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Hanako watches as two second-years laugh and hug each other, faces flushed and wrists adorned with hastily-written words of new love. The sight is cute, really—humans are so simple in their desire for another’s affections, and the excitement they swell with when the feelings are mutual is contagious. Not even he could stop the wry smile that stretches upon his face as curious on-lookers cheer on their friends for finally finding their soulmate.
But he can ignore the subtle itch that tickles his forearm, the burn that’s telling him it’s okay to take a little peek, to check if his skin has a message that is meant for him and him alone.
Hanako doesn’t know what his soulmate’s handwriting looks like. He doesn’t know what it feels like to wake up in the morning with your arms covered in little questions and doodles, and to be honest, he doesn’t even know if he has a soulmate at all.
—But it’s okay.
It’s okay, he tells himself when the days blend together and five minutes become five years, because he has a duty to fulfill, sins to atone for. After all, his time had stopped decades ago, his story cut short—it wouldn’t make sense for a ghost to hope for a future that will never come.
In the space between dawn and sunrise, Amane Yugi outlines tiny stars and a crescent moon in red ink. A gift, he thinks, for the person who will wake up and see his favorite things on the inside of their arm. The shapes are a little wobbly and he had to go back to trace the lines that were a tad too faint, but it’s the thought that counts, right?
At least, that’s what mom tells him whenever Tsukasa steals his crayons to melt them down for another one of his projects. ‘Art’, Tsukasa calls it, and Amane gets mad every time because those were his crayons. But he can’t stay upset at Tsukasa, not when his eyes gleam with good intentions and the hope that his older brother will appreciate his hard work.
So his seven-years-young heart prays that his soulmate appreciates these little drawings, prays that they’ll stick. Because that’s what soulmates are supposed to do. They’re a part of you that’s been ripped out and stuck into the core of somebody else, somebody who will understand and love you for who you are. Amane’s not the best artist, but he makes sure to pour his hope into every stroke of his marker.
"These are the stars I taped on my ceiling," Amane writes just below the inner crook of his elbow, and he smiles like he just told someone an important secret.
His world is barely three blocks wide and he doesn’t really know how to define ‘love’, but Amane thinks that the closest thing is sharing the sky he cares about so deeply with whoever’s fated to meet him.
“Amane, Amane,” Tsukasa asks on a Tuesday morning as he’s stuffing his mouth with rice, “why do you always do that?”
Amane snaps out of his reverie, shrinking a bit at his brother’s piercing stare. “Do what?”
Tsukasa hums quietly and rests his cheek on the palm of his hand. “You keep staring at your arm. It’s weird.” He gets up from his seat to lean a little closer, and something deep in Amane’s gut tells him to shift back, to tell Tsukasa to stay away.
What kind of brother am I, Amane thinks.
Tsukasa’s face speaks of childlike curiosity, but twelve years is long enough for Amane to know that something else lurks beneath the surface. He is still smiling when he reaches out for Amane’s wrist with a speed he wasn’t expecting, and he is still smiling when he grips it with enough force to nearly make Amane wince.
“You never get any messages,” Tsukasa comments off-handedly, softly thumbing Amane’s palm. It’s an objective truth, but Amane’s chest pangs painfully nonetheless. “Why do you keep checking, Amane? Do you think they’re going to write back?”
He can feel the ‘yes’ crawl up the back of his throat. Amane takes a few swigs of orange juice to swallow it. Not because he wants to lie to his younger brother, but because he knows better than to repeat a mistake twice.
His free hand subconsciously rubs a fading bruise on his left thigh, concealed by a cartoon bandaid and shame. Amane concedes a quiet “No.”
Tsukasa’s contentment shows in the grin that widens, in his hand not raising to strike him.
Amane releases a single breath in relief, but there is something hollow in this peace.
