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Yuuta and Maki. Two sides of a coin, unmarked, worn down by the greedy hands that sought to gain them for their own ends.
Okkotsu Yuuta was born without a single mark on his skin to indicate that he had been destined for anyone. He’d checked every inch, pinched at skin, closely inspected every crevice, but he was pale from the skin of his forehead to his toes; unmarked, unloved.
When he’d met Rika, freshly nine years old and still unbroken by this knowledge, hopeful for reasons his older self now couldn’t recall … he’d felt something tugging in his chest, a calling. Yuuta felt, stupidly, as though the moment he set eyes on Rika had cemented something, and he’d half expected to look down at his skin and find it blooming with colour.
(It had not, and Yuuta learned exactly what happened when he went against the universe’s wishes, what happened to greedy little boys who wanted to reach out for something that wasn’t theirs.
A puddle of blood, a curse bestowed unto him by a vengeful universe, a bright, young smile forever lost.)
Zenin Maki was born without a soulmark, too. Condemned, perhaps, to the kind of bleak existence every Zenin deserved—her own words, spilled out of her lips one late night over a pile of paperwork and empty coffee mugs.
“Do you ever wonder why?” he’d asked, studying the roughened skin on the back of his knuckles. It wasn’t like Yuuta hadn’t spent almost every waking moment agonising over the answer—that maybe he wasn’t good enough for another person, that no one on this godforsaken planet could love him—but Maki was different.
Maki who shone with the kind of muted anger that sent chills down his body was not weak. He bet she never had to stay up all night doubting whether her hands deserved to cradle another’s body. Pondering if she was tainted or broken. He bet Maki carried her unmarked skin with pride.
Someone so beautiful like her couldn’t possibly belong to anyone anyway. She wasn’t made to be tethered. Maki was meant to fly, to rage, to climb unreachable heights.
“I don’t care,” she shrugged, not looking up from her reports. “I wouldn’t have allowed it anyway, but even this world understood that no one’s meant to lay a claim on me, Okkotsu.”
Fierce. She was fierce in ways that Yuuta wished for in his marrow. Maki was all armour and unfailing strength and enough courage to crack the world down the middle without flinching.
He watched her sometimes, discreetly he hoped, as she chipped away at every obstacle in her path in that same steadfast determination he’d spied on her face on their first meeting. Maki was terrifying. She had nothing; no clan or innate jujutsu powers or a soulmark, and yet she had the strength in her fingers to rip the world apart.
Yuuta longed, irrationally, to be devoured by those scarred hands. To be pulled apart to his base components, to nothing, to be reduced at her whim. Maybe if she dug into his core she would see that despite having earned the wrath of the gods in the form of cursing his first love, Yuuta was still incapable of letting go of his rose-coloured hopes that somewhere out there was a person meant for him.
(Yuuta longed, without words, for her to be the one.)
Yuuta was eighteen, unmarked, untethered, and Maki was at once marked pink from head to toe, frayed at the seams.
Reduced to something Yuuta didn’t recognise.
Oh, her grace and lethality were all still there, and she wielded her fists with the devastating power of a bulldozer. But behind the inferno of her ceaseless anger was a vacancy that stretched like an endless abyss.
Now he looked at her and saw a void. Beautiful, ruinous Maki, now a ruin herself. He could see her hurt all over her skin, her loss everywhere on her body from the emptiness of her honey gaze to the way she was still an instrument of destruction even when there was no reason for her to be wielded anymore; the Zenin clan was finally destroyed.
He wanted to tell her she was free now. That she could shed her cracked armour and weep for what was lost, and maybe allow Yuuta the unparalleled privilege of her insecurities and fears.
“I lied,” she said, when he’d voiced his thoughts. “I always wondered if I was only meant to be a vessel filled up with hate; the Zenin clan’s curse. My whole life was spent honing and sharpening that hatred to something lethal enough to end them.”
Yuuta listened, his heart a burning weight in his chest.
“It was easier to think that than to wonder why Mai had a soulmark and I didn’t. My father told me it was because I’m broken, a shame on the family name that would never deserve the love of another.”
Oh, how gravely mistaken that poor bastard was, and if Yuuta was a more vengeful man he would have dug up his bones just to piss on them. No one deserved to tell Maki what she was or wasn’t. “Well, fuck him,” Yuuta said bluntly, earning her surprised gaze. “You’re not a means to an end, Maki, you’re a person. So fuck him if he thinks you should only exist to fulfil some ulterior motive in his life.”
Maki cracked a frail smile. “Thanks, Yuuta.”
Her gratitude churned in his stomach but he was not done, his mouth had a mind of its own. “I’m glad you exist,” he said, unable to meet her eyes. “We might not have soulmarks but it could be that we were granted the obscure privilege of having a choice.”
