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Itsuki had not interacted with Narumiya Mei for six years.
And yet, no single day passed by without a reminder of him.
The Seibu Lions is playing against the Yakult Swallows today, Itsuki thought to himself as he walked through the district of Marunouchi. They will be playing at Meiji Jingu.
There was a bright blue sky that morning, extending over Chiyoda, and when Itsuki looked up, memories began to flood his head. Crouching on the field, under the harshness of the summer sun, as the whole of Tokyo held their breath. Gazing forward, towards the mound where the pitcher stood tall, and under the blueness of the Tokyo summer sky, the pitcher raised his arm and-
The traffic light declared that it was time for him to cross the street, and Itsuki began walking. Funny, he reflected. It has been years since I even last played baseball, but I still think about him.
"Narumiya is definitely starting today, in my opinion," Itsuki could hear someone say as he entered the lobby of his office building, immediately going for the elevator. When Itsuki glanced over, he noticed that the speaker was a middle-aged man he did not recognize, most likely an employee from a different division. "The other pitcher, Hayashi, must still-"
Immediately after the elevator doors closed, Itsuki screamed in his head. Mei-san.
It felt wrong to think of him as "Mei-san" now, and he felt as if he did not deserve to do so - when was the last time they spoke? High school? And now, years later, they were no longer anything more than strangers. They were now people who do not know each other. And Mei-san of present day, Itsuki was confident, no longer remembered him.
However, although it had been more than half a decade, Itsuki could not think of him as simply "Narumiya", even if just in his head. It was alright, he thought; Mei-san would never know that Itsuki still thought of him as "Mei-san", even after all this time.
"Narumiya" was not the Mei-san whom Itsuki knew, or once knew, after all; Mei-san was Mei-san.
And Mei-san, in Itsuki's tiny world, was everywhere, still.
We belong to different worlds, Itsuki often thought to himself.
He thought it when he noticed the advertisement that showed Mei-san, NPB's superstar pitcher, whose brilliant smile made the train carriage seem brighter. He thought it when he went to the bar and saw that their television happened to be streaming a Seibu Lions match, showing how Mei-san never stopped, never got tired of impressing the world, of impressing Itsuki himself too. He thought it when he accidentally saw all those tabloids speculating about Mei-san's personal life, and he thought it when his boss got drunk and started a debate on when Narumiya Mei, Seibu Lions' rising star, was going to hurry away from Japan to start a whole new life in the MLB on the other side of the globe.
We belong to different worlds, now, but once upon a time, we were in the same one, Itsuki thought again, today, as he put on his headphones and pressed the play button, selecting one of his favorite idol group songs.
"We're in different worlds, worlds, worlds, but then I ask, to the skies, to the universe-"
It indeed felt odd to think about it, Itsuki admitted to himself. Back then, even though it was not without its own promise of blood and sweat and tears, he once played on the same place as Mei-san, not only in the literal sense but also the metaphorical one - to play on the same field.
However, in the present, they were no longer even playing the same game. Years ago, Mei-san had immediately thrown himself to the world of professional baseball of the highest level in Japan, brilliant, glamorous. There, he had sped forward, only becoming grander, stronger, more surreal, and Itsuki now had the impression that there was no single citizen in Japan who had never at least heard of his name.
And Itsuki, in the meantime?
He no longer played baseball, not even for fun on the weekends. The last time he put on the catcher gear, he was a university student and was still under the illusion that after he got his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, he would be collaborating with people from all over the world to directly work on the the most magnificent machines in the world - the fastest and most beautiful cars, the mightiest of ships.
Not this, not the bureaucratic documents that still get printed on paper despite Itsuki thinking it unnecessary. Not the hundreds and thousands of Excel spreadsheets, spreadsheets even for things that in Itsuki's opinion should not be turned into Excel spreadsheets in the first place. Not the lines and lines of code and numbers, numbers, numbers. Not spending hours and hours and days and days trapped in an office, his time and attention on documents and requests and problems.
Not that Itsuki was anything but grateful - his company was one of the larger, more successful, and more prestigious ones, one that was proven by their ability to easily rent office space in the elite commercial district of Marunouchi in Chiyoda, as well as their ability to pay Itsuki well enough to enable him to support his oshis.
Even though it did not fulfill his expectations, Itsuki did not despise his life right now - of Monday to Friday of riding a bicycle to the station before getting on a train, of being the first employee to go into the office because he was the most junior, every day. Of hours and hours in front of the computer screen with a brief break of a konbini bento for lunch before he got back to work. Of drinking with his colleagues and his boss on nights, on weekdays where he did not immediately go back home to his cramped and lonely apartment. Occasionally, on weekends he would put on an official merchandise shirt and hop on a train to Akihabara, where he never got tired of supporting the idol women who he had considered his younger sisters, especially his oshi Mayu-chan.
