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There were many stories surrounding soulmates, with many different variations. The red string of fate, getting the name of your soulmate tattooed on your body once you hit a certain age, one of your eyes turning into the color of your soulmate’s eyes, so on and so forth. An heard them all, being told either by her father, or Taiga, or Nagi, for one single reason.
For them, the people of Vivid Street, Soulmates were a different thing altogether. They weren’t someone you found through any physical manifestation that would lead you to them.
“For us it’s much deeper than that.” she remembered Nagi telling her after she read to her a story with the red string of fate tying two people.
“It’s something you need to feel in your heart.” Taiga said to her before he left abroad.
“When you’ll hear the singing voice of that person, you’ll know for sure you found your partner.” her dad told her when she wasn’t sure how two people could even find each other that way.
As An grew up, she couldn’t say she stopped enjoying those kinds of stories, she witnessed many of them in front of her eyes after all, but she did stop thinking it would ever happen to her. After all, if she were to truly have a soulmate, she would have found them by now among the countless people she sought a partner in to surpass RAD WEEKEND.
She refused to believe her soulmate would be someone who called her crazy, or disillusioned, for thinking she could surpass that day, but even among the few people who didn’t do that, whenever she heard them sing, it just never felt right.
From what everyone told her, she knew it was supposed to be a special moment. A moment where you were sure that the voice you were hearing was the one meant to make a beautiful melody with your own. But she, herself, never felt that.
Sure, there were people whose skills she acknowledged, and whose voices she knew were amazing, Akito always being the first person to cross her mind whenever she thought of someone extremely skilled, but they never felt like the piece that was missing from An’s life. Compared to her, Akito did manage to find his soulmate. Whenever she saw him walking around with the boy whose name she heard was Toya, she couldn’t help but feel a familiar emptiness in her chest. It must be nice… was what she always thought whenever she saw the two of them singing together.
She didn’t know what was still driving her to finding a partner at this point, besides desperation. She couldn’t surpass RAD WEEKEND alone, she knew that, but at the same time she couldn’t do anything about no one being out there for her either…
That’s what she used to think for the longest time, until her world quite literally felt like it completely flipped when it all happened to her as well.
In all the stories An heard, meeting your soulmate always ended up feeling like fate, like the entire universe worked towards bringing the two of you together, but meeting Azusawa Kohane felt like anything but that.
Besides the fact that not many female customers attended Weekend Garage, nothing felt unusual about the girl that watched her perform at that time. Sure, An found it a bit strange how she suddenly burst out of the cafe when she approached her, but she didn’t think much of it, not believing she would see the random person again.
But she was proven wrong as the following day she visited their cafe again. She didn’t run away this time when An approached her, but nothing felt unusual about the friendly conversation they started. It didn’t feel like fate when An decided to start singing and Kohane listened to her. It all just felt normal…That was until An finished singing, and Kohane started talking excitedly about how An changed a verse from the original song, singing it to emphasize her point.
The moment she heard that voice was the moment everything suddenly clicked into place. It was brief, the verse Kohane sang was short, so she didn’t get to hear her voice too much, but it was enough for An’s heart to skip a beat, and the atmosphere of the entire room to suddenly change.
The words were out of her mouth before An could even comprehend them, naturally asking Kohane to sing more. She wanted to hear that voice again. No, she needed to hear that voice again. Her heart felt like it would burst out of her chest if she didn’t.
It was incredibly stiff, Kohane being naturally shy for suddenly being put on the spot like that, but despite everything, when An heard it again, she knew for a fact that she never heard anything more beautiful.
Her heart was racing like crazy, more than it ever did, more than she ever expected it to, maybe even more than it did during that legendary day. She felt a huge wave of emotions wash over her, each more powerful than the other, making her feel so overwhelmed that she didn’t know what to latch on for a while.
Her legs were moving on their own as she went and grabbed her own mic, her instinct screaming that whatever happened, she needed to sing with this girl. So she did.
If hearing Kohane sing felt like the most overwhelming thing to happen to An, singing with her felt like the most grounding thing she ever experienced. Every single emotion that washed over her was still there, all present, still a jumbled mess, but nothing felt more right than letting her voice mix with Kohane’s own. At that moment, a sudden calmness overtook her body as she just let herself sing. This was it.
As the song finished, both of them out of breath, looking at each other with wide eyes, An couldn’t help but let out the brightest laughter she did in a while, no doubt in her heart as she spoke up.
“I found you. I’ve finally found you.”