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Hikaru thought that, like a lot of things he saw others have but himself lacked (talent, intellect), he simply didn’t have a soulmate… and it didn’t bother him as much as it should’ve, apparently.
For once, that’d have put him in the extreme minority, one so little studies on the matter have contradicted each other for… forever, it seems, or at least since studies like those have existed, maybe. His parents found it a little weird, he could see the concern in his mom’s eyes whenever she’d ask about “his destined”, neither his dad nor she could believe he didn’t have a soulmate.
It was always painful to hear them talk about it, in private or in front of their extended family. They always looked so sad about it, speaking of a curse and a misfortune. Oh, he doesn’t deserve such a lonely fate!, Mom would say all the time.
Hikaru really felt it should’ve bothered him, almost resenting himself for not being as affected by that as his parents were, causing them unnecessary worry over something he didn’t give much importance to – yet he could never bring himself to even pretend like it was any issue for him. He just wasn’t born with it, like so many other things that he saw around him every day of life.
And it didn’t have to be an issue.
In junior high, Furano’s soccer club gets two managers: Machida Machiko and Fujisawa Yoshiko.
Machida is Oda’s soulmate, of all people, and while he was very excited about it, she was less than enchanted to say the least. Hikaru loves Oda as much as the next guy should love their very first friend, but even he has to admit, Oda is a bit of an idiot, and Machida got to discover with who she was supposed to share a life-long bond thanks to some crude, broken English Oda had scribbled on his palm during class earlier. Talk about a romantic discovery.
The latter, on the other hand, has no bond to anyone else in the club (it’d have been a little weird if she had, like talk about a coincidence). She decided to join the club as a manager because she liked soccer, or at least the more logistical sides of it, and wanted to give them a hand even as everyone thought they were ridiculous for playing in the snow when they could’ve all joined the basketball club instead.
Hikaru really likes talking to Fujisawa. She’s patient and kind-hearted with everyone on the team, makes excellent work managing their papers and supplies and even comes before school without being obligated to. She always has a tiny attention for everyone, strives to improve in every aspect and, most of all, he gets along very well with her in a way that’s different from the boys. In fact, he feels comfortable enough with her that she becomes his sort of confident, halfway through their first year of junior high.
It comes to a head right around the corner of summer to fall, at a moment where she’s checking him over because she’s suspecting him to be downplaying an injury (he never does it on purpose, he swears, but every time what he thinks is a scratch turns out to be a more gaping wound…), and he confesses he feels a little awkward in the changing rooms every time because the other guys usually use the opportunity to check what their soulmate have said – but he has none, he never has anything to read on his skin. It’s only when he hears the clatter of the bottle of disinfectant she was holding up until that point that he realizes she’s frozen.
And that’s when Hikaru learns what must then be the most unbelievable of things: according to herself, Fujisawa doesn’t have a soulmate either.
Her voice trembles slightly when she slowly tells him about how she has never received a message from her “fated one”. She’s usually so collected that it troubles him a little to see her so open and vulnerable for once, letting her feelings conquer her ever so slightly. Still, he’s not only the team captain, but also her close-proximity associate and friend, so he does all
He knows it’s selfish, and he hates a part of himself for it, but he’s finding some relief in knowing he’s not alone in this very weird situation. For the longest time, he figured he was just going to remain the only guy he knew in this situation and it was fine with him, he didn’t even look too deep into it; yet he can feel some weight being taken off his chest and shoulders. It’s not out of enjoyment, because it still pains him that Fujisawa of all people is burdened with the same odd look, but out of… relief? He doesn’t quite know.
Maybe it gives him some hope that, at least, if they grow close, they won’t have to break off anything because she’ll have found her soulmate while he’ll remain alone. He’s heard of soulmates breaking up and never coming back together, instead finding love in someone else’s arms, but it’s such a rare scenario that, to this day, he still doesn’t believe he’ll ever see it happen.
He doesn’t quite know why that’s one of the first things that came to his mind when Fujisawa revealed her secret to him. He’d say they’re fairly close as far as classmates and friends go, he really enjoys talking to her, but that’s kind of it. Maybe he’s afraid she’d have otherwise just… left him behind to go with her chosen one, even if it doesn’t make sense for her to abandon someone for a thing they can’t control? Even when his entire team has stuck with him and still revers him as their captain despite it all?
