Nico di Angelo missed a lot of fun and excitement.

And no, it's not because of a miserable childhood or something like that. He had quite a happy childhood, thank you very much.

It's because of his soulmate, whom he had yet to meet.

It's because of his soulmate, who has successfully ruined a big part of his childhood excitement before even meeting him.

It happened when he was twelve.

Nico just finished reading the first book of the Harry Potter series. He was still buzzing with excitement and swore that he would get his hand on the second book once it's released when he felt a strange tingling feeling on the inner side of his left arm. He sat up on his bed and turned on the lamp on his nightstand. He rubbed his skin where the tingling feeling was, frowning a little to see small red spots scattered there. Did he eat anything unusual today? As far as he could remember, he was not allergic to anything. He was thinking whether he should get up and asked Bianca, his older sister, about this, when the tingling feeling suddenly turned into a sharper sensation on his skin.

He took a closer look at his skin again, and gasped to see that the red spots were no longer scattered randomly, but lining up into some kind of pattern. His heartbeat doubled as he tried to figure out what pattern it was. Suddenly he realized that it's not just a pattern. It's letters, forming words.

"Oh. My. God." Nico whispered.

For a split second, the red dots glowed brightly. Then they're gone, leaving a trail of words on his skin, like someone just wrote something on his skin with black ink.

Nico read the neat cursive letters.

His heart stopped beating.

He read it once again, but the words remained the same.

Man, I can't believe Dumbledore died.

Nico read it for the third time, and then he screamed.

Nico spent the next five years of his life worrying about a fictional character's death.

It's not fun.

Every time a new Harry Potter book came out, he would buy himself a copy, then spent at least two or three weeks to mentally prepare himself for reading it. Once he got enough courage to read it, he would just kind of skim the book, only reading it carefully in the part where Dumbledore showed up. And every time he finished reading it, he would let out a long sigh of relief, knowing that Dumbledore survived another year. Or another book, for that mattered. Then he would read the book once again, this time carefully trying to find any clues of how Dumbledore would die, or who would be the cause of his death.

It's not fun.

Every time he saw any fan theories or discussion about Harry Potter, he wanted to laugh hysterically about how wrong those theories were. And every time he saw someone mentioning the possibility of Dumbledore's death, he wanted to cry because yes yes yes that was something that was just bound to happen. And sometimes he wondered whether one of those people who had that kind of theory was his soulmate.

The time when the first Harry Potter movie came out was the first, and the only time, Nico felt a little bit good about his soulmate mark.

At least it was Dumbledore, and not Oliver Wood.

Because dude, he was hot.

When the sixth book was finally released, Nico already had a bad feeling.

His bad feeling turned to be a bad terrible mood once he finished reading the book.

Thirty minutes after finished reading the book, he sat with his legs stretched on his bed, feeling horrible because it finally happened.

He didn't know whether he would feel better had he hadn't known that Dumbledore would die. Maybe not. But at least if he hadn't known about it, he wouldn't had spent five fucking years worrying about something that was about to happen anyway.

Reading it felt like reading a cheap magazine coverage about a secret that he had known for so long.

Ignorance was indeed a bliss sometimes.

It's been twelve years since he read the first book. It's been twelve years, and now Nico was walking out of the movie theater with mixed feelings.

Watching that scene of Dumbledore sacrificing his life made him feel the same way like when he was reading the book.

The feeling like he was watching a car crash that he couldn't stop from happening, even though he saw it was coming.

Nico entered the coffee shop where he had been a regular for the last three years since he moved to live in this area. It's the only coffee shop that Nico found to serve the closest ones to real Italian coffee.

"One Marocchino, please," he said to Leo. The barista looked at Nico and grinned at him.

"What is it this time, Neeks?"

Nico only ordered Marocchino if he was in a bad mood. Otherwise, he would just have his daily shot of espresso.

"Dumbledore died," Nico mumbled.

Leo chuckled. "Dude, other people know it before the movie, but you have the privilege to know that even before the book!"

Nico rolled his eyes as he handed out some money to Leo. "Shut up, Valdez!"

He just not in the mood to talk about it. Not even to argue that knowing it was something that he would called as a privilege.

Leo ruffled his head, making his dark hair even messier. "Don't worry Neeks, at least it's not Wood, right?" he said, and winked at Nico.

Nico sat by the window, drumming his fingers on the table while gazing absently at view outside. He can't help to think about how pathetic it was, knowing that something was destined to happen, but still worrying about it so much, and still felt so awful when it finally happened.

He heard the bell above the entrance rang cheerfully as the door swing opened, but he was too absorbed in his own musing to care. There were footsteps coming closer to where he was sitting, along with some chattering between two guys.

Then he heard them.

The words.

"Man, I can't believe Dumbledore died!"

His head snapped to where the voice came from. A guy with jet black hair that seemed to stick out to every direction was shaking his head as he was sitting at the table in front of Nico.

"I mean, even when I read the book, I always thought that-"

Whatever it was that the guy thinking left unsaid because Nico already stood up, and it took him less than two seconds to shove aside a blonde guy who was coming with the black-haired guy and grabbed his collar.

"It's you! You're the one!" Nico half-shouted, releasing the anger and frustration he had for worrying about the poor old Dumbledore.

Panting, Nico held his eyes at a pair of green eyes that were staring back at him.

He was about to say something. He was about to let this stupid person know how he had ruined the whole excitement that Nico should have had.

But then Nico realized that the eyes in front of them were not just green, but they were brilliantly green. The eyes were like that color of the sea that was so tempting to be explored because they were not just beautiful but also offered so many layers of mysteries.

Nico's mind went blank.

After a few seconds of silence except for the sound of Nico's heavy breathing, the guy carefully pulled himself away from Nico. He shifted backward a little, but the distance between them was still close enough for Nico to see each lash of his eyes.

Nico blinked. He let go of the guy and slide his hands into his pocket. He tried to look away, because by the way he felt how his cheeks were burning right now, he knew that his face must be in an embarrassing shade of red.

But he couldn't.

The look of surprise in those gorgeous eyes vanished, replaced by a mischievous glint, with a hint of amusement.

"Well," the guy looked at Nico with a lopsided grin. "I have imagined like…thousands of scenarios on how those words are going to be said to me. But this, is definitely not one of those scenarios."

He chuckled. "But well," he added, not so subtly checking up on Nico. "Not that I'm not happy to finally meet you, though."

Nico's face was practically on fire now.

He opened his mouth, about to apologize for the not-so-friendly encounter. But then he remembered how this guy in front of him has practically made him go through years of worrying about a fictional character. Nico decided that what he just did was relatively nothing compared to what the guy has done to him.

He stretched his lips into a thin line and shot the guy a glare.

"You ruined the whole story for me."

The guy had the audacity to smile at him but it's even made it harder for Nico now because damn, that smile actually light up the greenish eyes and it took so much from Nico to stay glaring at him instead of tasting that smiling lips with his own.

"I'm really sorry for being a spoiler. Do you think if I offer you some dinner, you could try to forgive me?"

Somehow Nico managed to look away. He turned his head away, only to find Leo was leaning on the counter, looking amused. He winked at Nico and gave him a thumb up.

Nico rolled his eyes. He looked back at the guy.

"Only if you let me pick the restaurant."

If it's even possible, the smile got brighter.

He offered his hand to Nico.

"I am Percy, by the way. And apparently, I am your soulmate."

Nico bit his lower lip as he tried to hold himself from smiling. But it's just so hard not to smile when there were butterflies flapping their wings like crazy in his stomach.

He took Percy's hand.

"I'm Nico. And apparently, you're the one for me."