Chapter Text
Yamaguchi Tadashi is six, and he hasn’t found his soulmate. At his age, who cares about soulmates? Just the word itself had very little meaning to him, and he would certainly rather explore all of the new things available to him than rush to find whoever it was. It seemed like a no brainer. After all, he’s still learning everything about the world he lives in, which occupied most of his time. In fact, he just recently learned that the sun is (disappointingly) not following him when he’s in the car, driving with his parents. It was upsetting, for sure, but he knew he’d have to sacrifice things in favor of learning.
There was one thing bothering Yamaguchi, though. For whatever reason, whether it was on purpose or a byproduct of who or whatever created the earth and its inhabitants, he could only see in black and white. Color was a spectacle only someone who’d met their soulmate could see, color was unknown to him. (it also bonded two people so that the color only stayed as long as your soulmate was alive but that’s a different matter entirely) If there were one reason to find his soulmate at an early age, Yamaguchi thought, it would be that. Sometimes, his parents would point at a flower say “I love that color” and nothing frustrated him more than not being able to differentiate that flower’s color and the next.
Color. Noun. “ The property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way the object reflects or emits light.” At least, that’s the complicated and meaningless definition he found when he curiously looked up the word in the dictionary one day. He just learned how to read, half of those words weren't even in his six-year-old vocabulary.
He’s heard the word before, and his parents have tried to explain it to him, but that doesn't give him the experience he was so curious about. Plus, color was a concept that just couldn't be explained. Tadashi understood that it could take a while before he found out who it was, and that didn't upset him too much, even if he had no idea what “yellow” looked like yet.
Six is a little too young for worrying about a soulmate, he thinks, so Yamaguchi busies himself with getting used to attending school and making new friends.
Besides, in school, the subject of romantic soulmates is hardly touched upon before reaching junior high. The school system does, however, teach kids about platonic soulmates (a best friend forever, as his teachers explained it) from an early age. The indicator is much more subtle, simply a tattoo of their name that appears when you meet them.
Tadashi really hopes he meets his platonic soulmate soon.
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Making new friends is harder for Yamaguchi when he gets older, he realizes. It hits him like a wave of freezing water, threatening to pull him under. It hasn’t been long since he started school, but he’s disliking it more and more. More specifically, he’s disliking some of the other students. You’ve got a lumpy face, Tadashi. The words taunted him, continuously bringing themselves to the forefront of his mind when he least expected it.
The snide comments the other boys made about his freckles, accompanied by the shoving lowered his self esteem dramatically. It wasn’t every day, but the more it happened, the less Yamaguchi actually wants to show up to school. The tears they brought made him feel pathetic and useless, because he knew he couldn’t do anything to protect himself.
Everything changes one seemingly normal day. The sky was clear, only covered by a few clouds here and there. The wind blew pleasantly and reminded Tadashi of summers spent in the park, playing with his moms.
And yeah, the same boys who always bullied him were at it again, pushing and name-calling and the likes. Pretty much the norm at this point. Yamaguchi was on the floor with tears in his eyes when he heard a voice, one that hadn’t been there just a second ago.
“Pathetic,” the voice remarked. The freckled boy looked up, and what he saw shocked him. First, he noticed it was a boy. A tall one, but a boy nonetheless. I wonder how tall he is, Yamaguchi thought vaguely. He had glasses, an indifferent look on his face, and a little moon shape on the back of his jacket. The second thing he noticed was the color of the boy’s hair . He didn't know what to call it, (because hey, why give something a name if you can't distinguish it from everything else?) but he immediately came to the conclusion that he liked it a lot. His hair was so beautiful, so bright. Tadashi vaguely noticed the newcomer’s shockingly bright eyes widen almost imperceptibly before regaining his cool composure. He was caught up in being attacked by the colors assaulting his eyes that he didn’t pay attention to the boy walking away, nor the bullies who followed the boy, nor the short spoken confrontation that followed.
All of the boys ended up leaving, but Yamaguchi was still awestruck by the endless variety of colors he could now see. He slowly got up, looking around, taking note of everything and how different everything looked than it did just a few minutes earlier.
Tadashi was in shock for so long, the singular word the tall boy said didn’t hit him until much later. He sullenly wondered if the boy was talking about his bullies, him, or both . He wouldn’t doubt it if that were the case.
Tadashi was distracted from his thoughts when another cold wave of shocking realization washed over him. He had this sudden ability to see color, and he knew exactly why: the boy in the park. His soulmate. The freckled boy went home and secretly learned the names to every color so could differentiate them later. He learned that the boy’s hair was impossibly yellow, a color similar to his golden eyes and almost immediately decided yellow was his favorite of all the colors.
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Yamaguchi didn’t see the blond very often after that. A glimpse here and there, but not nearly enough. If he were being honest with himself, he wanted to know a lot more about the boy he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with.
The freckled boy had yet to tell his parents about finding his soulmate, so he was careful to not inspect the color of things too closely, in case they figured it out. It was hard, but he’d have to make it work if he didn't want to risk his parents endless questioning. It’s not that he didn’t want to tell them, he just felt like he should at least be able to give them a name when he does.
On the bright side, the bullying died down a little, but he knew it wouldn’t last long. His bullies probably thought the blond would be around a lot more to help him out. Tadashi decided he didn’t want to rely on the boy he hardly knew anything about ( his soulmate! ) and that it was time to do something, to finally be able to stand up for himself. Although he had little clue on how to do that, he decided joining a sport was not a bad place to start.
Yamaguchi headed to the gym with no prior knowledge of any sport, much less which one he’d want to join. Looking around at all of the different ones available to him, Yamaguchi felt a little overwhelmed. Baseball and soccer seemed to have a lot of scary guys, so those were out of the question. Along with... most of the other sports, he noted. Looking into the gym that the youth volleyball team was playing in, he was slightly more intrigued in this sport than the others. Mainly, he was ecstatic that volleyball seemed to have a lack of scary guys.
Suddenly, he heard a slightly familiar voice greeting him as the person walked past him and into the gym.
Tadashi isn’t entirely sure if it was fate, pure coincidence, or if whoever was in charge of the world enjoyed watching him suffer, but the person he saw walking into the gym was none other than the tall blond from the park the other day. Your soulmate his subconscious helpfully supplies, to which he intelligently retorted shut up.
After a slightly awkward conversation, Tadashi learned a few things that day, the first being that he actually kind of liked volleyball, and the lack of scary people was just a bonus. Also, it had very little to do with the tall boy who was, apparently, already in that particular club. He also learned the blond boy’s name - it was Tsukishima Kei - and that his brother, Tsukishima Akiteru was the ace on the Karasuno high school volleyball team. The taller boy blushed slightly hearing praise about his brother, but Yamaguchi didn’t mention it, fearing he’d lose the only friend he’s been able to make in a while.
The most troublesome thing he learned, however, was that the blond had no recollection of the day in the park. Which meant even though they could now see the same colors, the taller of the two didn’t acknowledge that Yamaguchi was his soulmate.
Oh well , Tadashi thought, we still have the rest of our lives. One day, maybe, I’ll like him and I’ll confess to him and we’ll talk about how we’re soulmates!
Little did Tadashi know, Tsukishima actually had no clue who it was. After all, he had looked upon the group of four boys at the same time - it could’ve been any of them.
What a mess.
The only good thing to come out of this, it seemed, was the friendship he swiftly developed with Tsukishima (or Tsukki, as he’d later dub him during a sleepover when he was half asleep. Kei never let anyone else call him that nickname either, much to Tadashi’s absolute delight.)