That soulmate thing you wrote a while ago I just found and now I want to read the rest? Is there more? No..? Well now I'm just crying in the corner thinking about karma and nagisa losing colour and just- not knowing- AHHHH
Alright, fine, you asked for it.
Being friends with Akabane Karma is weird.
Not that Nagisa has anything to complain about. No, he likes being friends with Karma quite a lot. That shouldn’t surprise him, considering they’re soulmates and all. It’s strange to think about, that Karma’s soul was made to slot in beside his, that Karma is supposed to be worth the spectrum of the universe dulling out into tones of grey.
He became Karma pretty quickly, rather than the more formal ‘Akabane kun’. After Nagisa asked that Karma call him by his given name, he only obliged so long as the favour was returned.
Somehow Nagisa’s sure he can’t tell him the truth. He’s already taken the colours from Karma’s world, what next? Karma deserves so much more than to be stuck with him for the rest of his life. Nagisa just hopes that he thinks it’s a mistake, that he doesn’t try to push Nagisa further, than he finds someone far better to settle down with eventually.
It all sounds so serious, but they’re still kids.
They go to the cinema and loudly discuss movies afterwards. After that’s a success, they go and eat fast food together because that’s all a couple of first year middle school students can really afford. And then, they get comfortable. Karma talks to him in between lessons, they swap comic books over the weekends, Karma teaches him how to play his favourite video games and Nagisa watches in appreciative quiet.
“It’s blue,” Karma explains, more than aware that Nagisa can’t see the console for himself. “Kind of like your hair.”
Nagisa does him the favour of not calling out his blatant lie. Sometimes it’s easier to pretend Karma can actually see colour, that Nagisa didn’t steal that from him.
Karma was already the most important person in his life. But now he’s the most important times by ten, and Nagisa starts to understand this whole soulmate thing. It’s not really how he imagined love to be. Sometimes, Karma makes his cheeks heat up when he gets too close, but Nagisa’s not really filled with mushy kissing feelings or whatever. All he knows for certain is he might drown, without Karma by his side, although he was perfectly fine before.
“Why don’t you transfer up?”
Nagisa says it one day, sitting on Karma’s bedroom floor. It’s a week and a half after Karma’s thirteenth birthday, and his parents were actually around for once. Nagisa knows that, because Karma spent the entire winter break texting him to complain about it. It means that they’re only just ‘celebrating’ now, if you could call it that.
Karma looks down at him lazily from his position, lounged out across his bed. “Huh? What’s that?”
He really wants an answer, though. “Your test results were all above 90. You could easily get into Class A.”
“What fun is that?” Karma laughs in a mocking way that makes Nagisa wonder what he even found funny. “They’re all zombies, that Class A. For a slacker like me? No dice. Why?” He tilts his head. “Trying to get rid of me, Nagisa kun?”
Briefly, Nagisa wonders if it’s a good thing he can’t make out the gold flecks in Karma’s irises that he knows are there, but he never got the chance to look at up close. In grey scale, Karma’s… a lot. Nagisa’s not sure how he’d be able to function, with the whole palette available.
“N-not at all,” he replies, “class wouldn’t be the same without you.”
He can’t quite see if it’s flush or not, but a part of Karma’s face does darken. “Boring, probably. It’s already miserable enough.”
“It could be worse,” Nagisa shuffles up on his knees. “At least we’re not in E Class.”
Karma huffs. “Doesn’t seem so bad, aside from the walk.”
“Someone like me couldn’t make it.”
It’s the truth. He’s not like Karma, not really. There’s the thing, they get along well, and Nagisa feels so light he might float off into the atmosphere whenever he’s with Karma. But they’re also so different. Karma’s smart, and brave, and strong. Karma does things his way and has no qualms with fighting to get it. There’s no way Nagisa could ever be like that.
He almost feels like fake, just being beside him. The way it should be, Karma’s on top of the pyramid, and Nagisa’s just one of the stones at the bottom. Karma being his soulmate feels like some kind of divine practical joke, especially now that Nagisa knows him, knows that Karma’s not just that person he yearned for from afar, but so much better. The selfish part of him drinks it up, pretends it won’t end once Karma gets bored.
He swallows. “How did you know, when you met your soulmate?”
Nagisa squeezes his eyes shut. “I locked eyes with them for just a second, and then everything went grey.”
“Yeah but,” he rolls over, “how did you know it was them?”
He shrugs, because what else can he do? “I just knew.”
All that matters is that things between them are good.
“I just don’t think we should hang out so much anymore,” he says.
It’s a cold day in March. Karma’s been distant from him for a couple of days, leaving Nagisa’s messages on read, barely sparing him more than a look in class… Nagisa’s been spending pretty much every waking minute trying to figure out what he did. But he keeps coming up blank, and this really is just coming out of nowhere. The only logic he can really pull is Karma finally realised how bored he is with someone like him.
“Your grades aren’t very good,” Karma continues to explain. “And I’m busy, anyway. It’s just- don’t waste your time asking me anymore, okay?”
And it’s as if the colours fade all over again.
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