”This fate is cruel.”

Mina mutters as she stares at her lithe wrist, focusing on a pale outline of a tattoo that never looked more loathsome than it is now. She closes her eyes and leans back on her seat in the bus nine stops away from her home.

With a sigh, she recalls standing outside her classroom door staring at the class list. Most of the names were familiar having graduated from the same middle school and with only a few transferees this year. One particular name struck Mina and froze her to her spot.

Kang Seulgi

“Good morning, classmate! I’m Seulgi.”

Mina turns her attention to the palm drawn beside her with a glimpse of a colorless bird of some sort at the back of her hand. She returns the gesture and introduces herself before looking up at the girl. Seulgi's hair is tied up in a ponytail, teeth pearly white in a grin, and crescent eyes more noticeable than before.

Mina snaps out of her thoughts and pulls her sleeve to cover her wrist.

She hears all sorts of stories about magical and romantic meetings of soulmates, destiny dancing in the air while colorful ink flow through skin and cover pale outlines.

They tell her stories of love and a promise of forever and certainty.

They don’t tell her about falling in love… with a person who is NOT their soulmate.

---

“What’s with the frown? It’s only the second day of class,”

Park Chaeyoung inches her face closer to her friend who is not paying her any attention.

“Yah!” Mina sits up in surprise at her best friend’s interruption. “I was just…”

Before Mina could even continue, Chaeyoung follows her line of sight, spotting Seulgi laughing with a few of their classmates at the back of the room.

---

Their Science teacher assigned them to groups on Wednesday. As Seulgi sat beside her, Mina catches a glimpse of her hand again.

Seulgi’s tattoo is a peacock – a symbol of attractiveness, elegance, and glory. Attractive? Obviously. Elegant? Definitely. Glorious? Absolutely.

Unlike hers, Seulgi’s tattoo is filled with color.

---

There’s a girl waiting outside their class a week after. She looks tiny especially with her head bowed a bit and eyes covered with bangs. Mina thinks she’s cute being all jittery, feet shifting and fingers fiddling with the straps of her bag.

Mina has a hunch of who she is even though they’ve never met. She had no intention of listening to Joohyun and Seulgi talk in shushed voices on the second day of class. Not really. But Mina’s seat is just behind them and she just happened to overhear them.

Joohyun animatedly tells Seulgi about the night she saw the colors in her tattoo through the mirror. She talks about Seungwan, a fellow transferee she met while lining up at the cafeteria on the first day of classes. Apparently, Seungwan chuckled at Joohyun’s oddity of distaste for chicken.

The girl’s head shoots up as she passes by, eyes searching for a familiar face. One, two, three seconds pass and Mina looks back. She smiles. She’s right. And the girl she’s looking for is standing right in front of her.

Joohyun gasps in surprise.

“Hi… ummm… Hi Joohyun.” The girl says with a shy smile on her lips.

“Hi! Seungwan, right? I’m Seulgi, Joohyun’s friend.” Seulgi answers with a beam of a smile and an arm lightly shoving Joohyun who was startled and frozen in place.

Mina lingers just a bit longer. She watches the exchange as if the stories she heard are made into a movie. She sees Seungwan and Joohyun’s fleeting glances and the way Seungwan smiles at the mere moments they catch each other’s gaze.

A barrage of questions fills up Mina’s mind. She wonders how their tattoos look like. She wonders how this moment actually feels like.

She wonders who Seulgi’s soulmate is, and if it's as magical as this when they met.

---

Answers come to Mina the next day in the form of another overheard conversation.

“Must be difficult trying to recall everyone you met on the first day of class. You were a walking welcome committee.”

Seulgi laughs at this, causing some classmates to look. Joohyun ignores and just continues what she was saying.

“What got you so distracted anyway that you didn’t see the hues creeping at the back of your hand?”

Joohyun sighs. Seulgi looks around before speaking so softly it was almost inaudible.

“I met a pretty girl the first thing in the morning.”

Mina almost regretted eavesdropping. She could not bear hearing Seulgi talk about a girl. She hastened to sit on her seat ignoring the pain creeping up her chest and the warmth covering her cheeks.

---

Miniscule flower petals as elegant as the girl grazed her wrist, arranged together to form a sleeping fox curled up in a ball.

Being the youngest in the family, everybody fussed over Mina. They knew she’s going to places from the day she was born. They say the vulnerability of the fox emanates only its good qualities – intelligence, wisdom, cleverness, adaptability, and quick thinking.

Nobody expected this girl to be a fool when it comes to love.

---

Everybody has a secret side – a side where all guards are down and one is simply comfortable without insecurities and fear of judgment.

To her classmates, Mina is the quiet girl who always gets the answers correct and spends her time in the library. She always has a still expression, rarely smiling, but rarely frowning, either. Before Mina cut her hair to shoulder-length, it covered her eyes making her shroud in mystery.

To Park Chaeyoung, Mina is the best friend one can ever have. She’s funny when they’re together and they tell each other stories like there’s no tomorrow. Mina sings and dances with her, something she only does when she’s with Chaeyoung. She makes her laugh and comforts her when she’s sad.

Mina’s naturally observant. It’s just magnified when something piques her interest.

