Chapter Text
When Zanka was younger, he couldn’t help but be excited at the idea of having a soulmate, someone destined, made for only you. Although it was rare, He wondered if he could be one of the lucky few people who were blessed with another person made just for them. And while having a soulmate was rare and many people had mixed feelings on the entire concept of having a predetermined person bound to be with another, the majority were in favour of soulmates.
Soulmates tended to work out. This was because a soulmate wasn’t limited to romance and didn’t necessarily have to be someone you needed to date. And though the greater number of people desired a soulmate to be with romantically, it included a diverse range of bonds.
Zanka wanted to be special enough to be fated with another. He didn’t necessarily need it to be romantic, but most discovered cases of soulmates were. It was often difficult to determine if a soulmate wasn’t romantic, mainly because most people didn’t care if it wasn’t, which led to most research corresponding with this interest. With this in mind, if he did have a soulmate, it would be most helpful if it were romantic.
While he wished for a soulmate, Zanka thought he might die if he did happen to obtain one and it was one of his siblings. His entire life was dependent on his family, and he desperately sought their approval. Kyouka was the Hellguard's squad one commander with Goka at her right hand, as the second in command. He was expected to join the Hellguard and follow in his siblings' footsteps, which proved extremely challenging but made him try even harder. If his soulmate were either of his siblings, he would only burden them and end up being the source of the problem that caused them both to be looked down on.
His family and the Hell Guard quickly made it clear to him that soulmates were only an inconvenience, a distraction to what he should truly be focusing on. Altogether, recognizing or even obtaining a soulmate was viewed as a sign of weakness and shame to the “noble” Nijiku name.
He learnt to go along with these beliefs and, for the most part, generally forgot about soulmates. He trained diligently, attempting to stay above the rest of his classmates and reach his family’s expectations. Seemingly always being behind others, unless trying twice as hard. Despite the struggle behind closed doors, it was worth it as he enjoyed and strived in the praise of being deemed a “genius” by his peers.
That is, until he noticed the absence of the very few items he owned. In the central Hell Guard training school, he was permitted a small room with not too many belongings of his own, so as not to divert and distract from his studies and training. His space had been mainly filled with textbooks, training equipment, and the necessary gear to complete his training.
Used to always being punctual and on top of things, he also has a surprisingly proficient memory. It’s rare if he even loses anything at all, and due to that, when he does lose something, Zanka is sure to immediately realize. So, when a textbook, or even something as small as a pencil, is missing, he automatically takes notice and retraces his steps to locate it.
Although slightly confused, he thinks nothing of it when he can’t locate some of his belongings. Things go missing all the time and turn up eventually. Until a normal day where he had spent any and all of his free time away from class, training diligently from morning until the sun set.
It had been an almost perfect day today. Not only did he manage to see his brother and sister in the halls due to whatever business they had in the training center, but Kyouka also made eye contact and noticed him as he was being graciously praised by some of his classmates and teachers for his efforts.
He returned to his room after he cleaned up and got ready to devote the remaining duration of his energy and time into his academic studies, needing to meet not only the physical expectations, but the mental ones too. When yet another textbook he needed tonight couldn’t be found. He previously used it and vaguely remembers falling asleep while trying to memorize the topics in the book, so he checks around his bed. After basically rearranging the whole room to find it, the textbook was deemed completely lost. He dramatically exhaled to validate his frustration as if someone was watching him, but still got up to make his way to the library, in hopes they had another copy. They’re not supposed to give more than one copy of a textbook to the same student– but for a model student like Zanka, he’s almost sure they'll temporarily lend it to him.
After returning to his room, he's honestly tired from the effort he put into the entire day, but he can’t allow himself to rest if he wants to keep up his appearance of being a natural genius. Plus, he can’t deny the surge of motivation from not receiving criticism from his siblings when they visited. His thoughts wondered if they just didn’t have time to even acknowledge him, or just forgot about him completely. Zanka quickly pushes these speculations out of his head, in hopes of actually attaining a bit of time to at least cram some knowledge.
He at last sits down at his desk and opens the book to get some work done, but before he can flip to the page he needs, something in the corner of his eye catches his attention. His focus is completely diverted from his studies as he picks up the abnormal-looking flower.
That wasn’t here before?
Did one of his classmates leave this here?
He picked up the flower carefully and brought it up to his face to examine the foreign plant. What's suspicious is that anything living other than humans was severely uncommon on the Ground, so even an abnormal flower like this would still be relatively expensive. He considered whether this could be a gift from one of his classmates. Zanka knew he wasn’t a stranger to erratic confessions, which happened enough to stop being considered random anymore. Well, he didn’t have time for relationships anyway, so he was grateful that this time, this confession wasn’t in school, so he didn’t have to reject them publicly. He silently hoped this person was shy so they could take a hint, and he wouldn’t have to deal with this. Though considering the price of the flower, the person was probably bold and wanted to visibly display their dedication.
He promptly thinks back to who could have gifted this to him, given the circumstances, but draws a blank. He continued to try to remember anything useful and briefly recalled a moment where a group of students was discussing the topics of soulmates.
The teacher left the class for only a few minutes, but Zanka continued to concentrate on his notes for today's lesson, since he would have to painstakingly review them later if he wanted to ace the next test in class. The class was filled with useless chatter. Zanka would never waste his time or ruin his image just to idly prattle on.
Finally, Zanka eventually drowned out the chatter as background noise when a group of kids to the right of the classroom could be heard loudly above the rest. They decided to instead, use this time to converse about insignificant topics like soulmates.
“Dude, imagine how rare it would be if one of us actually had a soulmate, that would be so cool!”
“Don’t be dumb, wouldn’t you have already noticed if you never found any of your things, or better yet, if random things started to appear near you?”
“Hey, I’m not dumb! Plus, soulmates can develop anytime, so you never know, but I guess you have a point...”
Someone else in the group decided to join the conversation. “Hah, it’s hard to imagine you with a soulm..”
Zanka successfully had had enough and chose to go back to ignoring the rest of the noise that threatened to disrupt his attention.
Zanka's brain quickly fixed onto two moments during this exchange.
“Wouldn’t you have already noticed if you never found any of your things, or better yet, if random things started to appear near you?”
And “plus, soulmates can develop anytime, so you never know.”
Holy crap.