“It’s okay,” Tsukasa finally says after a moment, and he wipes away the grain of rice that sticks to his cheek. “I don’t get any messages either. I’m not sad, though. It just means that you get to be my soulmate.” There’s a wistful note in his voice, and for a fleeting moment, Amane sees six-years-old Tsukasa clinging tightly to the back of his shirt because he’s afraid of being left alone.
What kind of brother am I?
”Then we can stay together forever and ever. Doesn’t that sound fun?”
You’re wrong, Amane wants to say. I deserve someone who makes me happy, and so do you.
“Yeah,” Amane says, biting into his cold toast as Tsukasa cheers.
Amane Yugi wakes up to the words "HE’S MINE" written in permanent marker on his left arm. Tsukasa’s hiragana is rounded and large—it’s almost cute.
And it’s difficult to wash off in the bath. Amane winces in pain as he scrubs at the ink, but he’s frantic in his movements, not caring if he were to draw blood. Half of Amane wants to believe that this is some sort of prank. That when he steps out of the bath, Tsukasa will laugh and prod at him, tease him for taking his joke so seriously.
Amane prays, so keenly, that Tsukasa will not be furious when he steps out of the bath, skin rubbed raw because he doesn’t want his soulmate to see a message that he did not write.
“—Amane?”
His heart sinks into his stomach when he hears the bathroom door open with a quiet ‘click’. He’d locked it, he’s sure of it, but this wouldn’t be the first time Tsukasa managed to find him when he didn’t want to be found.
Tsukasa’s footsteps are barely audible against the blood rushing against his ears. Amane does not hate Tsukasa—how could he, when they’ve been together long before either of them had even begun to breathe? But it is because Amane does not hate Tsukasa that he closes his eyes, curls his wet, bruised knees towards his chest. Amane is dizzy and frozen from the ice-cold fear in his veins, and his ribcage hurts from the rapidly-beating organ beneath.
The footsteps stop right in front of the bathtub. “Ah…” Tsukasa breathes out, low and deadly.
“...How mean of you.”
Amane Yugi is fourteen when he writes his final message in red ink.
"I'm sorry" brands his left arm in glaring red—it’s an apology to both his fated partner and Tsukasa.
He doesn’t turn on the light when he enters the kitchen. Partly because he doesn’t want to be caught, partly because he doesn’t want to see the way his hands are trembling with trepidation. And he wishes, so badly, for there to be another way. Another path he could take because, damn it, he doesn’t want it to end like this.
—But what choice does he have? If his soulmate were to choose this opportunity to write to him, to tell him that he’s making a grave mistake, would Amane listen?
Would they tell Amane that he has every right to pursue a future and a life that gives him purpose, makes him happy?
Even in this pit of despair, Amane is sure their words would carry so much weight.
And Amane knows he does not deserve them.
With the moonlight as his only witness, Amane wipes the hot tears from his eyes, opens the drawer closest to the sink, and pulls out a knife.
Hanako is fourteen when he wakes up with a startled gasp, chest aching and lungs burning. When he takes in a deep breath—
—he remembers that he is dead, and that oxygen no longer matters. There are a lot of things that don’t matter anymore, actually. He will no longer starve, no longer want for rest. The mortal pains that had accompanied the person that was Amane Yugi won’t apply to Hanako, and maybe he should be thankful for that.
(If that is true, why does his heart still bleed like there’s something missing?)
Some deity out there had given him a mission—a way to atone for his crimes. Keeping an eye on Kamome’s apparitions sounds like a really heavy job, and Hanako is sure it would be incredibly difficult to keep up if he had to worry about eating and sleeping.
But there are some things he misses about being human. Sometimes these things will sneak up behind his back if he isn't careful, taunting him with possibilities that will forever remain out of his reach. Being bound to the girls’ restroom on the third floor, he’ll never be able to eat plain donuts again. He’ll never be able to visit the new observatory in Tokyo, and he’ll never know what it’s like to graduate from high school.
A first-year girl is washing her hands when she gasps, words appearing on the inside of her wrist. The script is faint at first, but it gradually darkens enough for her—and Hanako—to read.
