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There are threads tied to Hitoka’s fingers. Two yellow ones around her left pinky, a dozen pink ones around her right middle finger, a green one around her right pinky, all of them connecting her to people she’s yet to meet, all of them promises.
There’s one more thread, tied around Hitoka’s left middle finger. Unlike the others, it’s invisible, just pressure against her skin, so soft she sometimes forgets it’s there, until she looks up and sees the red strands around other people’s fingers, and she wonders where hers leads to, holds it between her right thumb and index finger and tugs, waits to see if someone around her is looking around in confusion, wondering why they just felt like someone pulled their hand.
She’s been pulling the thread every now and then for years, and the only reaction she gets are curious looks when someone sees her strange movement.
+
Hitoka had been three years old when she realized nobody else could see the threads. She’d ran to her mother and asked her about the red thread, and her mother had told her that everyone has a soulmate, and that a red string unites them. Hitoka had asked about the pink threads then, and the green ones, and the yellow ones, and her mother had furrowed her brow.
“What threads?”
“The threads around our fingers!” Hitoka had said, raising her hands. “I have lots of pink ones, and two yellow ones, and a green one, and you have a red one, and a pink one, and a yellow one. What are they, mom?”
Her mom had thought it was all a game, that Hitoka had a great imagination, and Hitoka had been left confused, no answer to these strands tying people together, these lines that Hitoka could touch and follow, but which never tangled and which couldn’t be cut.
Hitoka never mentioned the threads again, just gaped when her mother’s new assistant showed up, his yellow thread connecting him to Hitoka’s mother.
+
Hitoka thinks the threads don’t work how they should. They’re not straight lines connecting people, they’re lines on the floor that follow the exact routes taken by their owners, they shorten when the person returns to a spot they’d previously passed through, and become longer when they move farther from the person meant for them. They’re never taut, unless Hitoka pulls on them, and she’d learned early on not to do that, because the people at the end of the line always reacted. They’d look around for the source of the tug, looking strangely hopeful for a second, and Hitoka’s heart would break for them.
She learns to stop paying attention to the threads, except for the few times she finds people that are connected and don’t know it. In those cases, Hitoka fights back the embarrassment, takes the strand in one hand and pulls. She’s made ten great friendships start that way, and four romances.
+
Hitoka was seven when she saw a thread disappear for the first time, or at least the first time she realized that a thread was disappearing. She was passing in front of a hospital - all the threads that came out from it looked like a long, colorful carpet leading to the entrance - and saw a bright green line vanish in front of her eyes, quickly and without warning. Hitoka stood there for an hour, waiting, her nerves on edge, until she saw another line, a pink one, disappear. Hitoka understood.
She looked at her hands and counted all the strands for the first time, wondering if it was the same amount she’d had since she’d first noticed them. The green one was still there, as well as the yellow ones, but she’d never paid attention to the pink ones, had never worried about their exact amount.
That was also the day she realized there was a thread tied around her left middle finger. As she’d been counting the pink threads, she’d brushed an invisible one. She’d held onto it, followed it by touch to the base of her left middle finger, where the red strand in everybody else’s hands was tied to. She squinted at her hand, and she thought she saw a thin red line in the air, but as soon as she lost focus she couldn’t see it again, even though she could still feel it.
She’d been twelve when she’d seen one of her pink threads disappear. She’d cried for days, counting over and over again the twelve pink threads that were left, holding onto the invisible red one around her middle finger for fear that it might be gone if she let go.
+
Through the years, Hitoka has found some of the people connected to her by pink threads. The first one had been a boy in her third year of school. He’d smiled brightly whenever he’d seen her, had shared snacks and walked her home often, and she’d thought the days were better when he talked to her, had wanted to share every good thing that happened in her day-to-day life with him.
She thinks he liked her too, but he’d moved to another city by the end of the year, and she hasn’t seen him again.
She’d told herself it didn’t matter, because their thread had been pink, not red. As a way to forget her sadness, she’d tried to follow her red thread by touch.
She’d given up after walking five blocks.
