As a person with a phlegmatic temperament, people never really bother me.

So it takes someone special, someone very, very special, to drive me up the wall so far that I go out of my own way to physically track them down.

It really wasn't as easy to do that as I first thought.

When I was thirteen, I went on a shopping trip to Trost with my mum and dad. Why? Because they wanted to be spontaneous. I just wished they'd been "spontaneous" closer to home, a small town called Jinae, so that I wouldn't have to suffer the two hour long drive home where I made faces at the cars going by when my parents weren't looking. As much fun as that was, I would have preferred to write stories in my notebook or play football with my friends in the park.

I ended up trudging behind them while they dived into shops of all kinds in the large shopping centre, maintaining at least a three feet distance between me and them. Because at thirteen years old, it didn't matter where you were and if no-one knew who you were; you just didn't want anyone to see you with your parents. It was a bit obvious, though, that they were my parents, considering I had my mum's soot black hair and my dad's freckles.

I stayed outside a particularly girly looking shop with flowers on the sign and looked at the comedy sketch through the window. My mum was showing my dad some ridiculous floral dress in the middle of the tiled shop floor while he nodded at it enthusiastically, probably telling her it'd look amazing on her. Of course it would; that woman could pull off floral any day. She was the kind of nice, nurturing mum that you'd expect to find in floral clothes and with her hair in a bun-which it was. Clothes like that were basically "mum brand" clothes worldwide. While I was watching them potter around the shop, both with sickeningly lovesick gazes aimed towards each other, and not really thinking about anything, a truly random thought came into my mind:

"Three miles to your left, down Trost's main street." I heard a man-a boy?- growl into my ear.

I turned around frantically, expecting to find pervert leering over my shoulder or a grouchy kid on the floor looking up at me with a scowl. Don't panic, I told myself. It was just a prank. Whoever it was, was gone by now; probably spluttering in laughter down some alley at my reaction. My parents come out the shop just then, smiling at me and finally declaring that we go and get something to eat in the next town over. I couldn't have been more thankful for my parents' wanderlust at that moment.

I didn't hear that voice again for the remainder of the trip that day. But it still freaked me out.

It took some will power to confess to my parents what was happening, a few painful years later. I always panicked when I went to Trost for shopping trips, I always heard that odd and irritating but somehow familiar voice giving me the most obscure directions.

"Go around the bend, if I'm not already driving you there." I made sure to avoid that particular corner. Not that I would have went anyway, there were some scary looking thugs lurking there and I didn't exactly plan on making friends with them.

"Turn to the right and zigzag your way into my life. Or just across this insane car park." I ran away from the car park.

"Why did the chicken cross the road? And go down the path? And then down the street on the third left road? Hint; it was to find me."

The raucous, boyish voice that rang in my mind finally caught my conscious attention.

I was supposed to find him?

I waited outside the panelled living room door. Through the small windows, I could see that my parents were sitting inside the dark room on the couch, watching the T.V that lit up their faces and talking to each other during the movie, like they always did. It was really weird how convenient it was that were both so similar like that. Someone who did the same things as you. Something simple like talking during a movie.

I had to build up the nerve before I walked in.

Last time I'd tried to talk to them about something serious-which may or may not have been the odd and uncomfortable curling hairs growing all of a sudden in my arm pit-it had ended with them just laughing it off and telling me that it was "life" and "the beginning of my manhood". I was under the impression that hearing the voices of a strange guy who wanted you to "find" them, maybe stalk them, possibly worship the ground they walked on, wasn't exactly what I'd been taught in circle time during sex education.

And the fact that I actually considered this voice to be another person or another person's probably meant I needed to go to a mental health facility.

I figured "what the hay, it couldn't hurt to be laughed at again-at least not physically-so just get it over with" and pulled the golden handle down to walk inside. My parents were snuggled together on the couch, nestled in a big blanket, and they looked up at me with identical and owlish expressions.

