wow!! i’m so glad to meet another fellow carat/med student. thank you so much for reading and i’m so happy to hear that it’s helped you ❤️ we all have to find things that we can turn to for comfort and healing, and seventeen has been a great source of calm for me. med school is tough and different and you’ve gotten this far, so you for sure will be able to achieve whatever you want to!!!

good luck on your exams and feel free to chat if you ever need advice from an old grouchy 4th year!

You felt the person beside you shift and you hid a smile behind the book that you were reading. “Good morning,” a raspy voice greeted you, and you looked down to meet his warm brown eyes and his sleepy smile. He pulled himself closer to you by wrapping a toned arm around your lap, only stopping when his head was comfortably nuzzled on your thighs.

“Afternoon, Sleeping Beauty,” you corrected with a giggle, your hand automatically finding its perch in his soft hair. You placed the book down on the nightstand and pulled the covers off of you, ignoring the man’s groans. “Minghao, you don’t have to get up, but I have a surprise for you and you’re going to ruin it.” You softly pushed his head off of your lap and scurried to the kitchen where several bags of his favorite takeout food sat.

“Surprise!” you cheered, setting down the food at a small table in your shared bedroom. You watched as Minghao’s eyes widened in glee. “I got delivery this morning! You haven’t had a full day off in so long, so I figured that we could just stay in bed and eat and watch TV or something.”

“That sounds…really great, but didn’t you want me to come shopping with you?” You waved off his uncertainty and climbed back into the bed, settling into his awaiting arms.

“The mall will always be there, and we can do some online shopping. Besides,” you grinned, angling your head upward to press a kiss to his jaw, “we have an entire day, alone, in this bedroom.” Your voice deepened to a purr, fingers trailing up and down his chest over the fabric of his thin tank top. “Don’t you think that there are better things to do?” Minghao swallowed and nodded, waiting for you to make your move. “Just do me one favor, okay?” you asked innocently, breathy and soft, your hand nearing the waistband of his boxers.

“Anything,” he blurted out immediately, cursing how easily you could affect him.

“The scallion pancakes are mine,” you whispered into his ear before pressing a chaste kiss to his cheek. You happily got up to claim your prize, leaving him frustrated in more ways than one.

Choi Seungcheol had a résumé that read like a small-town legend: football scholarship, fraternity president, board of trustees, a business major with a government minor who still managed to keep his 4.0 GPA.

He was competitive and commanded respect, a born leader with a handsome face and a razor-cut jaw that could inspire awe (and fear) in anyone. He was the pride of his town, the pride of his parents, the pride of the entire university, even, and no one would be surprised if he made a name for himself after graduation.

What would be a surprise, however, was how he was sitting in a grassy field with his brow furrowed, thick fingers clumsily braiding the long stems of white daisies together into a chain.

“If the world could see you now, Cheollie,” you laughed. You propped yourself up on the picnic blanket to take a sip of the ice-cold soda next to you, a perfect reprieve from the afternoon sun. You lowered your sunglasses to watch him for a few moments before fully sitting up and placing your hand over his. “I was really just joking about the daisy crown, babe. You’re sweet though,” you cooed, and he slapped your hand away to continue his determined braiding.

“No, you said you wanted a flower crown, so I’m making a flower crown.” He stopped his handiwork to reread the online tutorial that he had pulled up on his phone. “I think I’m almost done.” He proudly gestured to the long string of flowers before him and connected the two ends together to form a ring, threading the loose ends of the stems into a secure knot. “A beautiful crown for a beautiful princess,” he bowed, grinning goofily.

“I would be honored,” you mimicked, bowing your head as lady-like as you could. He placed the crown upon your head and beamed at you, one hand brushing loose hair behind your ear before leaning forward to steal a quick kiss.

“Let me take a picture,” he said, and you smiled while he focused on you with his phone. “Ugh, how am I with someone who is so pretty? Now I can see this every time I unlock my phone.”

“Okay, greaseball,” you snorted. “Let’s do your math problem set now.” You turned to lie on your stomach and he followed beside you, pausing to quickly throw an arm around you and give your waist a squeeze before grabbing his calculator and getting to work.

Choi Seungcheol was the campus golden boy, but to you, he was just Cheollie, a stubborn dork who made bad jokes and who loved you with all of his heart.

You only saw him at night.

That was the one rule that you came to accept. When the sun rose, Dokyeom belonged to the world of bright LCD screens and flashy pyrotechnics, the world of adoring screams and bass lines that echoed the thumps of your own heart. But when the sky became stained with pinks and reds, he was simply Lee Seokmin, the boy in an oversized hoodie who was currently pulling you away from the lampposts and into the dark.

Your hand gripped his tighter as the lights of the park faded into the distance, and you became all too aware of the darkness which pressed up against you, almost suffocating you. Seokmin had come to a stop and with an excited whisper of “Look up!”, the clawing fear in the pit of your stomach evaporated at the abstract splatter of white against a midnight blue canvas.

In your awe, you didn’t notice that Seokmin had let go of your hand, and you jumped when you felt something tap against your legs. “Sorry,” he laughed, “lie down with me!”

