We Thought We Were Soulmates Because We Saw Sound in Colors, Then One DNA Test Explained Why We Matched So Perfectly

When I was seven, I realized I could see sounds. Not metaphorically. I literally saw them.

My mom’s voice was warm amber, like honey dripping through the air. Thunder was deep purple explosions. I thought everybody saw the world this way until my teacher sent me to the counselor for drawing the colors of math class. That was when I found out I had chromosthesia, a condition where sounds trigger colors in your vision. Only one in 3,000 people have it.

By college, I had pretty much given up on dating. Every time I mentioned that someone’s laugh looked like golden fireworks, they gave me that look, the one that practically screamed, you’re insane. So I stopped mentioning it. I stopped mentioning a lot of things.

Then last year, my roommate dragged me to a silent disco. One of those parties where everyone wears wireless headphones and dances to music nobody else can hear. I went out to the dance floor alone, just wanting to lose myself in the colors only I could see.

That’s when I noticed him.

He was standing completely still in the middle of all the dancing, tears streaming down his face. We bumped into each other while reaching for water, and our headphones fell off.

“Sorry,” he said, wiping his eyes. “That song was just… it was like silver waterfalls.”

My heart stopped.

“You see it too?”

The way his eyes widened told me everything.

“You can see the colors.”

We spent the rest of that night comparing what we saw. His voice was emerald green to me, like forest light. Mine was rose gold to him, he said, like sunrise. We both saw rain as powder blue droplets. Thunder was always deep purple.

For the first time in my life, someone understood why I cried during certain songs and why I had to leave restaurants when the background music clashed with the conversation colors. Dating him felt like finally being fluent in a language I had only ever whispered to myself. We went to concerts just to watch the light shows only we could see.

Six months in, I knew I loved him.

I loved how he would hum specific notes just to paint colors in my vision when I was sad. I loved how we could sit in complete silence and still feel like we were sharing an entire conversation through the colors of the background noise around us.

One random Tuesday night, we were scrolling through ChatGPT together, asking it ridiculous questions about our condition. That was when we found it: an article claiming chromosthesia had genetic markers traced back to an ancient tribe in northern Finland, the Sami people. It said the condition was incredibly rare, like only a handful of bloodlines worldwide still carried the gene.

“No way we’re both from some ancient Finnish tribe,” I laughed.

But he was already pulling up more articles.

“That would explain why we match so perfectly, though,” he said.

Something about the way he said it made my chest go warm. I mean, what were the odds that two random people saw the exact same purple for thunder?

We joked about it for weeks. Every time we saw the same color for something new, we’d say it was our ancient Finnish connection. It became our inside joke.

So when DNA test ads started popping up everywhere, it felt obvious.

“Let’s see if we’re really descendants of the color-seeing tribe.”

We ordered two kits and made a whole date night out of spitting in tubes and sealing envelopes. We were ridiculously excited, like kids waiting for birthdays.

“When we get the results, we should compare ancestry percentages,” I said. “Bet we both have some Finnish.”

Three weeks later, his results came first. I was at work when he texted me in all caps.

23% FINNISH, 31% NORWEGIAN

We were right.

I couldn’t stop smiling. My coworkers probably thought I was losing it, grinning at my phone like that.

Mine haven’t come yet, I texted back. But that’s amazing.

Two days later, I got the email saying my results were ready. I was about to open them when my phone rang. It was him, and he was crying. Not the happy tears from when we first met. These were different.

“Just come over,” he said, his voice shaking. “Please.”

I drove over with that sick feeling in my stomach, the kind where you already know something is about to change everything.

He had his laptop open when I got there, and his face was pale.

“My mom called,” he said quietly. “I told her about the Finnish thing, and she got weird. Really weird.”

Then he turned the laptop toward me.

There, on my results page under DNA relatives, was his name. His picture. And next to it: First Cousin — 12.5% DNA shared.

The colors in the room seemed to dim.

“That’s… that’s not possible.”

“Your dad is my mom’s brother,” he whispered. “They haven’t spoken in twenty years. Some fight about their parents’ inheritance. That’s why we never knew.”

Different last names. Different cities.

I sat frozen on his couch, staring at the screen with our names side by side and those numbers underneath. First cousin. 12.5% DNA shared. My brain knew what the words meant, but it refused to connect them to us, to what we had been doing for six months.