"Oh! Hey, Marco! We were just watching this romantic comedy with Jennifer Anniston in it, do you want to watch it with us? We didn't call you down because we know you're not really into this sort of thing." My mum grinned at me cheerily, and my dad went back to watching the movie. It couldn't hurt…

I sat down beside them, or well, I sat down on the arm of the couch since they took up the entire area of cushions that we had.

"So…"

I began speaking but chickened out. Ugh. I was so going to regret this.

No-je ne regrette rien! Keep going Bodt! Live up to your family name (that doesn't exactly have any ancestors worth mentioning)!

"I hear voices in my head, or no, wait, it's just one voice. A guy's. Whenever I'm in Trost I always hear his voice and he gives me directions, that are apparently going to lead me to him." I told them quickly, casually looking at the screen instead of them.

When I peeked over at them, I was not expecting their reaction. I fell on the floor as they both piled onto me.

"MARCO THIS IS AMAZING."

"I'M SUDDENLY VERY HAPPY FOR YOU, SON."

"WHY IS THIS AMAZING AND MAKING YOU HAPPY?!" My voice was muffled under the thick blanket. "And why only suddenly? Shouldn't you always be happy for my well being?"

They rolled around together on the floor excitedly, making "happy" sounds. I really hoped they were, because I was already tempted to phone an ambulance due to their abrupt, seizure-like floor dance. My dad crawled up to me, releasing himself from the cocoon of my mum's blanket, he squeezed my shoulders with big hands and gazed into my eyes with his adoring grey ones.

"That's the voice of your soul mate! It's how your mum and I found each other, quite literally!"

After that incident in the living room, I was shipped to Trost with a small stash of money for a hotel so that I could find this guy. A guy I apparently hadn't made up. A guy who I knew nothing about apart from his sarcasm and impatience:

"I'm pretty sure an atheist would find God before you found me."

Comments like that were usually followed by more directions. But as I would be so lucky; I have absolutely no sense of direction.

Ask me where my house is and I'll point in the opposite direction. I once sent a humble Asian women to the slum estate when she asked to go to the town centre. It took me three months and several, unwilling guides to find my way around my high school- Jinae Academy-and the layout plan was basically just three levels of open space, circled hallways.

I got off the small, grotty bus after two hours and a half, seeing as my parents wanted me to go on a pilgrimage-like expedition like they had "when they were young", ignoring the fact that I had about as much idea as to where I was going as a pigeon. Immediately, I heard the boy's voice, who I guessed was about the same age as me. My soul mate's voice, I reminded myself.

"Go past the shop with the rickety sign," All the shops I saw had lopsided signs because of the wind. "Go down the road in the alley next to it and continue forward for one mile, then…"

It was pointless listening to him if I couldn't even find the first point on the trip I'd been sent to go on. Actually, why didn't he just find me? Why did I have to find him? It would've been a hell load easier.

But, then again, I am quite a nice person. And it never hurts to live up to that trait. I ignored his childish protests ("You're getting colder, COLDer, COLDER-ICE COLD.") when I began to make my way to the cheap hotel my mum had suggested I go to, since her friend worked there and would keep me safe (I was sixteen- I didn't need coddling. Oh well, I'd probably get a discount or something).

I hurriedly signed in, raced up to my room, dumped my bag on the bed and locked the door before running out again. LET THE GAMES BEGIN.

….

OR FAIL.

MISERABILY.

AND SEND ME INTO THE WILDERNESS.

IN THE DEAD OF THE NIGHT.

WITH MY PHONE'S BATTERY OUT OF CHARGE.

It was bad enough that I had no sense of direction, but now I had to live up to the cliché horror movie scene where the protagonist enters an empty house and gets murdered?

Top tip of survival-stick to the trees. Or just stay put. At least I got that part right (and to think I'd learned it in geography, of all the sources of information).

I sat at the kerb of the road, waiting for someone to drive by so I could hightail a lift back to town.

Nope. Definitely not as easy as I first thought. Stupid, bad-at-giving-directions-soul mate.

It had better be worth it in the end. That was, if I didn't find myself walking into some river because of his atrocious instructing.