However, even though his world was not too bad, it was undeniable that his own and Mei's worlds were different. Although, Itsuki thought as he briefly turned to look at the window, he and Mei-san still looked at the same Southern Kanto sky.
"In a world where I have a soulmate, I want, I want you, I want you to-"
.
.
"Ow!"
A sudden painful heat had burned his skin in a the blink of an eye. It ravaged, before it disappeared, as fast as it had came.
Gasping and out of breath, Itsuki turned to look to his left and right; all the other employees were focused on their own work.
His heart beating loud, he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt, very slowly, unrevealing the soulmark imprinted in black on the underside of his right arm.
Full of energy, extremely happy. Very much can be joked with.
"Wow, you were not lying," Yamamoto-san commented.
"Why would I lie?" Itsuki muttered, suppressing the temptation to shook his arm, currently laid on the table and being photographed by Yamamoto-san. Still, this was much better than how it had been hours prior; previously, Yamamoto-san had put Itsuki's arm under a microscope as well all sorts of tools he did not understood. "I agreed to participate in this study not because I wanted the incentive cash, but because I am very interested in the research itself and would like to see new discoveries for this field."
"I am not accusing you and you know that, Tadano-san," Yamamoto-san answered, in response. "But we are all, of course, surprised. Especially yourself, of that I am sure, considering that you were first person to see it?"
"Actually, no, I was not very surprised," Itsuki replied, re-reading what was written on his arm, his soulmark. "I do not closely follow the developments in the soulmate studies, so I was not aware that something like 'Very much can be joked with' is something that has never been recorded, before, as something that could appear on a soulmark."
"The last time we met, your soulmark only said 'Determined', did it not, Tadano-san?" Yamamoto-san questioned. "If I remember correctly."
"Indeed, Yamamoto-san."
"Now, that was very typical for a soulmark, as far as we know. But this! This is very interesting. This is new data. It has never been recorded before, that the soulmark can tell whether someone was ready to go along with something, or not. What is known is that the soulmark shows the emotional and physical state of someone. Something like 'Extremely happy' ..."
Suddenly, Yamamoto-san chuckled. "'Extremely happy', it said. Had your soulmark changed that evening instead of the in the morning, I would have thought that your soulmate is a Seibu Lions fan! But it changed in the morning, their match had not even started then ... Tadano-san, do you keep with the Seibu Lions? Their pitcher, that Narumiya-chan ..."
Suddenly, the loud sound of a door being opened could be heard, and Itsuki whirled to see who had joined him and Yamamoto-san in the night.
"Yamamoto!" The other researcher that Itsuki had met before, Mori-san, hurriedly went into the laboratory. "Is it true?!"
"Tadano-san's soulmark really did say so, Mori!" Yamamoto-san shout-replied without turning. "The analysis I have done so far had proven that the soulmark is no fake. This means that what we know so far about soulmarks is not complete! I mean, we do know that there is still so much that we do not know, but you know what I mean-!"
Itsuki leaned against the back of his chair, rather shocked. When he reported the change to his soulmark, something that they had agreed that he would do every time there was a change to his soulmark, he never thought that he would receive this reaction.
A few weeks ago ...
"Thank you very much for your help, Tadano-san, we are very grateful," Mori-san told him then, back when Itsuki went to the Honshu National University campus to sign on the informed consent form, the one that stated that Tadano Itsuki had consented to be a subject of the research headed by Professor Yamamoto Chiyo. "It is very difficult to find sampling for any sort of research on soulmates. Very few people ever received a soulmark at all during their lives, and fewer still are currently in the Greater Tokyo Area and are willing to participate."
"I was extremely confused, the first time I got my soulmark," Itsuki said. "I was only a college student back then, with a million questions ... but most of the websites I found were confusing in the way they present the information. And most of the time, they did not have the information I needed at all in the frist place."
Mori-san smiled, and started opening her mouth to respond, but Itsuki hurriedly continued. "And there is still very little that we know about soulmates and soulmarks at all, right? So, if I can contribute to the development of knowledge in this field of study, I will be very pleased!"
"That is indeed true," Mori-san replied. "A lot of our questions about soulmates are still unanswered! As those who live in the twenty-first century, we are already used to having access to all sorts of knowledge about pretty much everything. How plants photosynthesize and receive energy, how children inherit genetics from their parents, and why the sky is blue. The answers to all those questions can be looked up on the internet, and it's all in your hand because we have smartphones."
Itsuki nodded.
Mori-san continued. "But I feel, those all made some of us assume that we already know everything ... When in fact, we do not. For example, do boobs get saggier faster if we wear a bra, or if we do not wear a bra? To this date, there is yet to be a conclusion on that."
Itsuki smiled politely. "Oh." He felt awkward.
