✦ ⌇ Red string theory ！

People say the red string of fate connects soulmates, binding them by an invisible thread from birth no matter the time, distance, or circumstances. Most people think it’s about romance, but maybe that’s because they’ve never met Minho and Jisung.

Minho was nineteen when he first met Jisung, a nervous first-year student lugging around a way-too-heavy backpack and a tote bag with a tear near the seam. It was orientation week at Yonsei University. The campus was buzzing seniors in matching t-shirts yelling icebreaker games, professors half-smiling from the faculty building steps, and new students with eyes full of anxiety and hope.

Minho spotted Jisung standing alone near the student center bulletin board, looking utterly lost.

“Hey,” Minho said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “You good?”

Jisung looked up like he’d been caught stealing snacks from a shrine. “I’m trying to find the seminar room for the psych intro talk.”

Minho glanced at his own pamphlet. “You’re in Psych 101 too?”

Jisung nodded.

“Well,” Minho said with a lopsided grin, “we’re lost together then.”

They found the seminar room ten minutes late, snuck in through the back, and somehow ended up sitting next to each other again during lunch, then again during the club fair, and then again on the bus back to the dorms.

“Coincidence?” Jisung had asked.

“Nah,” Minho said, leaning back in his seat. “Fate. We’re destined to suffer through college together.”

From that moment on, they did everything together. Like, everything.

It started with classes. They weren’t even in the same major. Minho was in media and communication, while Jisung was a psych major, but they adjusted their electives so they could take as many classes as possible together. Group projects? Always paired. Presentations? Always practiced together in the dorm study lounge, usually at 2AM with half a bag of spicy chips and a soda between them.

But their real lives happened after classes.

After 4PM, Minho and Jisung entered their own little world.

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈   ♡ ˎˊ˗

They had traditions. Some were accidental at first but became a routine. Every Wednesday, they went to the tiny convenience store near Sinchon Station to buy two triangle kimbaps and the weirdest instant noodles they could find. They’d sit on the curb and argue about which flavor was worse, then agree that both were amazing, because everything tastes better when you’re slightly sleep-deprived and laughing your guts out.

On Fridays, they had “movie night” in Jisung’s dorm. Not that they ever made it through a full movie without arguing about the plot or falling asleep mid dialogue. Once, they watched Spirited Away and ended up theorizing for hours about whether No Face was just misunderstood or actually evil. They never reached a conclusion.

Then there were the adventures. One Tuesday, they missed their stop on the subway and ended up in the wrong district. Instead of panicking, Minho said, “Wanna explore?” And Jisung, despite being the more cautious of the two, grinned and nodded.

They spent hours wandering the neighborhood, finding a secondhand bookstore with poetry from the 1960s and a tiny cafe run by a woman who made her own cheesecake. They didn’t get home until midnight, but it became one of their favorite memories. From then on, “getting lost” became a hobby.

Sometimes, people would ask if they were dating. Minho would laugh it off. Jisung would roll his eyes. “He’s like my emotional support idiot,” Jisung would say. “We’re basically codependent.”