Chapter Text
The writing on Kuroba Kaito's right wrist is as normal as can be, really. A female name, to the mild relief of his parents. A nice name, Nakamori Aoko, and a healthy colour. It's set in like a scar; like cuts forgotten, indented and not raised in a white line like some he's seen.
The only problem is the other one.
Because there are two, and sometimes Kaito is treated to a tittering recount of his toddler years by his mother, when his marks began to develop on both wrists rather than just one. They had done some research, she tells him, at the library, but still Kaito's parents avoid his questions of why, why, why .
At far too young an age, he is gifted a watch by his father to cover the one on the left. It's the one with the forename that Kaito doesn't know how to read, and it's no real loss to him. Like everything from his father, he treasures the watch. When he starts school, he takes to wrapping his left wrist up with a bandage to shield it from prying eyes during gym class.
In the first grade, he doesn't meet anyone else with two markings.
That doesn't stop him from engaging in the conversations that spring up sometimes, when all the little girls shriek and giggle together about meeting Ryo or Natsu, some still struggling through the pronunciation, some listing off every potential reading their parents have given them, some with names in languages they can't read or identify; and the boys, declaring that, soulmate or no soulmate, Akane or Rikako is probably just as gross as all the other girls, anyway.
Kaito gleefully agrees with them. "I never want to kiss Aoko!" he declares, in the most disgusted voice he can muster, throwing his hands up so everyone can see the name on his visible wrist. He's met with laughter, and a few loud kissy-faces in his direction, which he returns while the girls are discussing their dream weddings with people they don't know, and arguing over the pronunciation of Dmitri.
One child even takes it upon herself to argue that Nagisa is a boy's name, it's just unusual. Nobody believes her, but it's a valiant effort.
That has Kaito's fingers running absently over the strap of his watch.
Kaito thinks it must be so easy for his parents. They have each other's names in neat script, standing out stark against their skin from proximity. He knows, from some unidentifiable source, because he has always known, that the names will grow clearer the closer he gets to this soulmate - these soulmates - of his. Both of his markings are pretty clear, he thinks. Not as clear as his parents', but far more than some, like the little girl down the street, whose indent of Pascal is almost unreadable.
In the second grade, he watches an upperclassman at his school burst into tears when she finds her name on the skin of a transfer student. He watches his father's name on his mother's wrist grow paler and darker again as he tours the country. He watches, stunned and aching with disappointment, as Hakuba-something fades and fades one day while he's in the bath, like blood being drained from him, and the soft pink scar becomes almost the colour of his skin.
He bursts into the dining room half-naked, where his mother is rearranging flowers on the table, and shoves his hand in front of her face. "Did she die?" he demands, desperate, his voice unreasonably high. "What happened to her?"
His mother sits him down, patient as can be, and examines the markings, brushing her thumb over them again and again. "She's fine," she says, in that voice she uses when Kaito has scraped his knee or bumped his head and needs reassurance that the world isn't ending, "She's just travelling, like your daddy."
She ruffles his hair, the signal that it's time for him to smile and stop panicking and mourning for someone he's never even met.
Kaito pulls a rose from within his sleeve, and holds it out to the sad little girl beside him. She's waiting for her dad, she says; scared and anxious to the side of a crowded street, and Kaito has done this routine for so many other children before. They cry, and he produces a balloon animal, or a bouquet of carnations. Someone falls on the playground and Kaito says, "Pick a card, any card," working in sync with his teachers so that by the time the child looks down, their wound is cleaned and bandaged and it's almost like it never happened at all.
Kaito has his sleeves rolled to the elbows, left hand firmly in his pocket. He catches a glint of something dark, dark lines on his skin when he gives her the flower, but doesn't look away from her face. "I'm Kuroba Kaito," he says, with a smile. Suddenly, her eyes go very wide. "It's nice to meet you."
The two of them compare markings in the park the next afternoon, both having agreed on the spot not to breathe a word to their families or anyone else. Her name on his wrist goes pale as she drives away in her father's car, back to the colour it always has been. Kaito supposes it must be the same for her.
