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The thing about growing up soulmates is that the moment of Connection means nothing to you.
Which is weird, in a way, because everyone makes it sound like such a big, beautiful thing. Every story that ends with Happily Ever After mentions a shortness of breath, the sound of birds singing, and a feeling of absolute right as the fated soulmates meet eyes and their strings point taut at each other. Kenma’s own parents didn’t make their own story sound anywhere near as grand, but they still liked to linger on the moment that they Connected. How their hearts both skipped a beat as their strings pulled taut and they knew.
It hadn’t been anything like that for Kenma.
He remembers the day clearly enough. Noticing moving trucks outside of a neighbour’s house. Getting a little frustrated because his finger felt weird, and it was making it hard to time his button sequences right to beat the miniboss he'd been fighting.
And then their new neighbours came to introduce themselves. Kenma had been on the stairs, where he could be visible enough to be polite, but far enough away that he could keep playing on his Gameboy without seeming overly rude. Kuro had been incredibly shy back then, only peeking out from behind his father when prompted to properly introduce himself. Kenma had looked up, curious to see at least what this new kid looked like, and then their strings both went taut.
It was his mother who noticed first, giving a gasp at Kuro’s hand, and then a shriek as she turned around to see Kenma’s. And before he knew it, a perfunctory presentation of introductory soba had turned into an invitation to stay for celebratory hot pot.
Kenma doesn’t remember feeling surprised or excited or anything at the sudden change of events; just annoyed that he’d been forced to put his Gameboy away after all so he could talk with his newly-found soulmate. And a little frustrated when his finger started aching from being taut so often, as he and Kuro were instructed to sit beside each other in a place of honour, despite neither of them really wanting to be there.
So yeah. Maybe it was just that they weren't old enough to fully appreciate their Connection when it happened. But so far as Kenma was concerned, meeting his soulmate really hadn’t been that great of an experience at all.
The thing about growing up soulmates is that other kids just don’t understand.
Oh, they think they understand, all right. Kenma’s classmates sure thought so, anyway. But they never, never did.
If anyone caught someone’s string twitching at all, it was to be met with shrieks, teasing, and hours of public contemplation as to who the lucky soulmate might be. For Kenma, whose string was constantly twitching, and prone to pull taut at assemblies and sports days, or when his or Kuro's class were walking down the hallway, it was basically torture. One would think that having a known soulmate would make it easier, but in Kenma’s opinion, it actually made it ten times worse.
The first month of the school year usually involved changing desks several times as teachers tried to find an arrangement that wouldn’t have a student shrieking every time his string pulled taut (which was basically an everyday occurrence). Kids liked to tease them that they should get married already. There had even been a while in which it felt like half the schoolyard was trying to force them to play Wedding, which had usually ended up with Kuro running away to hide in a bathroom stall. A couple of times, Kenma ended up climbing tree because a gaggle of girls holding tissue paper vails and dandelion bouquets wouldn’t stop chasing him. And on one very memorable occasion, a teacher actually sternly told him to control his string. As if anyone ever could.
And, yeah, it was sometimes hard to concentrate on tests when his ring finger ached from the tug of the string, or lost his place while doing a reading because his string had started acting up halfway through. It was normal to him, even if he knew that it wasn't a universal phenomenon.
Some people said it was cool that he knew for certain who his soulmate was so young, and in a way they were right. But he wasn’t sure that it was worth it for the amount of daily hardship it caused in the interim.
The thing about growing up soulmates is that you know everything about each other.
Not just the sort of things that they’d ask on the New Connections Game Show, like your soulmate’s favourite seasonal Kit-Kat flavour, or their ideal bedtime, or their perfect rice portion. Though yeah; Kenma knew those too (the fancy ones with dried fruit and nuts on top; 9:30 as a kid but 11:45 in high school; large, but smaller if there was unlimited rice so he could reduce food waste). Kenma knew all the little intricacies that made Kuro up—some of them beautiful, some disgusting, most utterly mundane—and he knew that Kuro knew all of his as well.
Like, he knew that Kuro had been an insanely shy kid. And while Kenma had done as he was told and found multiplayer games for the two of them to enjoy together whenever Kuro was sent over to visit (which was often), it had taken almost two years for them to have a real conversation.
He knew that Kuro liked salty treats over sweet ones, dogs over cats, fish over meat, and long haired idols over short-haired ones. But he also knew that Kuro hated when his fingernails were too long because it got in the way of ball control, just like Kenma didn't like the feeling of long nails on his gaming controllers. He also knew that Kuro was far more in favour of cuddling than Kenma was during the day, but couldn’t stand the extra body heat at night.
And Kuro knew, in turn, that Kenma had a bed wetting problem until age 9 because he’d witnessed the special underwear in the garbage often enough. And not only did he know that Kenma liked having something to snuggle against at night, but had been there when Kenma won the calico cat body pillow that was his current item of choice in an arcade game.