+
The third year girl that asks her to join the boys’ volleyball club is so beautiful that Hitoka could stare at her forever, wants nothing more than to spend her days around her, getting to know her, falling in love with her words and her actions.
Please let it be her, Hitoka thinks. There’s already a red strand around Shimizu’s finger, but Hitoka has seen enough people with more than one red thread to be deterred by that. She pulls her invisible thread, but there’s no reaction, and then she notices that they are connected by pink. It hurts Hitoka more than if there hadn’t been anything between them.
Her spirits go up after she visits the club, when she finds the two people connected to her by yellow.
Hinata and Kageyama are passionate, full of life and love for what they do, and Hitoka’s thankful that they’re hers, that she is theirs, that if she can find a way to approach them she’ll be allowed to spend the rest of her life with them, thinking of them as examples, being inspired by their strength. Maybe, one day, she’ll be able to be of some use to them as well.
When they ask her for her help to study, she has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself from smiling, because it’s starting, because her chance came earlier than she’d expected.
She’d give them the world if she could. She doesn’t need the yellow thread to tell her that these two can be the best friends she’ll ever have.
She stops pulling her invisible red thread after that, but she keeps feeling for it every now and then, just to know that that person is alive.
+
Yamaguchi has only one pink thread, and it connects him to the same person as his yellow thread.
Hitoka had noticed by accident, when he’d offered her a plate with meat during the barbecue at the end of the training camp with the other schools. He’d offered her the food with his left hand, and it had taken Hitoka a moment to realize that there wasn’t any red against his skin, just yellow. She’d seen enough people without any red or pink threads to think it strange, had already learned that some people just didn’t fall in love, and she smiled to herself because there was someone out there who was meant for him as a friend, but then she’d seen the pink thread tied to his right hand and she’d frozen.
She’d quickly accepted the food and walked away from Yamaguchi, and she’d sat on the stairs and pretended not to be looking at him, trying to see where his pink thread went to. Hitoka hadn’t needed to make a big effort, because the strand ended just a few meters away, on Tsukishima’s right hand, but Tsukishima did have a red thread, and it connected him to the boy he was currently talking to.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, Hitoka thinks, over and over, watching Tsukishima and the other boy. She’s startled out of her thoughts when Yamaguchi approaches her.
“Sorry,” he says, when she looks at him with too-wide eyes. “I didn’t mean to scare you! I was worried… you left really quickly, and didn’t even take a fork with you,” he says, pointing at the plate she’s holding. She looks down and realizes he’s right, she doesn’t have a fork or a knife, not even a napkin. She’d just grabbed the plate and left, hadn’t even looked for some salad to eat along with what Yamaguchi had given her.
“Right!” She nods. An excuse, an excuse, she thinks. “I didn’t feel too well, but I’m fine now! Thanks!” she moves to stand up, but Yamaguchi kneels in front of her and puts a hand on her shoulder, looking so obviously worried about her that she feels terrible for it.
“Are you sure? Do you want me to get a teacher? Or maybe Shimizu?”
“No, I’m fine, really! It was probably hunger. I’ll go get something to eat and I’ll be fine.”
“No, don’t,” Yamaguchi says, gently pushing her down by the shoulder. “I’ll go. Do you want salads?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Do you want a bit of everything, or- is there anything you don’t eat?”
“A bit of everything is fine,” Hitoka says, nodding enthusiastically.
“Okay,” Yamaguchi says, smiling at her and standing up. “I’ll be right back. Can you hold my plate for me?”
“Sure. Thank you.” She takes his plate and hands him her own. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“It’s no problem. Just take care of yourself,” he says, giving her a reassuring smile.
It makes Hitoka want to cry, that the only person who could love Yamaguchi back has somebody else they’re better suited for, while Yamaguchi wasn’t made for anyone; or that maybe he had been, and that person has died already (Hitoka isn’t sure which of the two options saddens her more). Her last hope is that the person hasn't been born yet.
+
Some days, as a way to pass the time, Hitoka follows a random line, just to see what kind of person is at the end. She usually stops before reaching the end, either because the route is taking her too far from home, or because she’s worried she might be led to a bad area of the city, or just because she’s tired.
