Craig had always known he had shit luck, so this development was nothing new. It started when he was just five, he had started kindergarten at South Park Elementary and met a bunch of the other kids from town. He had never been particularly social so this was his first time meeting most of them. He didn't even notice the change until his mother and father sat him down to explain to him how the marks work. Though it was probably safe to say that it happened sometime during introductions, the entire class was forced to go to the front of the room and introduce themselves with their names, age, and meaningless garbage about themselves.
Everyone is born with a mark of a flower bud on their arms. The way they work is simple, the flower will bloom when you meet your soulmate. The flower will match with the soulmate's own mark, so it's generally easy to find out who your soulmate is if you're lucky enough to meet them. But if one of the soulmates dies, the flower wilts, even if it's a bud. You may be able to guess where this is going. This is where Craig's issues began.
On the first day of school, Craig's mark had bloomed, he hadn't even noticed, as he had been wearing sleeves. His mother noticed that evening when he reached for his glass at dinner, it was a red poppy that stood out harshly against his pale skin. His mother had coo'ed and his father had just smiled. He just stared down at the mark with newfound interest. Who could it have been? There were a lot of weirdos in his class, and he wasn't sure how well it would go if fate decided to fuck him over with one of the stranger ones. That evening, when his father was tucking him in, the flower was wilted. Once again, Craig hadn't even noticed when it happened. Maybe that's what that itch was... Not that it mattered anymore, fate really had screwed him. That was the first time Craig had ever seen his parents cry, he decided he didn't like it.
The morning after something strange had happened, The flower had turned back to a bud, and was standing straight up as though nothing had happened. When he asked his mother about it she just looked at him as though he had another head. He figured it must have been a strange dream.
He was proven wrong every day for the next 5 years, and intermittently after that. The weirdest part? No one died in the area when the flower wilted. After a while, he just assumed something was wrong with him. He resolved to keep the mark covered up, not a big deal really when you live in the mountains.