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Everyone constantly talked about soulmate marks.
From kids in the playground, to adults. Magazines, movies, talk shows, fortune tellers all focusing on how to find your soulmate.
Kengo had seen lots of them - flowers, arrows, hearts. Spirals and animals and trees and abstract figures.
He had none of them on his own skin.
It was fine, Kengo told himself. Not that it mattered anyway.
Especially after he found the door to the Rabbit Hatch, and the Fourze system. Soulmates were the last thing on his mind.
Now Yuki… Yuki was enthusiastic about it.
And she was really trying her best to pretend she wasn’t upset that she found out about Kengo not having a soulmate mark.
“I— I’m sure it’s perfectly fine! We are still good friends aren’t we?”
“Of course we are,” Kengo sighed.
That’s what they were, after all. Soulmates were something that really weren’t on his radar most of the time.
He had a legacy to figure out and sort out, after all.
And then Kisaragi Gentaro happened.
And Yuki’s enthusiasm suddenly made more sense, when Kengo realised the two of them shared a soulmate mark.
It was around both of their wrists - two small stars connected by a small dotted line.
It made sense, both of them loud, enthusiastic, both of them weird. Neither of them thinking much before throwing themselves into doing whatever they wanted to do.
They were clearly attached to each other, and the two of them just looked at their wrists in the Rabbit Hutch, inquisitively.
“It’s odd. Look, the line keeps going but it doesn’t close.”
“It’s known for soulmate marks to kind of change. Maybe the older we get the more elaborate it gets?”
“Oh, what do you think will be on it?”
“Maybe more stars?”
“Maybe the stars get bigger and prettier!”
They were getting so easily swept up in it, and Kengo found it annoying.
They had other things to focus on.
When Kazashiro Miu ended up joining a club, and being enthusiastic and in control, she brightened a little.
She often wore bracelets that hid her wrist, and she reached out a hand briefly, and—
Oh.
“We had the same with Shun. This dotted line locking around our wrists, which— it’s so bland is it not? So we kept it on the down-low. But it makes more sense now.”
Now, that she was in the Rabbit Hutch, there were three stars on the dotted line.
Yuki reached out a hand, looking at her own.
“What! Gen! Gen, I got three stars now!”
Kisaragi hurried over, the three of them huddled over their wrists, and indeed - on the dotted line, there were three stars.
“How peculiar,” Kazashiro mused, before tilting her head to the side a bit. “I wonder…”
She trailed off, but didn’t say what she meant. Also couldn’t, because Yuki was sulking, and Kisaragi was just enthusiastic.
Kengo just sighed, opening his laptop.
JK almost bounced off the walls, as he joined, and Miu grabbed his hand, pushing up his selection of bracelets, and nodded to herself.
“I thought so. Look.”
“Huh?”
Kengo saw all four of them group together, looking at JK’s hand, and he didn’t even get up. He didn’t need to, he knew what that was.
“The dotted line had been here for a while,” JK muttered. “But it’s like. So lame, right? So I covered it up. And I had no idea who else might have had it but— I didn’t even notice when it changed.”
“You are joining the constellation,” Kisaragi beamed. “Welcome to the club! Officially!”
“Does that mean—”
Kengo felt JK’s eyes on him, and he just snorted.
“Don’t involve me in your nonsense.”
Not like he needed a soulmate mark, all of this was a distraction.
This entire Kamen Rider Club was just a distraction, and he wanted no part of it.
When Daimonji Shun got out of the Powerdizer, Kengo didn’t even wait around for it.
When he rubbed his wrist, looking at the president with big, pathetic eyes.
“It changed. Miu it changed—”
“I know,” The president sighed, grabbing Daimonji by the wrist and pulling him closer. “It’s more than that, though.”
The Daimonji Shun of a month ago would have exploded upon finding out that there were more people with the same mark around their wrists. But now, he just seemed in awe, as he slowly smiled.
And four other smiles met him, as Kengo pushed himself out of the Rabbit Hatch.
