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The utter horror of that red string appearing, and three years too early at that. Biologically, something must have been going on with her. Because she was only a third year in high school, she was only 18. When she stared at it just a little too long she supposed that this was the world telling her she was screwed.
And imagine her surprise at who she was linked to, her soul was interwoven with Matsukawa Issei’s. The same idiot she had a bet with to see who could kiss more people by the end of the year. They had known each other for most of high school, but they never ran in similar circles, there was just enough overlap in friends to cause them to mess around and make silly bets.
The horror at being tied to him was understated by her close friends who said at least he was hot. Sure he was hot, she’d give him that, but he was also extremely intimidating. Everyone said he had an easy-going nature, and that was true, but he also scared the living daylights out of her. No one could be that chill with everything that went on in the world, he must have been some kind of mutant to ignore the terribleness and to keep living each day to its fullest.
She deduces since neither of them talks about the string, life can continue as normal. She assumed the bet was still on, so she went to her current rotation of guys, trying to seal the deal with three of them that week at various locations throughout the school. She was not going to let eighteen thousand yen disappear that quickly from her reach.
He deduces that since neither of them talks about the string, that life is not continuing as normal. He assumed the bet was entirely off.
This is why he got a very infuriating chill when he saw his soulmate kissing someone from the debate team under the stairs on his way to English class. She pats the debater on the shoulder, telling him to get to class. When he goes in for one more kiss, Matsukawa pulls him back by the hood of his jacket, telling him to essentially get his ass in gear with one look in Matsukawa’s eyes.
“So we’re not going to talk about this,” He waves his pinkie in the air. The red string that usually remained invisible appeared visually to the pair of them, connecting his right hand to her left hand. “And you’re just going to keep kissing half the boys in school?”
“I’m at 35 boys now, thank you very much.” She cringed the moment she saw his face tighten in discomfort. She knew that he had capped out at 20 girls and had given up when the string appeared. She hadn’t heard it from him of course, she heard it from Iwaizumi who told her she needed to talk to Matsukawa because he was losing it slowly but surely day by day.
“I thought we could wait a few more years until we discussed,” She held her pinkie up in turn, “This.”
“Years? I was thinking something along a timeline of months.” He rubbed his eyes with his right hand, the string inevitably pulling her closer to him, she had to push against his chest to put some space between the two of them.
“Months? We’re still in high school mind you.” Her pinkie started to hurt, but she ignored it because she needed to set him straight about the expectations for this whole soulmate ordeal.
Matsukawa started citing all the things they were told in elementary school, she wanted to just roll her eyes. They were an exception to the rules, the whole legally registering, the whole getting a red circle tattooed around their pinkie finger to signify the bond they had, they had to be an exception because of their age.
They kept arguing, not realizing that their red string had begun to circle them, tying them up. Too busy with getting the argumentative edge to remember the other things about red strings, that they had a mind of their own. Or at least, the string’s mind was a manifestation of subconscious and conscious thoughts both soulmates had.
She went to walk away, only to realize that Matsukawa’s side of the red string, being a much darker red, had looped around her legs, her thighs, and her torso, and was keeping her from getting away from him.
He realized his fault in tying the two of them together, and for a moment he did look apologetic. So he offered words as a condolence, “You’re pretty.”
“I know.”
“And humble too.” His part of the string just looped around their waists again, meaning they’d be stuck for another thirty minutes or so. A teacher passed by and just giggled a little before guiding the pair to the nurse’s office to wait out the string.
It was shocking to realize that he never slept. Which meant that she began to never sleep.
The first time she realized he stayed up way too late was a few weeks after Matsukawa had let his side of the string go wild, resulting in the principal just telling the two of them to keep the whole red string thing to a minimum at school.
She was snoring, happily too, when her left hand began to move up and down from under the pillow. At first, she thought maybe it was just a dream, and she tried to go back to sleep. But then her hand would not stop the vertical motions, repeatedly. She called him in a fury.
“Get me out of your mind when you’re doing things like that at night!”
“I can’t help it! Biologically you’re literally that for me.”
She groaned and told him to take a cold shower so she could sleep. He had obliged that time. All the other times she just texted him and told him to make it quick, she also made it part of the routine to just scream into her pillow to release the anger at having part of her body being physically pulled by him.
Having the mental connection of thinking about your soulmate linked to physical actions was going to kill her. This was why the red string usually appeared when they were 21, because at least people had the common decency to not use their soulmates to get off in the middle of the night.
