Chapter Text
astra inclinant, sed non obligant.
The stars incline us, they do not bind us.
The first time Akaashi Keiji hears about Red Days, he is ten and a setter already, only a few seasons away from his first inter-school match.
“Kojiro-san, do you know where Haruto-san is?”
Another fourth grader turns slightly at Akaashi’s question; his round, open face settling on an answer before his voice ever does. “Oh, Haruto is having his Red Day,” he answers, friendly smiles caught between wonder and envy. “It’s his birthday today, obviously—and so he didn’t come to class today, either. A good decision, I say, since we also had PE in the first period. Imagine having to run laps with that stuff hanging from your finger! You’ll trip and make a fool of yourself in no time at all, and then Hayashi-sensei will probably yell at you for making a scene.” He laughs. “There are four kids in my class who have already had their first Red Days. Man, that is so cool, don’t you think? I can’t wait for mine to show up just to see what the fuss is all about.”
“Uh, sure, but—” Akaashi is on the verge of asking Kojiro just what on earth he’s babbling about, but then the coach’s whistle rings throughout the gym, blowing shrill and uninterrupted. It’s the signal of their practice starting, and so he promptly sets his question aside, letting Kojiro clap him on the back and steer him toward the rest of their teammates for some early briefing. They are soon divided into two teams, with Akaashi as the setter of Team A, and at another blow of the whistle, he quickly tries to settle into his practiced rhythm of the game.
The day ultimately ends with a win, 2-1 in favor of Team A, because after a botched first set, Akaashi learned to put his absent wing spiker out of his mind. He goes home with windswept hair and a floating heart, and thinks no more of the connection between birthdays, finger-hung stuff, and cool-but-fussy red days.
/
The next time he sees Haruto at practice, Akaashi is immediately regaled with tales of his friend’s predicament. His excuse for skipping school and staying home all day came in the form of a red thread, starting from the bottom crease of his left little finger and ending none at all. It stretched for as long as his eyes could see, he said, spanning his entire neighborhood like a weird electricity cable, and he would have followed it across Tokyo if his mother hadn’t made him stay put by bribing him with video games and the latest issue of Shounen Jump.
“Gosh, I really wish I’d been able to find out who’s on the other end of it.” Haruto sighs in the middle of a drill, hands curled around a continuously wall-bounced ball. “That way, I wouldn’t have to be so heartbroken over Yuuko-chan not noticing me yet again.”
At that, Akaashi stops his own ball and twirls it slightly with one hand, considering his options of a response:
A) Give him a generic, non-committal sound signifying agreement. Something like “Mm-hmm”, or something equally supportive. I believe in you, bro. I always got your back.
B) Ask him a follow-up question, because he seriously doesn’t understand just what the hell the red thread is supposed to be, and why it is somehow significant enough to put a stop to a fourth-grader’s pining over his school’s definition of the perfect girl.
C) Convince him that one day, thread or no thread, Yuuko-chan is bound to notice him and probably even return his affection if he will just say hello to her, for god’s sake. And, oh yeah—because you’re such a cool guy too, Haruto-san. Yuuko-chan is missing out, that’s for sure.
A is the most unpredictable one, because Haruto might then realize that Akaashi doesn’t actually understand the conversation’s topic while simultaneously lying about it, and that can come off as horribly impolite. C can also be troublesome, because knowing Haruto, he’ll probably take what Akaashi says as encouragement to go after Yuuko-chan and embarrass himself in front of her only to run away at the first sign of her attention, and then Akaashi will have to be the one who ends up apologizing and chasing after his sorry ass.
Alright. Option B it is, then.
“Why is that, Haruto-san?” he asks, “What is the red thread supposed to do?”
“What, Akaashi, you really don’t know?” Haruto asks him right back with widened eyes, looking rather at a loss for words. “Wow, I assume you know everything… But oh well, I guess it’s still pretty early in the school year and it’s possible that no one in your class has turned ten yet. And you also don’t have an older sibling, so...”
Akaashi watches as Haruto straightens, his ball firmly kept between both hands. He pivots on his feet to face Akaashi, and his face is serious and almost wistful as he tells him, “As far as I know, the Red Thread of Fate literally connects you to your destiny. To the person you’re gonna be together forever with. Everybody has one, but we can only see our own, and only for a few specific days in our lives. Like on our tenth birthday, for example. And then again on our fifteenth, and again when we finally meet that special person. There is one other day, though—or I guess it’s more like, a chance situation—but it’s kind of the exception, and not everyone gets that chance. I forgot the details about that one, but hey, I’m gonna ask my mom and tell you later, okay? Or you can ask your mom too, in the meantime!”
