Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When he opened his eyes, all he could see was pure white.

As his vision adjusted slowly to the environment, he noticed with a hint of joy that his body felt exceptionally well for whatever reason. His back did not hurt in the slightest and his neck did not crack in spite of the way his head had been bending downward. His sight was better than it had been in years and every breath he took was extremely refreshing. It was as if he had gone back to his childhood days, where nothing was ever wrong with him.

The momentary delight was washed away by the fact that his observation was not wrong. As his own hands entered his field of vision, he could not fight back a stunned gasp at how small they were. Staring further down, he figured with horror that the entirety of him seemed to have shrunk considerably. He was probably no taller than a dinner table, limbs soft and pudgy.

He was, in fact, an infant once again.

A better look at his clothes filled him with an inevitable sense of nostalgia. He recalled the long-sleeved shirt and knee-long shorts as a birthday present from his parents. The bear mascot surging from within the front pockets of his hoodie used to be a hit amongst children when he was in kindergarten, but his recollections kept no reminiscence of its name.

It was as if he had been sucked into a clichéd time-travel movie setting. There were thousands of questions going around his head simultaneously, making a muddle out of his grasp on reality, yet he had no time to dwell on what in the world could have happened to him as he scanned his surroundings.

“What the...?” he whispered under his breath, lost in the sensation of his rationality flying off the nest. His brain stopped working as though it had burned out.

There were no surroundings.

He turned to the right, left, up and down. Nothing but plain white. Aside from himself, there was not a single drop of color or anything that remotely gave off an impression of palpable matter anywhere. No earth, no sky and no in-between.

His heart thumped loudly inside his ribcage, blood running cold in his veins. His fingers traced his shaky lips, fidgety and trembling. There was a film of tears forming in his green eyes, both from the crushing confusion and the sheer terror of being completely on his own in the literal middle of nowhere. The alarms in his head fused into one, ringing stridently enough to let his mind occupy itself with nothing else, until they were interrupted by an unfamiliar voice.

“Minato?? Is that you?”

The exclamation instantly cut through the mental traps mining his conscience. His body gave a pronounced flinch, and with it, he was able to blink back the tears. His heartbeat steadily evened and his hands shook no more. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he turned around slowly.

A sense of déjà-vu assaulted him without warning. He was well acquainted with that manner of speaking, although the voice itself was wholly new to him. While praying that what he had heard had not been a hallucination, he cast his gaze to the source of the question, hoping to find the reliable figure of a man who he could spot amidst any crowd no matter how large.

However, standing there and staring back at him with an expression just as perplexed as his own was no one other than a boy in his early teens.

“Whoa, it’s really you. You’re so tiny,” the boy commented almost teasingly as a grin ghosted his features.

Minato’s mouth fell open. He did not recognize the boy by his short blue hair or his black gakuran, but there was no mistaking that smile. Neither there was any mistaking the pair of indigo eyes that crinkled gently at him as the boy walked towards his direction.

“Masaki...?” the name left Minato’s lips loud and clear, wiping the flavors of fear off his mouth altogether.

“Yep.” The boy crouched in front of him with a peace sign.

“What—How—Where—”

“You gotta be a bit more specific here,” he chided, flicking Minato’s forehead and resting a palm on his own chest. “So, anyway, I’m assuming that this is me when I was thirteen. What about you?”

“Huh?” Minato stiffened, inspecting himself once more. “I, uh... looked like this when I was... five, I guess?”

“Figures.” Masaki nodded. “Eight years of difference, just like on the Other Side.”

“‘Other Side’?”

“Hm?” The older one tilted his head. “Minato, can’t you tell where this is?”

Part of him wanted to ask back, “Where what is?” but the realization came to him before he could do so.

A completely white place. No sounds, no scents, no hues. No sense of time or space. During his school days, he had read about it over and over in books and magazines, watched his share of chick flicks with it as main theme, and even seen documentaries highlighting the few people who had been able to return to the Other Side after witnessing it. The knowledge regarding it was overall scarce, yet it should have been enough for him to have a grasp on his situation. He could only account for not having noticed where he was from the very start with the overwhelming panic that had impaired his thought process.

“Oh, right.” He scratched the back of his neck, cheeks heating up. Embarrassment came to him unannounced, stemming from the unnecessary anxiety and from how girly his voice was. “It’s gotta be that.”

There were countless ways to refer to said place. Some called it the End of the World, others the Beginning. Some claimed it to be the Final Stop, others to be the Starting Line. Most people used the name that included all possible definitions.

“Yeah, we’re at the ‘Border’.”

“Wait,” Minato began, narrowing his eyes. “If we’re here, it can only mean one thing.”

Both he and Masaki pointed at one another, speaking in perfect sync, “You died.”

“I was going to, either way. I told you there was no escaping that disease in my age,” Masaki reminded as if arguing in self-defense. “But how did that happen to you? You should’ve had at least one more decade or so ahead.” His pupils shrank in suspicion. “Don’t tell me you—”

“I wouldn’t break our promise,” Minato cut in, frowning. “You made me vow not to follow suit, remember? I’m not at all interested in a life without you, but I keep my word.”

“Well, that’s great to know,” Masaki muttered, mouth contorting in light of his being caught off-guard by unintentional flattery. “But then, why...?”

“Ah, wait,” Minato said lowly, fingers reaching his temple.

“You recalling something?”

“Yeah. It was a traffic accident.”

“Again?!”

“With a bus this time,” Minato added, watching Masaki’s facial traits loosen up into deadpan.

“Minato. Are you kidding me?”

“I wish.”

“How?”

He sighed, “Mom wasn’t there to shield me and you weren’t there to push me out of the way. That’s how.”

Masaki’s face grew sour. “Not what I meant.”

“I was going to pay you a visit,” Minato said by way of explanation. “I had the feeling that if I didn’t go then, I wouldn’t have another chance.”

“Looks like you were right.”

“I hope at least the cab that was taking me there survived.” He remarked, suddenly awash with regret, “He was young.”

Masaki let his hand fall onto the top of Minato’s head in a gesture of comfort. “No use mulling over that, since we’ll never know. This is a soulmate-only zone.”

Minato smiled bitterly. “Seems so. But if that was his fate, there’s nothing that can be done. Still, though... I can’t believe all those absurd testimonies about the Border were true.” He let his eyes wander around yet again.

No matter where his gaze stopped at, he saw nothing. He knew that the white was not light, for his retinas never burned no matter how long he stared at the same spot. Masaki was sitting down in front of him at that point, and he himself was standing upright, but there was no ground under his feet. Both of them were able to produce noises, yet there was no echo. He had had the initial impression that he was breathing, but he now understood that his body was merely acting on automatic, and that there was actually no air enveloping him.

He had been off the mark, but not quite. They were not in the middle of nowhere, but in the middle of nowhere and everywhere. Somehow or other, he had such notion at the back of his head.

“Well, maybe not all of them,” he corrected. “As far as I remember, we’re supposed to look like we did when we first met.”

“What if this was it, though?”

“For real?”

“Gotta be,” Masaki shrugged, convinced. “But that’ll only last for a few moments, right?”

“Hum, yes, according to the records. We’ll pass on to the next plane when we’re ready.”

“That ‘ready’ always changes from person to person, doesn’t it? I wonder how we’ll know the time.”

“There’s... no such time, I think. We’ll know when we get to it.”

“Feels like this is gonna be a long trip. A huge chunk of things is coming back to me,” Masaki exhaled, fingers running through his hair. “Not just about this life but also about the others.”

Minato’s brows creased sympathetically. “Same here. It’s not messed-up, but... that’s a lot at once.”

“Maybe we should just indulge in that?” Masaki suggested, hands balled against his knees as he leaned forward. “We’ve never been here before. It’s a once-in-a-million opportunity.”

“Well, we’d never died at the same time until now.”

“And we don’t know when it’ll happen again.” He winked. “Why not make the most out of it?”

“By that, you mean...?”

“I wanna see them all. All other versions of us.”

“We are, right now.”

“Yeah, but let’s concentrate a little more. Who knows? We might be able to remember them on the next Other Side if we try to commit to memory whatever we can,” Masaki reasoned.

Minato tapped his chin, right elbow supported by his left wrist. “Hmm... sounds like pushing it... but we could give it a shot...”

As his rather serious pondering was a total mismatch for his current physique, Masaki was unable to help a chuckle at it. “Hey, that just now was pretty cute. Do it again.”

“You won’t be able to see it with your eyes closed either way,” Minato retorted, arms crossing and ears stinging.

The act of displeasure was apparently equally endearing as the chuckle evolved into laughter. “Were you this sassy in the other lives too?”

Minato could almost hear his own features morphing into the very definition of tenderness at the sight. “You’ll only find out if you concentrate, right?”

At that, the laughing finally ceased and Masaki snorted out, “Good grief.”

