Soulmate

Six: Jin

Chaos happens around me, attempting to make Taehyung stage-ready in under three minutes. It's a process the usually takes hours, but is now cramped into three seconds. 

Yet I don't really care about any of that. 

"Are you sure you found your soulmate, Taehyung?" I ask. 

"I'm positive." 

"How do you even know?" 

He takes deep breaths to steady his hiccupy breathing. 

"I just know." 

—

"How is she?" Namjoon asks when Jimin enters the hotel room. 

"Excited," Jimin answers. He giggles, resting his chin on his hand. "She's cute. A lot younger than I thought she'd be." 

"How old?" 

"Seventeen," Jungkook says. 

Hoseok chokes on the champagne he was drinking. "Seventeen?! Are we sure they're really soulmates?" 

"Oh yeah," Jimin reassures all of us. "I was there. Same little flower on her ear. And she seemed way too generally shocked and embarrassed to be faking it. The poor girl was crying when we went in the first time. Nobody had taken the time to tell her what was going on, so she thought she was in trouble for the sign." He shakes his head. "Then we came in and that just made everything more confusing. They told us they had the same tattoo and Tae started crying again, making everything worse and there was still no interpreter to explain." 

"So I take it she doesn't speak Korean," Namjoon says. 

"I'm sure she know something," Jimin replies, trying to defend the young girl. "She's a fan, they all know a little something." 

"But not enough to hold a conversation with him," Namjoon points out. 

"Love has no language," Jungkook says softly. "We all know that." 

I can't help but agree with that. The faces of my ARMYs flash through my mind and my heart softens. We all know. 

"What's her name?" Hoseok asks after a moment of silence. 

"Elle," I tell him. "It's short for Elizabeth." 

Taehyung enters the hotel room, his face blank as we all watch him expectantly. He looks up from his feet and his swollen eyes slowly scan all of our faces. He sits on the couch between Jimin and I, looking at us all again, before his emotional dam breaks again. 

Sobs instantly rip through his throat, aggressive and body shaking. He cries in a way I've only seen once from him: after he signed the contract to join the company. No one moves, all of us simply watching his head drop into his hands. 

"Thank you," he mumbles into his hands in words like prayers. "Thank you, thank you, thank you." 

Jimin hugs him tightly and the rest of us sit in silence. 

"Taehyungie," Hoseok calls out to him. "It's...it'll be okay." 

"I've waited for this moment my entire life," he chokes out, "only to have to leave her as soon as we meet. I've never wanted to leave tour before." 

"At least he knows how it feels now," Jungkook mumbles quietly. 

"What's she doing right now?" I ask, ignoring Jungkook's bitter words. 

"Management asked me to leave because they said me crying was making her too worried. They sent me in to calm down." Taehyung takes some deep breaths to calm his breaths. "And I came to get Namjoon hyung. I need you to translate the English contract for me. I want to read it over before she actually signs anything."