Work Text:
Yuyuko wore red.
This was a fact that everyone knew. Her parents said that it began ever since she was a child, her grandmother said it was because she was wrapped in a red blanket when she came home. Yuyuko wore red because she saw red strings. Well, maybe the childhood stuff was true and a mere coincidence, but as soon as she realised she had a choice on what she would wear, she wore red.
Red hoodies were her favourite. It kept her ears warm, her face hidden and most importantly, it made the red strings blend in with her clothes. She can pretend that the red strings were just loose threads instead of romantic entanglements around her. It made it easier for her to ignore it all.
As far as Yuyuko was aware, this weird mythical trait about her average self held no explanation. Of course, she couldn’t see her own thread. She just saw everyone else’s strings. Well. She saw red strings around her, but it was rare for her to spot the owners on either end.
Maybe kids her age didn’t have any soulmates. A good thing really, the last thing anyone would want was a love-bomb devotion the size of a yarn ball amongst the raging hormones, puberty and teenage angst. Yuyuko certainly didn’t want it, so she was glad that she couldn’t see her strings.
The first time Yuyuko saw the owner of a red string around her age was by chance. Rui for some reason went to a different school to challenge someone called Hanayagi Kaoruko. She and Tamao raced after her only to find the confrontation already happening. There, Yuyuko saw a red string wrapped around Kaoruko-senpai’s pinky, its string loose and hanging in the air. Sometimes, it was taut.
(Yuyuko never asked them about it, she wouldn’t know how to explain herself to begin with. It was strange nevertheless realising that whilst your school department was falling apart, a train ride over, someone older than you found their soulmate. She wondered if that could happen to her, and realised that saving school was more important than some red-string crush).
Time passed.
A red-string crush appeared whilst she was trying to save the acting department. Quite literal of the term too. Akikaze Rui had a red string around her fingers. It had no other owner, but the string was short, and always hung on the cuff of her sleeves. Yuyuko didn’t know how to feel about that.
More time passed.
Regardless of the situation about Rui’s red strings, as weird as it was, Yuyuko found herself falling more despite herself. She’s tall, she’s beautiful-she made Yuyuko feel heard and listened to. Yuyuko wanted to see her shine, it’s not fair for someone as brilliant as her to hide so much of herself.
A lot of time passed.
Yuyuko couldn’t save the department. It died and was reborn as a club. Rui’s strings grew longer, it still had no owner. Jealousy was an ugly beast and it reared its head during an intense revue.
Yuyuko lost. When Rui and Yuyuko had a talk after all of the fighting and revues, Rui no longer had a string on her finger.
(Yuyuko had no idea what that meant, and avoided thinking about it by throwing herself into her performance of the magician).
A small time passed.
Rui asked her out. It was a stuttering, stammering ordeal; but it was sweet, sincere and the blushing nervous smile made Yuyuko weak at the knees. They went out the next day, and Ichie senpai helped her pick out an outfit. Even though they saw each other in pyjamas, bed head included, Yuyuko wanted to look pretty on her first date. When Rui made her feel beautiful even before they left the dorm, Yuyuko was glad neither of them had any other soulmate or red-string fiasco to worry about.
(She still had red strings around her, but she chose to ignore it like before. Well–most of it. She couldn’t help but give a nudge to her senpais when red strings appeared on all three of their fingers).
Time continued to pass.
They had their first kiss, instigated by Yuyuko on their second date: An impromptu movie night when the senpai were out. The movie was ending, and Yuyuko was resting against Rui’s lap as the credits rolled. She looked up, Rui looked down, surrounding red strings dangling from her head like it was hair. It was comical, it was poetic. Before she knew it, Yuyuko leaned up and kissed her, a choice made amongst the loose threads of fate.
Rui gave her second, third and well–she lost count how many kisses they shared that night. A door opened, bursting with possibility and action and Yuyuko revelled in the doorframe, smiling every time she got woken up by a kiss.
Sometimes, on the bad days where nothing was going right, Yuyuko would think too much of her benign but mystical vision. She couldn’t see her red strings, Rui had no red strings and there the bitterness and jealousy reared its ugly head on why can’t they be soulmates. Why them? Why her?
But every time, Rui would hold her close, kiss her with so much earnest love, and whisper every small thing she loved about Yuyuko. She would say it with a sweet tenderness that would give Yuyuko another reason to cry.
Then Yuyuko would look up at Rui, dangled red strings around her head and shoulders, relief in her gorgeous eyes. Sometimes the blushing nervous smile, the kind where Rui wasn’t sure if what she said worked even when it was sincere as her heart, would be there. The smile no longer made Yuyuko weak at the knees, but it did make her feel seen, it made feel her beautiful.
Those bad days end in a kiss, a human choice made again and again in a mess of loose threads and red strings of fate.
….
(Many years pass.
Yuyuko married her highschool sweetheart. Then in her late 40s, fuelled by boredom and mild curiosity, Yuyuko tugged and pulled at the strings around her for the first time in her life.
Rui, her wife of many years, ran to the living room from the garden. There was a gut sensation in her stomach, heightened more by Yuyuko’s mixture of cries and laughter. When the situation calmed itself, Rui joined in with the laughter too once she knew the context.
Turns out, somewhere along the way, the mess of threads that used to belong to strangers, belonged to only Yuyuko. Well, Yuyuko and her wife).