Minato stared at him for a moment, and then sat down amidst the lack of gravity as well, the two closing their eyes at the same time. Unlike in the land of the living, the silence that fell upon them did not screech in their ears. However, soon enough, the stillness was gone, replaced by every type of sound that had lay dormant within their spirits from their previous journeys around the wheel of life.

Minato acknowledged after processing a number of them that none had failed to surprise him. They had been everything, from a writer and an actor to a soldier and a farmer to a philanthropist and a scholar. They had been everywhere, from vast prairies to small islands to snow-covered highlands.

More importantly, Minato noted with a pang of sadness, they had met every single time, but not always managed to stay together.

The causes varied wildly – war, sickness, crime, physical distance. Quite often, they had been separated by circumstances beyond their control. It caused Minato to comprehend being able to connect with someone else for a brief eternity depended immensely on sheer luck. And also that past misfortunes sometimes worked to set things right on the subsequent trials.

They had treaded several paths, and as expected, the most recent one was the most vivid and discernible of all.

~o0o~

“Taki… kawa… Ngh, it’s difficult.”

“Wow, Seiya, you could actually read that? I had no idea what the first character was.”

“You should have been able to at least guess it, Ryouhei. See, the radical for ‘water’ is right here.”

“Ah! True!”

“Guys, care to let go of my head now?”

A huff of mild annoyance echoed throughout the sunset-dyed park. Barely audible, it was just about enough for two of the three children in the otherwise empty playground to break apart from the boy sitting on one of the swings.

“Sorry, Minato.”

“My bad!”

As they replied in unison, Minato let out a sigh. He then ran a hand through his spiky black hair, covering the spot that his friends had been fiddling with. The tips of his small fingers grazed the name marking his skin, and his ten-year-old heart skipped a beat in the process, as it always did whenever he was reminded of the individual that he had been set in stone to meet one day.

“I give up,” Seiya admitted, arms raising in defeat, “I can’t read it after all.”

“I told you it’d be hard with my hair on the way.”

“It’s not just that. The name itself looks difficult too,” Ryouhei added.

“It has a lot of strokes, that’s for sure. I’d say it’s even a bit extravagant.”

“I like it, though. It’s pretty,” Minato rebuked with a smile.

It took a few seconds of silence for Seiya to speak again, hands on his hips, “Well, I guess I lose the bet, then.”

“It wasn’t exactly a bet, Seiya.”

“What, what?” Ryouhei’s confused eyes darted between the duo.

Giggling, Seiya settled down on the swing to Minato’s right. “We’ve kind of had this deal for a while now: wouldn’t tell each other our soulmate’s name, and we’d let the other try to read it. We could only negate if it was read wrong and confirm if it was read right.”

“Why, though?” Ryouhei asked, raising one leg to sit sideways on the swing to Minato’s left.

“‘Cause it was an interesting idea.” Minato grinned. “Don’t a lot of people do stuff like this? Some don’t even tell anybody at all.”

“We’re best friends, neighbors and classmates. It’s almost impossible for us to keep secrets,” Seiya explained, “Not that we want to, either way. But this is basically the only thing that we didn’t know about each other for granted. Spicing it up a bit was tempting.”

“You guys are really something.” Ryouhei’s eyebrows retracted. “But, wait, why did you say that in past tense?”

“Because Minato was able to read mine.”

Mouth agape, Ryouhei directed his eyes, of which honey-like hue matched his hair’s, wide and gleaming at Minato. “No way!”

“Yes way.”

“Can I know what it says??”

Minato looked at Seiya as if asking for permission. He received it with a nod.

“‘Takehaya Kaito’.”

“That’s a nice name,” Ryouhei commented. “How’s it written?”

“With ‘sea’ and the count for liters.”

“I hear that the ‘to’ also means ‘Ursa Major’,” Seiya added.

“Seriously?” Minato raised his brows.

“That’s awesome!”

“It’s pretty common, though,” Seiya remarked almost deceptively, cheek resting on his knuckles.

“Kinda,” Ryouhei allowed, ever so honest. “But it sounds sophisticated with your surname beside it.”

“You think so?”

“I agree,” Minato supplied. “And it was because of your surname that I managed to read it so easily. We’d wanted to see who would get it right first, but I had the advantage from the start. That’s why it wasn’t much of a bet.”

“You’ll be the one marrying into your soulmate’s family, then,” Ryouhei observed, albeit a little late. “I think 'Narumiya’ has a nice ring to it, but ‘Takikawa Minato’ doesn’t sound bad at all. Plus, this probably makes it easier for you to find the person.”

Minato’s grip on the chains of the swing tightened imperceptibly at the word “marrying”. He cast his green eyes down shyly. “Maybe. But I asked my parents not to look the name up. I wanna be the one doing it.”

Ryouhei’s orbs sparkled. “That’s cool...”

“How so? If anything, he’s just delaying the inevitable,” Seiya chided.

“That’s not really my intention. It’s just... I’d rather not involve anyone in this. I mean, sure, many people are open about their own, but in the end, it’s personal stuff. It’ll happen one day even without anybody’s help, so I prefer to share it with the fewest. Intervention doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Wow, you’ve got some pretty complicated thoughts for a grade scholar.”

Minato mentally thanked the orange sunlight for camouflaging his blush. “I don’t think it’s that complex...”

“He said ‘complicated’,” Seiya corrected teasingly. “You’re actually surprisingly greedy about this sort of thing, aren’t you?”

Minato frowned. “What’re you talking about?”

“You’re more curious about who it is than anyone else could be. That’s only logical, since it’s your soulmate. But you want to weed out the biggest amount of people you can from this business because you want the problem to be yours and theirs only, right?”

“Wha... Wha...” Minato sputtered, suddenly feeling too hot for such a crisp autumn afternoon.

“Minato,” Seiya interrupted with a knowing smile, “I know that you’re carrying your treasure around.”

At the word “treasure”, Minato twitched as if something had clicked inside him. He reached for the dragonfly-patterned drawstring bag tied to his shorts in an automatic motion. Seiya smirked at his unwitting action, and it was then he realized that he had fallen for a bluff without really thinking.

Not understanding much of the exchange, Ryouhei stared blankly at them in a visitation of dumbness that only lasted while Minato was seated. As the latter abruptly stood up from the swing, Ryouhei blinked several times before snapping out of his reverie.

“It’s… getting late. I think we should go home,” Minato announced, not waiting for a response before walking away.

“Eh?! Wait up! The Sun isn’t even down yet!” Ryouhei shouted at his retreating back, yet he did not turn around.

“It’ll be, though. Soon,” he argued as if actually meaning it.

“Minato,” Seiya called out, calm as ever, but also unusually loud.

“What?!” he yelled in response, a little more angrily than intended. He stopped at the park’s exit and only his neck bent toward their direction.

“I said I was giving up, didn’t I?” Seiya’s sharp blue eyes narrowed. “Are you going to spill it or not?”

Minato frowned, facing forward again and muttering a barely audible answer.

“What??” Ryouhei put a hand against his ear.

“I’m not saying it twice!” Minato declared and broke into a run, scurrying home as fast as his legs could carry him.

“Aw, come on...!” Ryouhei whined, watching his figure grow smaller in the distance. He then turned to Seiya, gaze hopeful. “Did you catch that?”

Seiya merely let out a light hum, seemingly satisfied. “‘Takikawa Masataka’.”

Minato reckoned not being asked anything else about his soulmate after that. Seiya was not one to pry and could tell that his wish for privacy was genuine. Thanks to the uncalled-for remarks, Ryouhei had also been able to notice it, and thoughtfully stayed quiet too.

Embarrassed as he was, Minato knew he should not complain. The situation was favorable, just as the rest of his life. Not too long before, he had fulfilled his desire of starting his lifelong passion, and though it was one more secret to keep from even his family, he was still leading a satisfying and peaceful daily routine.

Nevertheless, the peace did not hold out. Much too fast, he found himself saying goodbye to Ryouhei as the latter moved to a far-away neighborhood. He found himself saying goodbye to his mother after the car accident that very nearly took him as well. He found himself saying goodbye to archery on his path to recovery, and along with it, he found himself saying goodbye to his kind teacher and his sole classmate.

Minato was serious by nature, but positivity had stayed on his side as a courtesy of childhood innocence and aptitude for restarts. He had indeed pondered on what else he would be prone to losing, yet managed to regain a number of things he had once lost thanks to a few sparks of luck lighting his way out of a rather dark tunnel.

They all boiled down to joining the archery club in middle school.

~o0o~

“You know, I’ve been thinking…” Seiya began upon making sure that he and Minato were alone in the changing room.

“Hm?” Minato responded distractedly.

“I get that ‘Takikawa’ is a more common way to read it in our region, but maybe it’s actually ‘Takigawa’.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said without looking at Seiya, firmly tying the belt of his hakama around his waist and wondering the reason for him to be pointing out something so obvious out of the blue.