Calmly, Mori-san continued. "To be honest, every time someone asked me about soulmates, I oftentimes answered, 'We don't know yet.' And many people find that disappointing. 'How can you not know, what was the use in you going back to school and getting a Doctorate if you cannot even know things like that?' But well, what can we do anyway, right, Tadano-san? If there was no research yet on the subject, or the research was not conclusive or only yielded negative results ... Well, then, we do not know, Tadano-san. We can only speculate."
"Ah, yes."
"Have you ever looked up what the biggest questions in the field of Soulmate Studies are, Tadano-san? We are still in the process of finding the answers to questions such as, Why do soulmate pairs are usually of the same ethnicity, socio-economic class, and background - or similar? Why do so few people receive a soulmark, if ever? Why are soulmarks received at different ages by different people? Why do soulmate marriages have an almost perfect success rate? We want to contribute towards answering those big questions through this research ..."
Mori-san smiled, enthused.
"... by finding out how often the information on the soulmark changes, and whether there is a correlation with age factors, sex, socio-economic class, residence, time, ..."
For a moment, there was only silence.
"Oh," Itsuki said quietly, not knowing what to say.
But ...
"The question, Why do soulmate marriages have an almost perfect success rate, doesn't that one already have a known answer?" Itsuki asked. "Because they are soulmates. That is the answer."
"We are actually yet to be able to conclude anything on that. It is still a working hypothesis," Mori-san told Itsuki. "The Perfect Significant Hypothesis, that is what we call it. It was suggested that the soulmate is the 'mate' that had been marked by the universe, and as such fated to be our perfect significant other. That is the idea that you are familiar with, right? Laypeople generally are most familiar the Perfect Significant Other Hypothesis as a conceptual framework. However, among researchers, that hypothesis also gets critiqued plenty and, of course, is yet to be fully accepted. Plenty of arguments against it - such as, that the hypothesis contradicted with the evidence of the existence of entirely platonic soulmates."
"I have never heard of platonic soulmates," Itsuki admitted.
"Oh, they are indeed rare, but the evidence is there. Although plenty remained in denial over their existence," Mori-san said. "In one instance that I have encountered, a lesbian found out that her soulmate is a man, who is also her best friend. See?"
Itsuki blinked. He had the feeling that the example given by Mori-san was much more personal than it seemed, but ... Well, it was none of his business, anyway.
"So, Tadano-san," Mori-san said, steering back their conversation. "As what Yamamoto had already explained prior, you will take a photograph of your soulmark every time it changes, take note of the time of the change, and then send it to us. We will be following you up with an online form, later. You will need not to come to the HNU campus again. Simply e-mail us if you have any concerns. Unless, something unexpected happened. As written on the informed consent form, you will be able to stop taking part anytime. If you stayed a participant until the end of this research next year, you will receive monetary incentive of the amount that had been written on the form."
Itsuki bowed his head, to look at the soulmark on his right arm, again. A bit tired, annoyed, angry, sleep-deprived was what was written on his skin, as if it was a living tattoo. Indicator of the current state of his soulmate, Itsuki thought. He already had this soulmark for years. And yet, every time he noticed the soulmark all over again, it felt brand new.
"I understand, Mori-san."
Although Tadano Itsuki had the opportunity to be accidentally involved in a major finding in Soulmate Studies, the Earth kept revolving as usual just like on the other days, and his life kept on continuing as usual.
There was no news of a recent discovery in the field of soulmate studies when Itsuki woke up the following day, and Itsuki was both unsurprised and surprised at the same time. Now that he thought about it, of course they were not going to immediately publish it. They still had to first analyze, verify, discuss ...
His soulmark had also changed. Now, it had Tired, but well-rested and full of energy printed on his skin.
"Good morning to you too," Itsuki softly said at his arm. "Whoever you are. I am glad that you got enough sleep, and that you are full of energy. Take care of yourself well, while I am yet to be able to be by your side!"
Itsuki returned his smartphone to where it was by his pillow, and stared at the ceilings of his apartment. His apartment, which was small, cramped, simple - and very expensive.
Well, that was Tokyo.
He may be able to rent something better, already ... but he habitually spent the vast majority of his time in the office, and he lived alone. His apartment was basically only a place to sleep, for him. Perhaps, had he been living with someone else ...
Itsuki turned in his bed, thinking about the moment when he got his soulmate for the first time.
Back then ...
His arm suddenly felt truly, throughoutly painful, as if it was being burned alive, but in the infinitesimal of a second later he could not feel anything. Itsuki, in utter shock, immediately turned his arm and found the words Absolutely hungry clearly imprinted in black on his skin.
A soulmark!, Itsuki thought, a tad bit hysterical. A soulmate! And they are hungry! He immediately turned back his arm to hide his soulmark, and not soon after that there was an announcement that they were now in the Kanto area.