He could often anticipate Kuro's opinions on matters, whether or not they were ones that he himself agreed with. Which was great when ordering fast food or shopping for souveniers, because it saved precious minutes of time. People often smiled when Kenma stated matter-of-factly what Kuro’s opinion would be on a matter, and told him that they were like an old, mated couple. And in many ways, it felt like it, too.
After all, when you’d known your soulmate since you were kids, there was very little room for secrets to grow.
The thing about growing up soulmates is that you get involved in each other’s hobbies by default.
Really, this was probably just a side-effect of spending so much time together. And since his and Kuro’s families had decided that their young soulmate offspring needed to spend as much time together as possible, sharing hobbies was pretty unavoidable, all told.
Introducing Kuro to his favourite video games was easy enough. And while it was clear that Kuro preferred playing multiplayer to just watching Kenma play (he’d get all fidgety and had a sad look on his face, especially when Kenma just needed to grind) he genuinely did enjoy the experience. It also meant that Kuro understood Kenma’s worldview, even as other people found him weird for putting everything in life into video game terms.
If it helped Kenma to frame chores as a monster battle, or buying clothes that fit him after a growth spurt as a quest, then Kuro would play along, or at least nod knowingly and translate his intent to anyone who happened to think it weird.
But of course, sharing hobbies didn't only go one way.
Kenma hadn’t meant to get involved in volleyball at all—in fact, he hadn’t even known that it was a thing Kuro wanted to do until one day when Kenma suggested Kuro choose a new game for them to play, and rather than picking something out from the shelf of jewel cases against the wall, he grabbed Kenma by the sleeve and led him outdoors.
Kuro had looked so good at it back then that Kenma had been filled with awe at finding a piece of his soulmate that he hadn't known. At least, he'd felt that way untill Kuro’s dad explained that Kuro's class had been studying volleyball in gym lately, and that Kuro had seemed extra excited about it for the past two weeks.
Of course, once Kenma’s parents found out that there was a chance to get him out of the house without some sort of portable game system in hand, they had all but forced the issue. Kenma was horrible at all of it, but Kuro was a surprisingly patient teacher, showing him the correct technique for overhand passing and underhand bumping, and how to make the ball go more or less where he wanted it to go. And from there, it was just a case of turning it into a quest that they could level grind in once more; making it a goal to get five passes in a row, then ten, then twenty, then a hundred.
He hadn’t meant to get good at it. He hadn't meant to keep doing it at all. But when daily practice was grinding, and getting to do some new trick was an achievement to unlock, it was easy to wrap his mind around it.
And since his soulmate was so obviously enthused by it all, he was going to have to learn volleyball's intricacies sooner or later anyway. So he might as well enjoy it in the process.
The thing about growing up soulmates is that you end up getting used to going everywhere together.
Some of it was pretty unavoidable. After all, since they were only a year apart in age and lived in close proximity, it made sense for them to travel to and from school together. But they’d probably have done that even if they weren’t soulmates, so long as they’d still gotten along well enough. And so long as their families got along, there would always be going to local events like shrine visits and festivals.
Some of it was parentally-enforced, like Kuro being sent over for babysitting whenever his folks were out, or Kenma’s parents forcing him to go out and play with Kuro for what was, apparently, his own good. (As if fresh air was some sort of wonderful gift that he was squandering.)
But some of it was definitely also by choice.
When Kuro had invited Kenma to go to a kids volleyball clinic happening at a nearby community centre, he hadn’t needed to say yes. But if he hadn’t, he would’ve never seen the way that something clicked in Kuro’s head as Coach Nekomata explained that a high net could be lowered to meet kids like them where they were at. And he wouldn’t have seen the joy in his eyes as Kuro hit his very first spike.
And maybe it was wanting to see more of that joy in Kuro’s eyes, and maybe it was just that it would have been boring to be in the go-home club if it meant walking to and from school without Kuro most days. But in either case, it felt as natural as breathing to follow Kuro into the volleyball clubs at both their middle school and high school. And sure, the amount of work involved sometimes made him want to never move again, and sometimes he’d still skip out early when Kuro was staying beside to put in some extra practice, and play on the 3DS that he’d hidden in his backpack until his soulmate was ready to go home. But it was worth it to see Kuro bloom into himself, and be there for something that was so very important to him.
And if Kenma got to grow and develop alongside him? Well, all the better.
The thing about growing up soulmates is that you end up getting asked the same questions over and over and over again.
Some of the questions weren’t too bad. Like, Kenma could retell the story of their meeting in his sleep. He just didn’t always want to do it ten times a day at the beginning of the school year.
