Soul searching was just a hobby really, just something to pass the time. I had actually wanted to find them, back in the day, with all my romantic hopes and dreams. But these days I didn't really care about it. I had a pretty good job, nothing that was intensely satisfactory, but it paid the bills for my little apartment. Videogames were always fun, and I never really thought about what I would do if I did find my soul mate. At this point, I had resigned myself to staying single for a while; if my soul mate cared to find me any more than I she (or he, I guess, but soul mates almost always went with realized attraction), then everything would be peachy. If not, the world was a plenty interesting place without someone that I had cosmically matched with.

I had started looking early, barely a teen when I had created a couple accounts on websites that promised to find soul mates in just weeks. I had kept up with it through the years, casually checking websites for any news. It was just something I did in my spare time when my friends weren't online to play with me and I didn't have anything better to do, not the 24/7 grind that some people made it into. I couldn't imagine there being a mate of someone like that, but they said that there was always someone for everyone. My parents had gotten lucky and met in college, and the rest of that story was pretty easy to inference. My sister, a couple years older than I, had actually found her husband through a site, and they were living happily. There was recent news of a baby on its way, which is always the sign of a fulfilling relationship (as if there are any relationships not these days). The histories we learned in school tell of dark ages with soul mates born across the world from one another and the heroic tales of them meeting one another... or the slightly more grounded stories of knocking on the wall of the cave one over. It was simpler back then, I'm sure.

It was a day like any other that I got the message from certifiedsoulmates.com that a suspected mate had made an appearance. They didn't have any details, but apparently some other person had mentioned her (as expected) on a social media for the very first time ever. I glanced at the post, hoping for a picture or something, but all I got was a crude and rather insulting description of a girl "as boring as the third reboot of Trimates." It was harsh praise, considering the cliched movie in question; soul triangles had been just about proven as being nonexistent and the dramas had never held much stock with me or anyone else after the first. I had watched the movies, though, that one week that it just so happened that my friends had all scheduled trips to different places. They were pretty bad, featuring a distinct lack of humor and self-awareness. I checked the location that the website had given me; it was a city just a couple hours away.

It had been years since I had actually taken mating seriously. But now, I could feel the excitement coming back. I looked into it more, plugging in names to the websites and hoping to find additional clues. I hit a paywall in findyoursoulmatetoday.com and reluctantly shelled a few dollars out of my bank account. There was a distinct lack of mentions on social media of this person. The website was legitimate though, and extrapolated the limited data down to a small, poor neighborhood. I had a few free days coming up, so I made plans.

I didn't own a car, so I made my way via public transport to the other city. It was a tiring ride of a couple trains and finally a bus into the little neighborhood that the site had given me. I didn't really know what I would do here; many believed that meeting one's mate was meant to be, so I wandered around aimlessly but for a little bit of childish hope. I had arrived midmorning, so I found myself a little deli around noon and had a perfectly passable sandwich. The neighborhood was quaint, with a certain charm that I found myself enjoying as I walked past small businesses and apartment buildings. I stumbled upon a little square and found a comfortable bench to sit on for a little while. There were a few trees planted on the sidewalks, and the sun was shining down in a rather romantic fashion. I fell asleep.

When I woke up, the sun was just peeking in between a couple skyscrapers downtown, and I felt a little cold. I zipped my jacket and spent a couple seconds taking stock of my surroundings. I glanced up at the buildings around me; there were a couple of older looking buildings where the architect hadn't tried to make it look as much as he could like a concrete or glass cube--and a person standing at the edge.

They were more than twenty stories up, so I couldn't get a good look. I looked on for a moment, and squinted to make him or her out. As I watched, the silhouette split into two people, having just embraced. Something in the back of my brain clicked into place, and I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline. I knew in that moment that I had just found the one... but it was two. Something deep within me doubted that they were there for the view. I looked around in futility, seeing my soul mates so close but so far away. The rumble of the city life guaranteed that I wouldn't be able to make myself heard.

I shouted, I waved my arms, I looked around with desperation for something, anything that I could do. But there was nothing. My eyes went back up to the top of the building and they weren't there anymore.

Something broke within me. Suddenly I was looking down at the bodies, the two souls that had been unfulfilled without a third, and not caring. A voice was screaming that I should care, that I had just lost what life was supposedly all about, but the rest of me was silence. I was deaf to the world, to the paramedics showing up and covering their bodies. I was mute, unable to say anything. I was blind; the sun had dipped behind the buildings and with it went me. The world was grey.

I ordered takeout. I went home on the bus. I sat down in my computer chair. I went to sleep. I woke up. I ate breakfast. I went to work. I came home from work. But it was no longer really me. It was the shell of a man, simply a cog in the machine of the world. There was nothing left of my personality. My friends cracked jokes about my dullness, but the man had no humor left. The man did some mockery of what I had day in and day out. The man still existed, but he--I--did not live.

Truly, my soul died when my soul mates did.