“Also, maybe it’s not ‘Masataka’ but ‘Masaki’.”

So that was it.

Minato raised a brow at him. “Sorry, what?” he asked without any suspicion in his tone, but with a hint of surprise at the end of it.

Seiya’s smile was weary, as though he already expected that Minato would not look too far into the subject. Minato had nothing to counter with, as he had always fully trusted the reading that his parents had told him about, and never really stopped to muse over it.

“I kind of saw through your hair because you were so sweaty after soccer yesterday,” Seiya explained, “And then I remembered. The characters of your soulmate’s first name are ‘miyabi’ and ‘taka’, right? There are many ways to read them and I’ve tried some out, but hardly any of the combinations actually sound like a proper name other than these two.”

“Is that so…?”

“Yeah. So there you have it: a new possibility. Either Takikawa or Takigawa Masaki. Do you know anyone with that name?”

Minato searched his memory. He was completely sure that neither he nor anyone of his family knew anyone with that name or similar. He shook his head, putting on his three-finger glove.

Seiya stared at him for a prolonged moment before sighing, his arms crossed. “I see. I also don’t know anyone with that name. But either way, this means one more thing.”

“What is it?”

“They could be a girl.”

“Oh. Right.” Minato scratched the back of his neck, cheeks pink. “Well, guys are nice, but girls are nice too.”

“Thought you’d say that,” Seiya hummed, closing his locker.

“What’s taking you so long, Minato-chan, Seiya-chan?” a voice resounded from the door of the changing room, which had been opened without warning. It was by no means loud, but the two quailed at it either way, caught off-guard.

The boy standing by the doorframe had on an amicable smile, apparently aware that his actions were being seen as intrusion but feigning ignorance wordlessly. His habit of coming to fetch anyone who took too long with preparations was appreciated more often than not, yet the duo found itself tensing up at the sight of him. Nikaidou Eisuke was not considered a distrustful person at all by most, but at some point in time, an unspoken rule had come to exist between Minato and Seiya whenever they entered the archery dojo of Kirisaki Middle School.

That they would never speak of soulmates around him.

“It’s nothing, Nikaidou-senpai,” Minato dismissed, tying the glove as fast as he could. “We’re almost done.”

“What was that just now? Soulmate talk? You two haven’t found yours yet, right?” Eisuke asked, his smile curling further upwards.

The air quickly grew thick, and Minato could hear in his head the tongue click that Seiya had to fight back. Seiya was probably asking himself how long Eisuke had been there and if he had eavesdropped on more than he was letting them into. Minato would know, as he was thinking about the exact same thing.

“Yes, we haven’t. But neither of us is in a hurry,” Seiya replied curtly, as if prompting Minato to flee with him.

On cue, Minato walked behind him toward the door and right past Eisuke, both passing him by with respectful nods of acknowledgement.

Contrary to their expectations, all the older one did was laugh as he followed them, “That’s nice, actually. Sometimes your soulmate simply isn’t what you expect. I wish I could’ve stayed the most of my life span possible away from this antisocial prick.” He then pointed into the hall, straight at the black-haired boy standing alone at the center of the open room and checking his arrows.

The latter glared daggers at Eisuke, but quickly turned his attention to his arrows once again, deciding that going through the trouble of grimacing for a matter so trivial was too much effort. “The feeling is 100% mutual,” he spat, nonchalant.

“Glad we agree at something for once,” Eisuke bit back. “But maybe the luckiest one here is Shuu-kun, since he doesn’t have a soulmate at all.”

For a second time, Minato and Seiya flinched in unison. The mention of the only other member in their club who was as old as them had manifested itself in the most unpredictable way. They could not help the shock in their facial expressions as they halted in their tracks to stare at their senior.

“Huh?” Minato breathed out.

That had to be a bad joke.

Eisuke’s silver eyebrows shot up. “Oh, you haven’t heard? I thought you were the one he was the closest to in this club. Or in this whole school, I guess?”

Seiya pressed on, not letting the topic deviate, “What do you mean by that, Senpai? Shuu doesn’t have a soulmate? How do you know?”

“Everyone was talking about it at a dinner party both of our families got invited to. That ‘the heir of the Fujiwara house has no name on him’, I mean.”

Minato felt his blood run cold. He knew that such instance was something fully possible to happen to anybody, but had never expected it to happen within his circle of friends. His propensity for realism had never stopped him from imagining a future where he and every youth he knew would be happily married to their respective significant others. It could be that he had made a semi-conscious effort not to picture anything else.

Shuu had always had an air of aloof dignity to him, and paired to his dark blond hair and violet irises, he stood out like a flashlight in the middle of ordinary teenagers even without doing anything. His wealthy family and flawless education only added up to the gap between him and the ever-present notion of “normal” that followed all other individuals. Minato did not see him for anything more than who he truly was, but knew very well that few would agree with his views of Shuu, as hardly anyone ever attempted to see beyond the layers of gloss painted around him by rumors and gossip. That was why Minato had never doubted that there must have been someone for him – someone to match even such a distant gleam of a world to which few had the dubious privilege of belonging, for Shuu’s essence was not limited to it.

Apparently, he had been wrong.

“News sure travel fast,” a steady and leveled voice cut through the heavy silence.

All heads turned towards its owner, and Minato could do nothing but whisper, “Shuu…”

On the other hand, Eisuke maintained a grin that did not darken his handsome features, sounding cheerful as ever as venom dripped from his lips, “Wow, people would normally think that this kind of talk is a taboo and be pretty upset about it, but I guess that’s exactly why it doesn’t affect someone like you.”

“Senpai—” Seiya began, but was effectively interrupted.

“Or maybe you’re just putting up a front?” Eisuke walked closer to his junior. “Maybe you’re actually affected by it? Not nearly as indifferent as you look?” He placed a fingertip on his own chest. “Maybe you do have a bit of humanity... deep inside?”

“Senpai!” Minato yelled, calm flying off the nest.

“Quit it, Nikaidou. Don’t waste your time and energy with unnecessary quarrels. Put this bitter vigor of yours to some use and go practice,” came the reproach from a corner of the dojo, where his soulmate was stringing his bow.

Eisuke turned on his heels, cheeks strained at the edges. “I’d do that even without you asking me so nicely, Koushirou, Darling.”

“Who gave you permission to use my first name? Get right here, you crafty little shit.”

Seiya heaved a relieved sigh for once. “Fuwa-senpai’s awful mood sure comes in handy sometimes.”

Minato immediately looked at Shuu, who walked into the dojo as if weaving his way inside, with the apologetic gaze of a pet that had broken something important. “Shuu, sorry, we didn’t mean to prod into your—”

“That’s fine. It’s just as Senpai said. I don’t really mind it,” Shuu stated smoothly. There were no lies in his affirmations or in his face.

“You mean you don’t mind Senpai’s attitude or that you…?” Seiya trailed off slowly.

“Both. I don’t really care about soulmates.”

As Shuu took his bow and started stringing it, Minato and Seiya found themselves watching his back wordlessly. “So that’s how it is,” Seiya seemed to conclude nonchalantly within himself. On the other hand, Minato’s jaw dropped in light of his confusion.

“You… don’t? How come?” he mustered out.

Shuu answered without averting his eyes from the string, “I don’t think it makes a difference for me. That’s probably why I don’t have a name.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Shuu rose from his kneeling position, his bow rested on his shoulder. The difference in height between him and the other two made it impossible for them to share a line of sight when standing so close to one another, and so Seiya and Minato had to tilt their necks upward.

“I’ve gone through two examinations in my whole body. One to figure if I really didn’t have a soulmate and one just for confirmation. I indeed wasn’t born with anyone’s name on me.”

“No, I mean, how can you be so sure it won’t make a difference? What if you change your mind later?”

Shuu took a few arrows out of the wooden box sitting against the wall, closing his eyelids and shrugging. “Then that’ll be that.”

Minato’ brows drew together, forming creases in his forehead. “No way; that’s just—”

“Hey~! You’ve heard the shady borderline bastard~! It’s practice time~!” Eisuke called after a break from the fruitless arguments with his partner.

“Yes…” the three first-years mumbled lifelessly.

Although Eisuke had called it “practice”, the only ones who actually got to practice were second and third-years. The first-years had to accomplish minor tasks in addition to taking lessons, but never had the opportunity of facing the targets.

The trio always took their bow and quiver with them to school, and had the habit of arriving as early as possible in order to score a chance before their upperclassmen showed up. That afternoon, they had managed to fulfill their goal, but it was only a matter of time before the older members came about.

“My bad for making you worry about me. But it’s fine, honestly,” Shuu reassured, the thin line of his mouth moving up the slightest bit in a sporadic display of charity. “I mean… I already have someone whose heart I want to shoot through.”

Queuing behind Seiya to string his own bow, Minato continued to stare at Shuu as he asked, “Is… that so? But don’t they belong to someone else?”

