Renjun doesn't text Mark. But he returns to the same art room the next day, not wasting a moment after class to cross the campus, sketchbook under his arm and soulmate dust buried under multiple layers of clothing. The weather isn't forgiving today, with grey clouds that refuse to reveal the sun and a crisp wind that numbs Renjun's fingers, so he wriggled into an extra jumper before leaving. He tightens the grip on his sketchbook when he reaches the door.

Peeking through the tiny glass window, Renjun recognises a few of the other students dotted across the room, but the twinge in his chest when he sees his usual table is empty confuses him. His toes curl in his shoes, and his eyes narrow as thinks too hard. He'd hoped to see Mark. Maybe he's pleased Mark isn't there. Either way, he takes advantage of the empty table to force himself to sit down and grab a pencil before the cage snaps back around his motivation. A mind map should be a suitable springboard to begin with. That's the approach most other students seem to have taken, judging by their discussions in the morning's workshop where Renjun kept his head down and bit his tongue, begging himself to not scorn everyone's projects out of jealousy.

He's had enough of jealousy. It lurks in a swamp in his stomach, and he broods over it, succumbs to its power, lets it hollow him out to a shell of resentment, a lame replacement for his anger towards the world. Where he used to look forward to seeing Jaemin in the morning and would buy breakfast with him in the school canteen, he can only sit opposite the couple and force his cereal down in a stormy daze. Where he used to fill a sketchbook in a month, he now can't draw a line without feeling his eyes wander away to examine someone else's artwork, desperate to compare them and remind himself that he isn't good enough.

He knows he shouldn't. He knows he is good enough, for he wouldn't have got into the university otherwise, but the lie provides an explanation for his heartbreak. So Renjun twists himself to live with that lie; it's easier to just blame himself than to try to decipher the complexities of fate.

Renjun grimaces when, yet again, he realises he sees the world as a miserable place. The world through his eyes is dark, a waste of energy, plagued by plastic and pollution and too many people, and he'd be embarrassed to make any of that the theme of his project. All those people, and Renjun had to be the one chosen by fate's cruel game, led down the wrong path, towards the wrong soulmate. Digging the pencil into the palm of his head, Renjun shakes his head at the empty mind map and hopes that ideas will magically appear, or at least that the negativity will vanish.

Cats. The little plants in his bedroom. Ice cream. He writes those things down instead, all things he likes. But none spark creativity in his gloomy mind. While he's doodling a small cat curled up asleep, the chair beside him scrapes across the floor as it's dragged out, and Renjun would recognise the scent anywhere. Mark smells of lemon, of the sea, of freshly cut grass.

"I hoped you'd be here," Mark says, the words seeming a little rushed. He sits down, immediately tapping his fingers on the desk. The younger takes in the blush across his cheeks, the faint beads of sweat on his forehead, the knots in his hair, and guesses he ran across campus. Renjun doesn't know if the information should flatter him or not, so makes no comment.

"Well, here I am," Renjun replies. He furrows his eyebrows, snaps his sketchbook shut to hide the messy mind map and doodle in the corner, then rests his elbow on it.

Neither speaks for a moment. Mark's gaze gets trapped on a pile of pencil shavings on the other side of the large, square table, and Renjun's own traces up and down the elder's side profile, past the mole on his cheek to land on the hickey. It's still there, in the middle of his neck with no attempts to hide it, and Renjun's curiosity only grows. In fact, the reddish-purple has barely faded since they met, instead persisting like it's meant to be there, like it was made with purpose, and his heart doesn't agree.

"You good?" Mark asks, concerned when he catches the tail end of Renjun's wince.

Renjun clears his throat and sits up, blinking away any signs he was staring at his neck. But it's too late, because Mark shifts around and brings his hand up to rub the culprit, and Renjun can't contain the question any longer. "Is that a hickey?"

"Um..." Mark doesn't nod, but licks his lips and bounces his knee and shoves his hand in his pocket to stop rubbing his neck, so still gives away the truth.

"Sorry. I shouldn't have asked," Renjun says to save Mark the pain of the dragging silence.

"I got you something." The elder's sudden announcement catches Renjun's attention, the guilt of asking the personal question forgotten to watch Mark fumble in his rucksack instead.

"You got me something?"

"A gift. For your birthday?" Mark explains, voice pinched to match the hesitation in his features, as though suddenly realising he might not have made the best decision, but Renjun's frown grows into a smile he can't contain.

He received a few presents from his dormmates, including a new cactus from Jisung and three months' supply of his favourite popcorn from Chenle, but the impromptu gift from Mark makes his heart flutter, makes his excitement build more than it did for the others.

