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The first day he comes home with a skinned knee, his mother whacks him over the back of his tiny blond head and asks him what he did this time. She doesn’t believe him when he yells in defense that he did nothing, you hag! I didn’t do anything! So he cleans the wound up himself and seethes in his room alone, punching his pillow and trying to figure out how the hell he just got a skinned knee.
But a few weeks later, while his mom picks him up from school–and he whines and whines because he doesn’t want her to walk with him, Katsuki doesn’t need anybody, ever–they’re halfway home and he’s leaving footprints in dried concrete the way he’s stomping ahead of her, when she grabs him by the back of his shirt.
With a choke, he stumbles back in her hands. “You just got this.” His mother says flatly, eyebrows drawn in concern. Katsuki turns up the elbow his mother is eyeing to see what all the fuss is about.
“I didn’t do anyth”–
“I know, you just got this. I watched it happen.” And then the horizon of understanding dawns over her eyes, and she stands back up, pushing her son forward. “C’mon, hurry it up, pal. I’ll clean it up for you.”
His mom almost never cleans up for him. Puzzled, he obeys, footsteps light as he scurries back.
---
A soul link, his mother calls it. He stares in his floor length mirror, picks up his elbows, and examines the lines that indicate probable scabs on the other person.
Sounds like his soulmate is a klutz.
That also explains that instance three months ago when he’d used a green marker but had ended up with red ink on his fingers later in the day. Or that one time he’d flipped a page in a book and found an odd little mark on the cushion of his palm, something that had looked like a smiley face but was so wobbly and crude it was questionable. He’d figured the ink on the book had somehow smudged on him.
And there’s also all the little paper cuts. Katsuki doesn’t get papercuts. For one thing, he’s careful and calculating, even if nobody would believe it. Secondly, they heal overnight because of his constantly moisturized hands, he barely scars as it is, so all the tiny little scars that linger? Their doing. Apparently his soulmate is just out there jamming their hands into whatever piles of paper they can find.
As this all runs through his mind, a bruise forms on his shin. Red eyes narrow at the abomination.
Well. This just sucks.
---
Deku is jabbering off at the edge of the sandbox and Katsuki is considering shoving a handful of the dirt down the irritation’s shirt when he sees the little scribble on the inside of his forearm, just by the crease of his elbow.
UA?
Sand sifts through his fingers like a sieve. The question mark implies they want to come back to whatever the acronym is. “UA” could mean anything. Uninformed Aardvark. Unicorns Anonymous. Unidentified Animal. They couldn’t possibly mean the hero school that he’s gunning for.
A second later, in tiny, tiny lettering: All Might?
With a question mark–again–like they don’t know who All Might is.
Katsuki throws what’s left of the sand in his hands at Deku, ignoring his doleful little cry to race back home and be in an inexplicably bad mood in his bedroom instead of out in the open.
---
That person on the other side of him–that’s what he calls it, because soulmate is just too… it’s too… it’s just “too,” alright?!–gets scrapes on their hands a lot. Tiny little marks, like they have a hobby of sliding over rock.
It’s gotten even worse with time, an almost daily occurrence since second grade. Katsuki’s in sixth grade now, and judging by the occasional reminders for algebra notes or the pages for English reading that pop up on his arms, so is that other person.
But the lines on his palms… what an idiot.
He’s at home at his desk, finding x for homework, when the telltale little cuts start surfacing. Jaw clenching, he ignores them, keeps plugging away at formulas and calculations.
When he pushes out for dinner, his mother’s screech five times louder than necessary, he sees the collection of lines on both his knees, the widths let him know that the other person is probably bleeding, and he swears. Is this person serious?! Making him look like an amateur when he’d never make these kinds of mistakes?!
“KATSUKI! DINNER! NOW!”