Yeah, Hikaru’s clearly in over his head, he’s sure of it – he doesn’t even care for this whole soulmate shebang anyway, all he wants is to win a soccer championship with his friends and spend time with Fujisawa, preferably both in their small yet oddly comfortable clubroom. Oh, and to make Mom and Dad proud. That’s also a good thing to focus on, rather than stupid soulmates.
Over his years in junior high, Hikaru has taken to sometimes scribbling on his hands and arms. It’s not for the aesthetic of having his skin discoloured blue by the time he finally gets to wash it off at the lavatory near the soccer grounds or the boys’ bathroom, but for the handy side of it: you can’t pull out a phone from your pocket in the middle of class when you suddenly get a flash for a new tactic, but your hands are allowed in the classroom.
His teammates find it amusing when they see the ink all over his arms that sometimes remains after a quick wash and sticks to him throughout practice. He doesn’t find quite as funny, especially when they’re using it to tease him on his lack of soulmate, which they don’t even take seriously. Hikaru just laughs it off anyway, may scold them if he isn’t in a good mood, might just smile once he hears Oda and Kaneda snicker away after their little routine.
Fujisawa sometimes chastises the guys who try to make fun of him for his lack of a soulmate. He always tells her it’s fine, that it makes him laugh more than anything; but like every single time she tells him to be more careful because he got injured yet again, it doesn’t seem to register, let alone produce any sort of effect. Well, at least, she looks cute when she does it, so it’s not like he can mi…
Cute? Did he just call someone that wasn’t one of his cousins’ kids cute?
Well, calling someone “cute” doesn’t mean you’re in love with them: you can just acknowledge when someone’s pretty or handsome or whatever. Calling Fujisawa cute is like calling Misugi Jun charismatic: it’s just objective (speaking of Misugi, what’s this guy even been up to? He straight-up vanished after the semi-finals of the last elementary school tournament they both participated in. He’ll ask Fujisawa later if she can find some info of that, it’s suddenly worrying him). There’s nothing more behind that. He’s just stating facts. Nothing more and especially nothing less.
(Man, even to himself he doesn’t sound convincing).
It’s weird: he more he thinks about her, the less he can believe she doesn’t have a soulmate. She keeps telling him she can’t have one, or else she’d have talked about them already (or, rather, Machida would’ve talked a bit too loudly about said soulmate), but the thing is, there’s such a thing as late bloomers. That’s why his parents had him so late, they simply didn’t meet until they were in their twenties while everyone else in his family, from his grandparents to his cousins, have met theirs early on in life, sometimes barely able to retell the day they met just because it was so long ago.
Fujisawa could simply be a late bloomer, someone who never writes to her because they’re shy or don’t have a thing to say. Maybe they’re someone who, like her, is convinced they don’t have a soulmate and so have given up on writing to her. (Wait, that sounds awfully like him too, doesn’t it?). He still doesn’t think it’s bad if he doesn’t have one, but since Fujisawa seemed so sad when she told him about it, he can’t help but feel like it’s unfair to her. She deserves the best of soulmates, not some jackass who can’t be bothered to reply to her.
There’s a pang in his chest whenever he thinks about it, which happens more often than not. The team’s new favourite joke to repeat until nausea ensues is that the captain and the manager are in love, kissing under a tree, holding hands in the clubroom when nobody’s looking at half past five in the morning. It’s deeply embarrassing for the both of them because, clearly, there’s nothing between them: they’re good friends. That’s it. These guys don’t even know about Fujisawa’s soulmate issue, so it’s not like they’re doing it to spite her (and, even if they had it in themselves to be that mean, they know he’d give them the punishment of their lives for it).
Is he envious of that speculative soulmate? Well, maybe he is. Maybe he’s afraid they’ll tear one of his closest friends apart from him, separating them in the name of a principle he didn’t get to get at birth like everyone else. That’d hurt a lot, especially if it just happened one day because, all along, Fujisawa was wrong to think she wasn’t worth someone’s unconditional love and affection. Someone like her, so selfless and so devoted to her tasks, has to have a soulmate who’d treasure her, right?
Hikaru doesn’t have a soulmate, Fujisawa definitely does yet doesn’t know about it yet, and he absolutely isn’t trying to make excuses for himself for not raising the matter up to her. They have a club to work hard for. They have classes and homework that require brain juices. They have families to make proud, friends to hang out with. There’s no point in twisting a knife into a wound.
Whose wound, on the other hand, is starting to get a little blurry.
