yoshihoon ; uncompleted

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Dien had carried that sequence of number on his wrist since the day he was born, and so far it had been nineteen years.

At the age of three, after the first day of kindergarten, he came home crying and asked his mother why he was different from the whole class, why none of his friends had a black mark on their wrists like him. His mother smiled and rubbed his head, telling him in a whispered voice, "This is nothing bad, one day I will let you know."

Having heard what his mother said, Dien immediately grinned and then ran out to play with the neighborhood kids.

When he was five, his mother finally told him, "My son, there's a line of code on your wrist, which means you have a soulmate. I hope you will find them, and they will give you all the greatest affections."

In the immature mind of the child, a sense was formed that in addition to parents and grandparents, there is someone who was not his kindred but would love him like as much as a family member.

In elementary school, no one commented on the fact that he had a sequence of numbers on his wrist, teachers simply thought that he was naughty using a pen to write miscellaneously.

Going to middle school and high school, he always wore a watch to cover the numbers on his wrist, after that one time when the school supervisor misunderstood them as an tattoo and punished him to stand under the flagpole for several hours.

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Twelve years of school had gone, yet Dien still had not found his soulmate. He passed the entrance exam to Law University as expected by his parents. He went to Hanoi to study, his heart fluttered with an expectation, that maybe there was someone in the capital being the soulmate he always desired.

He lived with a distant auntie and helped out at her restaurant whenever he was not in school. After finishing the first year, he felt that university were too oppressive, so he temporarily reserved the course. When auntie heard the news, she scolded him for being too impulsive at his young age, but she did not dissuade him, just advised him that every decision would be important, greatly affecting his life, he must think carefully before making one. And auntie still covered him up, helping him hide this matter from his parents.

Dien actually wanted to take the exam once again, in order to enter the School of Theater and Cinema. He still dreamt of that one day when he became a famous director, being able to create meaningful and great stories.

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He left his auntie's house, went out to rent a place – a small room at the end of an alley in Thuy Khue, a few hundred meters from the studio he wished to work in. Living alone, he was free to go out and come back whenever he wanted. He wanted to go find his soulmate, he wanted his soulmate to be found. He always kept in his mind a picture of how beautiful it would be when the soulmate entered his life.

Every week, on the rickety Thong Nhat bicycles bought from someone, he pedalled around the streets, exploring the nooks and crannies of this noisy city, secretly hoping to pass by a person with a strange face, but the wrist was glowing because of him.

And Dien has indeed met that person. One cloudy afternoon in July, he knew it was going to rain, but he still took the bike out of his house, pedaled across the streets, straight to the other side of the Red River.

He was about to go up the bridge when it started to rain, the rain poured down on his face, it took a lot of effort for him to see the road. Having come this far, as he couldn't go back even if he wanted to, he had to stop pedalling, stand on the side and wait for the rain to stop.