With your back pressed firmly against the slightly damp grass and your vision filled with the night sky, you began to grow more relaxed, your senses keen on grounding you to reality. You could feel Seokmin’s arm pressed up beside yours, his warm fingers slowly tracing patterns on the back of your hand. You could hear his soft breathing, steady and strong, and for a boy who talked in his sleep, he remained quiet.

“Thank you,” you whispered, and he inhaled sharply, as if your words broke him out of his own musings.

“I used to come out here, sometimes alone, sometimes with the other members, and we would wish for success,” he began, fondness and nostalgia seeping into his speech. “But now, I’m wishing that we can stay like this.”

Although you couldn’t see him, you knew that he was grinning that same grin which wrinkled the corners of his eyes with the ferocity of joy that it exuded. You couldn’t see him, but you still felt the happiness from that smile spreading warmth into your heart.

You only saw Lee Seokmin at night, but he was all the light that you needed. 

Minghao had made a promise to himself that he would never meddle.

Of course, that promise wasn’t completely unfounded. Ever since he could talk and began asking about the red string which tied his parents together, he was only met with confused looks and laughs about his “rich imagination.” When he finally learned to walk, he would stumble out of the way of the glimmering red strings tied around the fingers of strangers, and his parents wrote it off as a toddler…well, toddling, of course.

So, through years of trial and error, he learned that no, these strings weren’t tangible, and yes, he was the only one that could see them. Except his own, of course. Funny how these things work.

And the promise about meddling? Well, that was another lesson learned the hard way – trying to break up his love-struck best friend’s first relationship was admittedly not his brightest idea, especially when his only reason was that their red strings didn’t lead to one another.

When he saw you for the first time in a workshop held by the university’s hip hop dance crew, he tried to recall those feelings of hurt and sadness because for the first time, he couldn’t see the red string.

You didn’t have one.

What could it mean? Even when people lost their soulmates, their strings would simply grow dim and frayed, not disappear. Since he couldn’t see his own string either, could you perhaps see them as well?

Throwing caution to the wind, he approached you, but it would be a year later and six months after you first asked him out when he finally mustered up the courage to ask about the legends surrounding the red string of fate.

“I see them too,” you admitted coolly.

Any excitement that Minghao felt upon this admission was quickly crushed by the torrent of questions exploding in his head. You knew him long enough to know that he was trying to mask his growing sense of unease, and you slid your hand down his forearm and into his hand in a silent gesture of solidarity.

“Maybe this is the trade-off,” he finally said, a half-question and half-statement. “We see everyone’s fates, their destinies, but not our own.”

You remember the first time you saw him, the duality that existed between the steely-eyed performer with infinite charm and the quiet boy full of thoughts and doubts who now stood before you. “What are you afraid of?”

He looked at you, his weary smile almost a grimace on his usually bubbly face. “That we’re not meant to be together.”

“Do you think we’re right together?” you ask, your hand slowly withdrawing from his, playing with the infinity ring on your left pinky finger. He quickly captured your hand again to intertwine his fingers with yours, nodding “yes” without hesitation. “Then maybe we were given the chance to create our own fates.”

He smiled, a true smile, and wrapped his long arms around your shoulders. “I would love nothing more than to do that with you.”

“I thought we were going to watch another movie,” you whined, trying to make out your friends in the dim living room of your shared house. You nudged the closest girl sitting on the floor with your foot, and Eunwoo yelped in surprise before smacking your leg in protest.

“Nayoung said she saw her soulmate a week ago, so we’re going to find ours too,” Kyulkyung whispered conspiratorially, Eunwoo nodding resolutely beside her.

“So you two are just going to stare at mirrors the entire night on the off-chance that your soulmate looks back?” The other two girls pointedly ignored your sarcastic question, and you groaned as you stood up from your position on the sofa. It was nearing 1AM anyway, and your other housemates had decided to sleep after the scheduled weekly house movie marathon. You figured that you might as well retire for the night too, and leave Kyulkyung and Eunwoo to their silly, but admittedly dedicated, plan.

You looked up at your reflection in the bathroom mirror after brushing your teeth, patting your face dry with a small towel. Suddenly, a foggy image of a person appeared, and you could barely make out the “SVT” print on a bright t-shirt. Long fingers clipped back white gold hair which framed what you assumed to be a face…

If a face only had eyes and lips, that is.

You tore your gaze away from the mirror and bolted out of the bathroom, your mind torn between not waking up your sleeping housemates with a scream and panicking because oh my gosh, was that a ghost? Were you going to die?

But wait, what kind of ghost would be in SVT, your college’s very own secret honor society?

Just as your heart was beginning to calm down, rapid knocks on your front door resounded through the first floor, and you rounded the corner to see Eunwoo cautiously peering through the peephole.

“Why is Boo Seungkwan knocking on our door at 1AM?” she hissed at you and Kyulkyung, who only stared back at her wide-eyed and confused. You shrugged your shoulders as she opened the door to reveal the breathless boy from your poetry class, fringe clipped out of the way and in a bright, “SVT” printed t-shirt.

