When they'd picked the topic for their group project, everyone had assumed it would be a quick piece of work, take a day or two to complete and then submit it for a passing grade. None of them had realized just how difficult coding and designing a short game from scratch would be, and when the members of the group started dropping like flies it was hard to continue working at the pace they'd started with. First went Junko, claiming that the project was a waste of her time but that if she found out they'd removed her name from the credits after her careful design work of one aspect of their game, she'd get them all expelled from school. Not long after her, Leon and Sayaka were both gone, one of them choosing to save everyone else from the other's almost unbearable behavior, and from there the group dwindled down to a mere shell of what it had been to start.

"As soon as we're done with these final touches, we really should think about altering whose names show up on the submission," Makoto said with a yawn as he idly test-clicked a couple icons that had shown up on his screen. "I don't know how you guys feel about it, but I think most of the people who left don't deserve to get credit anymore."

"That's a discussion to have later, Makoto. Focus on finding any bugs, we can't submit this if it's unplayable and we don't exactly have Chihiro around to do this work for us anymore." Also clicking different icons to see what happened, Kyoko seemed absolutely focused on her work, as if she wasn't even paying attention to what the person she was talking to was doing in that moment. "Let's hope that by the time Hina gets back with snacks, we can call this as good as done, but that's being rather optimistic."

"Optimism's the only thing we've got going for us right now, I'd say," he replied, giving a hollow laugh as he noticed one of the actions he'd asked of the game not working right. "Uh, this path's bugging out, it's not letting me proceed in it. Whoever's in charge of story progression needs to fix that and fast so we can move on."

Kyoko lifted her hand from her mouse and began to turn to face Makoto at his computer, where he was sitting right next to her, but before she could move too far someone on the other side of the room was running towards them, the sounds of feet moving quickly across the tile floor the only indicator of their arrival. When she slid into the space between the two work stations, Kyoko shook her head and went back to her own work, leaving Toko there to fiddle with whatever was wrong with Makoto's version of the game without giving any input of her own. She'd volunteered to be a beta tester only because she was good at solving mysteries, not because she knew anything about making games, and even though she would have loved to give fixing the problem her best shot she knew it was best if she keep her hands out of that mess.

"The problem is that the code isn't done right here," Toko meekly told Makoto, hanging her head and averting her eyes as she pointed at the box that was giving him trouble. "The story's there, I know it is, but you have to make it so the game gets to it."

Makoto nodded, understanding what she'd diagnosed the problem as without any questioning of whether she was correct or not. "That's great! How do I do that?"

"You just…check the code?" she offered as an answer, not sure of what he was looking for her to say to him. "I only knew how to write the story, I don't know any of the other parts to this. If you don't know, why don't you just ask someone else?"

"You're right, I should ask someone else what to do." Makoto waited until Toko shuffled away before he turned towards Kyoko, looking at her expectantly as if she was supposed to know that he needed anything from her. When she didn't even acknowledge that he was staring at her, he reached out to gently shake her shoulder—and had his hand smacked away, causing him to retract it quickly. "Ouch, what was that for?" he asked with a flinch, his fingers burning more than his hand had from the smack. "I was just trying to get your attention, you didn't have to be so mean."

"Use your words next time, Makoto, I don't have time to spend learning all your problems because you don't say them." Her eyes were still locked on her screen, her testing coming up with few hindrances to the game's playability, but she'd heard what Makoto and Toko had been talking about; she knew that he was about to ask her to fix something that he'd found, and she was going to get to reveal something to him that she was surprised he hadn't noticed so far. True enough, he began explaining that he didn't know how to fix the bug he'd found and she got to tell him, in a flat monotone voice, "I already fixed that, restart the game and attempt the path again. It was a minor issue, one bracket out of place."

Nodding rapidly to show that she had been understood, just in case she was watching him now, Makoto did as he'd been directed and restarted the game; while it was booting up, he was inspecting the hand that had started to burn without any contact. This was a normal thing for him, something that he resented because of the reason for the pain but accepted because it was something everyone else in the world had to experience at some point or another, given that there wasn't anyone who didn't have the words of their first meaningful interaction with their soulmate tattooed in between their fingers.