She runs into Yamaguchi during one of those walks, on a Saturday afternoon.
“Hello, Yachi,” he says, startling her. She’d been so focused on the thread that she’d forgotten about the world around her.
“Hi!” she says, and then runs out of things to talk about. She’s never very sure of what to tell him, since he always looks a bit nervous around her, so she settles for smiling nicely.
“What are you doing?”
“Walking around. I felt like exploring.” It’s not that much of a lie.
“I know this area very well.” He pauses and looks around. “Want me to show you around?”
“You don’t have to,” Hitoka says, blushing slightly. She’s not going to make him waste his time just because she has a weird hobby she can’t explain.
“I don’t mind. Unless it ruins the exploration. Is it still exploration if you have a guide?”
“I think that makes it tourism,” Hitoka says, frowning as she thinks.
“Do you like tourism?”
“I do!”
“Then… would you like me to be your guide? It’ll be fun.” He sounds solemn as he says it, and Hitoka agrees.
She spends the afternoon purposely ignoring Yamaguchi’s hands.
+
Hitoka pays attention during practice, watches all the team members, tries to commit to memory the way they play, their strengths and weaknesses, tries to find a connection between their personalities and their playing styles.
She likes watching Hinata fly, because it makes her think they’re all meant for the sky - that Karasuno will be great again, as the stories say.
She likes watching Yamaguchi practice his serve, because it makes her think that with some effort and willpower, anything is possible. Hitoka almost screams in joy whenever he succeeds, no matter how many times she sees it.
+
“Wouldn’t it be cool if we could just know who’s meant for us?” Tanaka says. “Like that red string of fate.” He stretches his arms in front of him and spreads his fingers.
They’re all sitting on the floor, a small break after practice, before the clean-up starts. Hitoka isn’t really sure how the conversation had led to the topic of soulmates.
Kiyoko just looks at the second years with an unreadable expression before darting a glance towards the other third years. Hitoka pretends she doesn’t notice, that she doesn’t know who Kiyoko’s red string leads to.
“But what would you do with that thread?” Azumane asks, staring at his own hands.
“You could follow it! Everyone would find their soulmate quickly,” Nishinoya says, sounding pleased at the idea.
“Wouldn’t that be cruel?” Hinata asks. “What if you didn’t have anyone? What if the person meant for you was already in love with someone else?”
“The question is why the universe would care about our love lives,” Tsukishima says.
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t make any sense.”
“Are you scared you wouldn’t have anyone, Tsukishima?” Tanaka asks, moving closer to Tsukishima. “Don’t worry, I’m sure someone out there won’t mind your personality.”
Tsukishima glares, but Tanaka doesn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he does, but doesn’t care.
Hitoka looks at Yamaguchi. His eyebrows are drawn together, and for a moment she thinks he’s mad at Tanaka for the comment about Tsukishima, but people keep talking and he doesn’t seem to be paying attention.
When it’s time to leave, Hitoka approaches him and touches his elbow to get his attention. He turns to her immediately, eyes lighting up.
“You looked a bit distracted earlier,” she says. “When they were talking about soulmates?” she adds, when he doesn’t seem to understand what she’s talking about.
“Oh, that!” Yamaguchi says, giving her an uncomfortable smile. “I was thinking about what Hinata said. About how it would be cruel if we could see the red string of fate? I wouldn’t like that.”
“No?” Hitoka tilts her head and waits for him to continue, but he just shrugs.
“No. I just… sorry, I was just thinking a bunch of silly things. They don’t matter.”
“But I care about what you think!” she says, taking a short step towards him. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, because now she has to strain her neck to look up at him, but he might take it the wrong way if she steps back, and then he might not want to talk to her again.
“No, it’s just that… I mean… if there was someone out there for you, what would you do if you fell in love with someone else? You meet someone, and you fall in love, but you know they’re not for you, even if everything feels right? So, you wouldn’t be happy, because you’d be thinking that you could be happier… And maybe some people would spend their lives waiting for the one that’s tied to them, and would never fall in love, and what if they never meet the one they’re meant for?” He shakes his head. “And what about people who can’t fall in love? They’re going to spend their lives alone?”