"You got me a birthday present?" Renjun says. "But we don't even know each other."

"I felt bad. I'm sorry. You don't have to accept it. It's only small."

Mark pushes a box towards Renjun, then draws his hand back to his pocket. For a split second, Renjun thinks he's afraid of touching, afraid of the spark, and his heart stutters over its next few beats, excited that Mark might really be his soulmate but terrified of bringing up the topic in case he's wrong, until he realises what the gift is and forgets about all that.

"I saw them and... um... thought of you? I thought they were cute," Mark rambles, but Renjun cuts him off to thank him.

It's a set of animal erasers. A panda, a green frog, a golden bear in a tiny hoodie, a blue koala, a pink cat, all staring back at him with wonderfully wide cartoon eyes, the colours vibrant enough to awaken a childish joy in Renjun.

"Do you like them?"

"I love them. Thank you so much." Renjun rubs his thumb over the plastic box as though stroking them, then opens the packet while he tells Mark he always wished of having animal erasers as a kid. "Everyone had them at school. They were the latest trend."

Mark's shoulders drop in relief, then he laughs as Renjun inspects each eraser, murmuring a soft hello to each animal and patting them on the head. The younger isn't sure he'll be able to bring himself to use them.

"That's alright. They'd be cute just sat on your desk. Maybe they can be your motivation to draw," Mark suggests. The sparkle of his eyes follows Renjun's hands while he replaces the erasers in the box so they can make it home safely.

Hearing those words plants a seed in Renjun's chest, one that promises to grow into a marvellous tree of optimism, hope for his future, and it beckons warmth to settle down with it, a blanket of comfort that protects both the seed and his heart. Yet Renjun sniffs, wary of the fruit it may bear later on. The gravel of Mark's voice punctures his heart, makes him want to look out for him and make sure he's sleeping and looking after himself because he figures he isn't, but he notices the tingle in his stomach a second too late. Mark is sweet, and Renjun falls for his charm, letting the seed of a crush be planted right under his nose. His heart begs to be set free from its cage in his chest and run loose all over Mark.

"Oh shit, your dust! You've found your soulmate?"

Renjun snaps back into the room, thoughts drawn away from his inner turmoil. His hand seeks the bottle, fingers clasping round the cold glass before recoiling away, burnt by the reminder of the golden glow and not wanting to draw attention to it, even though Mark's attention is already captured like a child gawping at a Christmas tree.

"When? It wasn't glowing when we met, right?" Mark asks, fascinated, and Renjun has no answers.

The elder adjusts his glasses and gazes at the bottle of soulmate dust with wide, curious eyes that ask a million more questions, and Renjun wants to cut the string clean in half and let the bottle drop to the floor, watch the shards of glass explode across the dirty floorboards and the dust, dull once more, seep between the cracks, never to be seen again. He knows his heart would fail on the spot, but a sick part of him wants to try it anyway. Perhaps he could survive, proving that soulmates don't really exist, that it's all just a lie, or a figment of everyone's imagination.

But then Mark's reaching to hold his hand, tapping it to check up on him, and Renjun gasps at the electric touch. It's not as potent as the first time – he's not left breathless or dizzy – yet it surprises him enough to glare at Mark and snap his hand away, twisting his fingers together on his lap, under the safety of the table. Renjun feels bad, opens his mouth to apologise, but Mark beats him to it.

"I'm sorry." Mark scans the younger's hunched shoulders and flared nostrils, and Renjun takes a shaky inhale as he tries to smooth out the irritation that curls around his bones.

"It's fine," Renjun says. The words are shy, and he can't bring himself to meet the concern in the elder's expression, sitting still on the chair, staring at his closed sketchbook and the box of erasers with a cramping stomach.

When he does look at Mark, he has his lips parted and blinks every other second as his eyes rove all over Renjun's face, down to the dust, then back up to his face to try to deduce the source of the younger's annoyance.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"It's you," Renjun mutters.

"Huh?"

Renjun sits up straight, ignores the twinge in his spine, and looks Mark straight in the eyes. If he's going to tell him, he might as well be confident about it. "You're my soulmate."

The murmur of other students fills the silence between them, but doesn't conceal the panic in Mark's gaze, nor the fear that's left in Renjun's once the façade of confidence inevitably melts away.

Mark shakes his head. "I can't be."

"But you are," Renjun continues. He grips the bottle around his neck, then rubs the string between his fingers until it stings. "I felt the spark when I took the pencil from you. Then my dust was glowing by the time I got home. I can't think of anyone else I touched."

