Fated | Yoonmin

Prologue

Growing up, Yoongi had heard many stories about soulmates. He'd heard stories about cliché meet-cutes of people running into each other in public and noticing the marks, of someone realising the new exchange-student was their soulmate, of people meeting on holidays in foreign countries and working through the language barrier and of childhood friends who had known to be destined for each other all of their lives. His parents had met in high school, noticed the marks in their maths course where they had sat next to each other and had quickly fallen in love - it sounded like one of those teen romance movies his sister loved to watch. She always tended to clutch her wrist or stare at her mark while doing so, unable to wait for the moment she would meet her soulmate.

Yoongi was different, though. He had been the one in a billion, an anomaly that had only occurred 189 times in recorded history since the appearance of the soulmarks. His wrist was blank. Min Yoongi had been born without a mark on his wrist and had therefore lived through many other misfortunes naturally attached to said phenomenon.

One, the most obvious part of the missing mark - Min Yoongi did not have a soulmate; he was destined to die alone and unloved. It's not like he could never date, there were quite a few people who'd look for occasional relationships until they found their soulmate. It wasn't uncommon at all to gain some experience; but that was all it would ever be to people - gaining experience for the time they'd find their soulmate and be together for the rest of their lives.

The depressing knowledge of dying alone, however, wasn't the only downside to being born without a mark. While in grade school he had only gotten weird looks from adults, mainly teachers and people in the streets, middle and high school had been less kind to him. People would call him unloveable, not worthy of a soulmate, and typical insults like nerd, loser or idiot. Yoongi knew he didn't have a soulmate, but even the prospect of dating never seemed possible, since people deemed him as unloveable the moment they laid eyes on his bare wrist. Light, mockingly clear skin, telling everyone around him that he would die alone.

During his last year of high school he had finally decided to regularly cover his wrist with a watch, so people would not even be able to notice the non-existing mark. It had worked well enough for strangers who had just met him and he had finally managed to make some acquaintances besides his best friend Namjoon. However, it hadn't really helped with school, since everyone there had already known. Understandably, Yoongi couldn't have been happier when he (along with Namjoon) had been accepted into a university in Seoul and he could finally leave his cursed home town, which had brought him nothing but disgusted or pitying looks all his life.

Settling into Seoul had been the most pleasant experience of his life, as he loved the campus life and had actually made a great addition of two new friends, one of which, Kim Seokjin, had turned out to be Namjoons Soulmate.
Of course Yoongi had been happy for his best friend. Namjoon deserved to find happiness. Yet Yoongi could not deny the little twinge of jealousy whenever he saw how happy those two were with each other.

During his first two years in university Yoongi had actually tried dating a few people, which was now easier to accomplish, since nobody could see his wrist. All three of them, however, had eventually met their soulmates a few months into dating him. It was almost like Yoongi was cursed. They had all left him, wishing him luck on the journey to find his soulmate as well, unaware of the fact that he just didn't have one. Yoongi had always let them go with a smile, way too aware of the burning feeling underneath his watch; the blank space on his wrist, that would always remind him that he didn't have a fated one.

So, walking into his third year of university, Min Yoongi had decided that love just wasn't something he could ever have, and gave up on dating altogether.