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Kazuya is always chasing after something, someone.
The first instance he can remember is when he was seven and a little too curious for his own good. The red string wrapped around his pinky had always been there, as far back as he can recall, yet he didn’t necessarily understand what it meant. One day, he was tired of the convoluted answers he was getting from the adults around him and decided to simply walk with the string until he reached its end.
He started his journey with excitement unfurling in his stomach as he wondered about what exactly would be waiting for him at the end of his string, but as the day got warmer and brighter, then darker and colder, following the string became too much of a chore. He was chasing and chasing until he was tired and lost. Apparently, he traveled more than three kilometers on his feet alone, using all of his energy and determination to find the end of the line, but maybe he was too young or too naive because nothing ever came out of it. After his brief stint as a missing child, he went home expecting to be scolded by his father; instead, his father told him that there is nothing he can do but wait for his soulmate to come to him on their own terms, that he shouldn’t push fate.
At seven years old, he didn’t understand why his father didn’t want him to seek out whatever is on the end of his string, but now at fourteen, he thinks he’s a little more aware of the world and he’s come to the conclusion that it’s okay to push fate sometimes.
He tugs on his string a lot, but he doesn’t think it does anything to the person on the other end. For all he knows, the string can stretch across mountains and oceans and deserts—would it really be possible for his soulmate to feel every little tug and stretch of the string? He likes to at least think whoever is at the other end of the line can sense the intention and feel the least bit annoyed.
There’s still an urge to follow his string as far as his legs will take him, but the urge is much more settled within him, a dull ache rather than a force so uncontrollably strong he has no choice but to give in. But he still needs something to chase, something to fill the void and distract his mind. He can’t so easily stop chasing after people when it’s something he’s done his entire life. As a kid, he ran after his father’s shadow, and when he got a little older, he followed the boys at his school and on the baseball field. Now, just short of starting high school, he’s found someone else to chase, Takigawa Chris Yu, a boy who is more than just a few steps ahead of him, someone who is out of reach but most definitely still in sight.
He’s relieved to have met Chris, who is, in every way, the catcher he wants to be. Chris encompasses almost everything that occupies Kazuya’s mind: baseball, catching, growing, becoming better. The only thing Chris isn’t is his soulmate, but that’s something he’s already moved past.
He can’t follow his string, so for now, he’ll follow Chris.
__
Kazuya’s first day at Seidou is uneventful, and he has no problem with that. His roommates and the club members he has met so far are pleasant to be around. They are all loud, obnoxious even, but he doesn’t mind the noise. It’s a nice change from the quiet home life he’s become accustomed to in the last handful of years.
His second day is different, though. The second day is when all the club members meet for the first time, all of them convening in the cafeteria for breakfast.
He’s in the middle of eating his first bowl of rice when a loud noise disrupts the easy atmosphere of the room. He follows the sound with his eyes until his gaze eventually falls onto a boy who is too small to be anything other than a first year like him. He feels relieved to find another person who doesn’t quite meet their seniors’ in height and muscle and expectation. He looks back down at his tray after that—the boy who dropped his breakfast doesn’t need anymore attention on him, after all—but out of the very corner of his eye, he spots something bright red and too different in nature to be something he has seen anywhere else but on his own finger.
Before he can control himself, his head whips back to the boy, now picking up the dropped tray and silverware, his hands moving with intent, but Kazuya can only stare at the boy’s pinky, the one with the neatly tied red string around it.
No one can see another person’s string, unless the person is their soulmate.
He stares and stares and stares, but the string doesn’t disappear from his sight. He wills the boy to look at him, to see if the boy can see the string wrapped around his finger too or if this is all a trick of the light, but the boy continues to gather his dropped items from the floor with not so much as a falter in his movements. It is only after the boy stands up with his tray in hand, demeanor nonchalant as if he did not just drop a heaping of food onto the floor, that he finally looks at Kazuya, his eyes narrowed and his lips pursed tightly.
Kazuya is so wrapped up in his stare that he doesn’t realize the boy is marching toward him, one confident stride after another until he skids to a stop in front of him. He doesn’t sit down, though, just hovers over him like he’s waiting for something, but Kazuya is too overwhelmed to think of anything comprehensible to say. The boy is obviously unimpressed, so he sticks out his pinky, the one with the string wrapped around it, and gives another expectant look. Kazuya looks at the string again, but this time he follows the string until it reaches his own. He blinks, then blinks again. The string is no less than a few meters long now, barely long enough to span the length of the room; yet up until this very moment, the string was so long that Kazuya thought it spanned the entire world.
“Oh,” he murmurs, breathless as he focuses solely on the string attached to the boy’s finger. It’s just a red string, like the one that’s on his very own finger, but he can see it.
He can see it.
“Oh?” the boy repeats, his expression twisting into disbelief. “That’s all you have to say? Oh?”
Kazuya tilts his head to the side with a frown. “What else am I supposed to say?” he asks, but he is still staring intently at the string, the one single string that connects their two souls together. A part of him wants to tug on it and see what happens, but he thinks his soulmate will be angry if he did that.
“I don’t know,” the boy grumbles, exasperated as he takes a seat next to Kazuya. He ignores the way Kazuya stiffens, his eyes wide as he looks up and down at the boy and his string of fate. “I’m Youichi. Kuramochi Youichi.”
Kazuya watches as Youichi’s hand lifts off the table, the string falling onto the table as he brings it up for him to shake. “Miyuki Kazuya,” he murmurs, grabbing Youichi’s hand.
“Alright, nice to meet you, Miyuki Kazuya.”
Kazuya thinks Youichi is right. Neither of them are having a normal reaction to finding their soulmate. He thinks Youichi is too nonchalant and casual in his approach, but then again, he himself is stilted and awkward as he tries to find something meaningful to say.
He wonders if this is what it’s like, to chase after something for so long and finally reach the end of the line. It’s underwhelming. He looks at the boy sitting next to him—his soulmate for all intents and purposes now—and relaxes at the familiarity of him. It’s funny since Youichi is just as much a stranger to him as everyone else in the baseball club, but then again, he guesses he can’t have a string attached to himself and another person without feeling somewhat close to him, in one way or another.
It still doesn’t change how annoyed he is by the normality of it all. Ever since he realized he couldn’t just follow his string to its other end, he’s been chasing after people, endlessly running to catch up to them, always feeling like he could never walk right beside them. Now, he’s sitting right beside his soulmate, the person he’s been seeking for the better part of his life, and there’s no feeling of accomplishment or relief or excitement. Having Youichi sit next to him is a familiar presence, or really, the same exact presence as the feeling of the red string on his finger. It’s ever-present. It’s normal.
He wants to huff at that. After chasing his soulmate for so long, his soulmate came to him instead. It feels like fate is laughing at him, a cruel thing to do considering how he’s spent the better part of his life desperately reaching for other people’s backs in the vain hope of distracting himself from the unattainable. But in the end, he can’t be too bothered by it because he’s sitting right beside the one person he couldn’t stop chasing. He might as well bask in the warm, familiar feeling for the rest of his life now that he is no longer chasing after the ghost of that feeling.
He turns to his soulmate who is now eating his food without much change in his behavior either. “Nice to meet you, too, Kuramochi Youichi.”
His soulmate grins, grains of rice at the corners of his mouth, and that’s enough for Kazuya to smile back.