Had I not spontaneously agreed to go to Tokyo this weekend even though this does not make sense and this decision is not sane, Itsuki thought, perhaps I have not gotten this soulmark. And of course, on the trip Itsuki took on the way back to Fukuoka, where he went to college, his soulmark disappeared from his skin without leaving a trace, as if it was never there.
Itsuki's soulmate ... was somewhere around here.
And Itsuki never regretted all the sacrifices he had made to live in Tokyo, even if he had to continously question whether his soulmate compass will ever appear on his skin.
Well, those were soulmarks - in addition to only appearing after a certain age, it depends on geographical distance. Different people have different "ranges", according to one particular study; for one person, their soulmark will only appear if they were within 12 kilometers from their soulmate, and for others, that number may be 24 kilometers, 48 kilometers, 96 kilometers-
("And that's one of the reasons we study exponential growth," one of Itsuki's math teachers at Inashiro once said, light-heartedly.)
Soulmarks also, as far as they know, have two components. The first component is the "indicator component", which describes the current state of the soulmate, and it changes in the count of hours or days. It will only appear within a certain range of geographical distance.
Last night, Itsuki learned that the soulmate indicator he had is the first one with a recorded instance of reporting whether the soulmate was ready to go along with something or not at that time (in Itsuki's case: his soulmate could be joked with).
The other component was the "compass component", the one that Itsuki, to this date, had never gotten. Like the indicator component, the compass component will only appear within a certain distance. However, unlike the indicator component, the upper bound of distance of the compass component is not 12 kilometers, 24 kilometers, 48 kilometers ... but less than 100 meters, for everyone. Most importantly: The compass has an arrow, and that arrow will always point towards where the soulmate is.
("Those of you who have and know your soulmate," one of Itsuki's professors joked in a Heat Transfer class. "If you get lost or become a missing person, your soulmate will show the way! Hahaha!"
As many would expect, that class had nothing to do with soulmates, whatsoever.)
Itsuki had never seen his compass show up. However, Tokyo was a very broad area. Not to mention that there was the possibility of his soulmate not even being in the Tokyo prefecture, for they could have been in a neighbouring prefecture instead - Chiba. Kanagawa.
Saitama.
(Occasionally, Itsuki wondered whether his soulmate was a fan of Narumiya Mei, Saitama's local hero.)
Every day, Itsuki spent around seventy minutes traveling to his workplace in Chiyoda and back. He had plenty of time to listen to music.
Or listen to something else.
"This is all the work of the team," Mei-san said, extremely sweetly, in an interview taking place right after yesterday's match, which Itsuki did not manage to watch because he had to go to work, and that was prior to him being subsequently summoned to HNU's campus before his soulmark had the chance to disappear. "Without them, I would have not been able to ... "
Immediately, Itsuki wondered and imagined what Mei-san's expression was like when he said all those sweet words, dripping with honey: bright, radiant, annoying, and just a bit cute.
He hoped Mei-san slept well last light. On nights before a match, Mei-san always ...
Ah. Itsuki had not seen Mei-san for six years. What would he know? Everyone, by a little or by a lot, changes into adulthood.
Everyone knew that.
Occasionally, Itsuki would choose to scroll through Twitter during his commute. Oftentimes, he would choose to simply fanboy along with his other wota friends. There were once or two times when he participated in an internet war, and those experiences taught him that he had no desire to participate in another internet war, ever.
And usually, he had no desire to participate whatsoever in the first place, anyway. Usually, he did not even need to restrain himself.
Usually.
Itsuki rubbed his eyes, and looked at the screen of his smartphone again. His eyes was not lying to him the first time, it turned out. The AKB64 fandom was indeed involved in an internet war with the Seibu Lions fandom. Or, more precisely, Shirai Mayu's fandom was involved an internet war with Narumiya Mei's fandom. (The fact that Mei managed to get himself into the mess, before someone took away his phone if Itsuki had to guess, also did not help whatsoever.)
The reason? Something entirely, absolutely innocuous. According to Narumiya Mei's fanbase, the AKB64 poster put up not far from the Meiji Jingu Stadium was offensive towards Mei. According to the AKB64 fandom, the accusation itself is offensive towards Mayu. Users of both parties made various long threads that explained in detail, in the span of tens of tweets, why their perspective was the correct one, along with who knows how many screenshots and photos. Itsuki had no time to read any of them.
Successfully restraining the urge to swear, Itsuki decided to pocket his phone, words now beyond him. First off, this situation was too surreal for Itsuki, and second, how was he supposed to choose between Mayu-chan and Mei-san? He cannot!
