Is he really there?
Those words plague Kuroo Tetsurou's mind. They were inked on his wrist in messy writing with scratch marks as if his soulmate's hand was never stable. It was such a strange question.
"Stop looking at it, you look like an idio...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
・・・ ・・・ ・・・
High school wasn't much easier for (Y/N). Attending Nekoma in Tokyo sometimes made her anxious. The school reflected the city: it was busy. So many people, so many voices, so many words. Glaring eyes, pointing fingers, shadowed whispers. (Y/N) hated it. Unfortunately for her, Nekoma was the only school that was under an hour away that also had a Special Needs program that wasn't simply slopped together for the sake of government regulations. Nekoma had clubs and activities, and thankfully, this program was just as lovely. She and her adoptive mother still had yet to get a diagnosis for her, so they were trying to assess what she could tell doctors. She didn't mind much, it was just a label anyway. Especially if they were right about their suspicions of autism, though it didn't really seem to fit right. (Y/N) flinches as something swishes by her head. It was just a fly, (Y/N), just a fly, she thinks to herself as the thing buzzed around her breakfast fruit. She swatted it away. She always got fruit from the small market she passed by in the mornings. Two brothers ran the shop, and one had OCD, so they were very kind and accepting of some of her strange behavior.
"Isn't it strange how being abnormal creates a social circle within itself?" she asks the boy who was standing next to her at the crosswalk. He shrugs his shoulders. "I think it's strange. It shouldn't be like that." The boy shrugged again, and (Y/N) narrowed her eyes at him. She didn't like it when people didn't talk. It made her weary. "Maybe you should kill yourself," he says. Thoughts swam through her head as she turned forward again, eyes cast at the ground. Okay, it's okay. You're okay. Some people are just mean. "Really, you're gross. Hurry up and walk, fatty, I don't have all day." (Y/N) went to take a step forward to cross but jolted back when a car shot by, honking. The walk light was still red. Fuck. She glanced around, but nobody else saw except the boy who was now laughing to himself. She waited in silence, glancing at her wrist. It's just us. (Y/N) didn't want to be the type of person who fell in love with their soulmate without ever meeting them, but her soulmate had the most beautiful handwriting she had ever seen. No, it wasn't particularly neat like printing paper; it was a little sloppy, a little quick, a little quirky. She absolutely loved the words on her wrist, they made her feel warm. She wondered what she would say to them that would warrant the answer. Unfortunately, the writing couldn't convey the tone they would say it in. She wondered. Scenes from the romance movies her best friend sometimes watched floated through her head. Funnily enough, plenty of them had lines quite similar to hers. "We're all alone," "there's no one else around," "it's only us." These sorts of lines always had the girl being pinned against a wall in a sexual way as the guy spoke her line, usually realizing they were soulmates by her words. Akane loved to tease her about it.
"Ah, (Y/N), there you are," Hana says. Hana was (Y/N)'s only friend besides her neighbor Akane. (Y/N) probably never would have befriended her if Akane had gone to Nekoma, but Nekoma was centered around science, business, and sports. Akane was a performing arts and mathematics type of gal. Hana... Hana was just stupid and pretty. She was a tennis player. Yoshioka Hana was popular. She was gorgeous, firstly. She was kind to even the poorest school kids, which reflected in her friendship with (Y/N) and her amazing relationship with her older sister Mayu. She was fundamentally perfect. Basically every guy in Nekoma wanted her it seemed. Sometimes, they would claim the first thing she said to them was the words written on their wrist, but that wasn't true. Hana's soulmate was dead. Hana had met her soulmate once before she passed. The line, "Damn, I usually like guys, but I'd kiss those lips any day if you wear that outfit again," had a heavy black line crossed through it. Hana had sobbed when she looked at her girlfriend's wrist. A black line marked through nothing, because she had died as soon as the line was spoken. She had been shot. Still, that didn't stop Hana from being herself. Actually, she really didn't mind it at all anymore. Hana dated lots of people, both guys and girls. She had sex with plenty of them, too. (Y/N) didn't really approve of the lifestyle. She could never imagine going against her soulmate, even if they had passed on. Then again, it wasn't really her choice what Hana did, so she said nothing. "You've gotta stop staring, man," Yaku says with a huff at the captain. He really had no shame. Every day during lunch, Kuroo didn't talk. He just watched the two girls. Of course, he knew Hana's name—she was practically famous within the school—but he had no idea who her friend was. All he knew was that she was quiet and jumpy. "You could probably just ask her out. I mean, seriously, girls love you," Yamamoto says. "It's really not fair." "Am I the only person who thinks Yoshioka isn't that pretty? She doesn't look bad, but I feel like she really gets away with stuff. Do you remember in middle school when she threw a shoe at some girl? Nobody even talks about that anymore," Yaku says. He was the only sensible one minus Kenma. "The older sister is pretty cute, but I'm not really into the one in our grade. She gives me weird vibes. Not to mention, I've got a soulmate to be worrying about. I don't understand how all these guys just bypass that," Shibayama says. "Kuroo, you really gotta get your head out of your ass. That Yoshioka is trouble," Inuoka states. "It's not even her..."