The big final show of the Furano Junior High Soccer Club approaches quicker than a bullet train, so Hikaru spends more and more time on the field and staring at a whiteboard, a smelly pen in hand, writing words of encouragement in the morning and scribbling brainstorming notes in the evening. In-between, it seems like Machida and Fujisawa erase what he writes so the ink doesn’t dry up. They’re as serviceable as always, truly fit to be considered members of the team, and anyone who says otherwise will have a word with him on the matter of appreciating their hard work for the sake of their collective.
He tends to see Fujisawa a lot. She’s the second to arrive in the morning, around half an hour after he does, usually to help out with preparing the field and locker rooms before most of the team arrives. That leaves them to talk one-on-one for around forty minutes, sometimes up to an hour if she’s especially early or if the team – for some reason – leaves them alone in their clubroom without telling them they’ve arrived. Well, Hikaru can actually picture a reason why they’d do that but would rather not think about it. He has enough on his plate as is in terms of teasing.
They also see each other after afternoon practice, since he often stays behind in the clubroom to look into potential opponents and possible ways to improve the team’s performances. The championship they’re about to embark for is a tough one, he’s more than aware of it, so he’s pouring his mind on top of his sweat and tears into it. She’d have usually been the last to leave after locking the door of the clubroom, but lately, he’s found himself walking part of the way home with her.
As what must be a by-product of spending so much time together on club-related matters, Hikaru’s found himself eating lunch with Fujisawa more and more often. They usually discuss about club management, sometimes the team (he doesn’t know how she can stand his hour-long monologues on soccer team tactics, so he appreciates her questions even more than anyone else’s, replying to them is a great way to see cons in his plans), such as
“What about, hmm… The other day, I saw the girls’ volleyball team. At one point, one half pretended to attack so their opponents would get their tactic wrong. Maybe there’s a way to do that in soccer?”
“Oh, damn, you’re right, that’d be cool! It could work as a tackle. Just… feign a tackle and use another right afterwards? I dunno if that’d work, but you can never tell without trying, right?” He gets his pen from where he left it before. “Lemme just… scribble it real’ quick so I don’t forget.”
In the corner of his eye, he watches her pull her sleeves back on her wrists.
“There! That way, I won’t forget about it. That’s gotta be one pro of not having a soulmate: you don’t have to worry about givin’ them context about whatever it is you write on your hands.” He gives her his most earnest smile. “Thanks a lot for the suggestion, Fujisawa!”
She laughs, but it sounds off. He couldn’t explain it to save his skin, though, so he chalks it up to him not being that funny.
“You’re welcome,” she replies, fiddling with her other hand.
It doesn’t stop there.
She puts her hands behind her back when he remembers to send Oda the notes of the classes he’s had to miss due to the flu, writing the hiragana for his friend’s name on the back of his left hand so he can do so as soon as he’s home. When he asks her why, she replies with a question of her own, feigning ignorance. It might be him, but this time, he really doubts it.
Barely two weeks later, right as they’re having more and more snowless days, he remembers he needs to pick something up at the convenience store on the way home for his mom, quickly jots it down on his wrist and watches her… put on gloves. While they’re inside. When he asks if she’s cold, she says that she isn’t, but when he then asks about her gloves, she doesn’t find a concrete answer. Instead, she scutters away, pretexting something about having to remove snow outside – Hikaru checks, there’s no snow outside, and he’s starting to get more than a little suspicious (and concerned, but that goes without saying).
It’s that first time’s strangled chuckle, all of those that came after it and especially those gloves that finally push him to ask Machida herself about her best friend (he tried asking her, she didn’t give a straight answer). Machida may or may not have blown a raspberry at that, apparently finding it deeply funny that he’d be asking such a thing, as if that wasn’t out of concern for her.
“I imagine Yoshiko didn’t straight-up tell you about it, if you’re coming to me, hmm?”
“I’m serious, Machida. Is there something wrong with her hands? She put gloves when we were inside last time. It’s like she really didn’t want anyone to see what was on there.”
She chuckles again. Does this girl enjoy making fun of him that much?
“She didn’t tell me either.” He can believe that he supposes.
Oda chimes in, as he always tends to do, to add a cheerful: “maybe you should look at her hands, instead of asking about them, Captain!”
Very useful advice, thanks Oda.
“You don’t think I’ve tried that already? She always hides them from view.”
“That’s kinda weird,” Oda replies with a finger to his chin and a pout.
“I know, right? I’m afraid she’s hiding some injury.”
Wait, is that guy smirking? Don’t tell him Oda’s about to tease him on Fujisawa again… This really isn’t the time for that.
