#7secrets

The first time one of my designs was accepted and integrated into the world of fashion, I cried. Like, nonstop for about three days. I then proceeded to delve even farther into my work once the criticism that “beginners luck” was all I had to thank began.

It’s only been a few years since I began all of that, but I still remember the most pivotal day. I had just come from a grueling meeting about Paris fashion week, and was anxiously awaiting the news to see who would be invited.

Everyone in my department was invited except for me. And for the four-thousandth time in my life, I was told the same phrase.

“It’s time to take off your rose-colored glasses, Aera,” my supposed friend since I first entered design school told me. “This is the big leagues, and pretty ideas with no backbone won’t get you anywhere.”

It was a depressing day, but I’ll never forget what came of it. I was so angry (my soul sisters weren’t sure whether to flee the scene or console me), that I locked myself in my studio for hours and hours until I came up with a suitable design.

It was my cry into the void. My final scream before I allowed the world to silence me. To anyone else, they were just another pair of tinted glasses. But to me, it was my way of showing people that seeing the world as a beautiful mess of a journey is not as silly as they may seem.

It took a couple of years for that project to take off, but I’ll never forget the day it did. Friends and enemies were blowing up my phone with photos of the same man. A man that I was worried would never know had changed my life in so many more ways than just wearing the glasses I’d designed.

I’ll never forget the day I saw Park Jimin wear my rose-tinted glasses. It was in some concert, and he looked happy and beautiful in them. It didn’t take more than a week before I was sold out, and by then I was able to hire more people who continued on in my tinted glasses line and I got to move on to what I’ve always wanted to do: clothing.

He couldn’t have known that his soulmate designed those very glasses. There was no way on earth he could have known, but the way I can feel this bond sinking into my very soul, I think that maybe a part of him did know.

It’s been approximately five minutes since I first laid eyes on my soulmate, and I’ve had the hiccups for the past two.

“Aera,” my soulmate chuckles, “Do you need a glass of water?” We’ve just separated from our bonding, and I think me nearly hyperventilating before has come back to haunt me. Needless to say, it was a little embarrassing when I couldn’t stop hiccuping as Jimin tried to hold me steady in his arms.

“There should be water in the recovery room,” Dr. Byun interrupts. He’s the male doctor that led Jimin in here, where he shuffled over to me in a mixture of embarrassment and cuteness before wrapping his arms around me with teary eyes.

“Let’s go?” Jimin asks, extending his hand out to me. It doesn’t take me long to drop everything and take his hand.

The inside of the recovery room shows that Dr. Byun was telling the truth. A few bottles of water sit on the table alongside an assortment of different snacks. Jimin hands me a bottle which I gratefully take.

“Better?” He asks me, looking at me with a look I’d thought only reserved for couples who had lived together for over fifty years. For some reason, I think Jimin doesn’t need to be with someone for fifty years in order to look at them like they’re the most precious thing in the world.

I nod a little bashfully. “Much better. So,” I look around the room, “what now? We just wait?”

Again that sweet look before he looks away. For being a force to reckon with on stage, Park Jimin is quite bashful in person.

“I heard somewhere that slow dancing is a sure cure for the hiccups.”

My breath is too shallow still from our bonding to really even laugh, but I still manage a confused giggle. “But I don’t have the hiccups anymore…?”

Jimin shrugs, pulling his phone out of his pocket and fiddling with it. He turns the volume up and sets it on the table. “Just in case they come back?”

He doesn’t really look at me, shuffling forward and taking my hand in his, pulling me closer to him ever so gently. I allow him to tug me along, wrapping my one hand around the back of his neck while the other entwines with his. His hand on my waist is so light that I’m not sure he’s even holding me, but I give him a soft smile as the song he’s chosen wraps around us like the rays of the sun.

“Jimin,” I whisper. His eyes flicker up to mine, a timid expression painted along his features.

“Yeah?”

“Do you like tinted glasses?”

His eyebrows jump up, a confused grin showing up. “Y-yeah, I do. Do you?”

I’ve been told countless times that I see life through rose-tinted glasses. Right now, swaying along as though dancing among the clouds, I suppose that’s what led me to my soulmate.

The glasses became a battle cry for me in a time when I was just struggling to make my way in the world. For the first time in my life, I feel like it might be safe to ease the glasses off. With my soulmate beside me how could the world not be beautiful?

I’ll tell him about the glasses later. For now, I mentally slip them off the bridge of my nose and drink in the change of color pallete. No longer is the world rosy.

It’s pure gold.

“They’re alright, I guess.”