He’s frowning, and Hitoka’s so eager to bring back a calm expression that she blurts “They’d have a platonic soulmate” before she can stop herself.
“What?”
Hitoka blushes, but continues. “Yes! I was thinking… maybe people who don’t fall in love have platonic soulmates. And maybe people who fall in love can have a romantic soulmate and a platonic one. Or more than one of each!”
“You think?” Yamaguchi says, clearly interested.
“Is it a bad idea?”
“No! I think it’s a nice idea. It means no one would be alone,” he says, a smile slowly forming on his face.
“Yes! That’s what’s important, right? Not the kind of love, but not being alone.” She nods.
“I like that. So if your romantic soulmate has a red strand, what color would the platonic one get? They should have a color, right?”
“Um…” Hitoka pretends to think about it, looks at her hands, and at the two yellow threads around her left pinky, stretching in the direction Hinata and Kageyama walked off to. “Maybe yellow?”
“Really?” Yamaguchi asks, and Hitoka looks up quickly to find him blinking in confusion. He looks away when their eyes meet.
“Is it a weird idea?” she asks. Her voice trembles slightly from nerves.
“No! I was thinking about that color too.”
“You were?”
“I like yellow,” he says, a small smile returning to his face.
“Me too.” She smiles back and decides the person meant for Yamaguchi’s probably dead, because she can’t imagine why he wouldn’t be loved back.
+
After the older students retire, Hitoka becomes the volleyball club’s only manager, and also the main responsible of keeping Hinata’s and Kageyama’s grades at a level that won’t put their club attendance in danger.
Somehow, she also ends up helping Yamaguchi with English. She checks his homework in the lulls during morning practice, adds corrections in pencil and draws something when he doesn’t make any mistakes. The first time she’d doodled it had been without thinking, and she’d been about to erase it when he’d seen it and had asked her to leave it there.
“Thank you,” Yamaguchi says every day when she returns his homework to him, and some days he bites his lower lip, like there’s something else he wants to say but doesn’t know how to.
One day, he finally adds something.
“Could you do those little drawings in pen instead?” He’s staring at the little crow she’d drawn at the margin like it’s the most adorable thing he’s ever seen.
“Eh?”
“I keep worrying my teacher might erase them someday.”
“They’re just doodles,” she says, shaking her head, and Yamaguchi’s face falls. “But I can do it!” she adds quickly, just as Yamaguchi says, “They’re very cute.”
He’s blushing, and that makes Hitoka’s face break into a wide grin.
“Thank you!” she says. “I like drawing them.”
He nods and holds on tightly to his notebook.
+
“For you,” Yamaguchi says when they leave the convenience store, on a night around the middle of April, handing her a cup of tea. They all had stopped there after practice, and Hitoka had gone inside to escape the night’s cold. Her cheeks are probably red from the night air, and she keeps telling herself it’s not such a long way to her home, that soon she’ll be able to change into her warm, warm pajamas and get a hot, hot drink.
The tea’s the kind that you buy for just a coin and comes out of a machine, definitely not the best drink available, but definitely something everyone would drink without complaints. Yamaguchi’s holding two cups, and his nose is red from the cold.
“For me?” she says, and mentally reprimands herself for the reply.
“You were shivering before we went inside,” he says.
Oh. She’d been so sure she hadn’t been obvious. She’d tried so hard to keep herself still.
“Thank you,” she says.
Her fingers brush Yamaguchi’s as she reaches for the cup, and her eyes are drawn to the single pink thread tied to his right middle finger. She takes a sip from her tea and looks up to his pleased expression.
“I didn’t know what you liked so I got you this. What do you want next time?” he says, and takes a sip from his own cup.
“Next time?” She shakes her head. “No! Next time, I’m paying, okay?” she says, holding tightly onto her cup, its warmth almost burning her palms.
“You don’ have to. You’re always helping me with homework.”
“But that’s different. I don’t spend money helping you with homework.”
“But you spend time,” he says.
“Then give me some of your time,” Hitoka says without thinking. Yamaguchi’s eyes widen slightly. “You can help me put up posters for the club,” she offers. “On Sunday? It’ll be faster if there are two of us.”