“Hey, Akaashi, Haruto! Are you two here to chat, or to practice?!”
“Practice, Coach!” Having been jolted back into position, Akaashi starts picking up his passing drills right where he left off, and beside him, Haruto quickly does the same. They laugh at each other when they are given cleaning duty at the end of practice as punishment for talking too much, and because the words destiny and together forever aren’t really meaningful when you’re right on the edge of turning ten, Akaashi goes home much like the day before, with spring sunset lighting up his horizon and fated red threads perfectly absent from his mind.
/
When Akaashi’s tenth birthday finally rolls around, it greets him in a bold burst of the color red, just as he's expected.
It is the first thing he sees upon waking up, a vibrant string of fire on a winter morning’s blue-gray shade. It trails all over his bed and spills onto the floor, slipping under the cracks of his bedroom door and extending endlessly, flowing like a river to some strange, unknown place. “Mom?” he calls, once he sees his mother coming into his bedroom to wake him up, “Can you tell me what this is?”
“Hm? This what, Keiji?” She arrives at the edge of his bed in a flurry of bright green dress, bending at the waist and pressing a kiss to his temple. “Happy birthday, by the way. Your favorite cake’s already waiting downstairs.”
“Thank you.” Akaashi smiles, then holds up his left little finger for her to see. “And I mean this. Is this what my friends mean when they say they’ve had their first Red Day?”
“Ah.” His mother sighs softly, almost in fond nostalgia. “Yes, I should think it is. You’re talking about the long, red string tied on your little finger, correct?”
At Akaashi’s nod, she gently takes his left hand, briefly examining his fingers and the blunt, curved spaces between. “That’s your Red Thread of Fate, Keiji,” she says, pressing a thumb on the fleshiest part of his little finger, “You were born with it. Everyone was, including me, but we can only see it a small number of times in our lives—and only our own thread, no one else’s... Although, there is one exception for that, I suppose. A special privilege, granted only to the lucky few.” She pauses, staring at Akaashi with appraising eyes. “Would you like to hear more about that?”
“Sure.” Akaashi nods again, and because he can never say no to the prospect of new information, he proceeds to keep his calm hand inside his mother’s and settles more comfortably on his bed, listening to the thread’s woven rules like they are the universe’s secrets on magical but impossible things; like eternal youth, or turning lead into gold, or finding his one true love.
(Well, those are exactly what they are. Akaashi just doesn’t know that yet.)
/
“Listen well, Keiji. You can only begin to see, and feel, your own thread at four different kinds of Red Days:
One, on the morning of your tenth birthday. Yes, that’s today.
Two, on the afternoon of your fifteenth birthday, when the sun is at its highest, hottest peak in the sky.
On those two occasions, you’d better stay home and not go anywhere—not even to school, your teachers will understand—because the thread will be visible for almost the whole day, and when it is visible, it is also tangible, even if you’re the only one who can see it.
Now go on, try touching or tugging it. Can you feel it in your hands? Good. See? You’re the only one who can lay a finger on it, yes, but it is still a very solid, very present thing. And that means, if you’re not careful, you can accidentally get it tangled, or knotted, or even broken apart entirely, and trust me, you don’t want that.”
“Why, Mom?”
“Because that thread will lead you to your soulmate, Keiji. Its other end is attached to them, and if one day it breaks before you meet them, then how in the world would the two of you find each other?”
/
From ten to fifteen, Akaashi grows. Around him, Red Days fall into place for other people like the changing of seasons, swift and true and undeniable. There are some of his classmates who get lucky and barrell straight into their Red Days at the random age of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen—boys and girls having chance encounters in the corridors or the cafeteria and returning with their hands linked together, buoyant happiness painting their faces. Akaashi watches them all fit into each other like they were made from the same mold—always touching, always looking at each other like the whole world just melts away everytime their eyes meet—and he starts to wonder if it all will happen to him too, one day. If he will also meet someone he always wants around, and if he will look at that person like they put all the stars in the night sky. Akaashi doesn’t think he will ever be that sappy, but they say soulmates can make you do crazy things, things you would never have done otherwise, and suddenly he isn’t so sure anymore.
