the natural connection that will require effort required for the understanding. i know you asked outside au context but for the au i use what i believe from the reality, i believe soulmates is someone you enjoy conversation with. in the au i refer to nohyuck as soulmates and it all roots from haechan's words about jeno: “ Jeno understands me well, and no matter what happens, he's always the first to try and understand me.” for me this short phrase encapsulates love, which i believe is the process of wanting to understand someone fully, but staying and persevering even when you don’t. to love is to try. knowing someone fully is the goal instead of the expectation of love.

just like my hyuck! i also believe that being understood is more intimate than being loved. sometimes love can become a projection and they can love an idea of you, they can construct you in their head. that's why i consider this phrase “To be loved is to be seen” so true hahaha.

but being understood requires attention! so this other phrase from Ladybird (omg i'm suck a dork) “Don't you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?” stuck with me. understanding someone requires effort. i think it's more invasive than love, it's knowing their diction, it's noticing little changes, it's seeing past their contradictions, more than the surface because to be understood you have to visible! but visibility is never under your control, you can't perfom, and now there's a perception, a version of you that exist outside of your control, outside of your understanding of yourself hohoho. INVASIVEEEE

and i think it's a version bc i think we will never fully understand another because we don’t ever fully understand ourselves. that’s what makes the understanding in love so beautiful. while being together, you learn new things about them, and yourself (kinda like my nahyuck too tho…)

i tried to express all of this on the nohyuck au actually but thanks for asking because i love talking about it.

Tmi: but i have someone i consider a soulmate and the whole reason we both agreed on it it's because we could speak to each other in a way we couldn’t to anyone else, because guess what? they wouldn’t understand.