“You know that cases like mine are rare,” Shuu reminded, as if to say yes in the most roundabout manner. “But no matter what, I keep wanting this person to look at me and no one else.”

The last sentence earned an imperceptible reaction from Seiya, who said nothing regardless.

“Really…?” Minato’s pupils shrank briefly, then widened. Relief washed over him as he exhaled audibly and smiled. “I see. Then… I wish you luck with them. But even if it doesn’t work out, I hope you’ll find happiness in any way you can.”

“Well, I’m not really charmed by the idea of a romantic relationship. I don’t care about being just an observer, as long as he also pays attention to me.”

“Oh, so it’s a guy,” Minato noted, stepping forward and leaning his bow against the holder once it was available.

While stringing his bow, he was hyperaware of Seiya taking a few arrows from the box beside him and of Shuu’s piercing gaze on his back. He would normally not appreciate the sensation of exceeded closeness very much, yet it did not bother him in the slightest at the moment. His mind was riding high on the joy of knowing that the world was right even with the system that their lives resolved around being so unpredictable, tricky and most certainly unfair at times.

Shuu was somewhat of a lone wolf, but it did not mean he was lonely, and that was okay for now.

“But…” Shuu spoke lowly after Seiya was out of ear range.

“Hm?” Minato raised his body with the most innocent look of questioning, both hands holding onto his bow.

“Thank you anyway, Minato,” Shuu said wholeheartedly, his smile a little more vivid. His long lashes cast a shadow over his eyes, but they still shone with unsuppressed vivacity.

The energy that would surge inside him whenever Minato was around could never be overruled.

Minato nodded enthusiastically, oblivious to the flame burning bright within Shuu’s violet orbs. Positioned in front of his usual target, Seiya watched the exchange with growing concern.

~o0o~

The next instant that Minato opened his eyes, his body was fifteen.

Perhaps because he sensed the change, his concentration had shifted to the pseudo-present. Everything was a blur and his chest ached tremendously. He had no idea whether his heart was clenching or swelling or both, if that was even possible. It felt like he had been asleep for centuries, visited by every existing type of emotion in the process, and now they churned inside him, quite nearly bursting out.

But then he looked up while trying to wipe the tears away, and in-between the fruitless attempts to stop the flow, he found Masaki still with his eyes closed. There was a flood of tears pouring down his cheeks as well, his eyelids and nose just as red as Minato’s most likely were. However, he seemed oddly at peace – blissful even.

The sight was enough to put a smile on Minato’s face as well, not only because of the rarity of it or how absurdly endearing it was, but because his appearance had also converted into something far more familiar. Until his last day on Earth, Minato had only had the opportunity to see him in such form in the portraits and albums kept carefully stored in their home. Much of Masaki’s traits had retained on him through the years, but as any mortal being, he was not exactly the same as in the previous decades when finally passing away.

They had lived long lives, after all.

The one sitting in front of Minato was the Masaki of when they had met for the first – or, as the Universe had corrected for them, the second time. He was now about twenty centimeters taller and his proportions had accompanied the growth, torso stout and shoulders broad. His hair was styled in a low ponytail, long and wavy at the ends, the loose streaks messy and soft-looking. Replacing the gakuran was full archery gear.

Minato could feel water droplets dripping onto his lap as he blinked. The whirlpool in his chest had been knocked out by a surging of immensurable affection. It warmed him from inside out as he used his hands and sleeves to dry out his face. The fabric of his own black gakuran was thick and slightly rough against his skin.

“Why do you even bother?” came a laugh much deeper than the previous one he had heard. “You’ll be wailing like a baby after we’re done here.”

“Shut uuup,” Minato countered uncreatively, trying not to let his voice quiver too much.

Hiccups threatened to escape him. He sniffled in order to stop them, barely able to swallow the lump in his throat. While his eyes were still squeezed shut, he felt a pair of long fingers pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking it gently. His head swayed in the process.

“Just go back to it,” Masaki coaxed, voice hearty and with a faintly tearful undertone that sounded far from sad.

Minato found himself wondering for a second what he meant by “it”, but he recalled clearly where the veil of his memories had stopped, absorbed back into a certain evening in a certain shrine as soon as he focused on it. An evening amongst oaks and cherry blossoms. An evening that actually felt like dawn marking the passing of the darkest, longest night of his life. An evening in which he had found the only thing he had never thought he would lose.

Himself.

He had lost his mother, a physical part of his body and a lot of time in the path of rehabilitation – all things he could never have back. But he had managed through it and his spirit had not crumbled, until a tournament late in middle school, where he had self-destructed in every sense of the word.

The plague under the name of “target panic” had haunted him for longer than any of his other nightmares. However, the spring evening of his first day in high school was the one in which his inspiration had sparked, along with something else that he had failed to perceive.

Heartbeats had racing, palms sweaty and sighs prolonged, Minato had missed the flicker of a growing flame lighting up in his chest. He had looked straight into the black eyes of the most charming barn owl, watched the rise of a smoke trail on a windless day in the form of a young man with the most beautiful shooting stance that he had ever seen.

The man’s shots had flown straight at the target, into Minato’s unquiet heart and up towards the heavens above. Everything about him had screamed wisdom, knowledge and mystery, until they had spoken to each other face-to-face. The gap between his temperate seriousness and his good-natured wittiness, his methodical diligence and his blithe sarcasm, was oddly charismatic. The discipline and compromise toward his bow seemed to counterbalance his procrastination of minor, easily solvable daily affairs.

Yet as much of a walking contradiction as he might have been, he was still a beacon in many ways. Like the way that he had talked so unsuspectingly to the unknown boy that had been watching him from behind a fence in the woods at nightfall. Or the way he had gently applied medicine to the cut on said boy’s hand. The way he had offered him a can of coffee, not paid any heed to being watched as he resumed shooting and never left the queries thrown at him unanswered, no matter how personal they were.

Why had he not asked for the man’s name before going back home? The answer to that question, Minato would learn much later, was that it was simply not the right time for it yet.

~o0o~

“By the way, guys,” Ryouhei began, hunched against Minato’s desk in a failed attempt to make his stature seem less conspicuous. “I found my soulmate,” he added before wolfing down the yakisoba bread that he had bought in the cafeteria before waltzing into the classroom that he did not belong to.

The years of being separated by physical distance and different choices of middle school felt like dirt in the wind once high school had started. As Ryouhei sat together with Seiya and Minato during lunchtime, the three of them soon figured that their relationship had remained unaffected by the passing of time. Quite literally, nothing had changed.

However, the troublesome subtleties in-between made Seiya and Ryouhei’s company inevitably difficult to deal with in many levels. The instant they sat down, Seiya had not missed a beat before bringing up the topic of soulmates. Minato ate faster by the minute in order to escape from the situation despite trying not to let it show.

“Who is it?” he questioned after downing a chunk of rice with barley tea, unable to help his curiosity.

“Hanazawa-san from our club, right?” Seiya asked as if for confirmation.

“Yep.”

Minato swallowed audibly. “Seriously? That’s great, Ryouhei!”

“Yeah, she’s very cute.” Ryouhei grinned, cheeks rose-dusted. “And, you know, there are two more people in the club who have found each other already.”

“I noticed,” Seiya supplied. “It’s Seo-san and Shiragiku-san, isn’t it?”

“The girl with the short hair and the one with the hime cut?” Minato asked right before a mouthful of egg roll, his rhythm back to normal.

“Yes, them. Their middle school had a Find Your Mate feature in the official site. It seems Shiragiku-san was planning to go to an all-girls academy back then, but changed her mind when she found Seo-san’s name in Kazemai Middle School, and they enrolled into Kazemai High together after graduating.” Seiya added, “Shiragiku-san has quite a lot of initiative.”

Minato had to fight an urge to grimace at the indirect “unlike some people” that he had not voiced aloud.

“That’s awesome.” Ryouhei asked eagerly, “What about you, Seiya? Found yours yet?”

“Unfortunately, no. Since he’s the one with my surname on him, he’d have to be the one to find me.”

“I see... but, oh, there’s a ‘Kaito’ in our club, right? That was Onogi-kun’s first name, if I’m not wrong.”

“If it were him, I think he’d have talked to me about it by now. He already knows my full name, and even if he didn’t, our school also has a Find Your Mate online feature.”

“That’s true...” Ryouhei sighed sympathetically. “Ah, but by the looks of it, Onogi-kun still hasn’t found his.”

“I think I heard his cousin mentioning that.”

“Nanao-kun likes to tease him about it. Onogi-kun is very secretive, and Nanao-kun thinks it’s because he’ll be the one marrying out. He’s never told anyone about the name of his soulmate or even where the mark is.”

Seiya let out an amused, “Heeh, that Onogi...?”

“What about you, Minato?”