Others were more difficult. After all, asking what it was like to have a soulmate might as well have been asking what it was like to have air. It was so ingrained within him—a part of his life that he could barely remember doing without—that it was truly as hard to imagine life now without one or the other. But that answer never satisfied those who wanted to know how it felt more than how it was, which left Kenma in a terrible bind. After all, how would one explain the importance of oxygen?
For Kuro, it seemed like answering those questions got easier and easier as he grew more into himself. He’d laugh, and give a quip about how the two of them were built-in best friends, or else turn the question on the asker and wonder what it’s like to have siblings, or to live with both a mom and a dad. It usually got the esoteric nature of the question through clearly enough, which helped stem the flow of unnecessary questions in the long run.
Thank goodness that at least one of them was figuring out how to answer them comfortably.
Kenma let Kuro handle the stream of questions whenever possible, fixing him with a knowing look when they were both together, or else just staying quiet until his soulmate picked up the slack. And when no way out was available, he’d give a nonanswer of his own, shrug, and try to let the question slide past. It worked more often than not. And when it didn’t, well, someone was usually around who knew well enough to step in before things grew too out of hand.
So yeah, the thing with growing up soulmates was that everyone wanted to know what it was like. But the experience, in Kenma’s mind, was so normal as to be unexplainable.
The thing about growing up soulmates is that you got to skip through entire whole sections of teenage idiocy, because they just didn’t apply to you.
By the end of elementary school, all the threats of schoolyard marriage had died off, replaced by talks of crushes, laments about limp strings, and ponderings about who would make the best soulmates for whom. Apparently everyone within earshot was expected to take part in and have clear opinions on the whole soulmate thing, whether they were actually interested in it or not. And as the only soulbonded kid in his whole grade, Kenma was generally considered an expert on the matter against his will. He wanted to take part in those conversations approximately never, and tried to deter any attempts to involve him as thoroughly as possible. It was an effort that he had to renew at the beginning of each school year, just like the questions of what it was like in the first place. But even as he despised being expected to have thoughts and opinions on which celebrity a classmate would be an awesome soulmate for, or why a kid from 2-A’s string wasn’t reacting to the new kid in 1-B even though they apparently seemed perfect for each other… it was interesting to look back on all of the conversations and see what the trends had been.
Kenma didn’t really get the point of crushes, or getting sad when someone's string hadn’t reacted to their object of affection. After all, soulmates were something that would reveal themselves in their own time, and that just meant that there would be someone even more suitable appearing sooner or later.
Kenma also didn’t see the point in the celebrity crush thing. After all, it felt like some tabloid was breaking the news of some fan being certain that their string had been pointing directly to some big name star for another every day, even though usually they’d been in a room of thousands, and it was far more likely that someone sitting in front of them was trying to desperately ignore their string pointing back behind them while they were spending time with their oshi.
He learned the hard way that while expressing the former could sometimes help someone feel better, the latter would just end in unnecessary anger and resentment. Still, he couldn't deny having a little fun teasing Tora when Karasuno ended up having an objectively beautiful female manager who, on top of not being at all a gorilla, also didn’t make his string twitch the tiniest bit.
So even if it was usually a little uncomfortable having to observe all the teenage idiocy from outside, there were moments every now and again where getting to be high and mighty was actually a benefit.
The thing about growing up soulmates is that it actually gave them a small advantage while playing volleyball.
It helped that Kenma enjoyed being the setter, of course. The position was the one that required the least moving around, and even if it did mean that he was guaranteed to have to touch the ball in practically every successful play, it also meant that he was able to put everything he’d learned from thousands of hours playing PVP and tactical RPGs to good use. Not to mention the hours that he’d spent grinding his volleyball stats with Kuro, of course. Due to that unique combination of skills, he was able to observe what the other team was doing versus how his team was reacting, and fine-tune their tactics in order to turn almost any situation to their advantage.
Still, it was always easier to set for Kuro than for anyone else. He understood the way Kuro moved, having sent a ball to him millions of times before either of them was ever on a real volleyball team. He understood the way Kuro thought, having spent over half of his life with his soulmate no more than a five minute walk away. He understood Kuro’s strong points and his weaknesses; when he was the best person to send the ball to, and when he was the worst. And while he sometimes needed signals to convey his thoughts to some of the other people on his team (like bull-headed idiots like Tora or overeager middle blockers like Lev or Inuoka) it was as though Kuro could read his thoughts as well as Kenma could read Kuro’s actions.
It tended to take people by surprise the first time they saw it, to the point where they'd been accused of having a psychic bond more than once. And while it was sometimes fun to play around with the idea of psychic abilities, the only reason that Kenma could ever guess what number Kuro was thinking of was because he only ever chose one of three potential answers.
Some people accused them of cheating, but Kenma had read over the rules of collegiate volleyball online, and that of V-League to boot, and none of them had ever mentioned restrictions on soulmates, just like they had none on identical twins or any other group commonly thought to have a psychic link at all.
