#because yoojin sure as hell isn't going to

[tyrantwombat]

That said, as cool as the visuals are, they made the choking thing so dramatic again. I get the visual medium thing, and needing those high energy beats, but Sung Hyunjae is just so casually menacing about it in the novel and Yoojin just.

Barely registers it.

Can't be bothered.

[wovenstarlight]

so this mfer isn't going anywhere might as well scribble it down. sclass soulmates au but everyone has a different soulmate marker, as in some people are living the "soulmates name tattooed in your body" au and some have the "first words tattoo", some have "see color when u first meet them", etc etc infinitely. everyone's living a different soulmate au.

general disclaimers: platonic soulmates are a thing, multiple soulmates are a thing, I'm not a fan of Fated Soulmates so this is more of a "your soulmate bond pops up when you meet people who are right for u and get close enough to them to establish a solid bond"

yoojin's living the immortal soulmate au. which means yoojin ages up to somewhere about mid twenties and then. stops aging. freezes at age 25 for decades until he meets his soulmate(s).

semi-immortals like him generally freeze somewhere around their twenties, some early on and some later. their nails and hair and all keep growing but they don't grow taller or anything. they can't have kids once the immortality hits. and while they can get hurt, they never actually Die, so if they're ever in terrible situations they have that bittersweet knowledge that this won't kill them. doesn't stop the hurting in the meantime, but it's nice to have that.

(and by that I do mean that the world will stretch beyond itself to keep them alive. if they try to hurt themselves and die on purpose, either they'll fuck up and it won't work (knives breaking, guns jamming, pills making them vomit instead of killing them...), or someone will find them in time to save them)

because of how many ways there are to have soulmates and how vast the global population is, immortals are vanishingly rare to the point where they often have a hell of a time getting laws to adjust for them (no, date-of-birth checker, two centuries before modern times is a perfectly valid time to be born!!! fucking coders, stop programming weird limits into your websites!!!!)

BUT they're all registered at their country's soulmate management authorities (for legal purposes and also because some folks have damaging soulmate bonds, like folks who feel their soulmate's pain, and sometimes need an authority to back them up abt it and send in permits to excuse them from things), which makes it marginally easier for them to get in touch across countries

yoojin is born some hundred and fifty-ish years before canon, and over the decades builds up his little community of other immortals. one of the first things he's told by his fellow immortals is to find an anchor. it's hard living so long and it's very easy to lose oneself in grief and exhaustion, so as a way to make up for that, each immortal picks a hobby or some sort of fixation they'll focus on when things get bad. to remind themselves there's something in life they love and that's worth doing, that's worth staying alive for until they find their soulmates.

(because they've had folks hurt themselves to the point of complete shutdown, and a coma still means you're alive, and they're not really sure that person will ever wake up long enough to find their soulmate and finally be able to die like they've wanted for so long)

so yoojin tries to find something to fixate on and maybe he goes into being a vet or something like that, maybe a schoolteacher cuz he does genuinely like kids. he's a caring person by nature and he fixates on caring very aggressively for the people and creatures around him

which, the other immortals try to warn him off, a little, because living creatures die! and he's like. true! but also, even if the grief always hits in the end, he still has months and years and decades of happy memories to look back on afterwards, so. it's fine, it hurts, but he cares too much to let go.

and all the while, his sibling(s?) grows older as he stays eternally 25. and he watches as they fall in love, get married, have kids, and he looks at his nephews/nieces/niblings and he's like. hm. I fixated on caring about people. and these kids are pretty in need of care.

> hyperfixates on caring for my family like a boss

his sibling dies. he watches over their kids in return, watches them build families of their own, watches them entrust those families to him and pass on in turn, watches those families marry and die, watches their spouses remarry and raise a new generation, watches that new generation adopt their own kids, watches watches watches—

and then one day his nephew/niece (a few generations down, and not necessarily blood relatives anymore, but family all the same) gets married, and they have a child, and the child—

they abandon it. yoojin, keeper of his family, abandons them and takes the baby with him.

he gets yoohyun to call him hyung, even though he looks old enough to be his father, even though he's old enough to be his great-great-great-[...] grandfather. because just like the others who tried to call him dad or uncle or whatever, one day yoohyun's going to be 25 and one day he'll be 30 and one day he'll be a hundred years old and yoojin will be 25, watching and waiting.

so he's hyung, now. it's nice. yoohyun loves him, and he loves yoohyun

and he wakes up one day with wrinkles around his eyes and mouth from smiling too much. he laughs, and then he cries, and then he wonders if maybe he shouldn't have had yoohyun call him dad or uncle after all, but whatever.

(the other immortals are thrilled. one soulmate found means the chances of the others coming soon are high, and yoojin's choice of anchor means he's experienced so much grief, and it's about time he got to be properly happy)

(though they've all got their fair share of wrinkles and stray gray hairs, after meeting each other. it's hard not to love people you spend centuries with.)

yoohyun himself doesn't seem to have any obvious soulmate bond. he mentions having partial colorblindness, and that's probably it, but it could also just be natural colorblindness rather than a soulmate thing. either way, if he's had a soulmate bond with yoojin then it was from birth, so they can't tell from any change in him, because he's always known life with those colors

yoojin has always cared for the life around him, but all the kids he cared for had someone else to love them, so raising yoohyun alone is.... new. he devotes himself to it in a way he hasn't before, he watches as yoohyun grows into a smart, handsome hardworking young man, and he loves his baby brother so fucking much he hopes it kills him

yoohyun leaves.

yoojin... doesn't take it well.

not me thinking of another au for my current hyperfixation five days before the three consecutive midterms and essay I have 🤪