Ryouhei’s innocent gaze fell on him, and Minato found himself cornered by the fact that he would not be able to escape it even if he tried. Mentally berating himself, he resumed eating, answering in intervals, “Not yet. And if Onogi happens to be the one who has to look for his soulmate, then I think I can understand him in that aspect. It’d be embarrassing to ask and get the pronunciation wrong.”

“Which is why you’re still carrying it, right? Your treasure, that is,” Seiya remarked, adjusting his glasses.

“Huh…? Hey, didn’t you say something like that yesterday? What does his glove have to do with the subject, anyway?” Ryouhei asked, kneading the plastic wrap of what was once his meal into a sphere.

“Not this one. I meant the other treasure that he has in his bag.”

Minato frowned. “Don’t exaggerate. It’s just a photo.”

“A photo?” Ryouhei arched a brow at him.

“It’s a picture of Minato’s head,” Seiya clarified. “It was taken when he was a baby.”

“Your head? Oh, like, the spot where your mark is?”

“Yeah.” Minato looked away begrudgingly.

“Wait; let me get this straight...” Ryouhei raised a hand. “What you’re trying to say is... supposing you find someone who you suspect that might be your soulmate, you intend to just show your baby picture to them and go, ‘Is this how your name is written’?” he inquired, stun obvious in his voice.

Minato’s whole face exploded into red and he snapped his head back towards the younger boy. “So? I can’t ask someone I just met to try and feel my head.”

“Minato, that’s… true, but still... it’s probably even more embarrassing than saying the name wrong…” Ryouhei’s brows creased apologetically. He seemed barely able to contain a laughter that he did not want to let out even if he were paid to do so.

It took Minato all of his willpower in order to stop himself from jumping off the adjacent window.

“You got a better plan?” he asked impatiently.

“Actually, yes. Just look up your soulmate already,” Seiya suggested a little forcefully, bringing seriousness back to the conversation.

“Even if I do that, I’d only meet them at the ‘right time’. Why not just let it happen naturally?”

“Yes, but nothing guarantees you’ll figure who it is. You might’ve already met them and don’t even know. Your fate is a chance encounter with this person and it’ll change your life like nothing else, but if you don’t realize it at the right moment, you might just lose them in this vast world forever. It happens to a lot of people.”

“But they’ll keep their surname. That means I’ll marry into their family one day.”

“Are you sure you’re not being too positive? Maybe they’ll keep their surname because you’ll never get married at all. Some people do that when their soulmate dies shortly before they meet. You don’t know how your name is written on them. What if it’s ‘Narumiya Minato’?”

Minato dropped his chopsticks onto his empty lunchbox. He sat frozen, staring blankly at it for a solid five seconds while trying his best to digest what he had heard. The last bite was especially difficult to gulp down.

“T-That’s…”

“‘Not gonna happen to me’? It’s what you’d like to think, right?” Seiya asked, not really expecting an answer.

Minato himself did not know what he was about to say. In truth, the machinations of his mind had stopped functioning, and he had prepared himself for a counter-argument involuntarily. However, somewhere in his subconscious, he was aware that Seiya had probably hit jackpot, and he had been carrying such light-hearted beliefs within himself.

Seiya continued, no mercy to spare, “No one knows how long they have left to live. Managing to meet your soulmate and getting to stay with them are two different things. Their company won’t come for granted. Keep this up and you might never get to have it.”

Unable to keep quiet, Ryouhei almost whined, “Geez, Seiya, that’s harsh...”

“Words are never as harsh as it would be if they came true, don’t you think?” He rebuked, the coldness in his tone dissipating a little.

Ryouhei recoiled. “Well, you’ve… got a point. I’ll give you that.”

“But even if that weren’t the case, Minato, you’ll soon be the only one here without a soulmate if this goes on.”

“Don’t mind it,” Minato insisted, closing his lunchbox.

“What if your soulmate does? Ever stopped to think about how they must feel?” Seiya asked without any blaming connotation to it, knowing that Minato would feel an implication of fault nevertheless.

“I... have, actually. But I’d always thought that, if we’re bound by fate, we’d probably think alike. That’s how my parents were,” he maintained, putting the lunchbox back into his bag.

“That’s a baseless supposition, Minato. People are different, and so are couples,” Seiya admonished. “If your soulmate happens to be older than you, then probably most of their friends already found their mates.”

Minato’s mouth glued shut like a clam. The mere thought of making his future partner go through emotional pain physically suffocated him.

Like a parent readying himself for the most difficult of lectures, Seiya took a deep breath, saying in one go, “What’s more: what if they get tired of waiting for you and decide to find you themselves? You know there are dangers to reverse-searching soulmates even through government-managed domains. In this case, your soulmate would be in a very vulnerable position, because you’re not signed up to any of those sites. They wouldn’t have any choice but to expose theirs and your name and wait for someone who claims to be you to reach them. And there’s two outcomes to this scenario: either they whither waiting until you two meet in person and maybe realize that you’re soulmates by some silver thread of luck, or – gods forbid – they become one more headline in the newspaper as a victim of kidnapping or something worse by someone who pretended to be you.”

“If they haven’t yet,” Seiya’s inner voice added what he would not dare say aloud. Not in front of Ryouhei, and not when Minato looked so close to crying. His eyes flushed at the edges, his lips pursed.

Ryouhei’s head darted between the two of them, as if he were a younger brother witnessing a fight between his father and older sibling – one in which neither was exactly wrong, so he could not take a side and nothing truly was solved by the end of it. Thankfully, no one around them seemed to have noticed how thick the atmosphere was in that corner of the classroom.

“I’ll... think about it,” Minato mustered out. He then stood up, hastily making his way outside and wishing his hair was long enough to hide at least his eye line.

“Minato, where you going?” Ryouhei asked softly as Minato passed him by, trying not to stand out despite his worries.

“Bathroom,” Minato mumbled, his pace fastening.

He was not at all upset with Seiya. Minato knew better than to assume that he had not brought up the severe truth for his and his soulmate’s sake. Rather, he was upset with himself.

Maybe his soulmate shared his visions. Maybe they really would rather leave it all to the work of destiny. But maybe they were growing desperate by now, desolated and wondering if their other half did not want to meet them.

He knew that the lines between right and wrong were blurry with a concept as abstract as fate and having to bet on the will of someone that he did not yet know anything about. Still, at that point, it was probably better to stick to the safety measures and do things by the book. He had already relied on the Universe for fifteen years, and perhaps it was time for him to take a more active part in it in the most ordinary way possible. The idea was extremely unpleasant to him, but he had too much to lose if things took a turn for the worst.

The wager was simply not worth it.

He spent the rest of the day more or less composed, committed to do as Seiya had said. No tears welled up until the end of class. However, the possibility of it being thanks to the thought that had occupied his afternoon was bigger than he realized. For the remaining hours of homeroom, Minato had found himself fixated on one wish.

“I want to hurry and see him.”

Embarrassing as the thought was, it only amplified as he sped up his bicycle in the rain, rushed his way inside the shrine and hid again behind the same fence. He could not care less about the chilly raindrops soaking him to the bone or the very possible threat of a cold. All he did care for was the beauty of that person’s movements. There were prayers in his perfectly executed choreography even though no stars were on sight to hear him out, and that struck Minato almost as deeply as the brittle sounds he was able to produce with the bowstring.

That aside, Minato would be lying if he said that every other thing about the man had left little impression on him. His looks, for one, could not be ignored. Minato was a healthy teenager and certainly not blind. Yet his behavior itself was just as impactful. His actions were a combination of slight frugality and laidback sense of humor, catching Minato off-guard on the details.

His unabashed kindness was incomprehensible in some aspects. Minato could understand that inviting him into the shooting hall and handing him clean clothes so that he could leave his uniform to dry was something anyone would do. Yet the man was under no obligation to mop the floor that Minato had wetted in the process, offer him a warm drink or share snacks with him.

He did so either way.

Minato soon figured there was nothing he disliked about him. It was almost as if he were physically unable to. Even through the fluster of being treated like a pet, hearing the comment about how scary he looked standing in the dark under the rain and having to deal with jokes about being used as a perch, never once did any negative emotion well up within him. He knew that it was because the man bore no malice whatsoever and did not consider it a problem, except for the one thing that probably should have done a little more than just bother him.

“You don’t seem to have much experience in that field. Should I teach you the basics?”

Maybe someone with a less serious personality would have laughed and played along. Minato himself had not managed to come up with a better reply than “you perverted old man”, which did earned him nothing but a grin and a skipped heartbeat. Now the second reaction he found a bit alarming. By logical supposition, there was only one person in the world who should be capable of instigating it.

He would have dismissed that sooner or later if it had been all, but the abnormalities continued without him perceiving them until he was decanting his worst insecurities out to the not-stranger-but-not-acquaintance. He was simply too good at coaxing, clearly not proposing himself as a listener out of half-assed courtesy. His intention to be of help was genuine, and for some reason, he knew the right words to use.

