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People were always surprised to learn someone like Shouta Aizawa believed in soulmates. Shouta couldn’t blame them for it; the whole concept was flashy and romantic, the complete opposite of every pragmatic, logical impulse he stood for. For his part, however, Shouta simply knew he didn’t have a choice in whether to believe or not.
The first time he could remember seeing the strings was at his parents’ final divorce mediation. His parents sat across a large table from one another with their lawyers by their side; they were fighting, but they were always fighting. Shouta had been shuffled off to the corner, sitting on the uncomfortable two-seat couch with his nanny while they made decisions for him that he was far too young to make for himself. He’d been trying to entertain himself quietly as his mother had instructed him when they got to the office and caught a sudden flash of something translucent red and shiny as his mother made an angry sweeping gesture. A thin strand of what looked like frayed red kite string was tied to her pinky finger, Shouta had realized, the other end of which was tied to his father’s. To Shouta’s four year old mind it had seemed silly and impractical to have something linking them together when the whole purpose of today was figuring out the easiest way to be apart. His mother had always been very particular about him asking for clarification when he didn’t understand something, so Shouta slid off the couch and came over to tug on her sleeve. His mother’s mild annoyance at him being allowed to interrupt had turned to a white-faced fury as Shouta asked why, if his mother and father didn’t love each other anymore, they hadn’t bothered to untie the red thread holding them together.
He’d never received an answer; his nanny had quickly scooped him up and spirited him away from the room as his mother screamed at him for asking such a question with tears streaming down her face. By the time he saw his mother again that night she was collected and poised as if the outburst had never happened, but he didn’t dare ask again. From his bedroom window Shouta could see the string stretching to the back door of the taxi downstairs, fraying thinner and thinner as the last of his father’s belongings were packed away in the trunk and the car drove away.
Years later, it was an old book on superstitions he’d picked up out of boredom that finally told him what the strange threads he saw were. The Red Thread Of Fate, or so he read, bound soulmates together for all time; it might stretch or tangle with distance and circumstances but could never be cut. In concept it sounded like every other ludicrous fairy tale Shouta had ever heard about soulmates and destined true love; the only difference was the evidence plainly visible in front of him every time he went outside. It was hard to dismiss it as impossible nonsense when the world was an endless spiderweb of strings and threads in every shade of red you could think of. Instead, Shouta chose to accept it as truth but did his best to just ignore it. He knew from experience that the humans on either end of the strings could have their own ideas about the destiny they wished to pursue, and that in itself made the whole thing a novelty he was content to let pass him by. When his own string manifested sometime around his twelfth birthday, Shouta simply threaded it up his sleeve to keep it out of sight and out of mind.
Hizashi Yamada was the only person Shouta had ever come across who didn’t have a string. He’d seen others with threads that were stretched so thin that they were practically invisible or, like his parents’, were frayed to the point that they were nothing but shreds, but they were always there . Shouta found it fascinating in spite of himself. If he could have believed anyone had a destiny made for being with other people, it was the motormouth blond who had taken it upon himself to join Shouta’s solitary lunch on their first day and tell him his entire life story in one long run-on thought. Though he’d come to UA with no intention of anything but training to become a hero with as little interruption as possible, soon enough Shouta found himself drifting into Hizashi’s charismatic orbit. It was there that, despite his best intentions, Shouta found Oboro Shirakumo on the other end of his string.
Oboro wasn’t a mystery the way Hizashi and his missing string were, but Shouta found himself drawn to him in a not-dissimilar way. He couldn’t help thinking of their being linked as a kind of puzzle begging for him to solve it; it seemed like a massive clerical hiccup by destiny for someone so dour and overly-practical to be matched with someone so easy-going and sunny. They weren’t even different in an endearingly odd-couple sort of way, Shouta’s reflexive pessimism often proving too much for even Oboro’s inexhaustible good cheer to balance out. Even so, Oboro bore the heavy lifting of Shouta’s confidence issues without complaint, almost seeming to enjoy the challenge at times. It made Shouta feel seen in a way he didn’t quite have words for, only an odd jumble of appreciative guilt deep in his chest. He swore to use it as fuel, to have that feeling push him towards a version of himself that would really fit with Oboro. Once that happened, Shouta would tell Oboro everything he knew and felt and let him decide if being the one on the other end of Shouta’s string was the life he wanted to live.