“JUST A SECOND, WOMAN!” He yells back, grabbing a marker from the cup to his side. The ink is washable because he’s never wanted to leave anything on this stranger, doesn’t want them to know anything about him the way he already knows too much about them. He doesn’t write anything on himself to begin with, but if he ever had to, he’d wash it off right away.
But for the first time, in a bold, chisel-tip black marker, he writes into his palm:
STOP.
---
Through all of dinner, he clenches his left hand at his side, doesn’t want either of his parents to know–not that they’d care, they leave notes to each other all the time–’cause it feels too personal.
Once he’s shoveled all his food down, he excuses himself roughly, charging back up the stairs to his bathroom so that he can wash the message off, figures he’s given the person on the other side enough time to see his message.
But when he opens his hand to rub the bar of soap against it, he sees a string of numbers.
A phone number.
The stranger just gave him their phone number. They really are an idiot.
But he still jots it down before washing it off.
---
5pm.
That’s all it says. 5pm.
They’re probably trying to remember the time for some activity. Katsuki scrubs at the mark, growling, then tugs his sleeve over his wrist to conceal the ink. It’s been two months since the phone number and he’s made no moves to reach out. The person on the other side’s been keeping up with the injuries, bruises, notations for class, but none of them are as grievous as that moment two months ago.
He’d gotten what he wanted, so he doesn’t care to reach out.
“Bakugo!” The guy who sits next to him–classmate, probably “friend” to anybody else, but Katsuki only sees “extra” and “irrelevant”–stands up after the bell, slinging his bag over his shoulder and smiling down at him. “You wanna go to the arcade with us? My brother said he’d take us!” A small circle is shaping up around him.
He snorts. “No.” And tugs the sleeve of his shirt down just a bit more. He’s been fiddling with his quirk recently, and he’s too obsessed with it to spend any spare time entertaining other people.
But when he sits cross-legged on the rug of his room at 5, holding a palm out to set off a small explosion, he sees black scrawl up the pale side of his arm.
Hey! in round, neat letters.
Ignore it. He sets a blast off, quiet enough so neither of his parents will hear.
Do you not have a phone? Comes a few minutes later, the previous salutation washed off, presumably. My name’s Ochako!
A girl, then.
Gritting his teeth, Katsuki turns his forearm down so that he can’t see it, directs his little sparks outwards instead of upwards.
Like she knows, the words start appearing on the other side of his arm. Sorry about the scars.
If she’d really been sorry, she would’ve stopped.
I’m training my quirk so that I can be a hero!
With a strangled shout, Katsuki tears through his backpack for his phone–the one his parents gave him to keep track of him, the one he has no numbers saved on, has never shown his classmates ‘cause he doesn’t do that–and slams the digits on the sticky note into the screen.
STOP.
He expects three little dots, but nothing comes. Maybe they purposely gave him a wrong number.
But his phone pings with another message as he stares at it:
Ok. Sorry.
---
A year passes. The injuries improve. He wears a school uniform now.
He starts finding little hearts on his wrists. Sometimes stars. A tiny O + K wrapped in an even tinier heart appears in the middle of class, then it immediately disappears like she’s rubbed it off with her spit or something. Eurgh.
Anger should be his first reaction, some stupid girl mooning over him is the last thing he wants, but he’s more alarmed than anything that she’s found out his first name. The last straw is the tiny cluster of hearts on the pad of his thumb–he pulls out his phone when he gets home.
How’d you find out my name?
He doesn’t get a response for a full seven hours, and he’s almost foaming at the mouth by the time the notification pops up.
?
It took her seven hours to send a fucking question mark?! Some monster is rattling the bars of its cage inside Katsuki.
O and K! K! How’d you find out my name?!
There’s still no dots, but a message pops up. She doesn’t have her phone connected with wi-fi, then. Your name starts with a K?
Something else rattles at Katsuki as he flinches away from his phone, blinking. He feels his eyebrows pull together. Who is it?
There’s no reply.
---
He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. He. doesn’t. care.