Minato’s soul was out in the open as if it had liquefied and been poured onto the floor despite the embarrassment and shame, and thanks to that person, he realized he could add pain to the collection. It took him learning that the performer of the most ideal shots he had ever seen had actually gone through the exact same as himself during his own youth in order to understand how the man could notice that about him so quickly. And it took him learning the man’s name to very nearly faint from the shock.

Takigawa Masaki.

As three years had passed since his conversation with Seiya on a certain afternoon in the changing room, Minato had almost completely forgotten what the latter had told him. It all came back like a strong punch to the gut and rendered him wholly numb. He did not know if what he felt right then was happiness, confusion or both at the same time, but he did know that something had clicked. Pieces had fallen into place.

However, he said nothing about it. The fact that the name existed was not enough guarantee of anything – he would have to know if it was written the exact same way as on his skin and if his own name was branded somewhere in the other’s body as well. If he initiated such a topic, there was no telling where it would lead, and he did not want to risk losing the opportunity quite literally sitting in front of him. He could get the answers to his sea of questions with time, but for that, time with him was what Minato needed to secure.

The stars were not there for him, but he was there for Minato, and that was that.

Nevertheless, it was as if the lacking piece of information were holding a section of Minato’s consciousness hostage. It fell into a daze without warning, and right before he went to sleep that night, he would find himself wondering if what was happening was actually real.

Pieces had fallen into place, but Minato could not tell whether those were the right places or not.

~o0o~

“What do you mean by ‘didn’t find them’?” Seiya’s voice rang throughout the school terrace, the urgency in it swallowed by a sharp gust.

They had decided to have lunch at the rooftop that day, seizing the opportunity to have it for themselves as no one else felt like braving the windy weather. The plan was to finish as quickly as possible so as to not let their meal grow cold, but Seiya had stopped as soon as Minato dropped the bomb on his lap.

“I mean what I said,” Minato replied, unfazed. “I looked for my soulmate’s full name and there were no results for it, only for the surname and first name separately.”

“That’s... That’s not possible.” Seiya shook his head slowly. “Maybe you typed wrong.”

“I didn’t. I checked it twice.”

“It’s gotta be some problem with the search engine.”

“I used more than one, just to be sure.”

Seiya paused briefly. Minato could tell that his friend was scanning him for a reaction, some sort of confirmation. He did nothing but wordlessly scoop up the remainder of his grated carrots and bring it to his mouth. The sesame seeds were crisp against his teeth as he chewed and the taste of the sauce was bittersweet.

“You can’t be serious. Minato, if this is a prank, it’s not funny.”

His brows furrowed. “I wouldn’t play around with this kind of subject. If you don’t believe me, you can try it yourself.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you. What I can’t believe is how calm you are.”

The second statement was pregnant with a much bigger dose of sincere worry than usual. Minato looked at Seiya straight in the eyes, unblinking. He knew that the attitude he took in lieu of what was going on was extremely unlike him, and the way Seiya was so very concerned about it served as proof. He would likely be at least a little bit relieved if Minato spoke about the existence of a certain priest, but Minato himself had yet to confirm his suspicions.

Should he confirm them one day, he had still not decided whether he would inform it to anyone or not. The conviction of leaving everything to the hands of fate was still rooted deep within him.

“To be honest, me neither. But it’s fine. I’m fine,” Minato said as if heaving a sigh. The matter indeed had him anxious, yet he was more unpreoccupied about it than ever before.

For someone that he barely knew and had met only twice, Minato was aware that he liked Masaki a little too much already. Everything he did and said never failed to hit home, as if he were taking aim at Minato’s very core. After finding out that the two of them had more in common than he imagined, Minato realized that it made every sense for Masaki to be able to read him like an open book.

“You’re looking at someone who overcame target panic right now.”

Those words reverberated in his mind to the present moment. If Masaki had gone through the same living nightmare as himself and yet had managed to transform it into something so astoundingly impressive, he was already worthy of unconditional admiration by any archer. But in Minato’s case, there was something beyond awe and respect sprouting at the shore of his unconscious, and he could not place his finger on what it was.

If Masaki was truly his soulmate, all of it was no more than the expected. However, in the slim chance that he was not, then Minato had to question the nature of his own feelings, and make up his mind as to whether he would still be willing to chase after his soulmate upon sorting them out.

“You’re... okay with this?” Seiya asked, eyes narrowing slightly.

“Yeah.”

Seiya inspected Minato with his gaze once again. He was not putting up a strong front. There was no fakeness to his statements.

That was precisely the problem.

The corners of Seiya’s mouth curled downwards, uneasy. “This isn’t like you, Minato. Did... Did anything happen?”

“No, nothing. I’ve just been wondering...” Minato raised his head, staring at the vast, partially cloudy sky above. “Is there any chance that people to fall for someone who isn’t their soulmate?”

The whistle of the wind became louder. Dirt threatened to sweep its way into his lunchbox, and so he closed it. Seiya, however, stayed unmoving, apparently losing his appetite altogether as he made no attempt to protect his own lunch or to resume eating.

“I’ve never heard of it,” he responded frankly.

“Not a straight ‘no’?” Minato turned back to him. There was something gleaming in his green eyes, and Seiya could tell that it was optimism. It gave him nothing but a bad feeling.

“Why? Do you have anyone that’s giving you second thoughts?”

The question had Minato twitching. He meekly stared at the ground, cheeks pink. “I don’t know yet.”

“You don’t know...?”

“Yeah... not very sure of anything lately,” he practically muttered, bringing his knees to his chest.

“Well, you’ve never given up on your opinions about fate before, so this must mean something.”

“I guess so. But I don’t know if I’ve really given up on them yet.”

Seiya looked like he wanted to ask what exactly that meant, but perhaps understanding it would result in Minato repeating his previous statement, he decided to beat around the bush.

“Is it a guy?”

“Uh, yeah...” Minato answered awkwardly.

He had no reason to deceive Seiya, but wished that the latter would get a clue and not pry. Yet Seiya was exactly the kind of person that would test the limits of how much Minato would let him in on regardless. Minato was glad that he at least was thoughtful enough not to go for crushingly direct questions.

Or maybe he was just being careful so that Minato would not run away. That was more like him.

“Is it... someone without a name on them?” Seiya asked out of the blue, his tone lower than before.

It caught Minato off-guard, not only because he did not know if the name on Masaki was his own, but also because he did not know if Masaki had a name on him in the first place. If Masaki turned out not to be his soulmate, there was a chance that he might be one of the Nameless.

Taking the possibility into consideration, Minato answered fairly, “Maybe.”

Seiya’s eyes widened. His mouth stayed open for a moment, and just as Minato was wondering if it was really something to be so surprised about, he spoke, “Is it—”

The door to the stairway burst open, startling both of them. Ryouhei made his way outside carrying plastic packages, closing the door with his foot due to his hands being full. “S’up, guys?” he greeted cheerfully. “Sorry for taking so long. The line at the cafeteria was insane today.”

“Hey, Ryouhei, is that takoyaki?” Minato pointed at one of the packages.

“Yup.” Ryouhei nodded, sitting down next to him. “And okonomiyaki, both Hiroshima and Oosaka style. They were doing this service at the cafeteria.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Looks like the stove broke this morning, so they had to improvise with electric pans,” Ryouhei explained.

Minato snorted. “I should’ve gone there today, then.”

“No kidding,” Seiya mumbled, shooting the takoyaki a glare as if he had a grudge against it.

“What’s wrong, Seiya? You look... kinda upset?” Ryouhei tilted his head.

“I’m a bit cold. I think I’m going back to the classroom. See you guys later,” he said evasively, standing up and silently taking his leave. The severity was gone from his face, but something was still off in the air about him.

Ryouhei and Minato stared at his retreating back until it was no longer visible and the door shut with a creak. Minato brushed the whole thing off when Ryouhei tried to ask what had happened. There was virtually little that he could do, as he himself had no idea either.

Then again, he also had no idea how many times in the past Seiya had caught Shuu eyeing him like a falcon rounding its prey.

Thinking it over as class resumed, he could not help concluding what appeared most obvious – that Seiya was disappointed at him. Seiya was the type to do the right things with the right methods, so it was definitely more than a little difficult for him to accept Minato’s current state of mind. In any case, even if Masaki turned out not to be his match, he was uncertain as to whether he would be able to view the concept of soulmates the same way ever again.

His phone vibrated lightly under his desk, and he discreetly checked it, only to find a text from Seiya with contents that he surely did not need at such moment.

“What about your partner?”

The message was as short and simple. He knew it was coming. And after a long side-glance at Seiya, who sat beside him with his gaze fixed on the board, he replied with nothing but honesty.

“I don’t know.”

Seiya’s face grew sour at the sight. He put his phone away and did not touch it for the rest of the period. Never did he direct his reprimanding look at Minato, yet his disapproval was tangible, and since displeasing Seiya felt no different than displeasing his actual father, Minato found himself drowning in uneasiness all day long.