“You think we get to choose?” Maki’s voice held a lilt of surprise at the notion.
Now Yuuta’s palms were clammy, and his heart thundered loudly in his ears. Would he tell her after all? “I think…” his voice wavered a little. “Unmarked people exist for a reason. Maybe we aren’t meant for one person, maybe we can choose the one we want, and that makes them our soulmate.”
He wanted to fall into hysterics. Yuuta knew how naïve that thought was. Rika ended up in a puddle of blood. But looking at Maki, even this broken and flayed but unequivocally alive, surged hope into his chest.
“And who do you want, Yuuta?” Her voice had softened, perhaps with uncertainty, perhaps with trepidation to what Yuuta would say.
By god, they were sitting in the dirt on the peak of a mountain they’d spent an entire day climbing, both worn out and sweaty, and Yuuta was stupid enough to tell her. Was stupid enough to take one look at her face reflecting the warm hues of the setting sun and crumble apart like an idiot. “I want you.”
What a frightening proclamation. Who dared to want Maki? Maki was a force of nature, she didn’t stop or slow down for anyone. She could easily plough Yuuta over.
“Yuuta…” her voice cracked, trailing off. He suspected what she would say: that he was an idiot, that this couldn’t be—this impossible fantasy of his was childish. Unmarked people were unmarked because they would never belong to anyone.
“I know it’s stupid,” he said, chancing a glance at her expression—cracked open and shocked—to meet her eyes. “But if we get to choose … if we could choose … if we could have anyone in this whole world … I would choose you, Maki.”
They watched the sun for a while, Yuuta with his heart in his throat, and Maki silent beside him.
“No one ever chooses me,” she whispered eventually, knees hugged to her chest.
“Because they’re idiots,” Yuuta’s vehemence was dulled with the fear of loss—was she going to leave now? Never to be found again?
A touch at the back of his hand startled him so profoundly he froze. “Yuuta,” she said, like the way his name sounded rolling off her tongue wasn’t a sin in itself, a torment. “I think I would choose you, too.”
His head whipped around to face her, breath caught in his lungs. I would choose you, too. Had he imagined that? Yuuta's lips opened and closed soundlessly.
The sting of tears in his eyes was unmistakable. Despite every belief and rose coloured dream he had, Yuuta never truly believed it.
Maki’s fingers tentatively touched his cheek. “You look scared.”
He was. He was scared of what it meant for them to want each other without the interference of higher powers. But if a god did exist, then Yuuta hoped he would stay far, far away from them, that he would forget them, mark them down as two insignificant souls undeserving of his attention.
Yuuta surged forward to kiss her. It was thoughtless and impulsive; he didn’t want Maki to see his fear, he wanted her to see his conviction.
Their lips caught on teeth for a moment, but he cradled her face in his palms, eased the pressure to something comforting and imploring.
He always thought Maki would taste like victory. She tasted warm. Like temptation. It fluttered all the way down to his chest, worming beneath his ribs.
This part of her was delicate and soft in ways Yuuta failed to anticipate, and failed again now to memorise when her sweet breath curled with his own and Yuuta’s head went pleasantly blank.
They parted with an inaudible gasp, heads resting together.
“I’m only scared of what I feel,” he confessed in a breathless whisper against her temple. “It’s too big to contain, Maki, it’s terrifying.”
Her fingers curled in his shirt, the hot puffs of her breath burning on his neck. “This could end badly.”
“I know,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to breathe through the agony of it.
It already felt so dangerous, just having this little piece of her, just clinging to each other like this. Yuuta stole kisses from her skin—her hairline, the side of her face, her cheek, the corner of her mouth—with growing desperation.
He didn’t want this to end. Having Maki once was more torturous than never having her at all.
She kissed him back when their lips met again, without hesitation, with that same muted pain and desperation he was feeling. “Please,” he found himself pleading for something he didn’t know how to articulate.
Her fingers in his hair tugged hard, pulled him impossibly closer, and only let him go when she ripped her mouth away for breath. “Okay,” she said gaspingly, each shuddering breath tickling his skin. “Fuck, okay.”
Yuuta held her against him, nearly shaking. Please, please, please, he begged to any diety that would listen. Let me have this.
“You’re mine,” he said, not quietly, proclaiming it to the universe, staking his claim. “I choose you.”
That feeling he once had on the side of a pavement, was nothing compared to the way his chest was nearly caving in now. He would look down on his skin again and wonder if it was blooming with an inferno of colours but it wouldn’t matter anyway.
He felt it all inside his ribcage. Something was blooming, there was an inferno, even if he couldn’t see it, even if he couldn’t brandish it for Maki as a proof of the reality of his feelings.
So he held her open palm to his chest and hoped she would understand without words, that she would feel it for herself.
“I choose you,” he said again, breathing together.
Nothing had ever felt more right.