Shen Wei Zhao Yunlan- 18. If you dye your hair, your soulmate's hair color changes as well.
If Zhao Yunlan had thought about it a bit more, he probably would have taken a bit more care in his rebellious teen years. But, being a rebellious teen, and seeing as rebellious teens existed to flaunt the system, he'd taken the social faux pas of hair-dying and run with it.
Now, it was perfectly normal to have a bit of dyed hair—that was how you found your soulmate, by careful dye patterns and strategic placement. But it was considered polite to only do that with a lock of hair, not, well, all of your hair.
Zhao Yunlan, at sixteen and angry at the world, had decided the biggest middle finger to society that wouldn't actually hurt anything was to dye his whole head of hair. Not once. Not twice. It was a bi-weekly thing that he did for months, changing up colors and patterns. There were even weeks he spent with rainbow hair just because he'd managed to collect so many odds and ends of dyes.
Looking back, he had to cringe a little at it all. Sure, it had made authority figures sputter and little old ladies clutch their pearls at how bright of colors he chose. But he hadn't given a single thought to the soulmate he had on the other end.
They probably hated him. They'd have to have woken up for the better part of a year full of wariness, not knowing what their hair was going to look like that day. Hell, Zhao Yunlan hadn't known what his hair was going to be any given day and had frequently decided to change it on a whim at the most random of times.
The thing that was most baffling was that his soulmate never dyed their hair back. No locks with a favorite color, no scatter of color from a dyed braid undone or even retribution-dying Zhao Yunlan's hair back to a normal range of color. No, whoever it was had just let him do that. (They either had the patience of a saint or gave no shits and Zhao Yunlan could find either of those things attractive. On the right person. Which presumably his soulmate would be. …Look, his soulmate is going to need patience. He was fully aware of his faults.)
Now older and wiser—and less of an asshole to his other half, whoever that might be—Zhao Yunlan kept his hair natural for the most part. Somewhere his soulmate had to heave a sigh of relief.
Still, he had one lock dyed. Just the one that he touched up once a month with subtler deep red dye that blended enough with his brown hair that it wasn't obnoxious.
The higher ups seemed to like that, and it kind of made him want to pick up his old rebellious habit, but Zhao Yunlan was a bit too old to throw everything in the face of society like he'd done as a teen. Even if he still didn't believe he'd somehow become an authority figure some days, the fact of the matter was that he was actually an established professional in a leadership position and that came with some expectations. So less flashy hair dye it was.
Zhao Yunlan wasn't expecting to meet his soulmate any time soon. Forty percent of soulmates met within puberty range. Thirty percent in their twenties. After that, it could be wildly scattered with five percent never meeting them at all, so when he left his mid-twenties, he'd kind of resigned himself to not finding his soulmate anytime soon.
Then again, with his subtle dye job these days, he very well could run into his other half on the street and not notice; subtle dyes were more common in management positions. Like a bell curve, there was a threshold for conservatism somewhere in the middle range of power hierarchies before reaching eccentric levels at the extremes. Meaning there were a lot of people in the middle range, and it wasn't like Zhao Yunlan was scrutinizing everyone for their exact mixing of dye saturation.
He'd kind of stopped bothering anyway.
Maybe that was why the world smacked him in the face with his soulmate when he least expected it, in the middle of a case. As a potential suspect on a case.
There was a curious energy between them as he shook the professor's hand. A surety and knowing that had been hovering at the back of his mind like some kind of gentle alarm the second he saw the streak of red in the professor's hair. It stood out on him in a way it didn't with Zhao Yunlan, his hair darker, straighter, styled back. All except that lock of hair at his temple. It almost didn't look like the same red honestly, and for a split second, Zhao Yunlan thought he was mistaken, even if the colors and location matched. That brush of skin in the handshake was confirmation though, the resonance he'd read about, though it wasn't as strong a feeling as he'd expected, more like something was slotting into place that had been just shy of fitting his whole life. Comfortable. Subtly different. Good.
The professor looked at him like he was trying to memorize his face, or maybe like he too was feeling like this was less of a first meeting than a reunion even if Zhao Yunlan was sure he'd never met this man before in his life. He'd definitely have remembered someone this pretty if he'd met them before.
The professor didn't let go of his hand and Zhao Yunlan didn't retract it.
Oh man, he was pretty and put together and everything Zhao Yunlan was not. Zhao Yunlan had the sudden, horrifying thought that at some point this put-together gentleman had been saddled with Zhao Yunlan's rainbow hair.
Oh, wow, hello retrospective mortification. Let's just shove that in a box, yes? And really hope that this man didn't already hate him for Zhao Yunlan's rebellious teenage years.
"Are you going to let go of his hand yet?" Da Qing said with all the usual lack of social tact cats had. "It's getting weird."
The professor—no, Professor Wei, he had a name. It was a nice name, very good, very fitting—pulled his hand back first, quickly like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't. It made Zhao Yunlan want to snatch the hand back because, nah, it was perfectly fine to hold hands with a soulmate you just met, definitely.
Right.
Um. He was here professionally, right.
And the good professor had just witnessed them dangle their latest hire out the window. Fun times. There was no making a good first impression, was there. Zhao Yunlan was the guy that dyes his hair rainbows and dangles people out of windows and—wait hadn't Da Qing been a cat five minutes ago?
He looked at Da Qing. Da Qing gave him a look right back, though he was weirdly comfortable in Professor Shen's personal space—and Professor Shen didn't seem bothered either which was weird and something to take note of and had anyone else noticed that their hair matched yet or…?
Sadly, he was on the job and he couldn't grab the professor's hand again, drag him to a more private location, and ask personal questions and/or apologize for potentially embarrassing him in the past. He could however give him his business card.
Zhao Yunlan pressed the card into Professor Shen's hand with a bit more familiarity than he'd do with most people. Professor Shen kept up an amount of eye contact that was very encouraging for the situation.
"Please," Zhao Yunlan said, "call me later."
"For the case," Professor Shen said, giving Zhao Yunlan a slim margin of dignity in the deliberate interpretation of his words.
Zhao Yunlan didn't have dignity though, so he just smiled and said, "Oh, call for whatever reasons you'd like," even as Sa Qing rolled his eyes and the newbie wrung his hands in the background.
Then it was off to keep searching again, doing their job. It was very unfair that he didn't have time to have a proper conversation with his soulmate, but hey, the man had his number and it wasn't like it would be too hard to look up a Professor Shen at the university and get in touch in the future. Near future. He didn't have that much patience.
"So that was…" Da Qing said leadingly after they were a ways away.
"Yep."
"Huh."
"Yep."
"He doesn't look like someone who could pull off the colors you used to put your hair through." A pause. "There has to be more to him than the serious professor look."
Zhao Yunlan didn't care if Professor Shen really was as strait-laced as he first appeared or not. He just hoped he would get a chance to talk to the man soon.
(Shen Wei waking up one day in the past and looking in the mirror: … Why?)