Oh, well. Not that I desperately want a soulmate, anyway.
What Akaashi wants, actually, is to just know, to experience what having a soulmate will make him feel. He wants to know if it is really that life-changing, if it will genuinely make him want to live and drown in the present moment’s entirety instead of escaping into his thoughts and daydreams. He just wants to know if being with this person—his soulmate— will actually feel better than being alone, and if they will ever turn him from an outsider to emotions into an active participant instead.
“Akaashi-san, tomorrow’s your birthday, isn’t it? Have you submitted your leave of absence letter to Hoshi-sensei yet?”
“Oh, that’s right, I haven’t. But I have it right here.” Akaashi opens the back cover of his notebook and takes out an envelope, neatly addressed to his homeroom teacher. “Thanks for reminding me, Sanada-san. I’ll make sure to deliver it before I go home today.”
“Sounds great! Happy birthday in advance, Akaashi-san!”
“Thank you.”
As he watches his class president leave the chemistry lab, Akaashi starts thinking about birthdays and absences, and if fate really is something worth escaping the world for.
/
The next day, Akaashi’s thread appears, but it’s not red anymore.
It’s black, darker-than-night black, the kind of total darkness that brings dead things to mind, and at that moment, Akaashi understands why the end of scenes in movies and books are usually called fade to black.
Because it is a kind of fading, for him and his fate. It is a kind of ending, one that doesn’t give birth to a whole other range of sequels, but it’s also one that might open into a new scene or chapter with its own share of conflicts, and so, doesn’t it mean that endings are actually, secretly beginnings?
The thread around his finger is now so short, shorter than a fully-burnt candle, and Akaashi knows it’s not normal.
It’s broken.
His tether to his soulmate is broken, and even if he still can’t decide how he feels about that fact, he can only hope that it doesn’t mean that his soulmate has been broken, as well.
/
“Um, I think that’s easy, Mom. If my thread breaks before I find my soulmate, then I assume one of these two things will happen:
1) We will find each other anyway. They say soulmates are fated to meet and fall in love, right? Maybe I can prove whether or not that belief is right.
2) We will not find each other at all. I will go on to find someone else, or maybe I won’t find anyone at all, and the same thing will probably happen to them, too. It’s as simple as that, and I don’t think it’s really that bad, and I don’t think I will regret not meeting them very much, because—
Because, you know—How do you mourn something that has always been dead? Something that has never been alive, not even for a moment?
How can you get sad over losing something you’ve never even had in the first place?”
/
“Yo, Akaashi! Happy belated birthday, man! How’s your Red Day?”
“Fine, I guess,” Akaashi answers, mild as ever. “Thank you, by the way. Did I miss anything important yesterday?”
Haruto frowns a little, thinking it over, then suddenly brightens in recollection. “Oh! Have you heard about Suzuki-san yet?”
“Suzuki-san from Class 3-2? No. What about her?” I meant anything important in lessons, Haruto-san.
“Well, you know that she’s dating Maeda-san from Class 3-1, don’t you?” Haruto takes a seat in the empty chair in front of Akaashi’s desk, opening his lunchbox with a soft clatter. “They say she dumped him, because she just had a Red Day. Her third one, you know,” he says, breaking apart a pair of chopsticks, “In other words, she’s found her soulmate.”
“And her soulmate is not Maeda-san?”
“That’s right. I heard he’s some junior from Shinzen High. She met him last week.” Haruto spears a tamagoyaki with one half of his chopsticks, nibbling on the edge before taking a hearty bite. “And you know what makes it sadder for Maeda-san? Turns out he’s already had his third Red Day as well, back when they were still together, and it’s not the usual kind.” He pauses, swallows, and lets out a pitying sigh. “Poor guy actually thought Suzuki-san was his soulmate, and even after having his Red Day and seeing her thread completely unconnected to his, he still stayed with her for months before finally getting dumped.”
“I see,” Akaashi replies, slowly chewing on his salmon onigiri. “So she was his exception, but he’s never going to be hers, is that it?”
“Exactly.” Haruto sighs again. “And you wanna know what makes this whole thing even worse?”
“What?”
