These are wonderful short stories based on the idea of a soulmate alternate universe where you have a black stain where your soulmate is supposed to touch you for the first time. Once they touch you it turns to millions of colors! Consider the possibilities (and if you like this sort of thing check out The Soul Mate Countdown Story):
Inspiration from the black palm on the cheek — they go through their whole lives worried about what it means, worried that God, or fate, or the universe or whatever these people trust in, was cruel enough to match them with an abuser. They get really anxious about this, such that it spreads across their personality in general.
Then one day, they’re having a meltdown, and a friend who was never brave enough to get that close before touches them gently on the cheek as reassurance, and they both have the wide-eyed realization even before they take their hand away that the cheek won’t be black anymore.
Oh, I like that!!!
this one’s from my own experience
you have a single black oval, right between your shoulderblades.
you’re eight years old, playing tag with a friend you’ve had for a few months now, the only one so far with the same special interest: an obsession with dragons. you’ve always been faster than them, and tag is your favorite game. there’s no way they’ll catch you.
you dodge behind a bush, half laughing, half panting, and sit down for a moment to catch your breath. you hear them coming, stand up quickly, and start to run away-
“tag! you’re it!”
warmth fills your whole body, spreading from right between your shoulderblades. you freeze, and turn to look at your friend, who is staring at their fingertip in awe as it slowly turns from inky black to a kaleidoscopic rainbow of beauty. they slowly look up at you, and in a voice full of quiet wonder repeat,
“you’re it.”
I hate these simply because they always miss the point of ‘but what if you don’t have a mark of any kind. No, not even a workaround mark like black hair. Just totally have to live your life knowing that you don’t have a soulmate and everyone else gets to take it for granted that they’ll have someone while you’re alone’.
No one wants to explore what that feels like, but it’s a condition that calls for so much more empathy than ‘what if you live in a world of mandated fate-driven meet-cutes’.