Chapter 1 #2
So it was me. Me sitting beside her hospital bed during the final weeks. Me holding her cold hand as the machines beeped and whirred. Me listening as she told me the truth about soulmates that no one else would say.
"The bond wanted me, Keira," she'd whispered, her voice thin as paper. "From the moment it formed, it wanted to consume me. That's what they do—they pull you under, drown you in connection until you can't tell where you end and they begin."
"But you broke it," I'd said, tears streaming down my face. "You got away."
"No, baby." Her smile was gentle, sad, accepting of a fate she'd chosen long ago.
"I just traded one death for another. The bond would have consumed me.
The breaking destroyed me instead. Either way.
.." She'd squeezed my hand with what little strength she had left. "Either way, love leaves its mark."
She died three days later.
Twelve years old, and I learned that love was a death sentence. That bonds were chains. That the beautiful marks everyone celebrated were just pretty warnings of the destruction to come.
I've spent the years since then building a life designed to avoid that fate.
I became a lyricist—creating songs about love and connection without ever having to experience them myself.
I work behind the scenes, invisible to the spotlight that consumes so many in this industry.
I've kept everyone at arm's length, never letting anyone close enough to matter, never risking the kind of connection that destroyed my mother.
Now this.
Five flowers. Five potential bonds. Five chains waiting to wrap around my soul.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror, at the beautiful mark that suddenly feels like a curse, and I want to scream.
I want to rage against the universe that decided this was my fate.
Most people have one soulmate, maybe two if they're particularly blessed or particularly cursed.
Three is considered rare, the kind of thing that makes headlines when it happens to celebrities or politicians.
But five?
Five is nearly unheard of.
Five means that the universe has decided I don't get to escape. That no matter how carefully I've built my walls, no matter how desperately I've avoided connection, fate has been preparing a trap for me all along. A trap with five locks and no keys except the ones held by strangers I've never met.
My stomach twists with an emotion I refuse to name. Fear. Anger. Underneath it all, buried so deep I almost can't recognize it, a tiny spark of something that might be hope. Or might just be the bond already working its influence, trying to make me want what it wants.
That's the cruelest part, isn't it? The bonds don't just connect you to another person. They make you want the connection. They burrow into your heart and your mind and make you crave the very thing that could destroy you.
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 stay dormant.
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 layer of concealment—and begin walking toward my favorite coffee shop.