“I’m sure it’s nothing that bad,” Machida replies, tilting her head to the side and winking at him. “You’ll just have to look more carefully next time that happens!
“Easier said than done,” he sighs, more to himself than to either of his friends. “Also, that doesn’t worry you, Machida? What if it’s serious?”
That girl is giving him the nightmare child of a smirk and a mocking face.
“Aw, is our captain worried for his manager? You better be, considering how much she helps you out!”
“Of course I’m worried, I…” He sighs. “This is going nowhere.” He turns to Oda. “I’m going back to training. See you tomorrow.”
He takes his leave on it, not missing the faraway chuckles of both of them. For someone who was so disappointed about who her soulmate was, Machida sure seems to have a lot of fun with Oda.
That fruitless conversation has the countereffect to keep his mind running, even as he kicks the ball over and over again. There’s got to be some reason why this affects him so much, if even Fujisawa’s best friend doesn’t seem this concerned. He’d, of course, rather get to the bottom of the hand question, but he’s more than aware it’ll have to wait (despite not liking waiting, he has some notion of having to let time pass sometimes – something Grandpa Hiroshi often says, everything comes to those who wait).
Why is it so painful to imagine his friend having a soulmate she’s seemed to want? Unlike him, she was affected by it, he could see it in her eyes, feel it in her voice after getting to know her more – if anything, he should be happy for her… and he is! If she’s hiding her hands because they’re sending her notes, then good for her! Good for them! He hopes, like his parents and grandparents before them, her soulmate will take great care of her and make her happy. Send her nice messages of encouragement. Make sure she’s always treasured and praised for her hard work.
Yeah, good for them. At least someone’s going to be happy. Lucky bastard.
He kicks the ball again.
He has no tangible reason to be so angry over it? What is he, jealous? Jealous of what? Why? He has everything, right? He has a team that obeys him without question (well, most of the time that is), to who he can say anything, with who he can entrust everything he could think of. He has friends outside of it, a nice class, a loving family and he even gets to have privileged time with Fujisawa because for some reason she stays around at the same time as he does and it’s great, she’s implicated in her duties, like he is, and that’s why they get along. He loves her as a friend and as a close associate.
He wouldn’t go as far as saying they’re partners. They’re not nearly close enough for that to happen. Associates and friends is good enough, he supposes, for someone he hasn’t known for as long as the team and for someone who lacks a soulmate, romantic or not. He’s lucky. He should consider himself so. At least, not of those tiny messages can’t affect him. He can’t be distracted by anything but, sometimes, when he spots them, Fujisawa’s eyes.
The ball bounces back in his direction, almost hits him square into the chest.
Why isn’t he happy about what, two years ago, would’ve been justice served? Now that he can finally see some worth in soulmates, when he understands why his mother has been so dismayed over him seemingly lacking a fated partner, he’s finding himself at a loss.
He shouldn’t mind. He should be happy for her. For them. For everyone. Focus back on what matters, which isn’t some silly confusion between friendship and what definitely isn’t friendship anymore, or at least not just that. He can’t mind. He can’t be envious. He isn’t envious. He has everything but a thing he didn’t even care about up until recently. All that because, at some point, his friend started hiding her hands.
He sits on the ground, stares at the empty goalpost, and lets his head down.
Hikaru doesn’t have a soulmate, Fujisawa definitely does and he can’t make excuses for himself anymore. They have a club to work hard for, hey have summer homework and a tournament upcoming, they have families to make proud, friends to hang out with, a moveout to consider – but he can’t get his mind out of the topic that doesn’t matter, even if there’s no point in twisting a knife into a wound.
Good for her, it’s not hers.
The last day Furano is spending in Tokyo is a little bittersweet, more so to their captain (and presumably their manager) than to anyone else on the team. The gentler warmth of the evening is a much welcome change from the dry air that surrounded them earlier, the coach is loudly celebrating with perhaps one beer too many in his hand, the guys are laughing and celebrating their shared victory with Toho, the second favourites of the tournament.
Hikaru is, of course, as happy as everyone else that they’ve won the national tournament, even if was with a bit of a lucky strike (it’s obvious to point out Furano’d have lost against a healthy Nankatsu, but really, if they couldn’t win without Tsubasa playing at his top level, then they deserved to lose against Furano). The pride in his chest is only matched in size by his admiration for his teammates and fellow players of Toho: today, Furano managed to do the impossible, win the banner of victory for Hokkaido for the first time in history, and it’s more than enough reason to celebrate, he thinks.
