times up by revelwrittenscenes on tumblr
It was Valentine's Day, and Joy was feeling a bit pissed off.
All these smiling couples walking by her self-owned tattoo store, hand in hand, making lovey-dovey eyes at each other.
'Soulmates.' Joy thought, distaste evident on her face.
But she knew it was all fake.
These people just thought it was love. But it wasn't. It was all an illusion.
From the moment Joy had found out about 'soulmates', she had believed it was both stupid and unfair. Why couldn't she pick the right person for herself? Surely she knew who was best for her, instead of this so-called 'destiny'.
She didn't need some useless mark on her wrist to tell her who she was 'destined' to spend her life with, if she was 'destined' to spend it with anyone at all.
Out of curiousity, she looked down at said wrist, studying the set of numbers seemingly engraved into her skin. Though she had done her best to cover the damn mark by tattooing a very intricate flower design over it, the numbers were still visible through the ink. According to everyone else, these numbers represented the amount of time your soulmate had left to live...
Joy, of course, scoffed at the idea.
"Is something funny?" Joy whirled around; she hadn't even heard anybody come in. Then again, she'd been really caught up in her thoughts.
Her eyes came to rest on you. Considering you were wearing a jacket with the nearby university's mascot and colors, she guessed you must be a college student.
You were also quite attractive, which she didn't fail to notice.
"Can I help you?" Joy wondered what a college student like yourself would be doing alone at a tattoo shop on Valentine's Day.
"Um..yes. I want to get a tattoo." You proclaimed. Joy smirked.
"Then you've come to the right place." She grinned. "Do you have anything in mind for what you want to get?"
You quickly pulled a piece of paper out of your back pocket and brought it up to show it to her. Expecting some complicated design, Joy found herself confused by what was actually on the page. Not much had been drawn on there, except for a number.
"You want to tattoo yourself with the number 57?" You also looked surprised, and took the page from her.
"Wow, they went easy on me!" You said, turning to look outside. Joy looked over your shoulder, seeing three more people. They laughed, and seemed to cheer you on with several, excited thumbs up.
"My friends," you gestured to the others outside, "dared me to get a tattoo. But they had to be the ones to choose it. They gave me this piece of paper, where they told me they'd drawn the tattoo they'd chosen."
"You hadn't seen it yet?"
"No, they told me not to look." You seemed relieved. "Thankfully, they didn't pick something too extreme. Otherwise, I might have had a panic attack."
You added, "I don't usually do spontaneous things like this."
Joy took the paper from your hands. She traced the number with her thumb.
"Why the number 57, though?"
You turned to look at her sheepishly. "Well, it's the number that's currently on my wrist."
You pulled up the sleeve of your jacket, and showed her your wrist. Sure enough, the small numbers 57, followed by several other numbers keeping count of the months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, and seconds left before your soulmate would die, were now visible on your exposed skin.
