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“We would like you to come play for our team,” the man said, his tongue forming foreign syllables. The first thought I had when I heard this was along the lines of, oh god do I need to touch up on my English.
“You’ve been scouted, Kageyama, congratulation,” Oikawa Tooru, the team captain of my high school volleyball team, said in his usual cheery voice. Hearing him say those words (in a language I understood) was enough for me to know my entire life was about to change.
Pulling from my limited English knowledge I told the well-dressed man, “thank you... yes, please.” It certainly didn’t feel like the right response but it was the best I could muster, I hadn’t spoke English since sophomore year, and that was years ago now.
The man nodded, understanding blooming across his face and then a frown. He turned to Oikawa and the two of them started going back and forth, the words falling from their mouths going in one ear and out the other. He started handing Oikawa different papers, a business card, and a curt pat on the shoulder. He nodded to me once more before turning and being on his way.
“What did he say?” I asked Oikawa, I was standing and I was on the edge of my seat.
The amount of information Oikawa dropped on my head after that was too much to comprehend and I waddled home overwhelmed with the weight of it all. I had a full ride scholarship to California State University, I was moving to the other side of the globe to live in the heart of Los Angeles.
And I needed to learn English.
Everyone is born with some type of sign pointing them towards The One. Their other half, their true love, hearts desire. Their soulmate. Tattooed onto the inside of my wrist since before I was even born, black ink, beautiful, simple yet intricate, was a compass. It would rotate and spin as if it weren’t even connected to my skin with absolutely no sense of direction. North, no matter what I did, would always point west. Across the ocean. Across the world.
The first time it ever pointed somewhere else was when my parents decided to take me to Antarctica with them on a work trip. I was probably six at the time. For the first time in my life that needle pointed North, which was so unhelpful I threw a tantrum right then and there.
Now, sitting in a plane, on my way to a strange place three months after being informed that I had to choose between going broke or uprooting my entire life (with probably three more English words under my belt) all I could do was stare at my beautiful compass as it adjusted itself to point directly in front of me. That was probably the only time the entire plane ride that I had a good feeling about this trip. Otherwise... I was so fucking doomed.
When the plane landed I found myself wishing I knew how to read, which was certainly something I had never thought before. The thought pissed me off, what the fuck was wrong with me where I couldn’t even find a fucking exit when an exit sign could be right in front of my face (for all I knew).
“Hello?” I asked the nearest person, a mother who was standing with her daughter waiting for their baggage, they had been on my flight. “Do you find way out?” I almost slapped myself across the face, that wasn’t the right word and I knew it but I was too embarrassed to correct myself.
“If you go straight down this walk, there should be an exit on the third left,” she told me gently in broken Japanese, something I was grateful for (as I did not know the word for: exit, left, straight, down, should, or third).
“Thank you,” I told her, proudly in English, and made my way down the way she had indicated.
Now that I was in the great city of LA my compass had come to life. It was constantly swirling and pointing in every which direction. The fates had decided that I would be moving to the same city as my soulmate, it would seem. That was all the motivation I needed to find a teacher, with a month till school started, to teach me all they possibly could about the English language so I didn’t fail (more than usual) once school started back up. At the moment I knew the basics, I couldn’t read, but I could understand perfectly all volleyball terminology thanks to Oikawa. Once again, something I never thought I would think, to thank Oikawa I must have gone insane on the plane.
Then October started. October, a month full of the colors orange and black and I could tell this from just October 1st. American were very proud of their holidays, and Halloween seemed to be no exception. What I certainly didn’t expect to happen when I was making my way to the nearest coffee shop, because shoot me; I make a shit cup of coffee and yet need it to survive, well, yeah, I didn’t expect to be blocked by a wave of half naked women in pink shouting at the top of their lungs.
“You look confused,” a man said, putting his hand on my shoulder suddenly (causing me to nearly jump out of my skin). He was wearing nothing more than a speedo and some suspenders and so much pink eye shadow I found myself wondering if it would ever come off.
“Is this... a normal American thing?” I asked slowly, my tongue wanting to trip over the still foreign words. He broke out in laughter and my face contorted even further in confusion.
“It’s the Slut Walk. We’re walking to end body shaming, slut shaming...” his voice got drowned out the moment my eyes flicked down to my wrist as my compass went wild, flicking down to point into the moving crown and moving along with it, straining at the close proximity of it’s target. My soulmate was in the crowd .
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, cutting the man off before I took off sprint into the crowd, following my heart’s compass. Literally.
Every person I’d pass it would flick past, no not them , it would say and off I went again. Thousands upon thousands were in that crowd, but I didn’t let that sway me. We had been separated by oceans, continents, and kilometers upon kilometers my entire life, I wasn’t going to let something as juvenile as a crowd of half naked, empowered women separate us.