The only reason why his joy, while vivid, is muted down compared to everyone else, is because Fujisawa’s departure is imminent, and while he’s glad they were able to hold their promise to her on top of giving her one more day in Japan, she’ll still be leaving for the other side of the ocean. He doesn’t want to see her leave.
It’s a little late to realize it, but with the pressure vanishing, Hikaru is left to pick up the pieces he’s managed to ignore for the past months. He likes Fujisawa a little too much for it to be just a “she’s the manager, and she’s an amazing one at that, so it’s normal I don’t want to see her go” thing: she isn’t just a friend, isn’t it? (She hasn’t for a long time).
It’s too bad, it really is. It feels like something he should’ve noticed a lot earlier than that. Having a half-breakdown in the middle of the soccer grounds at school on the matter helped a little, he supposes, but since then, all he’s gotten are weird conversations that just seemed cut short for some reason and heavy silence, apprehension of what’s to come, hurry to head somewhere else altogether. Missed opportunities, on his part mostly.
A tickle in his left forearm gets him out of his pensive stance; only for him to see the impossible.
On his skin are the words of someone else, black-on-flesh, delicately spelled-out despite their message being anything but uplifting. While he doesn’t recognize the handwriting, he has the disturbing feeling he’s seen it somewhere before, and not too long ago to boot.
For how long did he have a soulmate and why did it take them fifteen years to write him anything?
He has honestly no idea what to make of this. It’s so sudden that it’s… dizzying to consider every question that’s coming to him now, flooding his mind from the top of his skull to the back of his jaw. Who is this person? Why now? Do they even know who he is? Why send him such a foreboding thing? If they know who he is, then how? Do they just so happen to follow middle-school Japanese soccer? They’re Japanese, he’d guess, since they wrote to him in kanji – wait, no, that’s not an actual hint, they may’ve learnt the language for that. Would anyone do, though? He’s just some ordinary guy, if you exclude his recently acquired national championship – God, this is so confusing, his head hurts almost as much as his legs.
A hand yanks him by the wrist – Machida’s, it turns out – and drags him back to the centre of attention for celebrations.
The party has considerably died down, leaving Hikaru with feet that just want a rest at long last (he can’t blame them, it’s been a difficult two weeks for everyone) and the only other person to still be awake: Fujisawa, who politely retains a yawn or two. Clearly, neither of them is in for the long haul, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to go to sleep knowing he could be spending quality time with her before she has to leave so early for New York.
He wonders what she’s thinking about. The USA, he imagines, because surely this sort of major change in someone’s life has to weight on her mind. The victory, maybe? He’s still not registering it fully. It’s been such a long-time dream, for the entire team, that it’s more like a dream he may wake up from soon than actual events. They’ve made it, yet he’s standing there, tired and quiet and dazed. Talk about a leader…
Fujisawa’s voice reaches out to him.
“Is something wrong?”
He turns back to her. She’s staring at him with worry all over her face.
“Oh nothing, it’s…” No point in hiding his concerns from her anymore, huh? “Well, it’s just that, uh… My soulmate wrote to me for the first time today.”
Her expression immediately changes to something he can’t quite describe in his own words, like she remembered a terrible thing. Maybe he got it all wrong and she doesn’t have a soulmate and now feels all alone? That’d be awful, far more than the opposite he envisioned until earlier tonight.
“What… What did they write?” She gulps. “If you don’t mind showing me, that is…”
He feigns a sense of serenity so he can bring her some sense of security.
“I love you… and I’m sorry.” He pauses, eyes fixated on his arm. “Don’t you find that a little weird? Wait, lemme show you what I mean.” He shows her the inside of his forearm (come to think of it, that’s a weird place to write on. Why not on the outside, where it’s far easier?). “It’s weird that they’d try to contact me so late… For the longest time, I thought I didn’t have a soulmate!”
She bows her head down, wordless.
“Uh… Fujisawa? You okay? You need to sleep? I mean, it’s fine if you don’t wanna talk about it or wanna go to sleep, I’m boutta hit bed too—”
She looks back up – oh, there’re tears in her eyes. Crap, he didn’t want to make her sad, he totally ruined her evening by telling her about it, he should’ve at least waited until tomorrow, maybe even after she was gone from Japan so it’d be easier to deal with the consequences of separation, and…
She rises her left arm to him, shows him its inside.
I love you… and I’m sorry.
