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Your hair had gotten lighter last summer. It had been due to your holiday at the seaside - the sun got to your hair and over the space of a few days, it had turned one shade lighter.

You’d sat wondering, the week after you got back home, realising the change, if your soulmate would notice that her hair had gotten lighter, too.

Soulmates had the exact same hair colour. Nobody really knew why, but even if someone artificially changed their hair colour, their soulmate’s would change too. Most people thought it was sweet. They’d wake up one morning a redhead. They’d be having lunch and someone would laugh and point out their hair going from bleach blonde to jet black.

You, however, did not find it cute this time.

“What the fuck?” You whispered to yourself, looking in the bathroom mirror at work at the hideous change in your hair.

You’d only been made aware of the change by your work friend Dahyun leaning across and nudging you, a smirk on her face as she tried not to laugh.

“Hey, (Y/N), you might want to have a look at your hair.”

You didn’t want to look at it any longer. You stared at your hair and instead of a chocolate brown, it was now white. That could’ve been alright, you supposed, if it wasn’t streaked pink and green. You worked in an office - what the hell was this? You were due in a meeting in a half hour, how could you walk in like this?

“I’ll tie it up again. Maybe if I…” You started trying to put it in a bun, pulling white strands up and over to try and hide the bright colours, but to no avail. The pink and green was showing up whether you wanted it to or not.

“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck.” In half an hour, you had gotten nowhere. You resolved to digging around in your bag for a bucket hat and securing it around your head, it wasn’t professional - but neither was pink and green hair.

Your boss was ten minutes late for the meeting, and for ten minutes, nobody said anything about the hat on your head.

Those ten minutes went by too quickly.

You boss walked in, her honey blonde hair bouncing round her shoulders -her soulmate clearly wasn’t an asshole - and the first thing she did was look at you.

“Y/N, hats are against the dress code in meetings.” She said, as you felt your face get hot.

“Are they, m’am?” You mumbled, slouching down in your chair and playing dumb. She threw you a murderous glance.

“Yes, they are. Take it off.” The eyes of everyone in the meeting room were on you as you reached up and tugged the hat off your head, your new hair tumbling out. You could hear the stifled giggles and gasps of surprise, and when you looked at your boss, she was frowning even harder. “What in God’s name did you do to your hair?”

“I didn’t do anything!” You protested, sitting up, raising your voice. “It was my soulmate.”

She sighed, her arms crossed. “Call her and tell her to fix it then,”

She said, as if you were stupid for not thinking of it.

You made a face at her.

“I haven’t found her yet.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose.

How could your soulmate do this? Did she not know - well, clearly she didn’t know what she’d done to you, but that was besides the point - you didn’t care how long it took for you to find her, you were going to make sure she paid for your embarrassment the first time you found her.

It was as you were on your way to the hair salon - the subway was jammed, so you had to walk halfway across the city - that you noticed a blue streak appearing in the front of your hair. You stopped walking and closed your eyes, groaning loudly in the middle of the street.

“I’m going to kill her. I’m going to kill her. What is she - what the hell does she look like if this is what I’m stuck with?” Someone bumped into you and jostled your shoulder, making you shake off the annoyance and snap back into reality, starting the walk again. As you passed a shop window, a red streak appeared towards the back of your head, and you took a shaky breath in. For every streak she put on both your goddamn heads, you were going to punch her eight times.

Three more times in the ten minute walk did your hair ‘upgrade’ - a purple strand next to the blue, two orange pieces in the side and a grey chunk on the other side.

You got inside the salon, and went straight into the backroom - your friend worked here, and when you’d called her to tell her the situation, she said she could fix it up for you cheaper than usual.

“Hey, Sana.” You said wearily, as you opened the back door, and she nodded at you.

“What's up? You sounded like you were freaking out.”

“I am!” You groaned, sitting down heavily in the chair, spinning it around to face her while she ate her lunch.

“My soulmate - wherever the hell she is - has been fucking around with her hair and I look like an idiot. I look like a huge idiot."