Ever since he was little, Makoto had admittedly been fixated on the fact that one hand—the hand that had his first meaningful word to whoever his soulmate was—simply had "ouch" written on it, because that was such a commonplace thing for him to say that it would constantly become an issue. Any time that he said it, no matter the context, his hand would burn and ache as if someone had taken a flame to it, informing him that the person he was talking to wasn't his soulmate, or that their conversation wasn't deemed meaningful enough. His other hand was covered in the dark print that denoted his soulmate's first meaningful words to him, a long sentence he'd never heard anyone say to him in his life. If it were something as common as his, every time they'd say it his hand (as well as their own) would burn, letting him know that they were saying his words to someone else. When, and only when, the soulmates had their fated interaction would the words melt away and allow for them to live without the fear of the pain.

He'd seen so many people with words much more frequently used than his on one or both of their hands, making their existences miserable with how often they'd be brought to face the searing pain of a missed connection. That was actually something they'd discussed back when they'd gotten this project group together, trying to get a feel for everyone's words to avoid so that they could keep people from hurting as much as possible. (That had, admittedly, caused a different problem that none of them had expected, but it was one that had been mostly overlooked by those of them still working at the school on the project because it had saved more time than anything.) "Are you going to get around to testing my fix?" Kyoko asked, breaking him from his thoughts as he slammed his hand down onto the mouse to do as she was expecting him to, causing him to utter the word that made him flinch once more. "Better yet, why does it have to be you here doing this, Makoto? Certainly someone else could do this job more efficiently than you currently are."

"There's not really anyone else here to be doing this, other than you," he reminded her, getting right to work as she was expecting him to be, which meant waiting for the game to reload. "Who would we ask? Our story writer? The person who funded the project? Our guy in charge of knowing who's where?"

"Admittedly we don't have much of a choice on who does what role right now," she conceded, shaking her head at him before going back to her own version of the game, "but once people come back from their various duties we can switch you out if you'd like."

Knowing that taking on a different role could jeopardize his place in the credits on the game, Makoto wanted to make it clear that he was serious about making sure this game was in running condition when they ended up submitting it. "No, I'll work twice as hard to keep up with you and your bug-finding skills. If Chihiro was here I'd ask to switch, but there's no one else I'd trust to do this, not even myself but I don't have a choice there."

"Will the two of you shut up with your bickering and get back to work? If I have to spend another dime on this project I'm pulling all the backing." From the chair he'd been sitting in the whole time, facing the people who were supposed to be working with his arms crossed in front of him and a stern glance being given over his glasses, the always-wonderful mister Byakuya Togami was clearly done with how long this was taking. "We need this finished entirely to pass, and if I have to erase everyone else's names but my own and get a proper development team on the job I will gladly do so."

"If you're so insistent on us working at your pace, you could help us too, you know," Kyoko shot back, a hint of teasing to her voice. "We're doing the best we can as untrained game developers, if you hadn't flaunted your money in the first place we wouldn't have been doing this project to begin with."

"Blaming me for this trainwreck, huh? Would you really do that, considering that I am B—"

"You really going to say that and hurt your poor little hand? Sit down and let us work without your distractions, we'll get done as soon as we can." Just like that, all sign of her being playful was gone and Kyoko sounded like she meant business, shutting him up mid-sentence. Makoto laughed at what he heard, even though he knew that paying attention to them meant he wasn't doing what he was supposed to be, but hearing someone who'd been so snooty the entire time be put in his place made everything worth it.

It had actually been Togami's fault that they'd all discussed the words etched into their hands in the first place. He'd greeted them all with his full name in a condescending way, immediately coming to regret what he'd done when his face contorted into a pained expression as he shook his hand to try to rid it of the stinging. That was when he'd explained that his phrase was his very greeting, but it was engrained in his mind as a proper way to introduce himself that he couldn't help but fall for it. Someone had remarked that it must have made it easy for whoever his soulmate was to know who to look for, given that his name was on their skin, and he'd taken the time to remind everyone that the words only faded when they were said with romantic intent of any kind, and he never had once introduced himself to someone in that manner.

From there everyone had decided to start sharing their words, or at least the ones that would most likely come up in conversation. Makoto had made sure to let everyone know about his common saying that was written in between his fingers, several people giving him condolences for how often his hand must have burned because of them. His wasn't the worst one, though, as there was someone who had caused herself pain while explaining what her words were, and there was someone else who was hurt by the words of someone else in their large circle as they gave their own explanation. For there being a group of fifteen of them to start, it took a while to get through the important words they needed to stay away from, and by the time they were done the group was already starting to shrink.