So why the hell does he want to spam her messages about what an idiot she is, getting a crush on some other extra when she already has a soulmate, what is she thinking?
It’s 5pm the next day when his phone goes off.
Do you think this soulmate stuff is real?
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Of course it’s real. It writes on his freaking arms. Outraged, he starts tapping back four familiar letters, that S, T–
Another message from her before he can finish his. Like could we end up with other people?
It’s not unheard of, plenty of people never find the other person, plenty of people never get marks so assume they don’t have a soul link. But nearly all people who are within reach of theirs choose that route, so why the hell would she want to find somebody else when she’s already got somebody set up for her, and somebody as great as him, too–
There’s a guy in my class
His name is Kaito, I guess it doesn’t matter if you know
But he’s cute! And he’s nice
So
idk
We’ll probably never meet and it seems kinda sad to wait for someone
And I don’t know you
being with someone I don’t know is kinda scary
I guess I’m just thinking out loud, it’s not like I really need your opinion
Without ending punctuation, her lines of messages read like some messed up poem, and holy crap, her infatuation for this extra is too far gone already. Snarling, Katsuki smashes out a response.
I’m going to UA.
He sits there for five minutes, expecting a response because she’d been so active just now, but nothing comes. When he finishes dinner and comes back up to study, he checks his phone and still sees nothing.
Before he turns in for the night, he looks again, squinting at the bright screen in the dark. Still nothing.
Huffing, he locks the device and stuffs it under his pillow. Whatever.
---
Being with someone I don’t know is kind of scary, she’d said.
He sits cross-legged on his bedroom floor, staring at the blue bubbles on his screen. There haven’t been any doodles or notes for a month now. He wonders if anything’s happened with Kaito.
Thumbs begin tapping.
What’s your quirk?
---
He finds out that she has a quirk that lets her change the effect of gravity on anything. Her follow-up question has a smile emoticon attached to the end of it, and he tells her he can make explosions.
Wow! I bet you’ll make a great hero!
I know I will.
She sends a laugh emoji, and he gets the feeling Ochako doesn’t know he’s being completely serious.
And he finds out that she has a flip phone, that she lives in the Mie prefecture, that her parents work construction. She decided to be a hero to help them out with money. She has him saved in her phone as “K.”
She dots her messages with emoticons like she’s desperate to get rid of them, she’s generous with her laughter, and “hahaha” is amusement but “HAHAHA” is bursting to tears with laughter–which she does a lot.
Katsuki finds this all out in a span of 6 months, of checking his phone during breaks, during meals, during lulls in his studying. There’s always a message waiting.
Another 2 months later, another 2 months of finding out she likes mochi–2 months of the occasional photo of some colorful rice cake, finds out she has buttons on the pads of her fingers when she sends him a photo of her holding a mochi in the palm of her hand–another 2 months of learning that she also uses washable ink, that her parents are also soulmates, that she already knows her hero name but she isn’t gonna tell him what it is, he gets a message.
Kaito confessed to me!
---
Eighth grade comes free of message notifications. What would’ve been the fucking point?
Girls are starting to notice him, but he’s written off quickly when the first confesses to him. Doesn’t even tell her that he’s already got a soulmate, just snaps that maybe if she got better grades she’d even fall on his radar.
Another month passes, which makes it 6 since Ochako dropped off the face of the earth. Katsuki gets a ping in the middle of calculating the formula of a parabola.
Whatcha up to? A shiny little smiling emoji.
It pisses him off. Your boyfriend gonna get all fucked up over you talking to your soulmate?
Four hours pass.
It wasn’t that serious!
Something nasty that he hadn’t known was living inside him slithers out.
---
Their rhythm picks back up, text after text like nothing had ever stopped them. Sometimes she asks about his homework, laughs when they’re working on the same thing, finds out they use the same math textbook, sometimes asks him for help.
One night, they’re both studying for their finals, and she mentions that she got a confession on her desk and she doesn’t know if she should meet the person at the time and location they specified, and what would you do?