But any of his daytime distress would wash away at dusk.

His nights were now filled with the smell of coffee, laughter that for some reason had healing powers, immense joy in watching the personification of his ideals right in front of him, and being glad to have been born. But they were also filled with anxiety after he had come to know about Masaki’s goal and how close he was to achieving it.

Before he had realized it, the shrine started to feel like a separate reality to him – one that felt as if it could fade like popping bubbles in the blink of an eye, and the things Masaki would say did not make it seem any less possible.

“I’m not someone who exists in your real life.”

He had tried not to dwell on the meaning of the words, deciding to concentrate on watching Masaki’s shooting, which he never did get tired of, and on taking lessons with him, in which he had to filter the vulgar but accurate advice and make the most he could off the instructions. Occasionally, he would let his mind wander to Fuu in its presence.

Minato came to find out about many of his strengths and weaknesses during his visits. One of such weaknesses was Masaki’s smile. On the other hand, he was comfortable around him enough for the two of them to start sassing each other out as a matter of development.

It all had a somewhat healing effect, distracting him from the negativity induced by the course of events in his life – fighting with Seiya for the first in a long time, having to deal with meddling from third parties, avoiding going anywhere near the archery dojo at school. Yet it was not always that he was able to take solace in Masaki’s company. On the night after his and Seiya’s roughing-up, everything seemed to go wrong. As though finding out that the outcome of the fight had left him wounded was not enough, his shooting was at its lowest accuracy even during close-range practice.

The fact that Masaki was the one to nurse him did not make it any better. His touch was gelid on Minato’s back, and there was no means for him to hide his scar from sight once his shirt was off. Even something as trivial the scent of tea replacing that of coffee felt like a nuisance to him, and confiding to Masaki about Seiya ended in Minato admitting how much he lacked confidence. But what made things worse were Masaki’s abstract statements.

“Don’t think that I’ll be here forever. You shouldn’t keep coming to this place.”

The sky clouded over, the wind was loud and the rustling of dry leaves scratches his ears, only not as much as Masaki’s carefree tone as he uttered those ominous words. Such pity-induced sentences felt oddly similar to the case of the owl that had left Masaki’s side once he finished taking care of it. With its injury cured, it had returned to the wild without looking back, and Masaki himself did not seem to mind it.

To Minato, the thought of the same thing happening with him was nothing short of terrifying. It dried his energy away, robbed his mind of any focus and gave him the strangest nightmares all night long. Maybe he would have felt better if he had at least been able to see the stars that evening, albeit unable to wish upon them.

Even so, he kept everything that Masaki had given him with utmost care. The stacks of books and photocopies entrusted to him were carefully stored in his desk drawer. The rubber dormouse lay sheltered under his pillow, only ever seeing the light of day when he found the time to clench it. The inappropriately worded yet detailed and thorough teachings remained as vivid in his memory as every other recollection of his new master, and they stuck to his consciousness at all times.

However, during one of his trips back from the shrine, something else had stayed with him. It was Masaki’s powder container – the one with a bikini pattern carved on it, a proof of his fondness for the opposite gender. Minato had accidentally taken it home in his absent-mindedness, and despite Masaki’s warning-like words, he opted for returning it.

On the way to the shrine that afternoon, he found himself pondering over the most unpleasant topics ever to cross his head, and every thread of thought led to the same conclusion: if Masaki was not his soulmate, he definitely already had one of his own, and shot in the dark, it was a woman. Minato had arrived at the shrine low on energy, certainly not expecting to leave it still with the container in hand and with a completely new sort of dread.

“Eh, Takigawa-san? He was supposed to have died a year ago.”

There was a part of him screaming that the woman who had told him so must have been terribly mistaken. Yet another part of him hammered his consciousness with the supposition that everything would make sense if it were true. He had no means of knowing how keenly the Other Side or the Border were connected to his own world, but he did know that many things would be possible if the connection was as deep as theories assumed. That included the souls unable to pass on to the Next Plane, stuck between the Border and a present they used to belonged to, mostly because their soulmate had yet to join them.

If that was Masaki’s case, too many things could easily be explained. His perpetually cold skin, his faultless skill and the fact that he only ever showed up once the Sun was out were some of them. But above that was the fact he had never brought up the proverbial subject of nearly any first meeting – the soulmate talk.

Should it be true, Masaki was indeed not his soulmate. His actual partner was still waiting for a sign from him somewhere, and their name probably read the way his parents had taught him.

Reasons aside, that was what messed up his mind the most.

For better or worse, he was back to the shrine at nightfall, not actually ready to engage with the raw reality. Everything was a blur and the fog only cleared once he laid his eyes on the dojo, directly at the shooting hall and at Masaki’s profile as he adjusted himself into his seamless draw, bright and glowing.

From that moment, he constantly prayed that the night would not come to an end. Despite being fully aware of the absurdity of it, everything already seemed absurd enough to him, and he could not help the irrational part of his brain that had deleted everything and everyone else.

One way or another, he managed to act normal in front of Masaki even as the latter announced that his goal was about to be accomplished, and was able to sit through not only the whole thing but also through the way that Masaki’s figure slowly morphed into haze in the process. But by the time it was done and finished, Minato’s insides seemed closer than ever to bursting.

Although he had not once in the past wished upon stars, they were visible that night, and he was willing to grovel to them. At that point, he cared not for fate, red strings or anything more that had defined his notions of life until then. And while he inwardly rejected the very foundation of human relations, Masaki’s words to him from his previous visit came back to him like some sort of revenge.

“In the future, if you meet someone that you like very much and you have to part ways with that person, are you just going to give up without doing anything when that time comes because you ‘have no confidence’? There are things people can’t overcome no matter how much they want to be strong. But if you do find something that you really don’t want to lose, it should be enough to make you cling to it and shout.”

It seemed far too obvious that the mentioned “someone” referred to his soulmate. Masaki must have realized that Minato had not yet found his own due to him never bringing it up.

“I’d never do such an embarrassing thing in my entire life,” was what Minato recalled saying in response, and it was ridiculously ironic how it turned out to be a lie, but the last he would do in that situation was laugh. Instead, he uttered a mental apology to whoever was waiting for him, as he was never again going to look for them, and was actually thankful not to have found anything leading up to who or where they were.

He did not want to draw the bow by himself. If Masaki would still insist for him to follow his passion, Minato would make sure that he would at least see through it. There was nothing fairer than having Masaki account for the influence that his mere existence had on Minato, for he was the one who had started that fire.

And so, Minato stood up, doing exactly what Masaki had told him to – cling and shout. There were tears in his eyes, but he could not bother wiping them. His heart was about to erupt out of his ribcage and it only beat that loud for the man in front of him. He held onto Masaki for dear life in order to declare war on death, and his resolve only became clearer with each word that spilled out.

His soulmate would have to find someone else.

Only when the dojo roared with Masaki’s laughter did he start cleaning up his face. His skin was lava from the neck up and he almost began embracing the idea of death as a good one at that moment in particular.

“Could it be that you hadn’t been showing up lately because you thought I was a ghost?”

The question had Minato silent for a second. He had not cared whether Masaki was a ghost or not from the get-go. The one thing that had horrified him so much about the idea was the risk of Masaki departing to somewhere he could not follow.

Not that he would let Masaki in on that.

The two final arrows that Masaki shot into the target sat horizontally at the very center of it, about as close to one another as Masaki and Minato stood to each other. The night sky was completely clear, and so were all the misunderstandings between them. The reason behind Masaki’s ten thousand shots, a significant part of his past, and most important of all, the trigger to his warn-like words, were laid out to him like cards on a table.

“Fuu went back to the forest. I’d thought that you, Minato, should have returned to where you belong too. Even so, you just immediately came back. I can’t do anything about that.”

That night, Minato was able to hit the center of a target for the first time in over a year, and hardly anything could beat the happiness of it. Two arrows sat horizontally again, slightly farther apart this time, and his whole body thundered with gratefulness.

“Have you found it too?” Masaki asked, and Minato did not know exactly what he meant, but felt that whatever interpretation applied.

“Yes. I’m joining the Kazemai High Archery Club,” he answered decisively. It felt like a lifetime had passed ever since he had last given such a straightforward response to anything related to the bow.

He had found the will to face his passion once again by coming to terms with his hardships. He had found his own form and regained his sense. He had found himself, yet he had also created himself afresh. He was reborn, remade, renewed.

And his soulmate definitely had to find someone else.

~o0o~

“So... the coach, huh?”

Minato raised a questioning eyebrow at Seiya, turning his head away immediately after realizing where he was coming from. The astonishment of welcoming Takigawa Masaki as the new mentor of Kazemai’s archery club had not completely washed off him even as practice ended, and he found himself having to deal with wholly new kinds of nervousness that day. He had barely avoided Seiya finding out that Masaki was the one he always sneaked out of home to see at night, but was still caught unprepared by the fact that Seiya would not stop there.

