mind agree to this? But then, why didn’t I delete the email in the first place? Why am I even reading it again?
I know why.
I’m tired of being scared. I’m tired of being alone.
I can’t ignore the way my heart pulses at the promise of anonymity and the possibility that there’s someone perfect for me out there and I can interact with them without a single spoken word.
Situational mutism is a pain that has nothing to do with the physical. It’s the feeling of knowing exactly what you want to say—the words are right there, perfectly clear in your mind—but your throat closes, making it impossible to release anything but hot air.
I wasn’t always like this. But after the accident, after my voice changed, I could no longer say the words out loud. Except, occasionally, to my dad.
So yeah, despite knowing I was stupid for getting pulled in by the soft promise of FYS, a part of me wants to experience this, to experience her, whomever ChaosInPurple is and whomever she might become to me.
All my teenage and adult life, I’ve lived in the echoes of other people’s voices. I’ve let my expert team of assistants, skilled in sign language, translate my thoughts in meetings. I’ve let Elixir Communications, my company, my pride, speak with the eloquence I keep buried inside me.
I gaze around my reading corner in the solarium, the mahogany-paneled walls lined with books on almost every subject.
I can’t even remember when I started hiding in the folds of my media empire or in the spines of well-worn books.
I’ve learned to listen more than to speak. To observe rather than to interrupt. To want… without expectation.
But tonight the emotions swirling inside me are new. For once, I want to be selfish and take something just for myself, even if it might be stupid.
ChaosInPurple.
I wonder what the name might mean.
Did she think it through for several long minutes like I did when I created my profile name SilenceInMidnight?
My finger hovers over the trackpad, hesitation curling around me like smoke.
What if she’s the one who won’t flinch from the rawness of my quiet? Who won’t press for noise just to fill the air? Who will read the silence and still stay?
Before any negative thought can sweep away the hope, I click on that black button with the golden YES.