There was no point in staying around.
Nozama knew, because of course she knew. Nozama Tomoko had a keen sense that science couldn’t explain (as annoying as this thought was), and she was there, a haunted look in her eyes.
“My soulmate mark is pointing me to the stars. I need to go there, and there is no other way I could.”
And Kisaragi, instead of showing her the shared marks, just grabbed her and dragged her on the Moon.
Because of course he did.
Because that was he was like, wrapping everyone into his orbit, with these little soulmate marks connecting all of them—
…not all of them.
Never all of them.
Because there was Kengo in the shower in the apartment he lived in alone, rubbing his wrist until it turned red, because why was he shut out, why not, not that he cared, he didn’t care, being Kisaragi’s friend was nonsensical, none of it mattered, fighting the Zodiarts mattered, the Fourze belt mattered, soulmate marks meant nothing.
It meant nothing even when his too-weak body gave up in the shower and he fell on his knees, sobbing, because who cared, who cared.
And then there were other shapes on the moon, and smiles on faces, and a Kamen Rider Club flag behind them.
“Don’t you find it wrong?” He asked Kisaragi quietly, which just made him tilt his head a little in confusion. “All of the others in the Kamen Rider Club, you are connected by the soulmate mark. Everyone but me.”
“Hmmm, true. But what even are soulmates?” Kisaragi shrugged. “These marks on our wrists show we are connected on a cosmic level, that’s what people say. But I don’t think either of us would think that you are not connected to us, Kengo, just because you don’t have them.”
Kengo laughed a little, shaking his head.
“You make it sound so simple. But what’s the point of the soulmate marks then?”
“I dunno about that,” Kisaragi was still beaming, and Kengo couldn’t look away. “But I know that the Club needs you. We all need you.”
For Kisaragi Gentaro, it was really all that simple.
Sakuta Ryusei refused to admit anything, and it was the most transparent part of his entire demeanor, and it was infuriating.
Because while the others’ soulmate marks did not change as soon as he arrived, it slowly did - a faded seventh star around their wrists.
It looked like a bracelet now - six stars, evenly paced, as seventh, faded one on their wrists.
Kengo also noticed that if everything was evenly paced, after the faded one, there was a spot for one more. So maybe there was bound to be someone else they found one day.
Kengo told himself it was all fine, but if only Sakuta would have stopped being such a problem about all of this.
Sakuta Ryusei was a liar and dug his heels in and insisted he did not have a soulmate mark, but he wore gloves all the time he refused to take off.
It was truly so transparent, but all of them decided to let him ride it out, and let him accept it in his own time.
They were willing to give him time to get there himself.
None of them expected it would have included a murder.
But it worked out in the end, and Sakuta Ryusei showed up to fight with his bare hands, and didn’t care if he’d be accepted.
But of course he was. Because that’s what the Kamen Rider Club was.
And now there were seven stars attached to the small dotted lines, like a beautiful bracelet, and place for one more.
All of this was fine.
Kengo didn’t expect he’d get an answer for why he didn’t have a soulmate mark.
But it made sense, didn’t it?
He wasn’t human, after all.
He wasn’t human, and this was for humans right? Only humans had soulmates, and someone like the Core Child, he was only there to observe and collect data.
Not to feel it himself.
Until he was breaking down in the museum, and Yuki, bright and delightful Yuki was sobbing, and she got a marker in her hand, drawing on Kengo’s wrist.
And he let her.
A dotted line.
Eight stars.
“You have to show it to the Presenters,” Yuki sniffled. “Go to them, show them, and tell them. So they’ll know you are loved.”
He was loved.
Even after he returned, his body now fully human, there were no marks on his skin.
Made sense, he figured.
When his body was fixed, it was fixed the same way as it was, when he was the Core Child.
No soulmate marks circling his wrist.
But he had the keychains on his bag, and his letter in Kisaragi’s hands. And if it was up to Yuki and the others, the marker was sure to come out soon again.
And probably an eighth star drawn on seven other wrists as well.