“It can’t be that bad.” Sana said, gesturing towards your head.

“Go on, let’s see it. Put the hat down.” You gave her a desperate look before doing as told. Sana’s eyes widened and she choked on a piece of her sandwich.

“See!” You wailed, “I’m fated to be with some weirdo who does this kind of shit to their hair - why now? Why in the middle of the day when I’m in work? She’d never done anything this stupid before!”

“It’s okay, I can fix it.” Sana croaked, still coughing on her sandwich crumbs.

“Just wait, you’ll be back to boring old brown.”

“It was auburn!” You protested, and she rolled her eyes.

“One auburn dye job won’t cover that mess.” You slammed your head back onto the chair in frustration. “It’ll need to be dark brown.”

So she did it. She fixed your hair back within an hour, and you trudged back to your apartment, constantly running your hands through it.

The rest of the night you spent working on the presentation and assuring your boss through emails that the hair was fixed, and that you wouldn’t embarrass the company tomorrow.

Sun streamed in through your blinds the next morning, and you stretched under the sheets, remembering your presentation for the client was in an hour. You moved slowly, changing into a skirt and a blouse, pulling on a coat and heels and grabbing an apple, ready to leave the house - but you caught your reflection in the mirror by the door, and the apple fell from your hand.

Your hair was bright green. You stared in silence for a while before calling your boss, still staring at your reflection.

“M’am, I hate to do this, but, my soulmate must have had other plans while I was sleeping and um…my hair is bright green.”

“Green?” She screeched, and you watched yourself flinch in the mirror.

“Very green.” You said, your face scrunched up like you were in pain.

“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you.”

“I didn’t do it!” You argued, “I dyed it back to brown, I swear it, I paid to get it fixed, I -”

“Don’t bother coming in today. Dahyun will do your presentation instead, email her the file.”

“But m’am-”

“I told you yesterday and I’m telling you again. This client needs to believe we are a professional company - who would take us seriously when a girl with green hair is presenting our five-year business deal plan? I’ll give you a week to get this under control, and if that doesn’t happen, you’re demoted to desk work only.”

There was a click, and she was gone. You put the phone back in your pocket and stared back at your hair for a moment, dropping your work bag and slamming out the door. You marched down to the shop below your apartment and bought as many different tubs of dark brown dye as possible.

If this is how your utter prick of a soulmate wanted to play it, then fine. She had a damn war on her hands.

Seven times in the next two days. That’s how many times your hair changed colour and you subsequently changed it back. Turquoise. Red. Purple. Pink. Blue. Orange. Yellow. Every time, you slathered a new tub of dark brown dye over it, and within the next six hours, it had changed again.

You had barely moved out of your apartment, sitting in front of a mirror, hair dye next to you, ready for when it changed again. Once your seventh tube was done- your hair had changed to a lilac color and you were done.

You got dressed and headed out again.

Your destination this time was the biggest beauty store in the city, and you were going on a mission.

You reached the store and picked up a basket, rushing to the hair dye section and sweeping your arm across the brown dye shelf, filling your basket. You looked up for only a second, to see a woman frantically shoving multicoloured dyes in her own basket, a look of determination on her face.

She was cute, you noted - she had big brown eyes and a very pretty mouth, and if you weren’t so busy trying to win the hair dye war, you might have even flirted with her a little.

It was only as you looked up at her hair that she looked at you, and you both shared a moment in which you realised that you were sporting the exact same hair colours. You both dropped your baskets to the ground, you pointing at her, your mouth open in shock, and her simply spluttering and trying to get a word out.

“You!” She eventually accused.

“What are you mad at me for?” You demanded, offended.

“I should be asking you that!” She pouted, folding her arms, and you scoffed.

“You’ve dyed my hair every colour of the goddamn rainbow!”

“And you keep ruining mine by making it brown -”

“How am I ruining it-?”

“What’s so life-threatening about some colour-?”

“I really ought to-”

“Excuse me!” A store attendant put himself in between the two of you as you argued, and you both glared at him for interrupting. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. We don’t tolerate behaviour like that in our stores.”

