Chapter Text
In a world where your soulmate’s first words to you are printed on your wrist, Yamaguchi hides his beneath a black wristband.
It’s not an uncommon thing to do. Some people find it too intimate to flash at any old stranger; others like the mystery. Then there are those who have blank wrists, who cover them to be rid of pitying gazes and sympathetic smiles.
Yamaguchi does it for none of those reasons.
He covers his wrist for himself, because he’s a coward. The excitement of having a soulmate out there, waiting for him - made to love him; to share double-popsicles with on sticky summer afternoons; to split french fries and draw ketchup doodles with - had died on the day he learnt to read the kanji on his wrist.
Some days, he fingers the worn, fuzzy fabric and wonders about the voice behind the word. The person. The tone. Some days, he wonders if he could scrub the black ink off, wishing that his wrist was blank instead.
Some days, he tries.
Truthfully, the cloth does nothing to hide the word and the truth of it all from himself. It is seared into his mind’s eye - its strokes deliberate and harsh, deep ugly lines etched into his pale skinny wrist dotted with freckles. He feels every syllable reverberate through his bones like a gong struck, turning his blood to ice, making his breath catch in his throat and his eyes wet whenever he glimpses it in the shower - the only time he ever peels the wristband off:
‘Pathetic.’
His reflection in the mirror wholeheartedly agrees.