cough syrup | n.jm

chapter three

Dami groaned as Heeyoung forced her head to bend forward to expose the back of her neck. This was the third time in the last ten minutes that she had done so, as if taking a break from staring at Dami's soulmate tattoo would suddenly reveal some secret answer to who her soulmate was.

"I can't believe you seriously can't find your soulmate," Heeyoung grumbled as she sat back down next to Dami on her bed. "Usually the universe will do its thing and bring you guys together somehow. It's been almost a month,"

Dami shrugged, "It's fine. It's not like it's that big of a deal, I'll just keep taking my medicine,"

Heeyoung gave Dami an unconvinced look. This wasn't the first time the two girls had this conversation. Heeyoung knew Dami well. After having been in the same group and training with each other for almost five years now, Heeyoung believed that the two of them knew each other the best among all the members of the group.

"You're not upset at all that you can't find your soulmate?" Heeyoung asked.

Dami shook her head, "It's fine, I'm not too worried," she replied. But her response was just a bit too quick for Heeyoung to accept. Seeing Heeyoung's unconvinced look, Dami tried to give her friend a smile, "I'm serious, I'm sure I'll meet them eventually. It's not a big deal,"

"You don't know that," Heeyoung replied, "You can't go a single day without your meds. What if you run out again and we're not here to help you?"

"I can always go out and get them myself," Dami insisted, "It'll be alright,"

"But-" Heeyoung tried to go on, but Dami cut her off.

"Don't worry so much," she said with a soft smile, "It won't be the end of the world."

Heeyoung sighed but eventually decided to drop the topic.

As Dami went to put her hair up in a bun so that she could go wash her face for the night, Heeyoung stared at her soulmate tattoo once more. The familiar handwriting spelling out the initials NJM was printed nearly on the back of Dami's neck.

"What if they were his?" Heeyoung asked.

Dami paused what she was doing, the muscles in her neck tensing a bit at the mention of him. "I'd rather not think about it," Dami said, "There are plenty of other people in the world with the same initials as him. The chances of it being him as low,"

"But not zero," Heeyoung said.

"I would rather have a snake as my soulmate than Na Jaemin," Dami replied as she finished tying her hair and made her way to the bathroom. "Hmm, well, I guess I would basically be soulmates with a snake if it was him,"

"Come on, Dami, he can't be that bad anymore," Heeyoung tried to convince Dami as she stood in the doorway to the bathroom.

"He probably isn't," Dami agreed as she started washing her face, "But he and I haven't been close since we were trainees. I doubt bonding as soulmates would change any of that,"

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Jaemin's phone had been blowing up for the past ten minutes. He wasn't entirely sure why Renjun, Jeno, and he didn't just talk to each other and instead felt the need to text to communicate, but at the same time, Jaemin couldn't complain because he was entirely way too comfortable in his own bed at that moment.

That day, Jisung had gone to spend time with Naerin, and Jaemin was pleasantly surprised to see that the younger girl had created a private close friend story so that she could post little updates of her day with Jisung for the dreamies to see.

After the initial October 2020 comeback for NCT, Jaemin moved into the same room as Jeno so that Shotaro and Sungchan could move in with them.

Despite being in the same apartment, Jeno continued to text in the group chat to communicate with people. Jaemin huffed gently and got up to use the bathroom. When he came back to his phone, his notifications were once again blown up.