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The day Mina turned sixteen, she didn’t get her soul mark. She waited all day for it to appear, wishing for the strange tingling feeling people described to her, followed by the appearance of a tattoo-like mark. It never came. No pretty image appeared on her skin to give her a clue about who she might spend the rest of her life with.
At one point, she thought she felt something on her arm, but nothing ever appeared. She ended up chalking the feeling up to her nervous excitement. By midnight, she had pretty much given up hoping anything would actually appear.
Her parents tried to reassure her, saying that even though everyone had soul marks, not everyone found their soulmate. Or pointing out that sometimes people who found their soulmates didn’t even end up staying with them. They insisted that she would still find someone even without a soul mark, not to give up hope. It didn’t help.
For about a week, she hoped that maybe something had just gone wrong and it would still appear. That maybe her date of birth had been reported wrong, or it was just a little late. After she accepted that it probably wasn’t coming, she began to wonder why. Was there just no one the universe thought might make a good match for her? Had something happened to her soulmate? Was there someone else out there who also didn’t get one?
Other than her parents, she didn’t tell anyone about not getting her soul mark. Any time someone asked her, she would come up with a lie about it being in a weird place or wanting to keep it private until she found her soulmate. There was just something scary about being the only one without a soulmate she didn’t want to face.
Luckily, no one asked her about her soul mark when she started at UA. It seemed they all had enough time to get used to their marks that it wasn’t a constant topic like last year. They were, of course, still brought up sometimes, and so she did her best to keep the subject away from her own mark. No matter how much she hated not having a mark, she was still fascinated by them. She still always wanted to hear about her friend’s marks and who they thought their soulmates might be.
She listened when Kaminari ran up to her a few weeks into their first year, freaking out about seeing the lightning soul mark on Ojiro’s chest in the locker room. She watched Kirishima and Bakugo dance around the topic of their soul marks that pointed to each other. When, during their second year, Midoriya confessed that he had two and was scared to tell in case his soulmates didn’t, she couldn’t help but feel jealous. How could Iida, Todoroki, and Midoriya be so lucky when she didn’t even have one?
During their final year at UA, for the first time, she realized she wasn’t alone. At least not completely. Their class was sitting down in the commons, and once again the conversation had turned to the subject of soulmarks.
“Do you ever think about how weird it is that so many members of our class found their soulmate in this class?” Hagakure asked. “I mean, there are only twenty of us.”
She did make a fair point. More than half of their class had found their soulmate within their little group of twenty, while many people took years before finding theirs. It felt like some sort of strange twist of fate that they were grouped so closely like this.
“After everything we went through together, it just makes sense, I guess,” Kirishima said with a grin. “I mean, it’s hard to imagine a life where I’m not around you guys. It just makes sense that so many of us are soulmates.”
“The odds are almost impossible, though,” Midoriya insisted, glancing up from one of his hero notebooks. “If you took a group of twenty random people, the odds of even two of them being soulmates are incredibly low.”
“Says the one who had two soulmates in this class,” Hagakure pointed out. Despite not having found her own soulmate, almost any time they discussed them, she was at the center of the conversation. She always wanted to know about everyone’s soul marks and hear about their story.
“Why do you even care so much about stupid soul marks, anyway?” Bakugo snapped, rolling his eyes. Despite having found his soulmate, he’d never thought much of them. He insisted he found Kirishima on his own and not because of the universe. “You probably can’t even see yours anyway!”
In all her time, wishing she had a soul mark and wondering about the ones other people had, she’d never even considered that there was someone so close that also essentially didn’t have one. Hagakure’s case almost felt worse. She knew she had one, but would never see it.
“Well, obviously,” she laughed, sounding completely unbothered by his jab. “I always knew I wouldn’t see my soul mark. I guess I just kind of accepted it. I still loved the idea, though. For me, I guess it was just always about seeing other people’s marks. With mine being invisible, they just fascinated me. I mean, everyone has one-”
“I don’t,” she blurted out, not even sure why she did it. Maybe so Hagakure would know she wasn’t the only one without a soul mark. Maybe just because it was nice to finally say something. “When I turned sixteen, it just never showed up.”
Everyone was looking at her now, but she didn’t really care about any of their reactions. There was only one person there whose reaction she cared about, and she couldn’t even see her face. She could tell from the direction of Hagakure’s clothes and hair ribbon tied in her hair that she had also turned her way, but as always, her face remained a mystery.
“Of course, you have a soul mark, Ashido, everyone does,” Hagakure insisted, with a tone so full of confidence Mina wanted to believe her. “You probably just can’t see it. Maybe your mark is just invisible.”
Was that even possible? What if she hadn’t imagined it when she thought she felt her mark appear, and it really was invisible? This whole time, maybe she had a soul mark, one that pointed her right to a classmate.
“That’s it! Enough with all this annoying soulmate talk!” Bakugo snapped, interrupting Mina’s thoughts. “So if you two want to talk about being soulmates or whatever, find somewhere else!”
She couldn’t help but laugh at Bakugo’s interruption. Despite his rude tone and words, she was pretty sure her friend was helping her out in his own weird way. By shutting down the conversation, he gave them the chance to have it without everyone watching and suggested they could go now. Even if Mina normally had no issue sharing stuff with people, this time she did kind of want to take this somewhere else.
“Yeah, maybe we will,” she shot back with a grin, standing up and smiling at Hagakure. “If you want to.”
“Let’s go,” the other girl replied, and she could practically hear the smile on her face as she stood.
They headed out to the porch of the dorm building, the sound of their classmates’ conversations disappearing as they shut the door. Neither of them said anything for a moment as they sat down on the stairs outside, which gave Mina at least a moment to collect her thoughts. She might have a soulmate. After all these years, she might actually have one.
“Do you really think we might be soulmates?” she asked, finally breaking the silence.
“I mean, it makes sense,” the invisible girl insisted. “If your soul mark is invisible, it probably means me, but even if it’s not, it doesn’t matter. Neither of us will ever see our soul marks, so we have something no one else does. We can give it a shot and decide for ourselves if we’re soulmates.”
Something about that sounded almost better than just finding out Hagakure was her soulmate. Maybe the two of them were luckier than everyone else. They didn’t have the pressure of the universe saying they should be together, or to wonder if they interpreted their marks correctly. They could just give things a try and decide for themselves.
“I think I’d like that,” Mina said, unable to contain the smile spreading across her face. “So, Toru Hagakure, will you be my girlfriend, not because the universe dictated it, but because we have the chance to find out for ourselves?”
“With an offer like that, how could I ever say no?”
Maybe it wasn’t how she’d pictured things going when she was little, but this felt better. For the first time ever, she was glad her soul mark never appeared.