Neither of you said a word until Eunwoo rolled her eyes and cleared her throat rather loudly. “Sorry for scaring you,” Seungkwan managed to stutter out, and you flushed when you realized that he had confirmed your suspicions. “I had a sheet mask on and…this wasn’t the best first impression to make as your soulmate, huh?” he laughed nervously.

You threw an arm around his shoulders mirthfully, bringing him into a loose hug. “Seungkwan, I’m just glad that my soulmate isn’t going to haunt me or something,” you joked. “Since you’ve come all this way, do you want to do sheet masks together?” Your hand subconsciously found his, your fingers intertwining together as you led him towards your room.

Eunwoo and Kyulkyung stared after the pair of you incredulously, returning to the living room and to their vanity mirrors with renewed determination.

Your hand reflexively found Mingyu’s upper arm upon entering the “Orphaned Dogs” room of the adoption center, and he looked at you with slight confusion as you stood, frozen, your eyes seemingly unfocused as a cacophony of excited barks bombarded the both of you. Were you too overwhelmed? Mingyu knew that you were never too warm to the idea of getting a puppy, but was it because you were actually…afraid of dogs? He had made up his mind to get you out of the room and into fresher air, his large hand enveloping the one still gripping his upper arm, until he heard a high-pitched squeal erupting from your parted lips.

“Mingyu, do you believe in love at first sight?”

All too quickly, your grip on his arm had released and you were on the ground, cooing at a fluffy golden retriever mix who had bounded up to you curiously, her steps still a bit uncoordinated and wobbly. Without hesitation, you brought the pup into your lap, fingers scratching her warm belly as you looked up at your boyfriend with glimmering eyes.

He looked at you, a bit dumbfounded, before sitting next to you and eyeing you suspiciously. He fought to keep his strange feeling of jealousy in check, but seriously, you looked happier and more in love than on the day that he had finally confessed to you! “And you said you didn’t want a dog,” he settled on saying.

“Well, yeah, because then I would have to take care of two pups,” you teased, reaching up to pat Mingyu’s cheek as he scowled. You scooped up the dog and placed her in his empty lap, and Mingyu couldn’t help the stars in his eyes when she began to softly nibble on his fingertips. You stood up with renewed vigor. “Okay, let’s go become the dog parents that we were always destined to be.”

Soonyoung had a bad feeling when he found out that your research team’s first experiments on mammalian influenza transmissibility had failed spectacularly. He couldn’t fathom what had gone so wrong to warrant such a swift and authoritarian response because there he stood, in the same government-sponsored biomedical engineering facility, innocently conducting research on embryonic development in chickens.

Through his incessant prodding and puppy-dog eyes, you told him that you may have created a new, highly pathogenic strain of influenza. “They were afraid that it could ‘fall into the wrong hands’,” you snorted derisively, “but how could any scientist be so unethical?”

Famous last words.

Sometimes, you would scold Soonyoung for not following protocol, like playing popular dance songs in his lab or naming all his lab animals, leaving you to think that he was way too soft-hearted and playful for this line of work.

But perhaps you were the one who was too trusting, and Soonyoung’s lighthearted demeanor was all a façade. A few days later, you found the genetic sequence to your accidental flu strain ripped from your lab manual, and a few months later, news broke out about flu epidemics and connections to bioterrorism with its source traced back to a scientist in your group who had sold the virus to the highest bidder.

In the midst of failing treatments and rising death counts, Soonyoung was nowhere to be found. As curiosity and worry got the better of you, and justifying it as him telling you that the code was your birthday anyway, you unlocked his lab bench drawer to find your missing, torn-out manual page, a bunch of test tubes, and one loaded syringe.

You hid the syringe in your pocket and locked the drawer up when Soonyoung entered the lab, his eyes widening like a deer in headlights.

“I was working overtime?” he tried, and he knew he couldn’t lie to you when your face contorted in disbelief. “Okay, I have a prototype vaccination for the pandemic, but I need more time for the antiviral meds!” he admitted. He grinned sheepishly, his smile not reaching his eyes, and continued, “I may have…taken a page from your manual a while ago…”

“Why are you withholding the vaccine?” you hissed, choosing to let the theft confession slide.

“They’re going to take away my work once they find out, and then they’ll just focus on getting the vaccinations out. There’s no time to synthesize and then mass-produce a 2-week long course of antiviral therapy drug—everyone that’s sick already is going to die.”

“You’re…such an idiot, Soonyoung. A kindhearted idiot,” you mumbled, throwing your arms around his torso. “At least tell me you took the vaccine.”

“No,” he protested, sounding slightly scandalized as his cheek pressed against the top of your head. “If anything, I’d let you have it first.”

Your hand withdrew into your pocket and uncapped the syringe with your thumb. You felt Soonyoung begin to pull away and before you could fully consider the consequences of your actions, your hand shot out to plunge the needle deep into his upper arm.

“Be selfish for once, Soonyoung,” you whispered as you withdrew, letting the now empty syringe crash onto the floor.