Well, third, most importantly, no matter how much of a big fan Itsuki was, he simply could not take this drama seriously. This was all because of a poster! Poster! Why was the one being offended Narumiya Mei's fandom, anyway? Narumiya Mei played for the Seibu Lions - his team's home stadium was not in Meiji Jingu, but in the Seibu Dome in Tokorozawa! Why was the Yakult Swallows fandom not the one being offended? Did anybody ask them? Their team was the one whose home stadium was in Meiji Jingu, in Tokyo, here!
"Ugh," Itsuki sighed to himself, and took out his phone again. There was a new post on his timeline; a photoshoot of Miyuki Kazuya and Hongou Masamune from the Yakult Swallows, Miyuki without his glasses, the two of them looking right at the camera as if seducing the audience, standing by each other as if ... Hmm, he had never thought of Miyuki and Hongou in that context, but Miyuki and Hongou really reminded him of himself and Mei-san. Not that there were any similarities whatsoever between Itsuki-Mei and Miyuki-Hongou, to be honest.
But.
Now he was thinking ...
Ah, he was back to thinking of Mei-san, was he not? Sometimes, Mei-san felt like a ghost, whose memory always lurked and stalked after him ...
Itsuki did not have terrible memories of Mei-san, and needed no closure, because nothing whatsoever ever happened between them. There was no fight, but there was no romance, either. Itsuki and Mei-san were Itsuki and Mei-san, and they were nothing more and nothing less.
Yet, sometimes it felt like it was his fate to always think of Mei-san as long as he lived. Even if Itsuki did not know why.
"Despite the controversies, Chiyama Haruto's novel is still selling well, isn't it?"
Itsuki did not like to eavesdrop. However, two teenaged girls were standing right beside him, and as the three of them waited for the traffic light to change colors until they were able to cross, Itsuki had no choice but to overhear their loud conversations.
"They are! Have you read them, Ai-chan? Very transgressive. His novel really makes you think, doesn't it?"
"My parents aren't going to like it, but I have! Just don't tell them, hahaha. Ah yes, I am now wondering, what if soulmates are actually not what we think they are? What if you absolutely despise your soulmate, like in Chiyama Haruto's novel?"
Itsuki blinked. Right in that moment, the traffic light finally changed.
Despise ... He felt shocked.
What, who is actually a soulmate? Itsuki wondered. For the most of his life, Itsuki only knew of the concept that Mori-san referred to as the Perfect Significant Other Hypothesis - the soulmate was the perfect significant other, fated by the universe itself, and the soulmark was as if ink left behind by the world to mark, to tell us to where we must look and seek.
The Perfect Significant Other Hypothesis was not without its own reasonings, Itsuki learned from his internet browsing.
The hypothesis itself had existed for centuries, but it was Alexander Kreyszig who got the credit for not just popularizing it, but also publishing the results of a study that he used as a basis. Kreyszig did not only did the literature review, but also gathered his own data from all over the world. He observed that one's soulmate was almost always of the opposite sex with small age differences, and of similar backgrounds whether it was in terms of education level, socio-economic class, ethnicity, culture, language, and various other factors. He found that marriage between soulmates almost always succeed - something he defined as not only not resulting in divorce, but also happy for decades according self-reports - with very few exceptions. Soulmates were, also, almost aways romantic pairings at the time of the discovery of their soulmarks, and even if they were not, they will soon become one.
Itsuki could not fault anybody who used the hypothesis as the basis of how they conceptualized and interpreted the phenomenon of soulmates. Itsuki did the same, himself, until last month. However, after what Mori-san said, Itsuki could not help but to reconsider.
However, he had never thought about the act of despising - contempt, hatred - before. What was Chiyama Haruto thinking, when he decided to explore that concept?
Chiyama's novel contributed to his controversiality, but was not the first cause of it, Itsuki found when he was back to opening his social media, which he did whilst he was waiting in a line at a konbini. Chiyama Haruto was already controversial long before his novel gained controversy, and it was because he was very vocal in opposing the Perfect Significant Other Hypothesis, which he interpreted as dogma. And then, the publication of his novel added fuel to the fire.
"The Perfect Significant Other Hypothesis is still only a hypothesis and cannot be proven. We don't really know what is going on here!" he said in a conference, or at least that was how he was quoted, his words soaring his status into that of a public figure.
Don't really know ...
Itsuki was so distracted by his thoughts that he almost crashed into someone in the lobby. Fortunately, at the very last moment he still managed to backtrack. There was only a very brief moment where they touched. Unfortunately, the figure he almost crashed into had already became aware of his existence, and the damage was done.
"Tadano Itsuki?" The figure called out with the tone of a surprised person, and Itsuki abruptly turned around as if he was jerked.
The figure, after he looked again, was someone he was pretty certain he did not recognize.
"Excuse me?"