“I go to Kamome too,” it says. Hanako can’t help but wince when she squeals, loud and elated.
He is glad that she cannot see him adjust his sleeve, subconsciously checking his wrist to see if anything is there.
The restroom is quiet after the girl leaves, and it gives Hanako a chance to confront an uncomfortable truth. He blinks against the glaring sunlight, stained glass washing him in hues of red and green and blue.
Whoever—whatever—had pitied him when he died, had given him these responsibilities, they were expecting Hanako, not Amane Yugi. Amane, who cried and bled and dreamt about going to the moon, no longer exists in this world.
A future in which Amane Yugi or Hanako ends up with their soulmate will never exist in this world, either.
Hanako’s resolve is strong. He clenches his fist and makes a silent promise to himself, an oath to carry out his duty as a School Wonder to the best of his ability.
(Long after the stars come out, Hanako wipes away the stray tears that dare to escape.
He hates himself for being so weak.)
Hanako doesn’t mind being bound to Kamome as his atonement. He deserves the punishment, knows this to be true. But sometimes he wonders if the deity had been waiting for an opportunity to make his time here even more hellish than intended.
It was fingers thrumming on a table, or maybe more like a gentle stroke on the forearm. He still cannot properly describe the sensation, but the most important part is that it is new and he’d never felt it before and he is completely terrified.
Before he can think of it, Hanako scrunches up the sleeve of his old uniform, the weight of it feeling like mountains. He holds in a breath he does not need, and his long-stalled heart continues to beat erratically as if he still possesses blood. He stares intently, hopeful and horrified, as two characters slowly appear on his cold, pale skin.
Their handwriting is so loopy, so unpracticed—Hanako imagines a young child, marker in hand as they write and doodle on their skin, blissfully unaware of the fact that these same markings will appear on someone else.
“Nene,” they had written, large and shaky and bold. “Nene,” reads his arm, dark and pulsating with a kind of hope he’d thought was lost long ago.
And Hanako squashes this hope with a quick flick of his wrist, masking the message under his sleeve. It's better off this way, he thinks, ignoring the burn deep within his gut that threatens to consume him.
“I’m a murderer,” Hanako whispers to himself.
“I’m dead,” Hanako reminds himself.
Hanako cannot picture what his soulmate looks like, what they’d be like, but something powerful and ancient tells him that they will grow up to be absolutely lovely.
And as he wills himself to fade away, Hanako hopes, with aching desperation, that the person his soulmate ends up with is perfect.
Ignoring his soulmate is easier said than done, especially when they try to contact him at least once an hour.
Bland, monotonous days are given color by Hanako’s soulmate, and they seem to have made it their personal goal to write to him multiple times a day. The messages are short at first—simple, naive observations about the world around them, about things they’re discovering about themselves.
His soulmate’s name is Nene. Nene is a girl, Nene loves cute things but also things like skulls, and she doesn’t understand why people are so weirded out by that. Nene discovers that she loves her dad’s strawberry daifuku, and that she finally got the pet hamster she was begging for as a birthday present.
As time passes, Nene’s musings become longer, her handwriting more controlled. Hanako receives full-on paragraphs on his arms on some days, and a sleeve of doodles on others. Nene writes about her hopes, her dreams, how she notices how some of the boys in her class are kind of cute but none of them could possibly compare to whoever is reading her messages, how her best friend, Aoi, found her soulmate at such a young age, and she wonders when (not ‘if’, Hanako notes) they’ll meet.
One day, Nene asks, “Why don’t you ever reply to me? Was it something I said?”
Hanako nearly conjures up a pen.
He doesn’t, of course. Hanako’s done a good job of lasting this long, but the thought of Nene doubting herself and all of the little facts and thoughts she’d confessed over the years nearly makes him keel over with guilt. And even if Hanako were to succumb, what could he possibly say? “Hey, I’m a dead guy but I promise you’re amazing just the way you are, so please find someone who’s, well, alive?”