And then came the rain, and the collapse, and a broken body under a white sheet. Shouta stood at the edge of the caution tape, staring down at the loose piece of string dangling across the palm of his hand. When he’d imagined what it would look like if a string could be broken, Shouta had expected a clean sheared cut, the ends neatly fused together like the universe was admitting its mistake. The string in his hand looked as though someone had taken it in both hands and pulled as hard as they could until it snapped, the jagged extruded fibers unravelling into a frizzy rain-soaked mess. The other end lay in a puddle a few feet away, sprawling out from under the edge of the sheet. No one had bothered to tuck it away out of sight the way they’d done with the rest of him; nobody else knew it needed to be done. Hizashi was at his side, one hand in a death grip on Shouta’s forearm and the other on his back. He was crying; Shouta couldn’t. Tears were for when you were sad because you understood, when you felt too much. Shouta didn’t feel anything. Everything inside of him had been ripped out on the wrong end of a broken string and all he had left was a numb hollowed-out space behind his ribs and the frayed mess of nothing in his hand.
When he was younger, Shouta’s mother had always used "going off to find herself" as the go-to excuse for when she went on months-long trips to Australia or America or wherever, leaving him behind the care of whatever nanny, tutor, or vague relation she could get to look after him. It made Shouta wonder if it was possible to travel far enough for long enough that you would simply lap yourself and somehow end up back home as a better version of the person you used to be.
It didn't work for the son any better than it seemed to have done for his mother. Shouta left the night of his graduation, the end of his string strapped to his forearm out of sight and his eyes set on any horizon he could find. Outrunning yourself was the easy part, Shouta decided; finding a way to keep the old you from catching up was far more complicated. Every version of himself that he found in the places where no one knew him were just different shades of the same sad lonely boy with a head full of memories, only older and more tired. Even though he had no idea if he had anywhere to go once he got there, Shouta decided it was time to face facts and go back where he had come from.
Still blond, still a motormouth, and still unfettered in all senses of the word, Hizashi did everything he could to help Shouta restart his life without a moment’s hesitation. He didn’t bat an eye at finding Shouta a part-time job to tide him over while he worked on his teaching certifications, nor at offering up a small fold-out couch in his spare room as temporary accommodation until Shouta could drum up the funds and the energy to find his own place. Hizashi had lost none of his social butterfly influence, smoothly integrating Shouta back into his circle as if no time had passed at all. Shouta found himself falling into Hizashi’s gravitational pull once again, both of them following a kind of emotional muscle memory of how things had been before. A familiar guilty gratitude took up residence in Shouta’s chest at his old friend’s unwavering kindness and loyalty. The two of them seemed to fit each other somehow, the boy with no string and the boy with the broken string hanging on to one another for dear life in a world that was otherwise so tightly connected. Shouta tried to explain it to Hizashi when he’d had too many drinks on a night out and thought about it too long. As the words rambled out of him Shouta knew he was too many beers deep into the night to be making any kind of sense, but even so Hizashi seemed to take the meandering compliment with a bemused appreciation.
Shouta awoke the next morning with a blistering hangover and a blossoming sense of dread at everything he’d said the night before. As he lay face-down in the sofa cushions silently bemoaning his drunken stupidity, he became aware of an odd tugging sensation in the pinky of his left hand. Shouta raised his head sharply, sure he had to still be dreaming. The end of his string had fallen out of his sleeve, whether while they were out or in his sleep he wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that he could no longer see the end of it. Moving as quickly as his aching head and whirling stomach would allow, Shouta took the string in both hands and looked at it closely. Once it had been broken the string had hung limply a few inches from the knot securing it to his hand; now it stretched under the door and down the hall. Shouta could feel himself shaking as he followed it, moving hand over hand down the length. The string tugged him along, leading towards the sound of Hizashi singing along to the radio as he made breakfast. Just as he rounded the corner Shouta finally found the end of his string; more importantly, however, he found the end of Hizashi’s .
A thin thread ran from Hizashi’s once-bare hand to the place Shouta stood. The frayed end of his string was looped and twined into the blunt end of Hizashi’s to make an almost-invisible knot. Shouta couldn’t help running his thumb over it, letting out a slightly helpless chuckle at how obvious it all seemed now that it was right in front of him. He was vaguely aware of Hizashi asking him a question, likely wondering if Shouta had decided this morning was a good time to lose his mind. Instead of answering, Shouta crossed the room to where Hizashi was. Relief mixed with a kind of joyous terror at what all of this might mean overrode any hesitation he might have had as he took Hizashi’s face in his hands and kissed him.
Hizashi started slightly at the suddenness of it but recovered quickly as he kissed Shouta back. Shouta could feel him smiling into the kiss as his hands came around to rest in the small of Shouta’s back, pulling Shouta flush against him. As they paused for breath, Hizashi pulled back slightly with a chuckle, resting his forehead against Shouta’s.
“I love you too.”