hello scout!! i come for your blurb game!
yuuta + eyes + you touched me, and i came alive.
[authors note: god i love a good soulmate au.
Yuuta is awkward, readers a bit bitchy. All in a days work for yours truly.]
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Rika's been gone for a while now, same with Maki and the others. Nothing bad happened, per se, it's just how life works: lines intersect, and then run parallel after a while.
It's getting colder now, he can see his breath when he walks down the sidewalks in Kyoto; he makes a little game with himself where he tries to see how big of a cloud he can make with his breath. He rocks his feet back and forth on the tactile paving, relishes the way the pebbled texture presses on the bottom of his shoes.
He's so distracted by his little game, and the way the cold feels on his cheeks and feeling the pebbled texture under his shoes he doesn't even notice you standing directly next to him.
(You're thoroughly unimpressed, by the way. You have him sized up in one glance. His shoes are worn out, there's a tear in between the sole and where the canvas connects with them. His jeans are patched in between his thighs, and the elbows of his sweater are worn thin. He's tall, though, which makes up for a lot. Dark hair frames his baby face. You watch him for a while, notice the cupids bow of his lip and the sharp angles of his jaw. You're taken aback momentarily by how dark the blue of his eyes are and how stark the contrast is compared to how dark the purple is under his eyes.)
He notices you after a while, mid shuffle of his feet. You stare him down, intensely so and it makes him feel like a prey animal. Like you're the fox and he's the rabbit cornered in his burrow. He's not sure what he wants more; for him to run or for you to take a bite.
"Hello," he says, mustering up some weak sort of smile.
If you hear him, there's no sort of acknowledgment there. You meet his eyes after a moment, and he can hear the faint parting of your lips before you speak, "There's a hole in your shoe."
"Oh," he blinks at you, and you think about how wide his eyes are, "there is," you watch him bring his left foot forward, wiggling his toes and enunciating the rip on the side. "I've had these for years. I think when I was 16 ? I got them at some second hand shop in Tokyo." He's not really sure why he's rambling. Or why he's telling you about the shoe's Maki took him to buy.
(Maybe it's because that was a good day to him. Maybe he just missed sharing things with someone.)
"Nice," you say, but the way you say it doesn't sound nice. You sound unimpressed. You look across the street, waiting for the light to change from red to white; symbolizing that you can walk away from him and this weird conversation.
(He's intriguing to you, in some strange sort of way. The pull of his dark blue eyes and the softness of his voice. You glance at him again, begrudgingly, and feel something in your chest shift slightly. You fight the urge to gag.)
Yuuta's wants to say something else to you — a question about your day or where you're going. He's grown into his friendliness, he realizes, and the thought make pride swell in his chest, followed instantly by a twinge of sadness when he wonders what Maki would think of him now.
The light across the street turns though, and the red hand changes to the symbol of someone walking and you're moving immediately, swaying off the sidewalk with all the grace of a fox. He stares at you for a moment, watches your hand clasped to your bag, head turned towards your shoes (not ripped, not the cleanest either) as if you're memorizing the gaps between the white stripes on the road.
Something happens that makes his skin prickle into goosebumps. Some sort of déjà vu settles into his veins and for a moment he thinks his lungs have forgotten how to expand. There's a clawing feeling in his chest and it almost feels like Rika's long nails have gripped around his heart.
There's a car coming, just down the turn of the street and it's not slowing down, despite the bright yellow lights flashing — signaling someone is crossing. And Yuuta just can't have that trauma again, not with everything he's done to work through it. Not when he knows how pretty your eyes are. Not when he's heard the light inclination of your voice.
Without much thought, without much care, his legs are pushing his tattered shoes across the street, both arms outstretched and using all the lankiness of his body to reach you as fast as possible.
Your yelp of surprise goes unnoticed by him — later he thinks all the adrenaline must've drowned it out — same with the sound of your bag clattering to the ground, and the screech of the van tires, because the only thing he can focus on is how bright everything looks now.
You touched him, and he came alive.
Suddenly the world is washed in a swath of colors, much more bright and beautiful than he ever imagined. It's like seeing clearly for the first time, everything's lost it's hazy hue and now it's all bright and blinding.
(You're still trapped underneath him. The cold ground makes your back hurt, but you can't really focus on that either. The whole worlds a bright color now and you find it nauseating for a second before you remember the stories your mother told you when she met your father. 'Everything was dull she said,' soft smile adorning her fine features, 'then he touched me, and suddenly everything was bright.'
"Soulmate," you think, somewhere in the concussed haze of your brain.)
"I'm sorry," he starts, slowly getting off of you, "I just didn't want anything to happen to you and I didn't think you saw the car coming."
You don't respond, don't really have the energy too, especially when sitting up makes you feel like you just lifted the weight of the world. You look at him again, take in his blue eyes that have somehow gotten bluer and mindlessly take in his endless tirade of apologies and justifications.
"What's your name?" You ask, interrupting another apology before it comes out.
"Okkotsu Yuuta," he tells you, somehow smiling despite everything that's happened. When you tell him yours in response, you watch the cupids bow of his lips stretch into a smile, and the sight of it makes your heart ache in your chest.
"Yuuta," you say, noticing the way your mouth moves as you do. "Do you want to go shoe shopping with me?"
