Written In Ink

“You realize there is no way this is going to work, right?”

Diana sighs defeatedly, shoulders slumping forward. She closes the job application with a petty glare in Daphne’s direction. She’ll have to open it after her sister leaves to avoid her unsolicited opinions.

“I’m trying to be positive— Your negative energy is really testing me right now,” Diana replies, sighing.

In true Daphne fashion, she ignores her sister’s sass with little restraint. To an outsider, it’s obvious she’s Diana’s elder by five years, even if they are the same size and could pass for a set of twins.

“You have zero job experience in that field, Di. They would have to take a major gamble hiring you.”

“Well, they’ll realize it was worth it after they meet me, Daph."

The pair of sisters go back and forth for some time, perspectives battling for common ground. It’s clear to Diana that she would never win against Daphne’s will, but that wouldn’t keep her from trying.

Her adolescent dream of becoming a leading guru in the world of music production had transformed into something slightly more manageable. Given warnings and advice from her father, Diana aimed for internships, assistantships, anything-other-than someone in charge of something, despite graduating with a stellar GPA and glowing recommendation letters.

However, that tiny, 6-year-old voice of her younger self would keep whispering in her ear, pushing her to dream bigger, do more than the small expectations her father kept saddling her with. So here she is, sharing the saddest excuse of an apartment with her elder sister, who is still pursuing her master’s degree and, eventually, her doctorate. And Diana is applying to be senior lyricist for a major music company; at the risk of Daphne shutting her down after months of feeling like less than garbage at her current job. Serving the less savory characters in a bar saddled between a gas station and a dispensary.

Chicago is an interesting place, she quickly learned after they moved here for Daphne’s education. There were droves of people who couldn’t care less about their soulmates—a far cry from the respect given to the system in upstate New York. Where the word Soulmates was sprinkled on every advertisement of every street.

Even as someone who generally loves life, Diana finds herself wishing for an early end every time she punches her time electronic timecard to the sound of some drunken Midwesterner complaining about their ugly soulmate mark.

“I just don’t want you to get let down any more than you already have,” Daphne settles on saying, giving her a pitying look.

“You don’t have to feel sorry for me, y’know. I know what I’m doing,” she sighs with her hands covering her flushed face, “The last thing I need right now is the only person who has ever believed in me to do what everyone else does - doubt me.”

Things are quiet after that, and Diana accepts the bone-crushing hug her sister envelopes her into, even if she still feels frustration ebbing under her skin like the way waves continue to crash into the sand on the beach.

It’s going to work. I’m going to do this! She thinks to herself when they finally separate. Never mind that she has no idea how any of it will actually work out.

When they’re both in bed, a queen-sized monstrosity that the previous renters graciously left for them, Daphne’s voice echoes in the darkness, tentative and quiet.

“I wonder what they’re like.”

Diana doesn’t have to think too hard to know she’s talking about her soulmate. Every person is born into this world with a person they’re destined to be connected to until the end of their days. The birthmarks appear at birth, little indistinct shapes of varying colors. When you meet your soulmate, the mark becomes a clear picture of something important to both of you, not unlike a photo-realistic tattoo.

Their father’s mark was a tiny polaroid camera on his pinky finger, matching their mother’s on her opposite pinky. They loved each other with unwavering ardency. It was incredible to watch them act like lovesick teens even when their mom began growing gray hairs and their dad stopped shaving his face clean.

“I hope they love me like mom and dad loved each other,” Diana whispers back as she blinks away a stray tear.

Their mother passed away only a few years ago, leaving her soulmate and two daughters behind at the height of their academic careers, and nothing but pain and agony in her wake. The doctors hadn’t caught the cancer soon enough, leading to a terminal diagnosis.

“They have to, right? It’s, like, how that works. Also, I hope they’re cute, at least. I’ve read stories of people coming to terms with having an ugly soulmate and I don’t want to have to deal with that, honestly,” Daphne confesses with a sigh as if it was a relief to say it.

“I want to know what my mark will be.”

It’s a blurb of darker skin splayed over the top of her left forearm. The already dark olive skin of her body looks pale to the mark, which is a few inches long. It looks like a burn, stark against her skin. She wishes with every fiber of her being that her soulmate will love her as much as her parents loved each other. There are millions of people who meet their soulmates and drift apart over time despite the destined connection. Factions of people have gathered in protest of the soulmate system, vowing to never let predetermined destinies make their choices for them.

