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The appearance of your soulmate’s name was considered one of the biggest milestones of a human being’s life. No one knew when it would appear, or even if it would appear. Your only indication being the gradual appearance of letters on the inside of your wrist, first appearing as faint smudges, then slowly revealing themselves to show the person that fate had decided for you.
Yours appeared just after your seventh birthday, the marks appearing as grey watercolor smears across your left wrist. They were incomprehensible, they would be for some time, but your parents had nonetheless called to tell everyone they could think of that their darling child had gotten their mark. And so early, too! It must be a sign, right?
Two weeks went by before the name became legible. Then… seven years went by without anything else.
Your parents encouraged you, of course they did. But you couldn’t help the idle sliding of your thumb across your cell phone’s screen at night, the light of articles glowing from its screen as you read about those who never met their soulmate. It wasn’t uncommon – It’s not like fate brought you together, it only told you who your perfect match was. It was up to you to do the finding.
When you were ten, three years after your mark first appeared, you decided that the best way to find your soulmate would be to expose yourself to as many people as possible. That’s why you worked on your quirk daily in hopes of being selected to join the hero course at U.A. High School. If you could become a hero, your name would be plastered everywhere, right? Your soulmate would have to find you then.
Right?
“Have a good day, I know you’ll great today, sweetheart!”
“I’ll try,” You droned, swinging your backpack over your shoulders while slipping into your shoes. Your parents stood behind you, their smiles beaming with pride as they took in the sight of you: U.A. Uniform, a brand-new backpack, and a determined glint in your eyes.
After another round of goodbyes, you slipped out the door and checked your pocket one more time for your student ID. There wouldn’t be any getting into the school without it, they had made that very clear in the acceptance papers. The barrier around the school would alert the system immediately, and everything would be locked down.
U.A. took its students’ safety rather seriously.
The train ride to U.A. from the station near your house took only thirty minutes, and you were more than early enough to leisurely find your assigned locker in the small room assigned to your year and change into your school-approved shoes. Then, with another glance at your paperwork to determine your homeroom class, the trek up the stairs began.
Each of the rooms had a sign sticking out of the door, holding their corresponding designation. Class 1-A was one of the first down the hall, so it was rather easy to find the massive door and push it open.
“Oh, hey! Another girl!”
With all the fuss around soulmates, it was always customary in almost every culture to greet someone and immediately follow-up with your name. Following in line with that, the pink-haired girl that accosted you blurted her name, “Ashido Mina!”
You responded with your own name, and her smile only fell a single notch as she pulled you to a few of the other students that had arrived before you – Yaoyorozu Momo, and Asui Tsuyu. They were nice enough, and you were glad to make a few new friends before school even started.
The board clearly labelled who would be sitting in which seat, and you weren’t given the chance to glance it over before Yaoyorozu beckoned you over. You’d be sitting in front of her, she claimed, and class was almost about to start so it only made sense to take your seats.
After a bit of ruckus at the front of the classroom when one of the final students arrived, the door finally slid shut behind the man that claimed to be your sensei. After a bit of beratement about taking so long to quiet down, we were given gym uniforms and told to head to the locker rooms to change and get ready for a quirk assessment test.
Aizawa turned to clear the board, drawing attention to it without really meaning to as he fiddled with the remote. You didn’t really get the chance to look at it closely, since it really only was the seating chart, but something on it had caused the green-haired boy in the seat in front of yours stiffen. You watched curiously as his shoulders started to shake for some strange reason.
Before you could bother to see if he was okay, Yaoyorozu had practically dragged you out of your seat and the two of your headed to the girl’s locker room to get changed into your uniforms. The other girls were just as amiable, introducing themselves to the group while wasting time in the locker room.
You left as a group, chattering down the hallway as you made your way to the open field that Aizawa had indicated. Uraraka was a bit worried about missing the opening ceremonies, but there had to be a good reason for Aizawa doing this right out of the gate, right?
It was an easy test, meant to gauge the skill level of different quirks in different scenarios. All throughout, as you performed well and got your results, you noticed the green-haired boy’s eyes had been glued to you the entire time.