“W-wait a second there…”
“It was me. I’m your soulmate, Matsuyama.” She sighs, looks at the floor on her right. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come clean about it. Truth be told I… I’ve just been a coward about it.”
“Wha’ do y’mean?”
A pained smile appears on her lips as she glances at her palms, “I recognized your handwriting on my hands months ago.” Then she gazes back at him, barely able to keep her tears inside with her hands. “I’m really sorry. I should’ve told you a long time ago. I don’t expect you to forgive me…”
“Okay, first of all, it’s not bad enough for that, Fujisawa, I’m just really shaken right now – also, how did you even recognize my handwriting, actually?”
“How could I not? I saw it on the whiteboard of the clubroom every day for two years and a half.”
Her features slightly soften and so does her tone. Good, good…
“Man, you know me more than I thought, Fujisawa, if you managed to do that… Can’t say I’m not flattered, though!” He studies the writing on his arm again. “To think I had no idea that was your handwriting… I should’ve known better, though, I knew it reminded me of something! On second thought, the way you wrote ‘sorry’ is fami… huh.”
Hey, how did he forget this was a…
“Wait a sec’ here!! You’re in love with me?!”
Fujisawa laughs. She just laughs for a while, and it spreads to him, so he laughs too, and the world feels like a much better place all of a sudden – be it because his chest feels lighter or if he’s light-headed from the outburst, he can’t tell, he’s too dazed for any real thinking.
God, she loves him? And he loves her? And they’re soulmates or whatever on top of it? What is this, the final miracle from some fairy tale? Between Furano’s national victory and this, he has to be dreaming. There’s no way this is real. No freaking way.
“I don’t know what to tell you, honestly…” He chuckles. “It’s so, uh… I’m not dreaming, right?”
“No, you’re not.” Her posture stiffens, hands entangled and shoulders risen. “It’s, uhm… it’s fine if you don’t like me back. Or don’t think it’s okay for me to have hidden the truth from you for so long. It’d only be fair…”
Her voice hitches with every word, a wet echo in her vocal cords.
“Fair to who?”
“To me. To you. It—”
He clutches her against him, partly because he can’t stand to see her cry, and partly because he feels like she wouldn’t mind. (If she does, then he’ll just go bury himself in the mountains of Hokkaido).
“That’s not true, Fujisawa, you know that.”
He pulls apart from her just enough to see her face again. Her eyes are bright and glisten under the lights of the inn, covering her entire figure in a warm red hue, staring at him almost in a daze of her own.
“So, hmm… Forgive me for asking, but the message I wrote you…”
He laughs, “shit, it’s seemed so obvious to me, I forgot to tell you!”
He takes a pen he apparently forgot he had in his shirt pocket and, right under her message on his arm, writes his response. It may be a little tacky, especially coming from him, but it feels weirdly appropriate in their little situation.
The bright smile she gives him as soon as she deciphers his handwriting (he’s tried to make it as readable as possible, but even then, he doesn’t doubt it’s still barely better than chicken scratch) makes the exceptional cheesiness entirely worth it. She almost tackles him to the ground by jumping on him suddenly and with, it seems, everything she has.
A thought then flashes through his mind, taking him out entirely out of his slightly romantic mindset.
“Wait… That means you could read anything I wrote on my hands, right…?”
“Yes.”
“So, you, uh…”
He feels his face grow even warmer. If it gets hotter, he may faint from overheating, which would be even more embarrassing – stop thinking about that, you idiot, or you’ll make it happen!!
“I didn’t mind getting my latest birthday present spoiled for me, it’s that what you were wondering.”
“Oh, okay,” he sighs in relief, “good. Good.”
“You had original ways to insult my soulmate that I don’t approve of, however.”
And now he wants to go bury himself in the mountains of Hokkaido again.
“I, uh… Well, I was planning to tell you to write me emails when you’d be in America, but, uh… Guess we don’t even need that, right?”
“It’s the one advantage of a soul bond. It’s a little inconvenient for letters, though, so I’ll just send you emails too.”
“I… promise you won’t just get my shopping lists.” He allows himself to put his forehead on hers, not that she’s never done so before (although in far less pleasant conditions). “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too, but we won’t be that far raway from each other, right…?”
Look, they finally did it!
Applause from the side wants him to commit acts of unjustified violence towards both of their best friends; but Hikaru has a lot of other things to think about than Oda and Machida’s self-satisfied smirks (and he doesn’t need to turn around to see them).
The journey back to Hokkaido is going to be a long, long one…