Humans have soulmates.

One touch and a bruise will mark them as bonded. They begin to need each other for energy to survive.

You bond with Jungkook by touching his hand in the crowd.

If soulmates touch, they will both be marked with a bruise on their bodies wherever they first touched each other physically.

Some humans never find their soulmates. But if you do, you begin to depend on touching each other for energy to survive.

If you don't find whoever you bonded with in time... you die.

If you can't stay together to give each other energy... you die.

A universe in which you bond with Jeon Jungkook by touching his hand at a concert.

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You

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Looking back now, it was unthinkable that you didn't recognize it.

The bruises had been so small.

You slowly turn over your right hand.

Just three fingertip.

Purple and blue, blotched right at the ends of your digits...

small, so small.

I don't want to die like this.

And I don't want to kill someone else too.

But he was going to die, like it or not, because you were going to die.

And he needed you, literally, to survive.

That was the full package of soulmate bonding. You touch, you bruise, and then you needed to scramble to find each other because touching the other person was now mandatory, it now was sustenance for survival.

But that's if the soulmates found each other.

The ones that didn't...

weakened

and died

exactly as a person would when deprived of food.

There were so, so many.

People perfectly fine and happy one day

and then the next day torn from their lives

to search frantically for the other half

they now needed.

Three-quarters manage to.

They live.

One quarter failed to meet in time.

They died.

Unbidden, the image of the BTS concert slid through your mind.

How you had laughed, jumped up and down, waved your light stick and screamed yourself hoarse.

You had reached up at Bangtan as they walked around the stage,

your hand just one of tens of thousands soaring through the air.

How you had frozen in surprise

when Jungkook

veered to the edge of the platform.

The girls around you swarmed,

pushing and shoving closer to him

as he grazed his hand over the swath of fans' hands,

some of them grabbing onto him

as he hastily pulled away.

You didn't know your hands touched.

You simply didn't know.

Your hand had slapped against so many girls' hands

as everyone shrieked and lunged for him.

Someone had shouldered you sideways violently

someone else stepped on your foot and you shouted in pain,

your own hand pulling back down to your body defensively.

Pulling back too slow.

Jungkook's hand had touched yours in the mess of fandom, and you didn't realize.

Your thoughts were so foggy... so, so clouded and faint as you remembered the black SUV that had parked outside your house, the manager and staff who had tried to find out if you've developed a bonding bruise, left in a rush when you said you never even touched Jungkook...

You begin to lose your thoughts

but you think you hear the slam of car doors,

footsteps

and "Oh my god, someone's collapsed on the lawn... do you think it could be..."

You

fall

into

the

cold

darkness.

--------------

Jungkook

--------------

Unbelievable.

Only 0.1 percent of the population ever bonded

and he had to be one of them.

It had always been a risk, he knew.

The amount of fans he touched on a weekly basis at endless fansigns and events.

The boundless lines of staff and crew and interviewers he shook hands with.

The quiet math of how many more people he touched

compared the average person

increased his odds of touching his soul mate.

The quiet truth that if they did touch their soulmates

it would be the fight of their lives to track her down in time before their time/life was up... was something all of the BTS members held close to their chest.

They'd talked about it before, of course.

BigHit had talked to them about it too.

All idols and celebrities knew this.

But it wasn't the same PR effect when you became an idol who wore gloves,

and secretly all the fans wanted to be the one that magically bonded with their biases

that it was nothing short of fantastic for business to throw many, many events that involved

touching hands with your fans.

But he just didn't think it would happen to him.

He often checked the other members' hands nonchalantly after they left the venues, always low key looking out.

But here it was.

On the edge of his palm, in line with his pinky.

A vertical-cloud shaped bruise.

When he made a fist, it hurt a lot.

A lot more than a normal bruise would.

He downed an entire water bottle with his other hand, trying to still his mind so he can desperately figure out what the panic of thoughts flashing through his brain even were, let alone organize them.

Waves of feelings flooded through his chest, fear and disbelief riding the crest of all of them.

Why me?

No, seriously, why?

Were the first coherent thoughts he could pin down.

Luck of the draw. Statistics is all. Even 0.1 percent had to happen to someone.

He should talk to Namjoon, he knew.

Or Hoseok.

Time was of the essence, everyone knew that.

But the thought of having someone else he needed to depend on for the rest of his life pushed down on him until he felt sick.

Would he be his own anymore?

To howl and laugh through the night with his brothers or crank up the music on his headphones for hours, to jet around the globe burning through his youth with his favorite people and passion and dreams?

He had just begun to feel on top of the world.

He had just begun to feel the sacrifices of losing life with his family and abandoning all hopes of being a normal boy turn the page to something phenomenal and worthwhile and just begun to see the golden mark he'd seared into history.

It's been 7 years of his youth.

But he had only just begun.

He knew it, like a wildfire in his heart.

He had so much more left to give, he had just found who he wanted to be.

And in just one instant

in just one brief move that he had made

one arm-offering moment

he had ended it all.

Would he have to leave Bangtan?

The dawns rising before the sun, or the nights not closing his eyes until the sun was at full rise, shouldering the pressure and fatigue with the six guys who were in the same boat as him sink or sail...

The endless hours of bone-breaking choreography he'd drilled his hundreds of worn-out sneakers and sore heels against the hardwood floors of sweaty practice rooms for...

The tears and pain and utter lack of freedom they had withstood, together...

Was all for nothing.

So he took a moment of his life, before his dreams were torn from him, before he had to burn it with his own hands, before he had to watch as he ripped the goals and dreams of his hyungs from them by extracting himself, before someone else depended on him for survival...

To hold onto himself as himself and unreservedly sink down to the floor

and

cry.

--

As the first wisp of light snuck under his blinds and across the windowsill, he was ready.

No, he didn't have a plan.

He didn't know how to solve the problem.

He hadn't won against his fears.

But he was ready to face them.

He'd noticed silently as the ache spread over his entire hand and past his wrist.

It had only been one night.

It had only been less than nine hours since he'd touched this girl, and already his right hand was useless and shaking as he pulled a hoodie over his head.

It was only going to speed up.

He used his left hand to open his door, and again when he knocked on the door to Namjoon's room.

He opened it a second later, knowing Yoongi and Namjoon were just going to be asleep inside.

Jungkook took a deep breath as he stood over the leader's bed and put a hand (left, again) on the man's shoulder.

"Hyung."

Surprisingly, Namjoon rolled over to face him immediately, blinking awake.

His eyes widened with impending danger as he saw the look on the maknae's face.

"What is it, Jungkook? What's wrong?"

Yoongi shuffled awake on his bed, letting out a moan, so Jungkook knew he could tell both of them at once.

He held up his right hand toward Namjoon's face, his arm barely coming up even as he swung it as hard as he could, and said it as clearly as possible because he thought he might be ill if he had to say it again.

"I've soulmate bonded."

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