Chapter 1

What is the difference between 'the love of your life' and 'your soulmate'?

One is a choice, one is not. 

C H A P T E R  1 

The young man sat in front of a computer, gaze locked on his monitor. The bright screen showed the colorful homepage of a questionable dating site. It claimed to host millions of profiles of extremely attractive young men, women, etc. All of them looking for romance and financial sponsorship. 

Nathan stared bleary-eyed at his computer after eight hours of a futile job search. He took a swig from his can of Heineken and wondered at what point in his life did it spiral down so bad that he sat here, jobless at twenty five years of age, looking for a sugar daddy.

Not to be conceited, but Nathan thought himself to be quite attractive. The girls at school used to fawn over him, the aunties selling food at street stalls always called him handsome, and some men even complimented him before. When he looked at the popular K-Pop idols, he thought his looks were not that far off from them. And especially as a gay man, he totally would date himself. He might not have the qualifications to get a 9-to-5 office job, but he definitely had the qualification to receive financial sponsorship by his looks alone.

Mindlessly, he scrolled through various photos of smiling young adults. None of these photos looked like bad, desperate people. It was refreshing to look at people's dating profiles after hours of staring at lines upon lines of job listings. Some of the profiles were written quite witty and made him laugh, which gave him an even better impression of the shady site. After hovering for a while, he clicked on the sign up button. 

It was time for people to start paying him for being hot. A voice on the back of his mind told him that he had hit a new low, but Nathan ignored it. 

As he munched down on a bag of seaweed flavored potato chips, he filled in his basic information. Some of the information was nothing but a bunch of lies — like his name, which he filled in as Stephan because there was no way he was going to feed this site his real government name — and some were truths — like the area he lived in. He only hesitated for a moment before uploading a selfie he had never posted anywhere else as his profile picture. By using a photo he had not posted in any of his social media accounts, people wouldn't be able to use reverse image search to find his real identity. It wasn't like any of the people he knew would visit this hell site right? 

He snickered to himself as he completed the profile. A few minutes later, he stared in horror at the result of his work. He rubbed his eyes. He was definitely drunker than he thought he was. Not only did he voluntarily post himself on a sugar daddy site, but he also could not find a way to delete the cursed account.

He scrolled up. Scrolled down to the bottom of the page. Nothing. He clicked on every tab on the settings page. He squinted. Still nothing. Wouldn't this be a violation of the data protection acts? Wasn't this liable to lawsuits? He didn't read the terms and conditions of this site, nor did he have money to sue the site owner. He cursed capitalism.

'What now?' he asked himself.

If he was not drunk, he definitely would have panicked more. As it was, he stumbled and looked around the site for a good 20 minutes, before giving up as a headache started to form. His mind was numb. He blinked a few times, stared at his screen for a few more seconds, then grabbed his empty beer cans and started chucking them into a plastic bag. 

Bad alcohol. His mother was right. Alcohol ruined lives. He tied a plastic bag full of beer cans and junk food containers, then dropped it near his trash can. He fell into his bed, thinking, I will deal with it tomorrow. It would technically be later today since the digital clock on his bedside table already showed the time to be 4.18 am. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow and did not dream as he slept.

When he woke up the next morning, it was already 1 in the afternoon. His stomach grumbled loudly. He got up, and like any other young man suffering from internet addiction, he reached for his computer first.

The monitor lit up to display the colorful, dreadful, shady sugar daddy site.

He was caught off guard for a second. Then he quickly closed the window.

'It's too early for this,' he reasoned. 'I will deal with it once I've eaten.'

With that, he went out of his room to shower and brush his teeth. Twenty minutes later, he grabbed his wallet, phone, and keys, and went out to get his first meal of the day. After he returned home about an hour later, he sat down in front of the computer and thought, 'No normal person would probably visit such a website, right?'. The temptation to log into an online game and spend the next five hours beating people up was too big. After gaming for a few hours, he opened the site again to find no difference from when he left it. Then he closed it again. Suffice to say, Nathan never ended up dealing with his sugar baby profile. 

He did not input too much of his personal information anyway, as he had filled most of the profile information with lies. Even if one of his acquaintances turned out to be a freak and found his photo on the website, they would probably assume it was… his doppelganger. Or a catfish using his photo. Even if in the worst case scenario, they thought it was him, no one sane would admit to looking at online sugar baby listings anyway. So he was probably safe from potential awkward confrontation. He could just pretend he knew nothing about shady sugar daddy sites. 

Out of sight, out of mind. As time gradually passed by, Nathan completely forgot about the damned site.

A month later, he stood listless in a waiting room in a huge game development company, together with a bunch of other job applicants. Most of the people were fresh graduates, which already made him feel a little inferior. From what he could gather by talking to the people around him, his portfolio was extremely lacking compared to his competitors. It was bizarre that he had even managed to get to the interview stage.

He briefly wondered whether he should just go home. The air conditioner was set so low that he was nearly freezing. The cold air, combined with the eight hours he spent last night playing games instead of sleeping, made him feel a little sleepy.

Actually, he was so sleepy he could fall asleep standing up. He opened his phone and played a few rounds of mobile games as he waited for his turn. One by one, the applicants were called into the interview room. When his turn came, he couldn't be any more excited to crash the whole interview then go home to sleep.

He entered the room. The two interviewers in the room greeted him, and he politely greeted them back. He sat in front of the table and answered a few basic questions. The woman was asking most of the questions while the man next to her took notes.

After stumbling over a few questions, he knew he had flunked the interview. He probably wouldn't get a callback. Still, he tried to answer the remaining questions as best as he could, hoping that the other job applicants were worse at it than he was. Not very likely.

The woman was in the middle of asking a question when a few knocks interrupted her. Without waiting for the people inside to answer, a woman barged into the room. The newcomer was young, attractive, and carried an almost arrogant air. She opened her mouth to say something to the interviewers before her gaze landed on Nathan and she blinked.

"Miss Sarah," the female interviewer smiled at her. It was evident that she was trying her best to be polite towards the young lady. "I am sorry, we're not done interviewing the applicants yet. Is there something that you need urgently?"

"You…" Sarah trailed off as she stared at Nathan. The way she scrutinized him made him feel nervous. Had he known her from somewhere? He was certain he would remember it if he had met someone like this before. She was quite eye-catching.

Sarah switched her gaze towards the other man in the room. "Anthony, come outside for a moment." Then she turned and left. Anthony hurried to chase after her with his note-taking board still in his hands.

Nathan wondered what kind of drama was going on in the company. As an outsider, he could only be interested in snooping around. As a potential employee, it would be best for him to pretend he didn't see anything, that everything was normal.

As the two left the room, Nathan smiled awkwardly at the other remaining interviewer. The woman had a small frown on her face as she stared at the door before returning her focus on him and resuming her questioning. Nathan could only swallow his curiosity. A few minutes later, they were interrupted again.

"I will take it from here." Sarah had returned. "Anita, you can go and take a break." She moved to sit on Anthony's previous seat. Anita frowned again, but it only lasted a millisecond before she agreed and left the room. Soon, there were only the two of them.

Nathan, already dying from curiosity, nearly asked her what was going on. Before he could open his mouth, however, Sarah had spoken first.

"It said here that your name is Mr. Nathan Williams." She paused. It took Nathan a second to realize she was waiting for him to confirm it.

"Yes, Ma'am." He replied politely.

Sarah raised one delicate eyebrow. "Not Stephan?"