Tall, sturdy, wearing glasses, and handsome. Oh shit. Was he one of those men whom Itsuki accidentally gave false hope in a gay bar, once upon a time? Itsuki believed in karma, but he also thought that he did not deserve this, for karma to pursue him into his workplace-
The figure chuckled. "Sometimes I forget, that most people do not recognize me when I wear glasses this way," he said, before taking a step towards Itsuki, who had, for all practical purposes, froze. "Hey, hey, I'm Miyuki Kazuya. We used to compete against each other, do you remember?"
Itsuki choked. Politely, Miyuki patted him on the back.
"You- Miyuki-san-," Itsuki started saying, before taking his words back. What are you doing here?! was not something that you can politely scream at someone who was 1) older, 2) practically a stranger, and 3) was Miyuki Kazuya.
However, it seemed that he needed not say anything. Miyuki immediately understood what he was getting at. "Oh, my father needed to deliver some documents physically here, but there was an ... Incident ... so he could not do that himself. So, because the errand was only about delivering documents anyway, I am able to do that because Monday is my off day." His tone was warm and friendly, but Itsuki could detect an undercurrent of a threat, one telling him not to ask further. For example, asking what was the incident involved. Fortunately, Itsuki was not a very nosy person who liked to seek out gossip; that was Mei-san.
"I understand ... Miyuki-san ... It has been a long time. I hope Miyuki-san's father is well."
"Oh, no need to worry, that old man is just fine, healthy, no problems whatsoever, yep. I believe you need to get to work soon? Speaking of, how is Mei doing, Tadano?"
For the second time in that lobby in that morning, Itsuki was taken by surprise.
"Hah, shouldn't Miyuki-san know better than me? Did you two fight? That's not a very good thing to do, to fight. Ah, I apologize for my impudence!" His words went out without him thinking about it, but fortunately Miyuki did not look offended.
"I haven't talked to Mei in six months, more or less," Miyuki told him. "There was no fight. Okay, maybe I annoyed him once that time ... But he was annoying first ... Ah, ignore all of that. We are fine, just fine, but I would like to know how he was doing. He seemed to be behaving oddly, recently."
Itsuki smiled curtly. "Six months, Miyuki-san? I have not talked to him in six years."
"Ah ... I apologize, Tadano. I thought you Inashiro folks still kept up with each other ... Alright."
Itsuki was still stunned when he finally went on the lift, feeling as if what had just happened did not really happen, too surreal.
If only he really knew what had been going on with Mei-san, just like how he could keep up with that soulmate of his, every day.
Against Itsuki's predictions, despite the cause of the internet war between Narumiya Mei and Shirai Mayu's fandoms being caused by something completely innocuous, the conflict had only escalated. During his work hours, he later found out, several people had been doxxed, more had been suspended or at least locked their accounts, and more had declared that they had decided to leave the fandom within the span of that time period.
Shirai Mayu, the young woman who Itsuki knew already had so many other things to deal with but thank heavens Mayu was still healthy and Itsuki hoped she would be healthy always, even intervened.
Mei-san had not returned to Twitter himself, and Itsuki guessed that his management still thought that he was not ready to be freed into the wilds that is social media, yet.
"Your soulmate is very expressive," Yamamoto-san said with wonder. Her face had not returned to its prior expression, still wholly surprised, and Itsuki understood.
He was back in the National University of Honshu's laboratory, and his hand was again put under microscopes and cameras and who knows how many other tools. Itsuki was grateful that he was genuinely curious about the end results of this research, because otherwise there was no way he would have been able to stand being a research subject this much.
However, he could not fault Yamamoto-san and Mori-san, and several of their own graduate students currently present to watch Itsuki as both an entertainment and something to study. It was not very day that someone's soulmark had written, Really wants to punch Miyuki Kazuya.
"So now we know that soulmarks can refer to specific names, don't we?" Itsuki asked the nearest research assistant student. "You know what else can refer to specific names ... ?"
"I have a feeling that you are going to make a word play, Tadano-san," Yamamoto-san suddenly interrupted. "Unfortunately, that is forbidden in this laboratory. I request that you, as a guest, respect this rule that had been instated by the host."
She gestured towards the paper on the the wall, one that Itsuki never noticed before, and she was right, for rule number 12 clearly printed in Times New Roman stated that, "In this laboratory 3A, it is not allowed for anybody to make any sort of of pun, which is also known as paronomasia. Violators will be penalized five hundred yen if they are not Yamamoto Chiyo, and two thousand yen if the violator is Yamamoto Chiyo."
Itsuki decided that he did not want to know the story behind that rule. "Alright," he replied, his tone resigned. The research assistant student that he was about to tease, prior, was now giving him a look of pity.