Before you knew quite what had happened, you and the (very cute, pretty-mouthed) woman were kicked out the store, left standing in silence in the street.

“That was your fault.” You muttered, not looking at her.

“How was it my fault?” She exclaimed, leaning over to make you look at her.

“You started it!” You accused, starting to walk away, knowing she’d follow you. She did, trotting after you.

“Hey, where are you - how did I start it?”

“You started everything with the white and pink and green.” You rolled your eyes, walking faster, but she still caught up with you, her hair - identical to yours.

“I had to win the bet!” She argued, as if that made any sense. You threw her a confused look.

“What bet?” As you reached the nearest coffee shop, she explained.

You took a table seat by the window and ordered a latte, her ordering the same.

“I had a bet going with my friends.” She said, taking the seat across from you. “We bet two hundred on it. Whoever had the stupidest and brightest hair for five whole days won the money.”

“Are you kidding me?” You raised your eyebrows, “I’m going through this debacle because you want to win some bet?”

She huffed, leaning back in her chair. “Well, what’s your excuse for being so stubborn? I think a bet’s a pretty solid reason.”

You leaned forward, settling your gaze on her determined face.

“I’m facing losing my job because of your dumb bet.” Her confident and determined face immediately fell slack and concerned, and she leaned forward too.

“Wait, what? What do you mean, losing your job?” You sighed.

“It’s a really strict place and I had a meeting just after you did it the first time.” You swirled the coffee with the stirrer, making a face. “I got kicked out and told to fix it. So I did -”

“And then I dyed it green.” She finished.

“And then I got told to give my presentation to someone else for the day, and to take a week off to sort it out or I get demoted.”

She was quiet as you took a sip of your coffee.

“Okay…” She started, and you raised an eyebrow. “I may have had the slightly less important reason.”

“Uh, yeah you did.” You scoffed, and her lips starting twitching, trying and failing not to smile.

“But you gotta admit, it was kinda funny.” Somehow, you were smiling, too.

“You got that pink on so fast, how did you even do that?” She laughed.

“You’re talking about fast? As soon as I finished dyeing it, it was back to brown within twenty minutes.” You burst out into giggles.

“I may have been sitting with the dye open for two days straight in front of a mirror.”

“Oh man, you loser-”

“Hey, you’re the one who took six hours to dye it every time!”

“That stuff is hard to use!” She whined, and you found yourself snorting with laughter at her babyish and hurt expression. You were both laughing soon, thinking about your ridiculous war of hair dye.

“I - I don’t even…” You started, but then your laughter faded. “Wait.” She looked up at your serious and mildly surprised expression.

“What?”

“That means we’re soulmates.” You said, incredulously, and she blinked.

“What?”

“Our hair…I was so caught up in being annoyed at you, I forgot the whole damn reason - we’re soulmates.”

“I don’t even know your name!” She yelled out, almost spilling her coffee, and you practically did the same.

“Neither do I!”

“My name’s Nayeon.” She said firmly, and a grin appeared on your face.

“Of course it is.” You shook your head, “Mine’s Y/N.”

“You’re my - I can’t believe this is how I found you.” Nayeon let out a stunned laugh.

“First thing we do as a couple?” You said, smirking and she looked surprised at you using that term so easily, “Decide on a mutual hair colour.”

“Hey, wait, you still have five days until you need to be at work. I have two more days to look like an idiot, and then I win.” Her eyes were sparkling, “How about we stick with the stupid bet, and then I use the winnings to take you out?”

You found yourself giggling profusely at her plan, nodding your head rapidly.

“Fine. Okay. It better be a damn good date.”

“Trust me,” She grinned, “It’ll be…hair-raising.” You groaned loudly at her terrible pun.

“So this is the type of relationship I have myself in for.”

“You bet it is.” Nayeon’s smile grew wider as she leaned across the table and took your hand, and suddenly, all memories of your job were out of your mind as you looked into her eyes and saw a very colourful future.