You spared him a few glances, taking note that his eyes were almost the exact same shade of his hair, and the dusting of freckles across his cheeks was… kind of cute actually. After double-checking with Yaoyorozu that you had nothing on your face, your teenaged brain started to jump into overdrive, thinking that maybe he was staring at you so openly because he like-liked you.
Once again, you skimmed the final rankings at the end, only searching for your own name, and were pleased to see that you had placed rather high on the list. Not that it mattered, since Aizawa explained that no one would actually be expelled. This brought an uproar from the class, though everyone was overjoyed to hear that we were being dismissed early from class.
After a quick change back into your school uniform, you headed back up to the classroom to grab your backpack and syllabus, per Aizawa’s direction. The other girls had lagged a bit in the locker room, so you made the trip alone. You arrived at the destination alone, too. Then, you left alone.
It wasn’t until you were halfway down the school’s front walk that you realized someone was frantically calling your name from the front doors of the school. When you turned, you saw it was the green-haired boy that you desperately could not remember the name of. Something in his eyes looked strange, so you waited patiently for him to catch up to you.
After taking a few moments to catch his breath, he looked up from his bent-over position with a watery smile. His eyes had tears in them, and for some reason you felt a bit angry at this – Who had made him cry? Then, you caught yourself, wondering why it even mattered to you.
“I-I finally caught up to you! I tried to wait outside the locker rooms but… Well, Yaoyorozu thought I was being a p-pervert, and when I was able to explain she uh… She told me that you were in a hurry to get home and had left already… I was worried about you! I mean, I was worried that I had missed you—”
He cut himself off with a hand over his mouth, his eyes closed shut for only a second as he tried to regain control over his rambling mouth. You had noticed his strange mumbling habit, but you guessed he had a tendency to ramble, too. After a deep breath to steady himself, he got his mouth back on track.
“I-I’m not sure if you were able to see the seating chart this morning. Um…” His eyes were looking to you once more, with something you seen a few times in the movies about true love and romance. It made you feel a bit strange for him to be looking at you like this, like you personally carried the stars across the sky, “I-I’ve been waiting for you for a long time—W-wait, that sounds creepy, I’m sorry! I just meant that um… I’ve just been excited to meet you finally…”
“I’m sorry, I know you’re in my class, but who are you again?” His face fell a bit at this, before he picked it back up and turned it into a smile that outshone any you had seen from another person.
“I-I’m Midoriya Izuku!”
Midoriya Izuku.
You felt all the air leave your lungs at once. This was Midoriya Izuku? This skinny kid with endearing green eyes that were criminally large and still full of tears?
Hurriedly, you reached for the sleeve of your blazer and pushed it up, your fingernails scraping against the skin as you forced the unyielding material you show what it held underneath. The black letters there were familiar, almost more than your own name. You had traced them enough, that’s for sure. Every night, your fingertip gliding from M to U, you wished that he was somewhere safe and happy…
Your eyes flicked from the black letters to the boy in front of you, his face still as bright as ever despite tears running down his freckled cheeks freely. Finally, you took a swallow of air, and it somehow tasted sweeter than just moments ago. Your hand limply fell back to your side, and the two of you were frozen for a moment before that same hand reached out again.
Like it was second nature, Midoriya plucked it from the air and used it to pull you into him in a hug. His chest shuddered inside your arms as you brought them up and around to lay your hands across his back. Midoriya was stiff in your hold as he returned it, but his shoulders relaxed completely when you breathed his name against his shoulder.
“I was born with my mark,” Midoriya’s words were quiet against the top of your head as he pressed his face into your hair, “I’ve waited my entire life to be with you… I-I thought it would never happen…”
“I’m here now,” You tried to encourage him, but he only let out a wet laugh before burying his face back into your hair. Wrapped in each other, the two of you stayed like that until finally, Midoriya pulled away and looked down at you.
Once more, the smile on his face was radiant and undimmed by the tears that he somehow was still able to produce. Like the sun, it felt like your skin was warmed by just being in its presence, and you couldn’t help but let the sun pass its happiness onto you, too.