In the end everyone didn't really care to be careful about what they said, when there were so many phrases that had to be avoided, but some people at least made a conscious effort to avoid setting someone's hand aflame. That was how they'd lost Sayaka, actually, her taking one for the team in a noble enough sacrifice that everyone had decided she'd get to keep her name in the credits for it. She'd chosen to remove someone from the group because he was using the knowledge of what was on everyone's hands and trying to manipulate them with it, refusing to work but wanting credit at the threat of abusing the power their words had over them. No one missed Leon, but Makoto would be lying if he said he didn't miss Sayaka's presence there with them, even though he knew he'd see her again when the next school term started.

That was, of course, reliant on them passing this project and being eligible to come back for the following term. The school had a strict rule of "no failing grades" that had to be adhered to, which was why they'd been working so hard on finishing the project. Thinking about that rule distracted Makoto further from what he was supposed to be doing, because now he had to know who was still considered part of their group, and therefore potentially passing the term. "Hey, Hiro, can you give me an update on whose names are still going on this?" he asked loudly, startling the man who was sitting half-awake in front of one of the other computers in the room. "I want to know so I know which characters I should focus on when I'm checking code."

"Uh, yeah, right on that," Hiro replied, shaking his mouse to bring his screen back to an active state so he could see his list. "All of us, Junko because she gave the threat if we left her out, Sayaka because of what she did, Hina because snacks, Sakura because…she kept guard when no one else would, Chihiro because of the coding, and that's all I've got for people definitely still in this."

"You forgot Taka and Mondo, they're still helping out even though they're not here," Toko said with a spiteful voice, almost as if she hated what she was having to say. "It's stupid that they're considered 'helping' when all they did was watch the door and then leave with Chihiro, but whatever. My name's top billing on this stupid project."

"I think I liked you better when you didn't say anything at all." Shuddering in his seat, Hiro was typing in the names that he'd been given direction to include, trying his best to not look anywhere near where Toko was sitting. She'd been quiet and relatively easy to deal with when they'd first started working, but after her story had been put to the code and they'd gotten to working all her plotlines out, she'd snapped and become almost unbearable, and what Hiro had said was a belief all of them held.

Now that he knew which characters he didn't need to focus on—they'd all somewhat built the characters to connect with at least one person who'd been initially working on the project—Makoto actually went back to work on the same path he'd been debugging from the start. Consider it slightly self-centered, but he was most interested in making sure the character he'd been used to create had a satisfying route to follow in the story, even if it was one that he wasn't thrilled with the plot of. The words on his fingers were kind of important to him, giving him some reason to branch out and talk to other people, that the idea of playing with them was strange to see spelled out on the screen.

How he felt didn't matter though, what mattered was that they had a working game that they could turn in for a grade. As long as it dealt with everyday issues and had resolution that the instructor approved of they'd be fine, so how one person felt about the plot was insignificant because the plot wasn't as important as the function and the issues touched on. Soulmate finger tattoos affected everyone in the world, what was it like if they didn't affect a person or two?

The crunching of the sand under her feet was uneven, but Chiaki hadn't ever really minded that the ground she tread on was an accident waiting to happen. It was just one of the quirks about the island they were staying on, something that she'd be able to look past soon enough. She held a hand up above her face to block the sun from shining too brightly in her eyes, the empty gaps between her fingers a reminder that something had gone very, very wrong somewhere in her life. When the people around her had all found themselves with words painted between their fingers, her skin had always been bare, not even a letter for her to go off of when it came to finding her so-called soulmate.

Not like she minded too much, she'd always preferred playing games to interacting with people so if she could spend the rest of her life gaming rather than getting tied down, it wouldn't be too big of a loss. In fact, the beach where she was walking had become an escape from the other island-bound kids, who were all focused on finding out whose words matched theirs and figuring out how to get romantically involved with them; in her hand that was still in her jacket pocket her fingers were laced around her handheld system, freshly charged and ready for some quality play time.

"Oh hey, what a surprise to see you out here!" a voice called from behind her and she stopped, her feet frozen in their position as they slowly sank into the sand to balance herself out. "Is this where you go when everyone starts hanging out? It's a nice place, I think you picked a good one, Chiaki!"