It wasn’t always him doing sexual acts either, sometimes he would just tap. Late at night, he would tap his fingers against his mattress, thinking about her. She didn’t mind that one as much as the other stuff he would do at night. She thought that the tapping was sort of sweet, in an annoying nuisance way. There would be some kind of pattern sometimes, but she could never tell distinctively what the pattern was.
Other times, she would just lay awake at night because the red string was doing its little heartbeat thing, where you could feel the heartbeat of your soulmate, but it was especially prominent when they were thinking about their soulmate. Matsukawa’s heartbeat was almost always extremely tangible for her.
She still hadn’t wanted to talk to him about the whole thing, just considering it one of those silly little things she had to deal with. But that was one of Matsukawa’s breaking points, the silence. He could do the waiting as long as she liked, but the silence was killing him. So much so that he had actively utilized her annoyance with the string’s mental-physical connection to tug so frequently one day that she would have to talk to him since no phones were allowed during the school day.
Peeking her head into his classroom, she was relieved to see it was just him in there, the rest of his classmates had gone out to buy lunches and such. He sat at his desk, moving his pinkie by hitting a volleyball in the air with both his hands.
He saw her when the door she was using to peek through had begun to slide and creak. She fell face-first to the ground when the door slid out of control, he laughed and told her to come over. Grabbing a chair, she sat across from him on the other side of the desk. He stopped tugging on the string when she finally sat down.
It was silent for a moment, they avoided each other’s eyes.
He cracks first.
“Talk to me.” He pleads. He reaches out and grabs her hand with his.
“Okay.” She bites her lip, “What do you want me to say?”
“Anything. But lemme say something first real quick, we used to be friends. Good friends I would say, but since this occurred it’s like you treat me as invisible. Like I’m not there. I can understand you wanting your time and stuff to process, like yeah this is a huge change to our lives. But I need you to realize you aren’t the only one dealing with this. I’m here too. I’m the one at the end of your string.”
She feels like crying because he sounds like he wants to cry.
“I’m not ready?”
“To treat me like a person?”
“I’m not ready to treat you like a soulmate. And all that goes on with that. I hate needles.” A flashing image of the needle that will inevitably trace around her pinkie is enough to get her to cringe.
“I know you hate needles. You told me about that first year.” Matsukawa leaned back in his chair, looking outside for a moment. “We, we can put a pause to the soulmate thing. At least for this year. But I want us to be friends again, back to normal.”
She smiles, rubbing his arm with her hand gently, “I want that too.”
Matsukawa did not enjoy being just friends. Not when his entire world had shifted. He had his person right there and she didn’t want to be anything more than friends. Suddenly everything she did was driving him crazy, and he still hadn’t even kissed her yet. Maybe it was his fault for expressing his impatience just a little too loudly during a passing period, because what the hell?
Her picture was pasted all over the walls, with the text: SOULMATE HATER almost spray-painted over it. Matsukawa realized that high school may be the worst invention of the modern world, because who decides to put a bunch of horrible undeveloped humans into one building for hours on end and say that that’s good?
She was shocked, to say the least when she got to school and traded out her shoes for her slippers. Her picture was right on her locker, with the most foul accusation. It wasn’t Matsukawa’s doing, he’d never do that. So she reasoned it must have been people sticking their noses into business that wasn’t theirs in the first place. It was crushing, embarrassing, and humiliating. She tried to rip down all the pictures in the entryway, only to see that all the walls had been glued with the poster.
Then she wanted to cry, because there she stood holding crushed paper in her hand, and other students were flooding in, seeing the pictures, and then looking at her, the worst part was that they then began to talk.
Rushing to the bathroom, she didn’t even realize that she brushed past Matsukawa and his friends, who were all trying to rip down as many of the pictures as quickly as possible. Oikawa sees Matsukawa hesitate, then tells him to go after her, Oikawa reassures him that he, Iwaizumi, and Hanamaki could deal with the photos (Oikawa left out saying that he was also going to find the person but then again some things could be implied with a look).
Matsukawa was crushed abysmally worse than when she said that she had just wanted to be friends, because there she was curled up on the floor of the bathroom rubbing her eyes, she wasn't quite crying but her body was shaking. He didn't know what to do, but he didn't want to mess it up.
He crouched down, and put his hand on her knee, rubbing his thumb over her kneecap.
“Hi.” He offers.
“Hey,” She uses her sleeve to rub her nose, “You do know I don't hate you right?”
He didn't believe it was even possible for her to hate anyone, “You don't hate me, you love me. It might not be all the way right now, but you do love me.”
She chuckles, pulling him down to sit with her. On the disgusting floor of the girls’ bathroom, they waited out the first class of the day, just talking. Eventually, Hanamaki texts Mattsukawa that the coast is clear. She doesn’t know what to do so she just shakes his hand and heads to her next class. He’s left stunned at the entrance of the girls’ bathroom.
