Chapter Text
After Orihara Izaya discovered the meaning of his soul mark at the tender age of four, nothing overly consequential occurred regarding it until he entered middle school. His parents, who became more and more involved with their work as he grew, continued to shy away from the subject. When it was brought up, they attempted to placate him with well-meaning yet benevolent lies. Izaya, for his part, did not broach the subject again after learning the meaning of the mark. While his curiosity toward it still burned, he realised it was futile to discuss. He accepted the words for what they were, accepted their bitter irony, and then moved on. He allowed his fascination toward the mark to cool down to a smoulder. However, that was not to say that his interest in soulmate marks vanished. In fact, by the time he entered school, he had become more invested than ever in observing the marks of others.
Izaya quickly became adept at piecing together connections between people and their marks. By his second year of elementary, he had ascertained that his homeroom teacher was soulmates with the physical education teacher but that she kept quiet about it as he did not share one in return. Izaya, for his part, did not let the teacher know; he simply observed the situation. As he entered the higher elementary grades and became the vice-president of the school council, his observation field grew. He soon discovered that the principal was deceiving his new girlfriend on the origins of his mark in a desperate attempt not to end up alone. Izaya, however, had no desire to alert the man's partner of the deception, nor did he view the principal any differently for his choice. It simply interested him. The fact that humans made such interesting decisions regarding their marks enthralled him. People allowed a few strokes of permanently entrenched ink to dictate their lives, whether for the positive or the negative. Some people became selfish and desperate in their quest to uncover their soulmate; others knew their mate’s identity but remained silent out of fear. Some would pay good money to discover their fated one; others couldn’t care less. Throw in the fact that 60% of people didn't even possess a mark, and you were left with a messy muddle of conflicting human emotions and actions. To Izaya, this was beautiful. Or at least it was until it actively involved him, and he could no longer remain detached from the phenomena as an unbiased observer.
Twelve Years Eleven Months
That’s how old Orihara Izaya was the first time he heard the name of his soulmate. Up until he entered middle school, there had been very little to disrupted his day-to-day life. Self-sufficient from an extremely young age, his daily routine had consisted of school, student council activities, homework, household chores and, of course, observing those in the world around him. Every once in a while, his parents would return from overseas to check in on him. Three and a half months before his tenth birthday, this exceedingly rare visit was accompanied by two identical screaming bundles of ‘joy.’ Despite this change, however, life for the new big brother continued on in basically the same matter for the rest of his elementary years. Come Middle School though, Izaya would become acquainted with someone who would have a direct bearing on him meeting the person who would utter the cursed words etched into his flesh.
The first conversation between Kishitani Shinra and Orihara Izaya had been about a club the former was determined to found. His persistence annoyed the older boy, which blossomed into curiosity since he was not usually affected by the actions of others. Hence, the day after Raijin Middle School’s opening ceremony, Izaya found himself talking to old elementary classmates of the overly enthusiastic bespectacled boy. He was seeking answers on what exactly made Shinra so different from the rest of the humans he had observed. Why was he so insistent on forming a biology club when he seemed to have no interest in the subject himself? What was up with his apparent disinterest in humans? Izaya didn't know why but felt like something was off about his new classmate and took it upon himself to find out what. Of course, he did not expect this to lead to him stumbling upon the name of his soulmate.
The conversation had started innocently enough;
“Oh, so that’s the same school that, uh…Kishitani went to, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Hey, Orihara, are you in Kishitani’s class?”
“Yup.”
“He’s weird, right? You can’t tell what the hell he’s thinking.”
This was almost exactly the answer Izaya was anticipating, but he wasn’t disappointed by it. “I don’t wanna say too much, because I don’t like badmouthing people, but…it doesn’t seem like he has many friends.”
“Actually, he doesn’t have any… Oh, except for Shizu-chan.”
Izaya froze. The symbols on his upper arm had instantaneously begun to heat up at the utterance of the name.
“Shizu-chan?” Izaya repeated in a tone that was far too high-pitched for his liking. Was that the name of his soulmate, the one person he had no interest in meeting? Was she a friend of that Shinra kid? What was he supposed to do now that the soulmate he had banked on avoiding for his whole life seemed to possess a name?
Shinra’s former classmate continued on, oblivious to the distress of the other. “It’s this freaky guy named Shizuo… He’s super-tough in a fight and gets mad in a snap, and everyone keeps their distance from him. Kishitani would just walk up to him like it was nothing and ask, ‘Can I dissect you?’ The guy made no sense.”
Izaya stared unblinkingly at the boy, his mind in overdrive. Evidently this ‘Shizu-chan’ was not a girl as he had assumed. Maybe he was a relative of his soulmate and that was why the mark was acting up. “Ah, I see your point.”, was all he could get out in reply.
“But the weird thing is, Shizuo would talk to Shinra like normal…and trust me, he was a freak! He threw the teacher’s desk!”
“Okay, thanks for your help. Let’s hope that guy gets arrested before he hurts anyone,” Izaya commented, his smile seeming genuine to everyone but himself. With that, he turned and left the hall.
Ten Minutes and Twenty-Nine Seconds
That’s how long after he first heard the name that Izaya attempted to convince himself that the sensation he had felt had absolutely nothing to do with his soulmate mark. Pacing the length of an abandoned classroom, he tried to calm himself down. While he appeared collected from an outsiders' perspective, in reality, this had shaken him more than anything he had experienced during his almost thirteen years on earth. Upon learning the meaning of the words burnt into his arm as with a branding iron, he had decided he would not allow them to have any further effect on his life. While it was impossible to deny their existence, he could deny them the power and control they desperately sought to exert over him.
After his departure from the hall, Izaya’s first matter of business had been to find an area away from peering gazes. This simple task stood in stark contrast to the far weightier one he was left to navigate through. Namely, discovering what this had to do with his soulmate and how to avoid the situation from escalating. When the boy in class 1-2 had first uttered the name ‘Shizu-chan,’ Izaya knew instantly that it pertained to his soulmate. But maybe it didn’t. The young adolescent racked his brain for some way, some excuse, some other explanation. There was no way this ‘Shizu-chan’ was his soulmate, he wouldn’t allow it. He had never wanted to meet his mate and be drawn into the mess he loved to watch from the outside. Besides, Izaya prided himself in remaining emotionally detached from situations and this Shizuo sounded overly emotional. After all, he apparently let his anger get the best of him, causing him to lose his temper and do things like throw his teacher’s desks around. Or at least tip it over, there was no way an elementary student could throw a desk, no matter how much of a “freaky guy” he was. Izaya couldn’t have dreamed that he and that “freaky guy” would end up attempting to kill each other on countless occasions or that he would remain inevitably connected to him for all eternity.