I slithered through the crowd and reached an edge, thinned out by close proximity to the side walk. My compass urged me, stressed the importance and it’s surety that they were right there . They, he , was walking slightly slower than the rest of the crowd, his shoulders hunched forward, his head down. The first thing that hit me wasn’t the color of his hair, a curly and vibrant orange mess. It wasn’t his outfit, baggy jeans, a thick blue sweatshirt, with a faded band t-shirt. No, it wasn’t even that he was wearing a backpack that made him look even smaller than he already was. No, it wasn’t any of these details and while the way he looked the first time we met would be forever drilled into my memories, as if he had given me a second tattoo on my brain. No, what struck me and held me rooted on the spot, pushed my heart into my throat and tears into my eyes, was the sign held in a tight, shaky grasp.
THIS IS WHAT I WAS WEARING. Tell me I asked for it. I DARE you.
And he walked right past me. I was so frozen in my stupor that I let him walk right past me. “Wait!” I screamed the moment my brain caught up but I was still so shocked that I couldn’t remember if what I yelled was in English or Japanese. I turned on my heel, my compass screaming and pointing and oh so happy that it finally found its north. I ran after them and grabbed their shoulder in a grip I refuse to admit, even to this day, as something anything less than desperate.
I’ve never felt a person jump more, and I certainly have never heard a person scream louder. “Wha... what?” He gasped, spinning around to face me, his sign flying to the ground as he stumbled away. He put a hand to his chest and was staring at me with big beautiful brown eyes.
“I’m your... you... I...” I didn’t know the English word for soulmate. I didn’t know how to tell him that I’d been looking for him my entire life. That as I found myself cowering under covers and bed frames from a monster that was right outside my door my compass twitching with his every movement kept me safe. That when I was lost in the woods behind my school, I could follow him to the edge of the country and beyond, I knew I wasn’t alone. The since before I was even born my compass had been pointing me in the right direction, and that finding him, finally finding him, made me feel a level of elation that neither English nor Japanese had the words to express. I didn’t have the words to even tell him he was meant to be with me.
“My name is Kageyama Tobio,” I said, slowly trying to recall my basic introduction skills, “my compass,” I gestured down to it as it wobbled following his movements as he rocked nervously, “it points to you.”
“Your compass,” his voice was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. His eyes fell down to look at my quivering soulmark. Something seemed to dawn on him then, as he raised a hand to touch his chest, right on top of his heart. “You’re my soulmate, aren’t you?”
The second he raised those beautiful brown eyes to meet mine I knew exactly what that word meant, soulmate . “Soulmate,” I tried it on my tongue, enjoying the feel of it, how warm it felt. “I don’t speak very good English, I’m sorry, what is your name?”
“Oh!” His whole face lit up in a smile so bright it could rival a thousand suns. He grabbed my hand, leaned down to scoop up his sign, and led us straight into the very coffee shop I had my sights set on moments before. “Kageyama Tobio, is that Japanese?” He asked, sitting us down at the first table he could find.
“Yes, I just moved here from Miyagi,” I told him with a gentle ‘smile’. According to Oikawa, I don’t smile. My eyes crease up a little bit, small children cry, but I don’t smile.
“What really?!” His excitement was nearing on suffocating, I was going to drown in him five minutes into meeting him. “My name is Hinata Shouyou, I moved here from Miyagi when I was ten!” It felt like everything he said ended in an exclamation point, which was a huge turnaround from his before behavior of downtrodden and shy.
“My compass has always pointed west...” I whisper to him in confusion.
“I lived in west Miyagi, I guess. It’s very nice to meet you,” he pat the back of my hand, his skin clammy.
“Am I making you,” I paused searching up the word in my brain, “uncomfortable?”
He looked shocked for just a moment before shaking head quickly, “no, I’m just nervous. I’ve never met my soulmate before.” What a strange thing to say.
“What? Of course you haven’t, dumbass,” I muttered the last word under my breath but he pouted at it anyway.
“Well that isn’t how you should talk to your soulmate. You’re not very good at first impressions Kageyama,” he said good naturedly, his arms crossed over his chest and a strong pout on his lips.
I watched him go through his life after that moment. Not as a bystander, but as his partner. I was at his side, or acting as his chair, or behind him making scary faces at whoever the hell thought they were good enough to even look at him (and most people weren’t in my eyes, I certainly wasn’t). That was how we lived, together, as partners, friends, later teammates, and then husbands.
After a lifetime spent with Shouyou; I learned three valuable lessons.
- Always follow your heart, or you compass if one is included.
- Never eat more than three concession stand hot dogs no matter how good they taste.
And finally, 3. If you find yourself confronted by a crowd of half naked, empowered women, do not hesitate too long or you might miss your chance to find your better half.