It was the following weekend, the whole photo disaster had died down due to the band kids accidentally having an orgy on their trip to Tokyo. While disgusting, it made her grateful to have something else be the focus of the school than her red string.
Matsukawa was bored out of his mind, switching through TV channels. Everyone else was busy with makeup work or their families. He looked down at his hand, he moved each finger once. What was she doing? Who was she with? When would he see her again, outside of just school?
He stared at her icon in his phone, the last texts had just been her thanking him for taking down the photos and for sitting with her. He decided now was as good a time as ever.
to y/n (future wife) 🤩⭐✨💌: Do you want to come over?
to matsukawa issei 🧵🍀: Why would I come over?
to y/n (future wife) 🤩⭐✨💌: To hang out?
She was chewing the inside of her mouth. He was cleaning up the living room as quickly as he could because he had a feeling she would be coming over.
to matsukawa issei 🧵🍀: I have Oreos, you better have more snacks at your house
They didn’t expect to have such a good time together. Sitting cross-legged and across from each other on the couch, they were trying to get Oreos from their forehead to their mouths without dropping them and without using their hands. Matsukawa was surprisingly gifted at this game. She had dropped at least three Oreos, but she was having a great time with each new attempt.
“You gotta move your nose less.”
“I can do it without you coaching me!” She started laughing though, so the Oreo fell, and she made a short sound in reaction to dropping her Oreo. Falling back onto the arm of the couch she kicked her feet out and rested them in Matsukawa’s lap since he had turned around and was looking for the remote to the TV.
It was midnight and they were glued onto the movie screen, gradually, throughout the movie, they moved closer and closer until the length of their sides were touching. He was scratching her back lightly, soaking in the light hums she let out appreciatively. When one of the characters in the movie died, she asked a question.
“How many more months until school ends?”
“For break? Or the end of the year?”
“The end of the year.”
“I think like maybe four or five, we’re about halfway done.” He ate another apple slice from the apples that he had cut up and put in a bowl on the side table. She asked for one and he gave it to her.
“Okay, last day of school, we can go for it.”
“Go for it?”
She just lifted up her pinkie, the tiny red string a rich red color, a more vibrant shade than Matsukawa’s deep blood-red hue. The grin in response that he gave was astounding.
When Aoba Johsai lost to Karasuno, the third years were in shambles. It was again late at night, and Matsukawa just couldn’t help but tug on the string, he wondered if she would call him, or if she would text him telling him to stop. His insomnia got the best of him at times like these.
When his brain wouldn’t let him relax into bed and finally stop thinking. He thought of everything he could have done differently in that last game. Everything he could have done differently to make her love him just a little more, or at least for them to get closer sooner.
Then, with one text, he was opening his front door and she was hugging him so tightly he thought that his breathing would never return to normal. When her shoulder was soaked through with his tears, he gave her one of his sweaters to change into. That was probably the reason for the mental-physical connection to the string, he mused, so that when one of them needed each other, they could be there faster than fast.
The days went by, and they hung out more and more frequently. She was getting used to his personality, all sides of it. The goofy, the serious, but most importantly his ability to stay calm. She could be worried, or anxious, and he would just be there in a capacity that she didn’t understand the magnitude of.
One time, when she went on a family trip to Okinawa. And Matsukawa felt so ill that his mom just knew it was from string sickness. He felt like she must have been too far apart and suddenly waves of nausea hit him like a truck. His mom was amazed that her son was the one who got this side effect of the soul connection since she had texted L/N’s mom and asked if she was doing alright. When the result came up perfectly peachy, Matsukawa’s mom just laughed and got her son another glass of ginger ale.
He called her that night too, begging.
“You're intoxicating, I’m actually running a fever, you need to come home early.” Matsukawa wanted her back within a ten-mile range as soon as possible.
“You mean go back to my house?” She was ruffling her brother’s hair and adjusting his swim shirt for the late-night swim he wanted to go on. Rubbing sunscreen on his ears and pinching his cheek when he complained.
Matsukawa hit his head against his pillow and clarified for her, “No, I need you to come home, which is with me. I said what I meant. Keep up.”
She said she would call him again tomorrow. He was still extremely sick until she got back from her trip. And as soon as he was feeling normal again, he came over.
“You’re a terrible listener, I said to come home not go back to your house.” He tugged her hand, waving at her parents through the door. They waved back at him. She jumped a little, leaning to the side, putting on her shoes, and asking him to slow down.