"Are you sure?" Mark is quick to interrogate. He removes his glasses to rub at his eyes, and the action seems to peel back a layer, leave him bare, all the emotions in his raw gaze now exposed without the glint of light on the lenses, and fire engulfs his pupils. "It could be wrong, right? I mean... like, it could be wrong. Soulmate dust doesn't lie. You could have accidentally brushed against someone, or... I don't know... but how do you know it's me?"

Renjun swallows down his rage before it can escape from his cracked lips. He stares at the hickey on Mark's neck. He replays his words over and over, and each time they ring with more desperation, and he hates them a little more. Mark probably has a partner, and that's why he's panicking, rushing to make Renjun think he's got the wrong end of the stick. No one wants to discover that the love of their life isn't their soulmate. A half-suppressed scoff leaves Renjun's throat. He pinches his wrist, nails digging into the skin while he considers the possibility that Mark's dust colour is just grey, or grey once mixed with that of his partner, before he realises it's totally dull. It sits lifeless in the vial, unresponsive to the light, not a single grain glowing. Renjun's is bright when he looks down at his own. The yellow appears to ebb and flow as though the dust were liquid, one moving entity that dances and sways and taunts him.

Mark zips up his jacket, concealing his dust from sight.

Renjun exhales through his nose. It usually helps him calm down, the slow release of an audible breath enough to bring him back to the room, but nothing about the breath is slow so the huff only tightens his chest and irks him more. "Look, Mark. It's not like it's my fault, is it?"

He watches Mark fumble to replace his glasses on his nose. They outline the regret in his eyes, and bring back the youthful innocence of his features, but Renjun still doesn't drop the steel from his own face, in need of an answer to the questions that have circled his mind since the change to his dust.

"Sorry."

"Stop apologising." Renjun opens his sketchbook for something else to look at while searching for the right words. Mark clears his throat, mutters the first half of another apology before snapping his mouth shut again. It brings the ghost of a smile onto Renjun's lips. "I met you here yesterday, right?" He looks at the elder but doesn't wait for him to respond. "I took the pencil off you to show you how to colour in the tree, and it hurt when I touched you. As in, it was like electricity shot through me. Then when I got back to my dorm, I looked in the mirror and my dust was glowing yellow. I don't know how else to explain it, but I'm sure it's you."

Mark nods slowly, then ducks his head down, hands in his pockets as he slouches, body curling into itself in defeat, in helplessness. His face scrunches up in deep thought.

"I don't know if you're dating anyone," Renjun continues, catching the hickey for the briefest second, "or why your dust is still grey, but I don't really care. I'm just confused and angry and kind of pissed off at life. You don't owe me anything."

During the next silence, Renjun starts to sketch another cat, big enough to fill half a page this time, but the lines tremble under Mark's stare to give away the truth. He does care. He just wishes he didn't.

"It was only a hook-up." Renjun pauses at that.

"You didn't strike me as the sort to... you know..." He tries to not look at the mark on the elder's neck, instead catching his eyes. "Sorry. I shouldn't judge."

Mark doesn't reply. Renjun understands. He finds a reference photo on his phone to help sketch the cat, but sneaks glances at the boy sat next to him. The bags under Mark's eyes suck the energy from his eyes until they're empty, void of their usual glint, until they stop shifting around the room and droop, fixated on the pile of pencil shavings again. Mark's leg bounces up and down. His cheekbones slice through his pale skin.

Renjun swears Mark didn't look so knackered before.

"Are you sure you didn't meet anyone else?" Renjun wants to cry when Mark tries a final time, the question feeble because he knows it's a long shot, a waste of words, and he tries to mask his frustration with a sad smile.

"Let's not dwell on it. I don't believe in all the soulmate bullshit anyway," Renjun says. "Well, I try not to believe in it. Want some paper?"

Mark frowns, but accepts the younger's offer and selects a pencil, cautious to take it from Renjun's starred pencil case without letting their hands touch, and draws a few squiggles across the page. When he selects a red pencil and proceeds to colour in some of the resulting shapes, Renjun hums in mock fascination to lighten the mood. "Interesting. Interesting, indeed."

Sceptical, Mark's cheeks flush in embarrassment, and the soft pink has Renjun relieved to see colour return to his skin, glad to know the elder isn't about to pass out.

They draw together, only occasionally exchanging a few words, and the topic of soulmates doesn't resurface for the rest of the day.

𓆩♡𓆪

That writing slump was not fun :c but I'm feeling much better now ^^ I hope you enjoyed this chapter and that you're having a good weekend <3