“They say Maeda-san’s thread has been broken ever since his first Red Day. Imagine that, Akaashi! Imagine never being able to meet your soulmate, or meeting them without knowing whether or not they’re your soulmate, because I heard our threads turn black and hopelessly short when they get broken, and that way, it will be so easy to miss your soulmate, won’t it? If you meet them on the street or something, there won’t be any long, red thing connecting the two of you, and you can only see whatever remains of your threads for a couple of minutes anyway, just like the rest of us. How on earth, then, will you find your way to each other?” Haruto puts down his chopsticks, looking frustrated. “Gosh, if that were me, I probably wouldn’t be able to look any girl in the eye without thinking of her as my soulmate, and I’d just end up having Red Days over and over.” He laughs. “But hey, at least that way, I’d be able to find my soulmate by process of elimination, right? Of all the girls I’d meet in life, one of them has got to have a broken thread that matches mine.”
“It wouldn’t work, Haruto-san,” Akaashi gently argues, “Because for the exception to kick in, you have to really mean it. You have to really see her as your soulmate, and choose her to be your soulmate, without taking the thread into account at all. That means you have to truly decide that she’s the only one for you, and that you won’t love anybody else, even if she’s not your actual soulmate in the traditional sense. That’s the reason why not a lot of people get to experience a fourth Red Day, let alone a fifth, a sixth, or so on.” He shrugs, smiling a little when he sees the start of Haruto’s scowl. “That’s what my mom told me, at least.”
“Ugh, Akaashi, you know what? You have this annoying habit of always being right.” Haruto picks his chopsticks back up and continues eating, still with a childish frown on his face. “I still wouldn’t like to have my thread broken, though. I think it would make me really sad.”
Akaashi stops chewing, the tailend of a past question finding its way back to the forefront of his mind. “Why would it make you sad, Haruto-san?” he asks, shoulders tense in anticipation of a second answer, the first one being his mother’s, “Why would you get sad over—not finding someone you’ve never even met? How do you get sad over losing something you’ve never even had in the first place?”
“Well, I don’t think it’s about the loss… Not really, at least.” Haruto narrows his eyes, taps his chin with the points of his chopsticks. “I think what would really make me sad is the missed opportunity, you know? The knowledge that you should have had something, but you never did?” He sighs. “And don’t even get me started about experiencing something like what Maeda-san just had to go through. To fall in love with someone who isn’t your soulmate, and to always be on guard against the possibility of them leaving you for their soulmate, all while knowing that you’ll probably never be able to do the same?” Haruto scoffs, shaking his head. “I think that knowledge would just kill me, man. Figuratively speaking, that is.”
“Ah, okay. I see,” Akaashi says, even though he doesn’t see, not really. “But if I think about it some more, having your thread broken can also be a kind of freedom, can’t it? That way, you can love anyone you want, choose anyone you want. And then you can tell them that you fell in love with them not because of some supernatural thread connecting you two together, but really because of who they are as a person.”
“That’s a very interesting point of view,” Haruto replies, pointing a finger-gun at Akaashi with his left hand. “But, Akaashi—You’ll gain freedom, yes, but there’s another thing that I think you will end up sacrificing.”
“Which is?”
“Certainty.” Haruto smiles, a little wistfully. “You’ll lose the certainty that you will love them, and more importantly, that they will love you in return. See, if you don’t have that, can you still tell me that you’ll make the decision to choose them? To be your only one? Over and over again? Even if you know that they most likely won’t choose you back, because their thread is probably not broken? Honestly, Akaashi, will you really hurt yourself that way?
When after two minutes have passed and Akaashi is still quiet, Haruto gives a little nod. “That’s right, Akaashi,” he says, “That’s right. You don’t know. You don’t know if you ever will, and that, my friend, is the reason why we should definitely take care of our thread.”
/
“It’s not the loss that will one day take on the power to hurt you, Keiji. It’s the longing.
It’s always, always the longing.”
/
“Hey, Akaashi, I heard there are high-school volleyball matches happening right now in the city gymnasium! Wanna go check it out?”
“Um, sure.” Akaashi finishes tying his shoelaces, then stands up to find Haruto smiling eagerly at him. “Which high-schools, by the way?”
“I have no idea.” Haruto shakes his head, still grinning. “I just think they would be cool. Come on, let’s go! Fukuroudani might be playing! You’ve earned a recommendation to join their team, right?”