Diana dreams of the romantic, fairytale ending. She smiles to herself every day, rubbing her hand over her mark with a sense of longing and love which has no recipient. So, she bottles it up, all adoration of her future person constantly threatening to spill over, making her somewhat emotionally volatile.

“I think mine will be something cheesy like a graduation cap or a stack of books. All I’ve done in my life is study, and even though I love it, I have lost so many years to the fucking library.”

Diana snorts. “I think mine could be a tree? Maybe a music staff or a guitar…”

“In your dreams. Dad’s was only a camera because Mom was a photographer. She was the one always taking photos of us,” she replies wistfully.

She’d known their mother better, as she was a sophomore in her undergrad program at the time of her passing and Diana was only 14 years old. There are little pieces of her mother hiding in Daphne’s memories, unknown to Diana unless the elder gave her a peek at them. Each little memory is a precious gem to be admired because their mother was an amazing woman, even if Diana didn’t appreciate her then. She hadn’t realized how precious their time together was until it was too late.

“I still believe it’ll be something important to both of us, a big part of both of our lives.”

Daphne pauses, turning over to face Diana. Her hazel eyes land on her own brown ones in the light streaming in from the one window facing a streetlamp, shining despite the dark circles staining the skin beneath them. Daphne was lucky enough to have inherited their mother’s Italian looks and their father’s beautiful eyes—a mixture anyone would kill to have. Diana mourns her own honey brown eyes and rounder cheeks every time she looks at her.

“I know I tell you to get your head out of the clouds all the time, but I really, really hope you’re right. G’night, Di. Love you.”

Diana parrots a response before falling into a dreamless sleep shrouded in the inky black night.

---

When she makes it back to the office, hands shaking from the exertion of holding two drink carriers full of iced coffee, the lingering cheer of being happy that Daphne found her soulmate disintegrates. Charles accosts her as soon as the elevator doors open, his face flushed an angry red.

Diana notices someone standing next to him, but she keeps her eyes glued to the floor after seeing that he is definitely pissed.

“God, there you are! Where the fuck were you, taking the scenic route?”

Her face fills with warmth as she stammers a response. “I-I came as fast as I could and I only—”

“Whatever, just give those to me and get out of here before you can screw anything else up,” he bites out, snatching the drinks from her hands.

She finally looks up, willing the tears not to well up in her eyes, but it feels as if something slams into her, a sense of weightlessness quickly washing away any lingering embarrassment. The man standing next to Charles towers above her, dark waves of hair framing his cheekbones. His round monolid eyes are inky black. She can’t hold back a gasp as pain shoots through her left arm and the sharpness cuts through her shock at his beauty—the consimilar of a marble statue. It’s her soulmate.

It’s him.

When his soft, pink lips part, she has to hold herself back from leaning closer in anticipation.

But he says nothing, simply glaring at her like she’s an oaf—like she’s not his destined soulmate. She only gets to stare at his alluring face a terse second longer, her own cheeks colored in shock, before the elevator doors move to close and he does nothing to stop them.

Her shaking hands fall to her sides, her vision blurring red along the edges. She’s never felt so beneath someone that being in his presence was such an insult. She sways when the elevator brings her back to the ground floor, but she must act like everything is fine.

The first-floor bathroom is thankfully empty, the black marble shining immaculately under the recessed lighting. She shuts the door and nearly falls to her knees once she makes it into a stall. She gives herself a few moments to sob openly - feeling like the smallest person in the world, feeling like nothing. Charles had been the only person who treated her like a human being, at the job she’d fought Daphne to support her in, and now she no longer has that to lean on anymore.

She hikes her sweater sleeve up to check if it’s true. If that feeling had meant anything. When she looks down, it’s no longer a stain of skin. Furiously wiping the tears pooled in her eyes, she makes sure she isn’t imagining the clear picture on her arm.

It’s a microphone, shiny and black and divine—a symbol of love for music and for her soulmate, who works at this music label. Of course, he makes music—he was born to meet his other half in Diana, who has fought for her entire life to find a way to create music.

As tears slide down her cheeks, she squeezes her eyes shut to forget the disgusted look on his face, but it doesn’t work. He’s forever frozen in her mind as her soulmate who decided how little he cared for her in mere moments.

Her soulmate.

And no one but herself cares.