Shirai Mayu of AKB64 Begs Loyal Fans, MAYMAYs, to Cease Fight with Mei-Chan Supporters
Itsuki groaned when he saw that headline. The last time he checked, Mayu-chan's fanbase mostly consisted of adult men, and the same can be said about Mei-san's own fanbase. Why were they like this? Do they not have better things to do than to fight on the internet? Itsuki himself did not even have the time to witness most of the drama because he had work.
Because it was Saturday, he decided to go back to sleep.
Itsuki did not remember when was the last time he made a decision as spontaneous this one.
Perhaps, that was back when his fellow college students at Kyutech suddenly declared that they were going to travel to Tokyo that weekend. Itsuki told them that they were insane, because they all still had work to do and Tokyo was nowhere near Fukuoka. The trip would also not be cheap. The other students present at the scene also called out how unreasonable the idea was.
And yet, in the end, they all went to Tokyo.
Itsuki and all the other doubters included. And had Itsuki not spontaneously decided to join in, he might had never gotten his current soulmark. Very few people ever do.
And now, he was doing that again: Spontaneous travel.
This one was not as out of one's mind as the Fukuoka-Tokyo one from back then. Meiji Jingu Studium was less than twenty kilometers from Nishitokyo, where Itsuki rented his apartment, instead of the one thousand kilometers that created the distance between Fukuoka and Tokyo. And present-day Itsuki had way more money of his own, now; he was no longer a young college student scraping by financially who, for no good reason, thought that a spontaneous one thousand kilometers trip was an "okay" idea.
However, Itsuki still did not do "spontaneous" generally, and even though this trip was nothing, his heart was still beating violently.
As if, something was going to happen.
Nothing is going to happen, Itsuki told himself. It's all only because you're a shut-in, alright, stop having weird thoughts.
Nothing, is going to happen.
Nothing.
Itsuki only suddenly wanted to see the poster that had started all this online war, the war that had ravaged Japanese Twitter and took in all sorts of fandoms along with it, this time not only the AKB64 and Seibu Lions fandoms but also the figure skating and mechanical keyboard fandoms.
Emotion is such an odd, fascinating thing, Itsuki thought. It was emotion that oftentimes found its way to the print on Itsuki's arm, bringing new news every day. It was emotion that made Itsuki continuously nostalgize and think of Mei-san. It was emotion that the songwriters at AKB64 were inspired by. It was emotion that ignited the quarrel between the Narumiya Mei and Shirai Mayu fandoms.
And it was emotion that got Itsuki to hurriedly walk here.
"Ow!"
Itsuki held his breath, holding his arm. The pain this time felt different than the usual. Slowly, he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt.
As he had predicted, his soulmark had changed, now saying Impatient.
But something else was new.
A compass.
A compass, placed right below the previous writing, Impatient. Like the indicator soulmark, it looked like a tattoo, but here was what differentiated it: This tattoo was absolutely, utterly alive.
Its arrow slowly spinned, to its left and to its right, and Itsuki did not have to think long before he was off, going in the direction of wherever it was that the arrow pointed.
The compass led him towards the location that had been his initial destination from the start - towards the controversional poster that had started the gigantic drama of Japanese Twitter - and Itsuki walked, and walked faster, and walked so hurriedly that he was on the verge of running.
He positioned his arm as horizontal as possible, and bowed his head to observe the compass and its moving arrow.
He almost did not see the person that he had been looking for all along.
.
.
.
.
.
"Itsuki," Mei-san called out, shortly. He did not seem the slightest bit surprised.
"Mei-san," Itsuki said.
Silence.
"Hm, I have not been entirely sure, unfortunately," Mei-san said, finally. "But I have always thought that this soulmark belonged to you. After all, you were the one I chose."
"Hahh?!" Itsuki spontaneously backtracked in response. "Hah? Mei-san? What- Why-?"
Mei-san suddenly grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward, much gentler than Itsuki would have ever thought. When he turned both of their arms, the sight was undeniable, of the both of their soulmark compasses pointing towards each other, frozen and no longer in motion.
"See," Mei-san sniffed. "What other proof do you need, Itsuki? It's not like you can deny and refuse it like this, right? You know how to read a compass, right? Because I wasn't sure whether they even teach that in Aerospace Engineering."
Itsuki immediately pulled back his arm. "I know how to read a compass!" He said loudly. "And I major in Mechanical Engineering, Mei-san, not Aerospace Engineering! What do you want? What do you mean by chose? Why are you standing right next to that poster do you want to be murdered?!"
"Oh, I know you're a Mechanical Engineering dude," Mei-san said, relaxed. "I just wanted to see your reaction, because see, in this engineering students meme forum that I browsed often they kept making jokes about how Mechanical Engineering students are the mortal enemies of Aerospace Engineering students-"
"What kind of stereotype is that even?! WHY ARE YOU BROWSING ENGINEERING STUDENT MEMES?!"