“Okay. But after we’re done, I buy the celebration snacks.”
“I said next time I’d pay,” Hitoka says, mock-reproachful.
“I thought you meant next time we went for something after practice. Sorry, Sunday is my treat,” he says, not sounding apologetic at all, and she’s a bit mad at him while at the same time not minding at all.
+
Hitoka feels a bit guilty on Sunday. The new posters feature Nishinoya receiving a serve, and they look amazing, she’s sure they’ll get them funding, but at the same time they don’t show any of the things she wishes she could put on paper. There’s nothing interesting in Tsukishima blocking, even if the stories Hinata and Kageyama tell her imply that the fact he’s putting effort into it is worthy of a subplot in a manga, or at least worthy of a song. There’s nothing flashy in Ennoshita’s receives, even if they’re what allows the rest of the team to do the more exciting plays. And Yamaguchi’s jump float serve can’t be properly caught on a picture.
Yamaguchi congratulates her on the posters, and keeps the conversation light. They stop at a bookshop on their way home, more to avoid the still cold weather for a while than to look for anything. They browse together, grab books at random, point out their favorites.
“I got this one in last year’s Secret Santa,” Yamaguchi says, reaching over Hitoka’s head to grab a book.
She looks at his face - to the amused but slightly pained expression that he’s been showing whenever he finds a book he doesn’t think many nice things of – and then to his arms. He’d rolled up his sleeves shortly after entering the store, the place’s heating system turned on too high for just a slightly cold spring afternoon. There are freckles on his forearms, even more than on his face, and they make Hitoka think of stars.
Hitoka likes stars, and she likes how they look against Yamaguchi’s skin.
“It’s kind of a self-help book, I think,” Yamaguchi says, unaware of Hitoka’s eyes on him, as he flips through the pages. “I never finished it.” He doesn’t sound like he regrets that.
Her eyes follow the line of his arms down to his hands, to the strands tied to his fingers, and she reaches for her red thread, something warm but heavy that might be hope caught in her chest.
If she pulls the thread and he reacts, what will she do? How does she tell him that the universe does care about loneliness, and that they will never fear it if they’re together?
What if she pulls the thread and he doesn’t react? What if she can love him, but will never be loved back?
She sniffles. Yamaguchi looks down, his face going from curiosity to fear to worry in a moment. Hitoka put all those emotions there, and she feels like the worst.
“Yachi? Yachi, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing! I just got a runny nose.”
“Did you catch a cold?” He seems slightly panicked.
“No, I think it’s because it’s so warm in here,” Yachi says, looking down to get a tissue from her backpack and hide her face.
She blows her nose and looks at him again, at his concerned expression.
Hitoka likes stars, she likes the way they look on Yamaguchi’s face, and she likes Yamaguchi.
+
Despite the sensation that something big should happen when you admit to yourself that you like someone, life remains the same, at least in general terms.
So maybe Hitoka’s more conscious of Yamaguchi’s movements, and now she always knows in what part of the gym he is, and maybe she starts putting more details in what she doodles on his homework, but she’s still the team’s manager, and she still has to do homework, and study, and help Hinata and Kageyama with schoolwork, and in the end life is basically the same as always.
She sits by the court and watches them practice, and she rubs the red thread with her thumb and forefinger, daring herself to pull it and find out if it’s him or not.
+
She’s on cleaning duty on a June afternoon, distractedly sweeping the floor when, for fun, she sweeps with too much strength and forms a small dust cloud, barely big enough to reach her ankles. She watches the motes settling around the yellow threads that fall from her fingers to the floor, and dares herself to be brave. She finishes her task, puts away the cleaning utensils, and texts Ennoshita to let him know she might be late to practice, or might even not go today.
Then, Hitoka takes a deep breath to steel herself and grabs her invisible thread with her right hand.
She walks slowly at first, following the line through the hallways, down the stairs, away from the school entrance, and that heavy and warm feeling in her chest is back, becoming lighter with each step she takes towards the gym where the club's training.