The two of them, along with Ryouhei, were the last ones to leave the dojo that day. With their houses being next to one another, Minato and Seiya would usually go back home together and had the habit of waiting for each other. Ryouhei, on the other hand, took a little longer than everyone else to undress, not yet fully used to the archery uniform.

Minato was the one to finish changing first, and should have fled when he had the chance. Now he would have to deal with his friends making the same mistake he had upon learning Masaki’s full name, and they would have to know about the bitter truth through him.

“Isn’t that awesome, Minato?” Ryouhei chirped. “You’ve found yours. Now all that’s left is for Seiya to find his.”

Minato stood silent, leaning against the pale wall. His eyes fell to the floor, not because the awkwardness made it difficult to look at Ryouhei in the face, but because he had no idea where to start. All he knew was that he did not want the talk to happen even. Having to break down to them that they were getting ahead of themselves when they seemed so happy for him was a little too much to bear. He did not want to wipe the smiles off their lips – especially Ryouhei’s. It was clear that he would be the one feeling worst for the misunderstanding, since he was already dating his soulmate.

“Minato...?” Seiya tilted his head.

“Hum...” he began, but the knot in his throat kept him from saying anything else.

Ryouhei stopped midway through buttoning up his shirt, looking as lost as a small infant separated from his parents in a crowd. In contrast, Seiya’s face darkened.

“Minato,” he hissed, “don’t tell me you’re still thinking about that.”

Minato’s shoulders twitched. He stared at Seiya with the wide eyes and tightly closed mouth of a child guiltily defying their mother.

“Are you serious? Can’t you tell it’ll get you nowhere?”

“‘That’?” Ryouhei repeated, his head darting from Seiya to Minato and back. “That what?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“I didn’t,” Minato answered.

“Hum, is it... something I’m not supposed to know?”

“I don’t know. Is it?” Seiya asked Minato, hands on his hips.

Minato scratched the back of his head, wanting nothing but the end of that conversation to come as quickly as possible. Not receiving a direct “yes” had Seiya mute, and the atmosphere grew suffocating.

Either of them might have stormed out of it had Ryouhei not suddenly brightened up.

“Y’know, Minato... you guys don’t have to get in a relationship right away.”

Minato raised his head. “Huh...?”

“You heard me. I’m the one with experience in this matter now, so you should take my advice,” Ryouhei lectured light-heartedly, crossing his arms.

With a hand in the air and the other still on his hip, Seiya played along, “Please go on, Sensei.”

Ryouhei feigned a cough. “My point is: your situation is sort of an outlier. People normally get soulmates who are close to their ages, but Masa-san is, like, eight years older than you. It’s not a lot, but it’s also not little. I think it’s natural that you’d feel uncertain about that stuff.”

Minato blinked multiple times. Ryouhei might have misinterpreted the issue, but had still hit bull’s-eye regarding Minato’s other, more obscure insecurities. Ryouhei was, in fact, no longer a grade scholar.

“You should talk to him about this. I’m sure he’ll be thinking the exact same. I mean, he seems like a really nice and decent person.”

“Ryouhei...” Minato mustered out, his eyes burning.

“I know Seiya said before that not all soulmates end up together because some people die before they find out who their other half is, but that’s not your case anymore. All the more since you have his surname on you. You two will get married; that much is guaranteed. So even if he’s not in love with you now, it doesn’t mean he’ll never be. Just give it time until you become an adult too. I bet he won’t even know what hit him.”

Seiya stared at Ryouhei with a mixture of amusement and pride while Minato just gawked, speechless. Ryouhei had always been painstakingly candid, and perhaps that was why his words were so believable. Not even in his wildest dreams could Minato imagine Masaki falling for him, no matter how many years passed, but the way that Ryouhei spoke of it made it seem entirely possible.

And for a fleeting instant, Minato was able to believe in him.

As he and Seiya took the bus, he could see how the latter was brimming with the desire to dig information on Masaki. Minato, on the other hand, did not bother with such things. He could draw his bow in Yata no Mori, and that was enough.

As long as Minato could continue watching his shots, nothing would ever be missing.

~o0o~

Masaki opened his eyes to the sound of Minato’s sniffling. He was the one clad in full archery gear now, while Masaki found himself in casual clothes and with his hair shorter.

Minato’s head hung low. There were still tears pouring down from in-between his eyelashes. He sat prostrated forward with his elbows supporting his body, resting on his folded knees. Rather than disheartened, he seemed to be at his limit.

Masaki’s own tears had not yet dried, and he knew they would not until the two of them saw everything through to the very end. But in comparison, he was in a much better state. Instead of letting himself be drained by the emotional batter they were in, he spent his efforts focusing on the positive parts of it and getting strength from them.

Minato was not the complete opposite, but Masaki knew that he was most likely going to lose himself in the peaks of it, and so the latter spoke as gently as he could, “Hey, you oka—”

The non-existent air had no possibility of being knocked out of his lungs as Minato plunged forward without warning, but if they were in the land of the living, Masaki would have rolled onto his back gasping as the boy shoved his head into his chest. The lack of perception of time and space had him disoriented, and before he realized it, he was in a position similar to lying face-up. Minato’s body was sprawled over his, yet he felt none of its weight, nor did he experience any pain from the impact. However, he did feel the strength of Minato’s arms around his torso, wrapped tight.

“Y’know...” Minato began, turning his head to the side upon noticing how muffled his voice was with his face buried into Masaki’s shirt.

Just as he was pondering on how utterly odd it was for there to be intervention of any sort when there were no laws of physics in that no-place, he finally understood one crucial fact. That, since the forms they had were no longer physical, they were not speaking to each other with their mouths, but with the mouths of their minds. His throat had not once vibrated whenever words made their way out of his lips, precisely because they were not coming from his lips at all. He and Masaki were merely reproducing what they had lived in the Other Side on automatic, for their consciousness knew no other forms of expression. In turn, they were also automatically interpreting their own actions and reactions in the way both would have turned out to be on the Other Side.

The two of them were deceased souls residing in the realm between one life and another, nonetheless acting as if they had never died in the first place.

Minato almost snorted at the irony of it, but decided to hold it back as he continued, “You coming over to Kazemai was a real shocker back then.”

Masaki’s facial expression softened, his insides surging with smug happiness. He recalled the surprise in Minato’s face when he walked into the archery dojo of Kazemai with his hair trimmed short, introduced by the manager as the new coach. He recalled the way that Minato’s cheeks relaxed at the sight of his usual grin. But more importantly, he recalled a certain night on the road to Yata no Mori, as well as the words that Minato had uttered without the slightest hint of embarrassment on the passenger seat of his car.

He used to think being caught off-guard by the sudden arrangement had been the only cause of Minato’s jaw-drop. Finding out that Minato was actually envious whenever the other team members held his attention had been far from an unpleasant experience. Thanks to it, he was able to tell that Minato’s urge to embrace him stemmed from having a taste of said envy all over again, except even more intensely than the first time.

“I couldn’t help it. You still had a long way to go, and I felt like I could put myself to better use if I became an official teacher. Your friends also seemed to be having troubles. Especially Seiya.” Masaki paused, glancing up, and then nodded to himself. “Mostly Seiya. That one was on you.”

“Ugh...”

He raised his arm to pat Minato’s head. “Besides, you went back to Yata no Mori for my sake. I think it was only fair that I went after you, too.”

“Yeah... When you put it like that, I guess it was a good decision.”

The fingers that had been running through Minato’s hair pinched him lightly on the cheek.

The sensation was all-too-familiar. But as Minato’s vision turned back to the eyes of his mind, he found himself not even close to seeing the first time that Masaki had done something of the sort. Instead, he sensed the warmth of a wool coat being placed over his shoulders and listened to the concern in Masaki’s voice telling him to wear it. He tasted the flavor of the first cup of coffee that Masaki had ever brewed for him, and felt himself awash with relief at the sight of Masaki’s usual grin.

With Masaki being the chief priest of Yata Shrine, it was only natural that his family lived in it. Minato’s first visit to the dining room of his family home had ended with him revealing his unease toward being a bother for his teammates, his aversion for Seiya’s exaggerated worry on his behalf, and the car accident that had taken his mother away. If he were with anyone else, Minato would hardly think that the result of discussing such gloomy subjects would result in the other party and himself laughing together, but since he was in Masaki’s company, he could not expect much less.

Part of him wondered if he would ever be able to have such a good time with his true soulmate, and the other part did not want to ruin the moment. Once Masaki started teaching him about the hold on the bow with his left hand so as to answer one of his questions, his mind was occupied with concentrating on Masaki’s feather-light touch and branding it into his skin in order to never forget it.

Amongst the many things they had shared with each other, he knew that he would not be able to help eagerly awaiting a certain day. Time would definitely come when he would pass on to the people that shared dreams and ambitions with him the warmth that Masaki’s hands had always offered him.