"- and, also, I went to this poster because, see, look at my soulmark. There is this writing, Restless because of the whole Mei-Mayu fandom drama and had spontaneously decided to go to the scene of the crime. Actually, I am not supposed to be here right now, and my management had called me but I pretended to not hear. But you absolutely cannot fault me, because recently my soulmark had all sorts of weird information written on it, such as Really wants to make a pun but doesn't want to get fined by the professor, and Questioning the meaning of soulmates, and Surprised by Miyuki Kazuya, and much more. How am I supposed to not be concerned, especially when I got Currently a guinea pig at the laboratory and most precarious, Enchanted by high school senpai, because, like, who is this rival who had dared enchant my soulmate-"
"OH MY GOD!" Itsuki felt like he wanted to faint. He had never thought about what kind of messages he was sending his soulmate, but now that he thought about it, in hindsight it was very obvious that Itsuki, too, was broadcasting his own information. "Wait! What did you mean by chose?!"
"Six years ago," Mei-san began. "Do you remember, back when we encountered each other at the station, before you were to travel to Kyushu for university?" He laughed. "I thought, ah, this kouhai of mine had grown up, now an adult and a dashing one, and perhaps, I might have been just a little bit spellbound ... But that was not the important part, nope. I never really stopped thinking about you after I graduated from Inashiro, really, but after that encounter, I thought of you more ... And then, I thought about how, ah, you're really my partner, my friend, I would have been very different without you. I didn't get it at the time, but in hindsight, six years ago ... I was opening my heart."
"That doesn't answer my question, Mei-san."
Mei-san raised his hand. "Patience. The moment I remember the most is the one after it, the moment when I decided that I wanted to be with you, in the most abstract sense of the world. Not necessarily in a romantic way, but not necessarily in a platonic way. Just, with you, in its entirety. The moment after that, my left arm hurt and suddenly there it was carved on my skin, Nervous but ready to face new things. You get it, right? What I know is that you're not the soulmate that fate, the universe itself had chosen for me. It was I who had chosen you. Did you see?"
"Mei-san ..."
Itsuki did not know what to say. The idea that the soulmate was someone we chose ourselves was a theory, a concept that Itsuki had never heard of before, not from Chiyama, not from Yamamoto or Mori. It fit Mei's ego, his pride and vanity, for Mei to think that he could make the universe itself bow to him.
However, the story Mei was telling, it did not feel like a coincidence.
"Wait!" Itsuki cut in. "I only got my soulmark a few years ago. How did you get yours six years ago?!"
"Oh, please, you just need to use logic, don't you?" Mei-san answered, relaxed. "Obviously, it meant that my soulmate range is different from yours ... probably further, stronger, better! Easy, right?"
"Technically," Itsuki began to say. "That soulmark belongs to me. The universe only entrusted it to you. And Mei-san? Go to the lab with me. I want to introduce you to Professor Yamamoto and Professor Mori, and I am sure that they will be very interested to hear how you ... chose your own soulmate, as you put it."
"Wait a moment!" Mei yelled. "How dare you be the one to keep asking questions, questions, and telling me what to do?! You used to be such a good and polite kouhai! It's my turn, I want to say, I am extremely disappointed in you. How come you don't defend me at all on Twitter?! Every day I stalked you, that Twitter account MayuchansBigBro. That account belongs to you, right?!"
"Hah?! From where on Earth did you find it?!"
"Well, I accidentally saw it once! And then it was obvious that it was you! So, how come you didn't defend me at all, huh?! You'll choose Mayu over me, huh?!"
"Obviously yes, Mei-san! That's something you don't even need to ask!"
But-
Would have chosen Narumiya Mei over Shirai Mayu, was suddenly printed on Mei-san's arm. Mei-san threw Itsuki a victorious look of triumph.
"Oh!" Itsuki stared at Mei-san's arm. "You really do have to go to the lab with me, now! I didn't know that soulmarks can be used as lie detectors-!"
"Itsuki, you're really a guinea pig now-?!"
Perhaps, Itsuki did not know, yet, what soulmates exactly are. What the limits of soulmarks are.
Nobody did, including Mei-san, even if Mei-san thought he knew it all.
However, Itsuki knew that just like how Mei-san had chosen him, he had also chosen Mei-san even if unintentionally, and he would choose Mei-san again and again.
"You know, right?" Mei-san said, holding Itsuki's hand briefly before releasing it. "Usually, people in stories introduce their significant others to their parents. Not ... their researchers, who had made them their research subjects. I have never met someone so excited to be a research subject, before."
"I know," Itsuki said. "And you know that I know. But the Tadano Itsuki that you chose ... is this Tadano Itsuki, right?"
Mei-san did not need to respond. Itsuki already knew the answer.