I’ve never believed in soulmates. Sure, I’ve been around happy couples all my life, but my own romances have never been anything but messy. Mom and Dad have always said I’d know half my soul when I saw it.
I didn’t really believe it until I met Kairi.
Two months ago, my senior year of high school had begun. I used to love school, when it wasn’t super important to my future.
Or rather, when I didn’t think it was that important.
I really couldn’t wait to leave school, go to college, pry the real Keiko from my parents’ clutching fingers. I wanted no ties to home. Swore to myself I would burn every bridge I spent years making just so I could be free.
I wanted to throw that promise right out the window when I walked into math.
I was smart. Not a genius, but not normal either. So it was calculus three.
There weren’t many kids, but there were definitely more than fifteen.
She walked in late. That was unusual, especially for smart kids.
What was weirder was that she hadn’t been in our class to start. Rumor was that she blew the tops off the pre calc tests, and the admin had freaked out.
She wasn’t introduced to us. Our teacher seated her in the far back of the room, next to another girl whose name I couldn’t remember.
I’d accepted that there was no changing my sexuality years ago. So I let myself take in this girl. Dark brown hair in a short bob, leather jacket, battered yellow Converse with daisies sewn on the sides….
Yeah, she was precisely my type. I immediately started writing our love story in my head. It was a bad habit, made worse by the fact that I was pansexual. Instead of doing it for just guys, I now did it for everyone I met.
I also was a sucker for a good leather jacket.
Stop it, Keiko! I chided myself. You don’t even know the poor girl’s name and you’re already planning a romance? Get real!
Fortunately, my chance came a few days later. Our teacher had revealed his fondness for making people do math problems on the board. I was one of his first victims.
Like most people, he’d just walked up to the board and pointed out six flaws in my work in front of the entire class. So humiliating.
That day, he said, “Aoi, Tsumugi, Kairi, Haruto, you’re up.”
Everyone but Aoi had flinched and stood with shaking hands. Aoi was just a genius, so he didn’t flip out. Tsu, Haruto, and Kairi weren’t so lucky.
Tsu was my best friend. She liked art and music much more than math, no matter how clever her grades said she was. She also struggled with exceptional anxiety.
Translation: Tsu should’ve never gone up to the board.
She was shivering and pale. I saw the new girl- Kairi- grasp her wrist and whisper something in Tsu’s ear. Tsu nodded, and took a breath.
I was doomed. I already liked that girl too much.
Mr. Gensu walked up to the board, and started talking the class through the problems.
Aoi had no mistakes, obviously.
Tsu didn’t slip, either. I felt a swell of pride for my friend.
Haruto screwed up, but he always did that. I was positive it was for comedy, not because he wasn’t able to keep up.
Kairi wasn’t so lucky.
She looked so small as Gensu marked the mistakes with an orange Dry-Erase.
When the bell rang, I told Tsu I wanted to check on the new girl.
Tsu nodded, “I’d help, but I’m not great at talking to people. Just…tell her I said thanks.”
I hurried to catch up with Kairi.
When I reached her, I was a little out of breath. Girl walked fast.
“Hey, you okay? Gensu can really rip math up,” I said.
Kairi nodded, “Tsumugi needed my strength more than I did.”
“Yeah, she says thanks.”
She smiled.
“I’m sorry, I don’t actually know your name,” I confessed apologetically.
“It’s Kairi. You’re…” She waited expectantly.
“I’m Keiko. It’s great to meet you.”
Kairi….Kairi. Her name was sharp in the right places, and smoother than honey on my lips. I liked it.
We kept chattering all the way to the cafeteria.
Kairi wasn’t someone I fully crushed on at first. She was just…Kairi.
Heck, we weren’t even friends until the cafeteria layout shifted and we sat together. Tsu sat with a different group.
Tsu and I were still friends, but I think she knew before I did that Kairi would be all-consuming.
It started small, Kairi and I. I’d show her ridiculous comics. She’d give me Jolly Ranchers. We’d walk the track and talk about nothing super important.
It started deepening. We’d hug, tease each other, talk about people who we thought sucked. People shipped us. It was a source of silent tension between us, but no one mentioned it.
We both knew that our sexualities allowed it. We just pretended that it was impossible.
Or rather, Kairi did. I didn’t.
I just lied to myself that I was slowly developing a massive crush.
Lying is hard. Lying to someone who knows you as well as you do is next-to impossible. But I did it.
Lied to myself, lied to Tsu, lied to Kairi. I prayed that it would disappear. I wanted nothing left here, especially not a romance.
But when you have a crush, logic is swallowed up by the butterflies in your stomach and the giant WHAT IF SHE LIKES ME?
For me, I only started noticing the tidal wave after the fall assembly.
Kairi sat behind me. I couldn’t see her face as the principal started talking about college and scholarships and studying abroad and “getting serious about the future.”
I was only half-paying attention. Most of my focus went to the dangerous girl behind me. Her legs could hug my shoulders if she moved them a couple centimeters.
I was alarmed when I realized how badly I wanted her to. How badly I wanted her to wrap her arms around me and never let go.
I blanched. I think Kairi assumed it was from all the big talk about money and the economy.
She reached down and squeezed my shoulder. It sent electric tingles down my spine. Goose bumps raised on my arms.
I really hoped Kairi couldn’t see them. That would be so embarrassing.
If I were strictly religious, I would’ve prayed to anyone. Allah. Buddha. The Sages. God. Anyone. I would’ve prayed that Kairi didn’t notice or pull her perfectly curved nails from my shoulder.
I wasn’t lucky on either count. Kairi pulled her hand from my shoulder, a look of mild surprise swiftly replaced by feigned curiosity in the principal’s monotone.
Crap! I swore to myself.
That was when I first felt the anchor tying my heart to hers, no matter the distance.