To her surprise, he pushed her back up, so she was standing. He put her shoes on instead, lacing the ties just tight enough to be secure. He patted her thigh on his way to standing up again, using his head to point to his car. When they got to the park, he took her right to the swings. They weren’t swinging, just sitting on the seats and rocking slightly.
“This is for you.” He hands her a small baggie, made of velvet.
“Drugs?”
“Shut up.” He turns his face away from her, waiting for her to open the gift.
Inside the bag was a shiny small silver ring, it was understated, but the metal had been molded so there was a single knot that was meant to face upwards. She handed the ring to him. He froze for a moment before she held her hand out for him, wiggling her ring finger. He just rolled his eyes and put the ring on her.
“Great, it’s like preparation for the real thing.” She inspected the ring on her finger and Matsukawa just chuckled, shaking his head in exasperation.
“I have something for you too.” She kicks the ground a little more, actually swinging a little. “You need to close your eyes though.”
So Matsukawa holds his hand out and tightly shuts his eyes. He did not expect her to put one hand on his, holding it tightly, and then for her other hand to cup the side of his face, but he most definitely did not expect her to press her lips to his. When she goes to separate from him, he just grabs the back of her head and pushes her back to his lips.
He wishes he could go back in time to erase all other kisses from his history, he wanted this to be his first kiss, he wanted this to be the only kiss to ever have graced his senses.
He tugs the string at night. Always at night. Sometimes she just can not sleep because her finger feels the short but rough tugs. She only realizes there’s an actual communicative pattern when her teacher mentions the development of Morse code within the world, and how that completely shifted global communication.
She heads to the library, thinking there was no way that he was doing what would’ve been completely crazy. He was already in the library, in the exact aisle she wanted to go down, so she ducked and hid in the other section until she saw him leaving. She rushed to get to the book she had asked the librarian to help her find. And when she opened it, a note fell out.
Better start learning ;) - Issei <3
What a goof. It is fully believed that she never studied anything even remotely that intensively before this.
His late-night messages range from sweet genuine confessions to things so borderline toe-curling she has to stop transcribing or else her face would get too hot to live with. Most commonly, he’ll just tap out: I love you.
She knew he was an insomniac. But this was driving her crazy, to know he wouldn’t sleep, or more realistically, couldn’t sleep. She starts going over to his house most nights, just hanging out until she goes home to sleep. Matsukawa starts sleeping better and more frequently when she comes around.
“I bet I’d sleep even better if you just stayed over.” Matsukawa was pushing his luck with that one. She went home but came back with a duffel bag around fifteen minutes later.
Brushing their teeth together made her realize that she did love him back. He kept trying to talk but his mouth was full of toothpaste.
“Do you really wear a chain to bed?” She judged the silver accessory he was wearing in combination with his pajamas. He was lying against his headboard, watching her flit around his room, inspecting and assessing his things. He took the necklace off immediately and threw it under his bed.
“No idea what you’re talking about.” He blurts out. She sat down on the futon his mom laid out for her. “Yeah, you’re not sleeping on that.” Matsukawa resolves and then pats the spot next to him on his bed.
Maybe having her sleepover wasn’t the best idea, because he just wanted to stay awake talking to her and tracing shapes on her hip. But she was asleep and nuzzling into her pillow by the time he got to the part in his story about Oikawa tripping over a volleyball when he saw that Hanamaki and Iwaizumi were wearing crop tops for a joke at practice. He tucked a hair behind her ear and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her into him. He claimed that that was the best night's sleep in his whole life.
His mom also came in around 3 am just to make sure nothing that would cause her to be a grandma prematurely was occurring, and all she saw was her son holding his soulmate like a teddy bear. The pictures of them sleeping were well worth all the years she spent dealing with not only her insomnia but Issei’s as well.
Matsukawa’s mom had sent the photos to Y/N before her son. So when Matsukawa was messing around on Y/N’s phone, he was very pleasantly informed to see the two of them sleeping as her lock screen, and then a photo of their shoes facing each other as her home screen.
When it was time to grow up, say goodbye, and move on, Matsukawa could not have been happier. How could he not when Y/N gladly held his hand in public during all the various graduation activities? Hanamaki joked that he had never seen Matsukawa smile longer than two seconds at max, and now here he was smiling like an idiot because the girl he liked was holding his hand and pressing kisses to the corner of his mouth.
The rest of his life went pretty great. Getting married practically right out of high school (much to her chagrin, but hey, she didn’t say no when he proposed so that’s her fault), working at a funeral home which meant helping people move on and understanding that life continues even when it feels like it shouldn’t, and one of the best parts of being with his soulmate was getting much better sleep.