When they meet again, it's after school and Aoko has arrived when Kaito gets there. She's dumped her bag at the base of the swings, and she's wearing her uniform - he recognises it as belonging to an elementary school nearby. She isn't swinging, just sitting.
"So," she says, when he's seated himself on the swing next to hers, and rolls down her sleeve to show his name on her left wrist, unmistakable. "It's you."
"It's you," he repeats, giving his best reassuring smile when he realises how shy she looks. She's very pretty, he thinks. Kind of short for her age, and her hair is messy, unruly the way his has been since he was born.
Maybe it will give them something to talk about, another time.
They fall into silence. Aoko's feet barely touch the ground, and she has to strain to reach in order to twist herself around and around in her seat, the chain wrapping around itself, creaking. She lets go and it sends her twirling, the swingset protesting loudly under the strain. She kicks him, a little, but Kaito doesn't say anything. She does it again, but she doesn't kick him this time.
She clanks back into place, and glances over at him again. "Do you think we should kiss?"
Kaito blinks, feels himself blushing. "Now?"
Aoko blushes back. She swings her legs, not gaining any momentum, just fidgeting. "Yeah."
Kaito remembers what he always said. "I will never never never never ever kiss--"
"Not yet." He rests the side of his head on the chain and looks sideways at her. "Not until you tell me if you watch Yaiba or not."
It's only months later when Kaito and his mother are nestled in the booth of a little restaurant not far from their home, a treat for the end of term. She's wearing jewellery, so many pretty bracelets and a locket necklace, but Kaito still notices when she reaches for her drink. Something is missing.
He stills her hand, feels his own hand shaking.
She seems to know before he tells her.
Kaito spends almost the entire summer at Aoko's house, which would be so much more exciting under any other circumstance. Whenever Kaito sees his mother, her eyes are rimmed-red with bruised-purple circles beneath, and some mornings Kaito wakes up to find himself looking the same way.
In some strange way, he wishes he could dedicate every moment to mourning. Sometimes he catches himself happily singing along with Aoko's radio, or laughing hysterically when she tickles him, and wonders just what is wrong with him. Other times, he spends the whole night sobbing in his futon on Aoko's bedroom floor, underneath the blankets, because he doesn't have to wear his poker face when nobody can see him.
He convinces himself that Aoko doesn't know, even though she always attempts to bring him breakfast in bed the morning after those nights. Sometimes, he swears he can hear her crying with him. But it's just a coincidence, he thinks, resolutely.
"I could live with you forever," he says one morning, munching on his burnt toast.
She grins and sticks out her tongue. "Try telling that to my dad."
And life goes on.
It has to be admitted that Kaito and Aoko talk a lot. They talk about all sorts of things. They talk about television programs and books and how much they either love or hate their respective teachers, depending how the day went. They talk about magic tricks (Kaito) and animals (mostly Aoko) and chess strategies (a strange mutual phase that lasts most of the third grade) - and then, when the craze hits, they talk about Pokemon, constantly.
What they don't talk about is soulmates.
Kaito supposes that's the thing about meeting your soulmate when you're seven. There isn't much to say about it. Aoko isn't his girlfriend, they aren't planning a wedding - she's just a friend who happens to have his name written on her, and vice versa. Occasionally, in quiet moments, he'll rub his fingertips over the kanji on her left wrist and wonder.
Her left wrist.
Every soulmate mark Kaito has ever seen has been on the right. He has always thought that Aoko's name being on his right means that she is his 'real' soulmate, whereas Hakuba, still faded and pale, is not. So he hides that second name from her, the way he always has.
It feels like cheating. Like an assurance that Aoko will leave, or die, and Kaito will move on. The way he hopes his mother will never move on from his father, he will move on with that secondary soulmate, the faraway Hakuba-
The realisation is like those times he had curiously dipped his finger in hot candlewax - hot and prickly, a tension where he knew it would sting later, but he didn't quite know when.