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Red String, as a quirk, didn’t sound like something with any real use beyond matchmaking. Of course, the real power of a quirk was entirely dependent on the creativity of the user. She’d heard of a vigilante whose power to glide let him climb and stick to walls, and just the other day Deku had been going on about how, theoretically, a telekinetic quirk which could only manipulate small objects could be used on an atomic scale. So, while Red String didn’t sound particularly dangerous, the run-in with that particular petty villain had ended with her hopelessly tangled in a string she couldn’t snap and smarting from the few hits the punk had managed to land.
“And it only activated after they touched you?” Deku asked, scribbling away in his notebook. “That’s an impressive use of something usually called a matchmaker quirk.”
“Did you see which way it went?” Mina asked, always eager for some gossip.
“North.” Tsuyu answered, because it had been hard to miss where the string was tangling her from and there were hundreds, thousands of people north of them in a narrow enough range to have not sent the string off at an angle.
“Ooh, can you still see it?” Denki leaned over Deku’s shoulder, looking genuinely curious. Tsuyu looked down at her bare hands, wondered for a moment, then concentrated on the thread she’d seen trailing off her right ring finger. It barely went a handspan from her fingertip now, The thread, which had pointed vaguely off to the north during the fight yesterday, now pointed almost directly behind her.
“It’s going that way now.” she pointed towards the back wall of the classroom, and when she looked up to follow her own finger her cheeks heated. She was pointing directly at Ochako.
“Omggggg.” Mina squealed, thankfully not noticing how Tusyu had just pointed at. “They’re definitely at least sorta local. You’re interning just a few stops south, right?”
Tsuyu nodded. Ochako had been on campus yesterday, it would make sense. But they were still only barely dating, just two high school girlfriends, no guarantee of them being together as they continued to grow up. Nothing like the red string of fate implied. She would have to test it.
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“You keep making that face.” Ochako teased, tapping her lips with a chopstick. “What’s up?”
“I think we may be soulmates, kero.” she said, holding her her right hand and wiggling her ring finger. “I’ve been looking at my thread, and it’s reaching for you.”
“You sound awfully confident.” Ochako sipped at her tea. “Sure it’s not just a coincidence?”
“Positive.” Tsuyu nodded, concentrating as hard as she could and reaching out across the table. Ochako’s fingertips brushed hers, and the touch sparked like electricity up her arm, the thread stretching from her fingertip joining with one attached to Ochako’s which had, until that very moment, been invisible. Ochako’s arm jumped, and Tsuyu knew somehow that she saw it now too.
“That- that’s red, alright.” she said, lifting her hand to examine where the thread wrapped around the base of her ring finger, disappearing into itself.
“Well, it’s a good thing we already like each other, kero.” Tsuyu smiled. Ochako blinked, then laughed, bright and easy, and lowered her hand again to lay over Tsuyu’s.
“A really good thing, yeah.” she smiled, lacing their fingers together.