Don’t. He answers for her.
Seems kinda rude? She texts back.
Later, he’ll say he blacked out, or that his finger slipped. As it currently stands–
“Why’d you do it?”
“Whu-hello?”
Her voice is tinny, girly, she sounds like she’s in disbelief. “Why’d you do it.”
“W-wow, you sound nothing like I thought you would”–
“Why. Did. You. Date. Someone. Else. ”
The other end is silent. Then, a soft inhale. “Doesn’t it scare you? Not having a choice?”
“I don’t care.”
“How come?”
“I only care about being the number one hero. Everything else is white noise.”
“What if your soulmate wasn’t going to be a hero, wouldn’t that be hard?”
“You don’t wanna be a hero anymore?”
“That’s not what I meant”–
“So you’re still tryna be a hero.”
“Yeah, but”–
"Doesn’t matter.”
“... If you say so!” She’s giggling.
“You gonna go out with anybody else?”
“I–I don’t know, maybe”–
“You’re an idiot.”
Then hangs up on her, heart pounding on his tongue. She’s got a voice–a laugh–that he could listen to for the rest of his life.
---
He learns in ninth grade that she gets a lot of confessions. On one hand, he’s smug–’course he’d have a soulmate who’s as great as he is–but on the other hand, those assholes need to stay the hell away if they know what’s good for them.
He’d ask why she doesn’t just tell everybody she has a soulmate, but he already knows why. Some dumb act of rebellion against fate.
One day, she asks in the middle of their discussion about All Might’s most recent act of heroism: What do you look like?
Katsuki’s never taken a single selfie in his life, the only photos of himself that he has are childhood photos. He doesn’t have any other contacts, doesn’t bother to get photos his classmates take at events.
There’s one photo though. He scrolls through the (entirely one-sided) conversation he has with Deku and finds what he’s looking for. It’s from their most recent sports festival, his leg tied to Deku’s after they’ve won their race, arms crossed and a self-satisfied sneer across his face, looking down his nose at the photographer while Deku gives two thumbs up beside him. They’ve both got red ribbons tied around their foreheads, flipping in the breeze.
Typically, there’s a few seconds between each message when they talk. Whatever she’s sending back must be long, ‘cause it takes ten entire minutes before his phone lights up.
But it’s just an emoji. Specifically the one with the party hat blowing the birthday thing. He raises his eyebrows, sends back a question mark.
You look really cool!
He’s got a feeling it’s more than that, so he smirks, but lets it go. What about you?
The photo she sends back is of three girls with their hands around each other’s waists, standing together the way close, comfortable friends do and waving at the camera. Katsuki knows right away which one she is–the wide open smile looks exactly like how her laugh sounds.
He taps his thumbs against the sides of his phone, thinks about what he should do. Then does it.
Cute.
---
Usually she answers any texts or starts conversations after classes, and he appreciates that she gives all her attention to school.
But today he gets a text in the morning.
Have a good first day!
The first day of 10th grade, the last year of middle school. When he taps back “you too,” she sends back a big smile emoji. For the rest of the day, his hands itch to find his phone, to see if she’s said anything else, to tell her what’s happening on his end.
And when classes are over, she asks, How was it?
Gonna call you.
---
“Did you know otters hold hands in their sleep?”
They’ve been on the phone for three hours now, mostly in silence as they do their homework. He’s making an outline of historical events for his class and she’s supposed to be working on her physics homework. “Oi. You got homework or not?”
“You’re so growl-y, Katsuki. Do you ever just say stuff normally?”
“What’s it matter to you. Do your homework.”
“Somebody asked me out today.”
That gets his attention. She seems to know it by his lack of response. After a beat, he snaps, “You still haven’t told all those extras you have a soulmate?”
Her voice is small. “That’s the thing. Everybody knows. He knew. He still asked.”