The thought of writing something so stupid is enough to give him pause. In the pain that Hanako feels as he covers up Nene’s question with his sleeve, he allows himself to picture how Amane Yugi would respond.
Amane would probably talk to her every day. He’d write cheesy pick-up lines and tell her the stories behind his favorite constellations. He’d ask about her school, what she’d eaten, if she has any siblings (“I have a twin brother, Tsukasa. He’s a big baby but I love him, y’know?”)
Amane would reassure her without a second thought, would tell Nene that she’d never said anything wrong and that he couldn’t be luckier to be paired with such a beautiful person.
(But he is a ghost, not a teenage boy, and these feelings are not meant for him.)
Idly, Hanako wonders if he's allowed to be jealous of himself.
Another itch rouses him from his train of thought, and adding to his long list of bad decisions, he checks his left forearm.
“I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to find you, and you can’t stop me! And when I do, I’m going to be SO mad at you!” Nene tells him, and her words sing of a special kind of determination that almost makes him believe her.
Almost, Hanako thinks sadly as he silently thumbs the proof of her promise on his arm.
“Today is my first day of high school. I don’t know if we’ll be in the same year or even the same campus, but I’m going to try my hardest! Prepare yourself!”
Perhaps it’s selfish of him, but Hanako mentally cheers her on, anyway.
No one had ever told Hanako what it’s like to meet your soulmate. Mom—Amane’s mom—never really talked about it, and he wonders if she’d assumed he wouldn’t be interested in such romantic, cheesy stories. And maybe his seven-year-old self wouldn’t have been willing to listen, anyway. He would blush and find some sort of excuse to leave the conversation entirely.
So he likens the experience to a movie scene he’d watched when a girl snuck into the restroom during school hours. Her phone screen was lined with sparkling roses and stars as the protagonists’ eyes met. Time had slowed, the bustling crowds halted, and the heroine, in her hushed inner monologue, thought, I didn’t know it then, but I think I was born for this very moment.
It was a whole ten levels of corny, but the scene seemed so dramatic, Hanako felt confident he would never find himself in that type of situation.
But the thing is, no one had ever told Hanako that time doesn’t slow down when something big is about to happen. Life-changing revelations are not made to the sound of violins and trumpets, and there are no cues that will tell him that “Hey, your world is about to be turned upside-down.”
And that is why he thinks nothing of it when he hears three small knocks on his stall.
Just another Tuesday.
“Hanako-san, Hanako-san, are you there?” She calls out, voice quivering with fear and anticipation. Hanako tsks to himself; they all sound the same, don’t they?
Cracking open the door and replying with his trademark “Yes~?” runs a little deeper than muscle memory by now. The consistency is nice in its own way, but Hanako already suspects that this girl probably won’t be able to see him. She would then leave, disappointed, and tell all of her friends that the Seventh Wonder was a big hoax.
Hanako doesn’t know if he should be pleasantly surprised or horrified when she screams and fails to push him away, her small hands phasing right through his body.
And it’s this clench in his chest, the wide ruby eyes that regard him with curiosity and wariness and awe that tells him that something is amiss. This isn’t just another Tuesday, holy crap she can see him, and why does he feel so exposed?
As she straightens her posture, smooths out her skirts, Hanako examines her more closely. He’d never seen her before, never knew someone like her could exist. But he takes in her flushed face, pink and pretty in the setting sun, and Hanako thinks, for some inexplicable reason, finally; there you are.
He does and doesn’t understand it.
It’s this intoxicating mix of aching familiarity and gnawing suspense that causes Hanako to jump and ask, “Who are you?”
A smile that speaks of a kindness he wishes he could have adorns her lips. They’ve barely known each other for five minutes, but the gaze she meets him with is so soft that it nearly brings him—the part of him who had been hidden so well, quiet and complacent because he’d long accepted his fate—to tears.
“I’m Yashiro Nene!” she replies, bright and confident—
—and Hanako knows that he is doomed.