When I mentioned to Kairi that I thought soulmates were fake, she bought me a yin-yang necklace. It was meant as a prank, but it sent blood rushing to my face and sweat to my palms.
“It’s separable,” Kairi said. “So you can give your soulmate one. Until then, you can wear both.”
“Thanks,” I said casually, as if my heart wasn’t doing backflips.
She smiled. “Which do you want?”
I considered the two necklaces. “Yang. The white.”
Kairi asked, “Want me to help you put it on?”
It was an innocent question, from a friend to another, but my skin heated immediately.
“Sure,” I said.
She stepped around me, and swept my long, thick hair out of the way.
She slid the chain around my neck, cool against my collarbone.
“Done.” She stepped back, admired her handiwork.
I wanted to keep her gaze, guide it up to my eyes. I wanted her to say, “Want me to keep yin?”
I fumbled for yin. “ I, uh, don’t trust myself not to lose this,” I stuttered. “ Could you keep it for me?”
She shrugged. “Okay.”
When I went to her apartment later that week, I was pleasantly surprised to see yin on her nightstand.
She flushed and hid it as soon as she noticed I’d seen it.
Kairi mentioned offhandedly one day, ”I think I like someone.” My heart started to dance.
I’ve always been an optimistic person. Worrying that Kairi’s crush wasn’t me wasn’t a problem. My concern suddenly became how to confess and not be awkward.
“I think I like someone, too,” I replied.
Winter crept silently, and before I knew it, Kairi was in turtlenecks and I was in cardigans.
One day, I caught Kairi adjusting the neck of her sweater.
Yin flashed before it disappeared.
I reached for yang, always at my throat, prominent. Tsu had asked where yin was when I started wearing it.
I’d flushed, stammered, and changed the subject. She’d given me one of her sharp looks.
She knows exactly where yin is, she just wants me to say it.
I pretended not to notice.
The week before Christmas, I confronted Kairi about yin.
“You’re wearing yin, aren’t you?”
She nodded, cheeks slightly pink. “I didn’t really trust myself not to lose it unless I wore it. Don’t read too much into it.”
I nodded, as if this made sense. As if I weren’t a tiny bit disappointed.
“Will you give yin to your crush?” I asked.
She shook her head. She looked embarrassed. “I’m not totally sure, but I think I’m aro. I told you I like someone because I was worried you wouldn’t…” She hunched her shoulders. “Are you angry with me?”
My heart sure was, but Kairi was still my friend. “No. I’m proud of you for telling me.” I took her in my arms.
I felt her exhale in relief. “Thank you.”
She pulled back. “Do you…want yin back?”
I shook my head. “No, you keep it. It looks great with your emo vibe.”
She grinned, a crooked, honest smile. “You’re a better friend than I could’ve ever asked for, Keiko.”
The words stung. I knew Kairi hadn’t meant it to, but it did anyway. My secret crush was now dead and buried.
So obviously, the first person I told was Tsu.
I told Kairi that I wanted to chat with Tsu. She didn’t ask. Just nodded, and said, “Tell her I said hello.”
I told Tsu everything. My crush, yin-yang. I said what I could while avoiding Kairi’s sexuality. I figured she’d want to tell Tsu on her own time, in her own way.
Tsu stayed silent, but startled at the mention of yin. She unzipped her jacket, reveiling….
“She gave it to me,” Tsu whispered. No….
Tsu….
“She spotted something in me, and shoved yin into my hand. She told me it was yours, and she trusted me to keep it for you both.”
“Tsu..” I didn’t know what to say.
She pressed on. “She looked at me, and said that you had yang. She saw it before I did. She was vague. Told me to wear it when I knew what I wanted.”
My feet knew what to do before my brain could come up with something suave. They took a step forward. “And do you know?”
She went red. “No. I just…wanted to wear something to keep us together.”
I tilted my head. “I’ve never believed in soulmates.”
A wooden smile rose to her face. “I believe that some people will change your life when they touch it.”
She walked away, clutching yin between her fingers.
I puzzled over that conversation for days.
I got desperate enough that I holed up in my bedroom, and slid the notebook out from under my bed.
I ran my hand over the cover. The wrinkled leather surface was instantly calming.
I opened it to the first page. Dust rose to greet me. I sneezed.
A smile crept its way across my face upon seeing the various drawings. Sketches of myself, my parents, my room, the view outside my window.
I flipped to the next blank page.
I lifted my pencil from the floor.
And I started to draw Tsu during that conversation. A few swipes of my pencil, and I’d captured the curves of her head. Then her thick brown hair. Then the creases at the corners of her eyes and mouth. The lines on her forehead.
The final touch was the yin necklace at her throat.
She was beautiful.
And I knew what Kairi saw.
I taped the drawing to Tsu’s locker with the words “I see you” written on it.
I asked Kairi to walk by the locker to see how Tsu reacted to it.
“She looked terrified and flattered at the same time,” Kairi whispered to me during class.
“Does she know it was me?” I whispered back.
Kairi smirked. “I don’t know. Isn’t that wonderful?”
I flicked her arm. “For you, maybe,” I joked.
I found a note on my locker that said,”If the drawing was you, it isn’t funny.”
I put another note on hers. “If it was me, maybe I didn’t think it was funny.”
She showed up to my apartment the next week, with homemade mochi in a box nestled in her arms.
We abandoned the mochi on the kitchen counter when she threw her arms around me.
I felt warm and safe. Like this was where I was always supposed to be.
And when she kissed me, cherry lip gloss sweet, I knew what forever felt like.
Our lives were not perfect, not after that, and not even before. We wore yin and yang. Two halves of one whole.
When the time came for me to leave Japan, Tsu came with me.
And we spent our lives living as we always had: together.