“Tch.” His blood is starting to boil. “Do whatever the hell you want. I don’t care.”
“Katsuki?”
He hangs up on her.
---
They don’t talk, but when winter break comes around a month later, he gets a text from her.
I’m visiting Tokyo over the break! Wanna meet?
He doesn’t answer because he doesn’t care. And he’s also not going to be in town. But mostly because he doesn’t care.
(He stares at his ceiling fan and wonders how he can convince his parents to let him stay here while they tour Korea without him.)
---
A week after winter break, she texts him.
I didn’t accept, just so you know.
What a way to piss him off. A month without any exchange for no reason. They could’ve been talking this entire time, wouldn’t have spent all this time feeling this awful, weird, cloud in his gut–
I was mad at you though.
He scoffs. She was mad at him? His phone starts ringing, and he picks up.
“You didn’t even listen to me. Why can’t you just wait for once, why do you always have to react immediately”–
“You’re an idiot if you think I’m gonna sit around and listen to you swoon over some other guy”–
“I was gonna ask you what you thought about how I was gonna turn him down!”
He blinks. Then sinks his teeth back in. “All you have to say is ‘no,’ it’s not hard,” he fumes at her.
“He wrote me an entire paragraph about how he knew I had a soulmate and he thought it was worth trying. I thought he deserved more than that! We were pretty good friends.” She adds dejectedly.
It kind of kills him. He knows she’s allowed to have friends, allowed to have close friends, knows other people are allowed to like her, even knows she’s allowed to like other people, but fuck, if it doesn’t drive him insane. Why can’t she just be okay with this?
“I’ve never even met you,” Ochako continues quietly, suddenly, and he stiffens. “Sometimes it doesn’t even feel real.”
“It’s real,” he growls.
“How are you so sure?” She sighs.
“It’s not a big deal,” He’s pretty sure half the reason she’s so anxious about it is because she overthinks it. “You’ve got best friends, don’t you? How is this any different?” Which is rich coming from him. He can barely stand the person closest to him.
“What if we meet and we hate each other?”
“You’ve already seen me,” he answers, exasperated.
“A picture is different, Katsuki. Plus, sometimes you’re rude. Most of the time I think it’s funny, but sometimes I already don’t like you. What if I just like you less and less when we have to be together all the time?”
His brows furrow. He swallows, picks up a tone of voice that he doesn’t use often. “I promise you won’t.”
The line is quiet. He repeats himself, mouth dry, words soft. “I promise.”
“Okay,” she whispers back.
The next morning, he stops by a stationary store on his way to school and picks up a chisel-tip marker–a permanent one. Before the bell, he uncaps it and draws an ‘x’ onto his wrist, over his pulse.
Not a second later, he feels his phone vibrate.
? She asks.
Promise. He answers.
---
He’d called after studying on his own, after getting ready for bed, and placed his phone down beside his pillow and laid down on his side to stare at her little icon, that photo of her, listening to her voice through headphones.
“Do you ever wonder if there’s somebody better out there for you?”
He snorts. Every time, he snorts. “You’re my soulmate. Pretty sure that means you’re the best out there for me.”
“But what if this is all wrong.”
They have this conversation at least once every six months. This must be the third or fourth time, given that they’re in their eleventh year. His thumb rubs against the x on his wrist. “Why would it be wrong, Cheeks?”
A nickname he’d given her after she’d sent him a picture of her with a mochi up to her face. She’d looked almost exactly like it, and he’d smiled.
“There’s seven billion people in the world. How could just one of them be the one?”
He kind of agrees with her, and he never knows what to say. These conversations have grown his patience, ‘cause he hates the way he’d driven her to tears once. So he sighs and says the first thing that comes to mind this time. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it could be any one of those seven billion, and fate just thought it’d throw one possibility out at us.”
For once, there’s no question after. “Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Ochako repeats, sounding like she’s murmuring it to herself. They lay in silence for the eternity afterwards.