And some people, the very smart ones that were the most annoying sort to play against, tried to target Kuro or Kenma directly, forcing them out of position and off their rhythm to break up whatever was causing them to maintain in-synch. But those tactics were only ever successful for so long. After all, just because he had to use signals to keep Yamamoto, Lev, and Inuoka in mind didn’t mean that they hadn’t honed the use of those signals to perfection; until what each one meant and how they were meant to respond were practically second nature.
So maybe, growing up soulmates just meant that Kenma and Kuro were the ultimate decoys, just for existing.
The thing about growing up soulmates is that it made future planning a lot easier.
There were entire weeks in Homeroom dedicated to future planning: about how to choose a career, how to select the next school that one would attend, and how to prepare for adult life in general.
Planning for middle school and high school was easy: wherever Kuro had decided to go, it was sure that Kenma would follow. After all, both of them were decently bright and (begrudgingly) okay at athletics, so whatever was a good fit for one of them likely would be suitable for both. And Kuro having a year head start meant that Kenma could visit and be absolutely sure that things were okay before committing himself to the same path, just in case. So he’d always felt pretty comfortable when filling out forms like that.
Interestingly enough, it had more or less worked the opposite way when it came to careers. Kenma always knew that if possible, he would want to keep gaming for the rest of his life, for as much of his life as possible. And so, as streaming became a viable path, and professional gamer became a title that he could reach for, it was pretty clear what he was going todo. And of course, he’d need other streams of revenue to supplement that work—one of which he’d almost certainly go to university for, if just to have a back-up career ready to go—but so far as he was concerned, his life was set.
It was Kuro who pointed out that if Kenma got good enough at gaming to have a presence in the esports community, he might want to have someone to help negotiate sponsorships and deal with the legalities and paperwork. And Kuro, as it happened, was interested in both of those things. He was applying for programs in sports management, marketing, and communications, just to see what stuck. The sports-side would always be Kuro's main focus—Kenma knew Kuro well enough to know he'd be miserable dedicating his life to gamers alone—but if Kuro was willing to branch into both, then Kenma would be proud to be his first and most loyal client.
And as for the life stuff, well… Kenma saw so many of his classmates struggle as they tried to figure out lives that made sense for one, but that could easily be melded into another whenever they happened to Connect. And Kenma was secretly glad that he didn’t have to worry about any of that, but that didn't mean that they didn't have their own problems.There were a lot of pushes for young singles to move into one-bedroom apartments, whereas paired-off soulmates were usually pushed towards houses. But growing up soulmates meant that they didn't have the funds of a more established couple, who'd had time to work part- or full-time jobs and build up a nest egg before moving in together. Kuro was the one who suggested that they rent a house to start out with, and then build a house that was entirely to their personal specifications once they had built up the capital with which to do it. And even if Kenma knew that he’d be doing a lot of the layout planning for that house, making sure that there was a soundproofed place for streaming, a home office where Kuro would be able to do his work in comfort, and that plenty of room for everything else that they could ever need, it was a comfort knowing that Kuro would be there to do all of the actual negotiations over rental terms and fees in his stead.
So really, the thing about growing up soulmates was that there was always someone there to pick up on the other’s weak points, and to make for a stronger unit together. Even if it meant needing to rent a house right off the bat.
The thing about growing up soulmates is that it was easy to build a life together. How could it not be, when they were so used to living out of each other’s pockets already?
Once upon a time, Kenma had felt frustrated at being forced to spend so much time with Kuro. But now that it was their choice, it was something that he couldn’t wait to do.
And sure, part of it was that with no-one else around, they were free to do whatever they wanted. They could forgo the kitchen table and eat in the living room, or stay up all night having movie marathons, or have sex over the kitchen countertops, or whatever else suited their fancy. But really, a lot of the appeal was much more mundane than that.
There was something comforting waking up each morning and knowing that Kuro will have prepared him a tasty breakfast, and left the coffee warming.
There was something good about getting to go through a nighttime routine that would set things up, in turn, for Kuro to have an easy morning ahead of him; everything clean and ready to go.
There was a joy in dividing up chores to find those that suit them each best, and occasionally seeing which of them they could (and should) outsource.
There was a joy in figuring out if they wanted to have pets, or kids, or maybe just a nice rock garden, and looking into what each of these potential futures would entail.
And even if Kuro kept joking about how they should move to Roppongi Hills now that Kenma was indeed making good bank between his streaming, stock trading, and volleyball equipment manufacturing, Kenma had to admit that he liked the place where they’d settled. He’d be sad to see it go when they finally did move on.
But for now, he was happy enough settling into a life together with his soulmate, helping him grow and being nurtured by Kuro in return.
And even if it wasn’t a love story for the ages, and felt like the most normal thing in the air, Kenma was glad to live in an environment so rich in his oxygen.