She notices the way Seulgi’s eyes turn into crescents when she smiles or the way she bites her lips by habit. She notes how Seulgi becomes ten times prettier when she lets her hair down rather than in her signature ponytail.

What she doesn’t notice is a certain girl observing her as well.

---

“Minaaaa!”

Chaeyoung greets Mina in the hallway seven minutes before the morning bell. She‘s sporting a wide grin and a glint in her eyes, too suspicious for Mina to smile back.

She spots a folded paper heart on her desk with her name scrawled prettily on one side. On the inside is an instruction to meet up in the rooftop at lunch, without any signature of the sender.

She mouths ‘I have no idea’ to Chaeyoung from across the room to answer her unspoken question.

---

Her heart wants to go short-circuit the moment she closed the rooftop door.

It seems impossible. Yet, here she is.

The girl standing in front of her tucks her hair behind her ear looking bashful. She gives Mina a small smile while taking small steps towards her. One hand inviting her to hold and the other showing her a packed lunch wrapped in a handkerchief.

Mina takes her hand – such soft hands – and follows to sit on the laid out mat.

To say that it was incredible is an understatement. Mina is in a daze the whole day with Seulgi’s confession playing like a broken record in her head.

Come to think about it, Mina should have seen it coming. There were plenty of times when they caught each other’s gaze. And before she found the note, she saw Seulgi sitting suspiciously quiet on her desk and Joohyun beaming strangely at Mina.

---

Mina lay in bed that night with a smile still grazing her lips. Her mind flashes back to two and a half years ago on a cold and rainy day. They were drinking hot chocolate when a girl around their age walked by the exteriors of the café. She seems to have been distracted, because instead of leaving the umbrella by the door, she gave it to a stranded little boy instead. The girl smiled as the boy bowed and left before she walked through the entrance of the café.

Intrigued, Mina continued to observe the girl in her peripheral. She’s dressed in the same uniform with a black jacket zipped up to her chest. The girl sat down after ordering coffee, putting her earphones on before bringing out a notebook and a few pens. She flipped through the pages and continued to draw lines and fill them with ink.

Mina smiles at the memory.

---

She dreams of rainbows and sunshines and Seulgi’s face in the middle of it all. She listens to the sounds of confession, soft chuckles, and nods of agreement. She dreams of colored tattoos – a majestic peacock of green and blue with a touch of maroon and gold and a sleeping fox, beautiful and equally magical maroon and black in a bed of green and blue flowers.

She wakes up in the early morning of dawn, torn between feeling hopeful and feeling hopeless. No matter how true and breathtaking Seulgi’s confession is, the last part of the dream is still just a dream. Mina lifts up her arm to look at her wrist, again and again, and still see the black lines of mockery right in her face.

---

Mina discovers a fondness for Seulgi’s hands. Although she adores Seulgi in general – the crescent of her eyes, the curve of her nose, the scent of her hair, and the red of her lips – there’s just something real about her hands. Her hands are marred with pen and ink as a side effect from drawing most of the time. Mina finds out Seulgi draws on herself too when she’s bored or spaced out from the lessons. Doodles from small hearts to gardens are smudged but visible on her palms.

On an autumn day, Seulgi invites Mina to visit a museum and stroll in the park. They talk and laugh the way they would with friends, but with brighter smiles and smaller eyes and heartier laughs. Mina stares at the tattoo again. And when she sees pens in Seulgi’s bag, she makes a request.

Seulgi nodded and took Mina’s right hand but she retracted it just as quick. Seulgi seemed surprised but Mina offered her left hand instead pushing her sleeves away from her wrist. Seulgi held Mina’s hand as if it was a delicate paper, the of the pen smooth and tickling. But when Seulgi’s done with the colored masterpiece, Mina almost cries. On her skin is a long feather of a peacock, hues of blue and green, with just a tinge of gold, maroon, and gray. The tingling feeling in her stomach moves up to her heart and her lips tug so wide.

She hugs Seulgi tight before they part.

---

They hang out more often and get to know each other’s friends. It’s not like they were strangers at all. But Joohyun is new and they've never been classmates before. Seungwan’s a transferee and from the other class.

The first time Mina had lunch with Seulgi’s friends is when Chaeyoung was too sick to go to school. Joohyun is somehow captivating. She’s viewed as the class’ muse, serious and intimidating. But the Joohyun sitting across Mina right now is quirky and playful. She cracks jokes and teases Seulgi and Seungwan every chance she gets. Seungwan is innocent and pleasant. Her thoughts show on her face and it amuses Mina to watch. Her laugh is contagious not just by its sound but in the way her eyebrows crinkle and forms a wide U like an emoticon.

She wishes they could meet Chaeyoung too. She’ll make sure to introduce them soon.

Unfortunately, the meeting never comes because Chaeyoung is 'too shy' for some reason. Mina ignores the lingering looks she throws Seungwan from across the cafeteria.

---

When the dismissal bell rings, Joohyun leaves her goodbyes with a skip towards Seungwan. There’s something about the way Seungwan and Joohyun lace their fingers together and steal glances while they exchange stories at the end of the day.

Even when they are literally just walk