Katsuki thinks she’s fallen asleep, confirms it when he mumbles her name and there’s no response.
Faint words fall to the ceiling more than to the phone as he says, “I think I love you,” and lays the ‘x’ on his wrist over his eyes.
---
The conversation doesn’t pop up the next half-year that passes, and then, they’re a year from graduating. He’s been waiting for this year his entire life, and now he just wants it to be over.
He just wants to be at UA, and it used to be that he desperately, desperately, wanted to be a hero. But now it’s also because he wants so badly to be with her.
And then one day, he’s taken hostage by an overconfident mass of sludge, and when it’s all over with, the first thing that comes to mind is for him to check his texts.
You’re on the news
Call me
Please
He doesn’t call her, but he answers, frustrated, I’m fine.
His phone starts ringing and he picks up, biting, “What? ”
But her voice sounds more amused than annoyed. “I saw the way you were looking at Deku. Don’t, Katsuki. Leave it alone!”
“Fine. ”
She’s still smiling. “Promise?”
Katsuki glares at the ‘x’ on his wrist. “Fuckin’ promise, alright?”
She hangs up on a laugh, and he knows exactly what she looks like right now.
It makes everything feel more tolerable.
---
Injuries incoming, she texts, and he grins. They’ve all been training for the entrance exam, he’s got his own bruises as well as hers, and now they’re waiting for it to start. He hasn’t seen her yet.
“That Ochako?” Deku smiles at him.
Katsuki waves him off with a threatening spark of his palms. “Shut the hell up.”
“Sorry, it’s just so exciting!”
Katsuki stares at the faint mark his childhood friend has had around his eye since he was eight. He’s never gotten any words, just bruises. Big ones at that, usually around his stomach. Seems pretty fucked up.
“Good luck,” he throws out to his friend, knows all about All Might.
Deku smiles warmly. “Thanks.”
---
“Kacchan,” Deku starts, breathless as he dashes to catch up to him when he’s on his way home. Katsuki stops, glares. The green-haired anomaly watches him with bright eyes. “She’s cute. She’s really cute.”
“I know that already,” he snaps. He hadn’t seen her the entire exam, too focused on racking up the most points. It'd paid off with first place. He’d heard about the commotion Deku’d dealt with, had gotten jealous once he’d cleared the course and had more room to think about everything else.
She'd gotten third. He's proud of her. He's relieved. He's... glad. Glad that it somehow all worked out.
---
On the first day of school, he ties his tie then rips it off ‘cause he hates it, has always hated ties. Leaves the top two buttons undone and runs his hands through his hair. Stares in the mirror and then turns away with a huff. It doesn’t fucking matter.
And when he gets to the entrance, there’s a girl with short brown hair and big brown eyes, cheeks flushed from more than the sun he’s sure, black tights on under her school-issue skirt, staring up at the sky, leaning against a pillar with her bag against her legs.
“Cheeks.”
Her head turns sharply, and the way her smile breaks across her face knocks the breath out of him.
She bounds up to him, whining, laughing, and it all sounds perfect. “Can’t even call me by my real name the first time you meet me!”
Katsuki’d thought he’d already loved her, but right now, falling feels a lot like flying. He tugs her arm out to him, sees the fresh ‘x’ he’d drawn that morning, and circles his fingers around her wrist.
“It’s real,” she quips gently, eyes glittering when his own flicker up to meet her gaze. “Promise.”
With a quick jerk, she’s pressed against his chest, and he presses his face into the crown of her head.
“I missed you.”
Giggling, she presses away from him, hands on his chest. “Am I everything you hoped for?” She teases.
“Better.”
As if they’re trying to outdo the sun, her eyes get even brighter. “Oh yeah? Promise?” She loops an arm through his, other hand holding the strap of her backpack as she starts them on the path down to the doors.
“Promise.”
He slides his hand into hers.
It’s a perfect fit.