“Uh… Well, yeah, I guess.” Akaashi shrugs, then follows Haruto out of their school gym, not knowing that the city gymnasium will be the place where he finally starts to understand what his mother previously said about longing.
/
The moment Akaashi walks through the door, he recalls again that itching, burning question that’s been constantly circling around his mind since the day he found out his thread was broken:
How do you get sad over losing something you’ve never even had in the first place?
There’s a jump and a laugh, done almost simultaneously, followed by a ball being spiked so hard it crashes into the opponent’s court in a sense of doom and fiery rain. It bounced against the floor before colliding with the wall, then rolled back a few inches forward, and was immediately declared in-bounds. Untouched, unreceived, undefeated.
Perfect.
Now there’s the sound of more laughter, loud and unrestrained, as the player who just hit the ball celebrates his success, getting slapped across the back by his teammates. He laughs like there’s no tomorrow, every line of happiness and pride lighting up his face like sunrise, and with the coming of the next rallies, Akaashi watches him take to the sky in both success and failure, and finds that even his occasional, deeply-felt frustration is as captivating as his starlit joy.
No, it’s not about the loss, Akaashi realizes, as he searches and searches the hitter’s hand for some remains of a discolored thread and finds nothing. It’s about the missed chances, the hastily-scrapped possibilities, without even the presence of something safe and certain to fall back on.
It’s about the longing for something I know I can never have, something that’s not meant for me but for someone else, all while knowing that nothing is meant for me in return.
“To think he’s still just a first-year… He doesn’t seem like one at all.”
Oh, but he does, Akaashi thinks, answering a random audience’s musings inside his head, He does seem like a first-year—like a complete volleyball rookie, even—with that wide-eyed passion burning so bright he looks to be drowning in it. He doesn’t have the weary, determined gaze of a veteran trying to win their last few matches, and he doesn’t show the unquestionable, war-seasoned confidence of a true expert, either.
He goes into this match with his greatest power and brilliance, yes, but also with ample room to grow and a genuine desire to keep doing better. His skill may be on par with the seniors, but his attitude is just… It’s on a whole different level, something above but also below, something that just keeps on giving and renewing, and I...
…and I like seeing him that way.
That day, all throughout the full-set match, every time the hitter—Fukuroudani’s Number 12— tries to grab point after point, Akaashi watches him handle each ball like it’s his very first time on the court, with his soul still filled to the brim with serious love and amazement for the game. He watches him pour that love into each movement, golden eyes lit up like a call to action, and when he bursts through the air like a rising star, Akaashi can’t help but feel himself rise, as well.
Like Venus in the night sky, where each daylight blazes for a year,
Tell me, universe, does he burn this bright for his soulmate, too?
/
“So, Keiji. The first two Red Days I’ve told you about are no doubt certain and definite, because they are tied to your birthdays. However, the third and fourth kinds… They are not that clear-cut, I’m afraid.
The third one, as far as I know, will happen on the day you meet your soulmate. No one knows how or when that day will come for them, but the moment you are within a certain distance of each other, your thread will appear, and so will theirs, because your threads are one and the same. They are connected, both of you are connected, and so you’ll be able to find your way to each other that way.
As for the fourth kind… See, this is a little tricky. You’ll only get this particular kind of Red Day when you find yourself looking into someone’s eyes and thinking of them as your soulmate—and I mean really, truly think of them as the only person in the whole entire world that you will keep choosing, and keep loving, for the rest of your life, no matter if they are your real soulmate or not. You have to really, selflessly mean it, and on the rare occasion that you do, you’ll be able to see your thread as well as theirs. No matter if they are connected or not.
No matter if they are connected or not, because you have chosen to be connected to them using your heart instead, and you know what? That is not a bad situation to be in, not at all, because—
Because, Keiji, the thing about your heart is… It might just be stronger and more durable than a fate-woven thread, and when it decides to make a choice—a real, committed, conscious choice—sometimes it can also take on power to defy the world.”
/
The hitter’s name is Bokuto Koutarou, Akaashi soon learns, and it is a very fitting name for a boy of light, who hunts for his dreams even in the darkest realm of possibilities, with all the unwavering intensity of a fearless bird of prey.
/
“Keiji, darling, the phone’s ringing! Can you help me get it?”
“Coming, Mom. Hello?”
Later in the week, when Fukuroudani calls his home number to confirm his admission next spring, Akaashi answers them with the easiest Yes he’s ever made in his life.