She stops by the door, peeks into the gym and finds Yamaguchi. She tightens her grip on the thread before standing at the threshold, and then she pulls with all of her strength.
The reaction is almost instantaneous. Yamaguchi startles, looks down at his hands and then at the door, and when he sees her he smiles, soft, slightly insecure, and gentle. It's the kind of smile that welcomes people home, the kind that's on your face when you find that home.
Hitoka almost runs at him. Her hands shake as she pulls on the thread again, not caring that some of the boys have already noticed her at the door and are looking at her. She thinks she hears Hinata asking her what she’s doing, but the only sounds she’s aware of are her breathing and the beat of her heart, so fast she thinks it’s her own cheer squad, urging her to take a step forward.
The moment she pulls for the second time, Yamaguchi looks down at his hands again, then at Hitoka, as if asking for an explanation, and she can’t help it, she runs to him, puts her arms around him without thinking and buries her face in his shirt, not caring that he’s in the middle of practice and probably sweaty and gross, because it’s him, it’s him, thank goodness it’s him, and she’s crying and she doesn’t want anyone to see it.
“Yachi?” Hinata asks, from somewhere. “Is it your heart? Do you need a teacher? Are you nervous?”
Hitoka shakes her head. “I’m fine!” she says, and realizes that at some moment she’d started clenching Yamaguchi’s t-shirt. She starts regretting having acted like that, without thinking. She must look ridiculous, wrapped around a Yamaguchi that doesn’t know what’s going on.
Hitoka loosens her grip on Yamaguchi’s t-shirt and moves to pull away, but his arms settle around her. His hold is loose, and his body feels tense, but he’s hugging her back anyway, and he could be hers, she could spend her life like this if she tries hard enough.
“Did something happen?” he asks her, worried. There’s a damp spot on his t-shirt from her tears, and he must have felt it. Why must Hitoka keep worrying him? He doesn’t deserve that.
“I found something,” Hitoka replies.
“You should take her outside,” Tsukishima says.
She moves her head slightly to take a peek at the room, and finds everyone looking at them, curiously or with knowing smiles. She blushes and hides her face again.
“Um…” Yamaguchi says, and doesn’t move.
“Okay, everyone back to practice, Yamaguchi can do this alone,” Ennoshita says, and everyone slowly turns away from them. Yamaguchi still doesn’t move.
“I think we can run for it now if you want to,” he says after who knows how long of just standing there, in the same position.
Hitoka looks up. He returns her gaze.
“Your eyes are bit puffy,” he whispers, “but if we leave quickly they won’t notice.”
“Okay,” she whispers back.
She lets go and hurries to the door, turning around to make sure he’s following her. She keeps walking until she finds the vending machines, and she gets two sodas.
“For you,” she tells Yamaguchi.
“Thank you.” He accepts the can and looks at it like he hopes to find some answers in it. “Yachi, about just now…” he trails off and gestures in the direction they came from.
Hitoka’s face feels hot immediately, and she looks down, stares at the freckles on Yamaguchi’s arms. She wants to trace paths between the spots with her fingers and invent a hundred new constellations.
“I like you,” she says, quickly, and then closes her eyes and mentally chastises herself. She shouldn’t have said it like that. She should have found a better moment. She should have asked someone if he liked her.
But she needed to say it, she needed to let him know that someone out there thought the world of him. If Yamaguchi’s skin is covered in constellations, that makes him a galaxy, but Hitoka has seen him, she remembers his smiles, his gestures and words, and to her he’s bigger than all the worlds Hitoka can imagine, he’s a universe, and he needs to know how much he means.
“That’s what you found?” Yamaguchi asks, quietly. It doesn’t sound like a rejection, so Hitoka dares to open her eyes.
He’s as red as she thinks she must be, and his face is going through too many emotions again, from surprise to bemusement to embarrassment to happiness. Hitoka put all those emotions there, and she feels like she has to do something about it, it’s her fault after all.
She takes a step forward and reaches for his left hand. He intertwines their fingers and she looks up to find him smiling at her.
She hugs him again, tightly, and this time he hugs her back immediately, far more careful, like he thinks she might break. This time, though, she’s laughing, and there’s no tension in his body.