Can't Believe it's a Human

Nosy

“You are so lucky to already know your mate,” Jake commented as they swam to Jay’s place. “Mine refuse to tell me until the month before.”

“Well, they couldn’t really keep it quiet if Minjeong was going to tell me anyway,” Sunghoon shrugged. “I’m happier that we are friends, kind of, and not complete strangers.” Which was a fair point.

Jake and Sunghoon had to get this talk out of their system before they reached Jay’s place. The thing was, Jay hated when they talked about their arranged mattings. It was weird, everyone knew that arranged mattings were pretty common and it’s not like they couldn’t oppose it, if they found someone else before then. Sunghoon had a whole year before he’d have to mate with Minjeong, and all in all, Minjeong was not a bad option. She was pretty and nice and they were kind of friends. It was great.

Meanwhile, Jake’s case was a bit more unusual, but not that weird either. He had no idea who his mate would be, his parents wouldn’t tell him. In theory, it was so that if he met his mate, they could naturally develop feelings for each other. Sunghoon saw the appeal, if he were honest. It sounded almost romantic, meeting your mate and falling in love without knowing, without the pressure. Even if you met someone else and decided to be with them, it’d be fine. The only downside was that if you never met your mate before that and didn’t fall for anyone else, then you’d be mating a stranger, essentially. 

On the other hand, Jay did not see the appeal of these arrangements at all, knowing who it was to or not. It worked for him since his parents were the least traditional of all and had not arranged any mate for him. Honestly, this was almost unheard of, and most of the people Sunghoon had heard that had not had an arranged mate had been from far away communities. Jay was the first in their community. He was some sort of celebrity because of it, it was weird. Many, Sunghoon knew, pitied him. They thought Jay’s parents were making a mistake and Jay’s life more miserable, but Jay didn’t care and even preferred it that way.

Out of the three, Sunghoon supposes, Jake got the shortest end of the stick. Sunghoon knew who he’d mate and was okay with it, Jay was more than glad not to have an arranged mate, and Jake was left complaining that he didn’t even know who or when he’d end up mating. At the same time, though, Jay could get quite annoyed if they talked about it too much, so maybe he was in the worst position. Living in a community that treated arranged matings as the norm and hating it must suck, though Jay couldn’t do anything about it. At least he wasn’t forced to participate. 

“You were talking about mating again,” Jay stated as soon as they met up with him. “I get that’s okay for you, but do you need to talk about it every day?”

“You can’t know what we were talking about,” Sunghoon argued, even if it was true. “And it’s a pretty big deal, you know, my parents told me who’ll be my mate.”

“Do you ever talk about anything else?” Jay insisted, which immediately prompted Jake to swim up behind him.

“Sometimes we talk about how weird humans are,” Jake naturally sided with Sunghoon, since they were both being criticised.

“That’s not much better…” Jay muttered. 

That was also, Sunghoon noted, a sensitive topic for Jay, but it had only started recently. If Sunghoon had to estimate, he’d say humans had become a delicate subject for Jay maybe four or five months ago. It hadn’t even been subtle, for a bit he’d been on edge about the topic, never participating when they made fun of humans or commented on their dangerous habits. Then, it was like something flipped in Jay and he had lashed out, surprisingly defending humans. Sunghoon didn’t get it, humans were pretty horrible creatures from what he’d been told and heard around. But, he had no personal experience with them, so he backed off after that.