"Thank you, Hajime, but I came out here to be by myself," she replied, her words feeling like they weren't necessarily her own, even though the sentiment was hers. "Why did you follow me to the beach when you have so many friends you could be talking to right now?"

The sound of footsteps crunching on the sand just like hers had came quicker and quicker until there was silence, no noise except the sound of the boy behind her taking in deep breaths, almost as if he'd just run to catch up with her. "I didn't want to talk to any of them, I guess. They started doing their normal flirting and arguing and I wasn't really interested in watching any of them. It's hard to sit by and watch that, you know."

She smiled, wanting to walk away but finding that her feet had started becoming covered by the sand she stood on, making a quick escape nearly impossible. "I don't really watch them, sorry," she said as she pulled out her game system, waving it in the air. "They start interacting and I start gaming, it's not like they're going to bother with including me in what they're doing so I just…check out, I guess. They include you, though, so you should be there." Her lips closed at her final word as she brought her game down in front of her, opening its cover and turning it on. "Go ahead, leave me alone, I don't mind."

"I think you do mind, otherwise I think you'd be more insistent I go. You're looking for the company here, aren't you?" Even with what she'd said, Hajime was still standing there, his breathing steadying itself now that he hadn't just been running to follow her. "How about this, I stay here for a bit, or at least until they're all done having their fun, then we go back together so neither of us is left out here. Sound good?"

She was too focused on the game she'd started up to be listening to him, so it took him repeating what he'd said for her to realize she was still being addressed. Her mind wrapped itself around his words, trying to decide if it was better to go with him or to turn him down, before she came to her decision. "I think I'll stay out here even when you think they're done, thank you though. I like my alone time."

"So much alone time can't be good for someone," he told her, stepping closer until she could hear what was definitely his heart racing there next to her, not from anything but the exertion he'd put himself through (she hoped, anyway, because if it was anything else it was pointless). "I'll just stick around then, for as long as you need me to. Consider it a gift from me to you."

Her eyes didn't lift from her screen as she gave her reply. "No thank you, really, Hajime. You can go back with everyone else and I'll stay here. I'm just going to play some games until I get sleepy, then it's off to bed."

"If that's your plan, why not just play in your room? It'd be safer that way, and comfier too. Wouldn't you want to be comfy as you play your game?" He was beginning to sound pushy, almost as if he wanted her to go somewhere she had no interest in going, but when she didn't respond Hajime backed off. "I guess the beach is really where you want to be then, huh? Not complaining, it's a nice place, but it's lonely if you're the only one here."

"I'm not lonely if I have my game, which I do." She raised her game system in front of her face for a moment just in case he hadn't noticed it yet, just to lower it back down to where she'd originally been holding it. "Besides, it doesn't matter if I'm lonely or not, it's not like someone like me is meant to be involved with others."'

Hajime seemed taken aback when he reacted to what Chiaki had just said to him, almost like she'd punched him in the gut or something. "I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean, of course you're meant to be involved! We're all friends, aren't we?"

"Friends, yes, but everyone else is looking for love and there's…no reason for me to be doing that." Closing her game and tucking it away, she turned to face Hajime and held out her hands for him to look at them, spreading her fingers to show the blank skin in between them. "You see, why should I bother, when I'm just some kind of machine or something, not meant to be involved with what they're doing?"

"Ha, you think that just because you don't have an assigned soulmate doesn't mean you should try?" His question came as he too raised his hands, mirroring what she had done and showing her the blank spaces where words should have been. "Ever since everyone else I grew up with started caring about their marks, I felt left out because I never got mine. But now that I know I'm not alone, I want to make sure that you're included with me."

"Even though we're clearly some kind of misprint, or some glitched code in a game?"

He nodded, grinning at her. "Even though we're glitches or something. Come on, Chiaki, let's get off this beach and go play your game somewhere a bit nicer to spend time with good friends, shall we?"

Each dropping one hand, they reached towards each other with the one still raised until their fingers interlocked, and they came together to have a near-kiss, at which point dusk overtook everything and a still silence filled the air.

"The way they talk still feels weird to me, but the ending's satisfying enough, I guess," Makoto muttered to himself as the screen in front of him went dark, him having finished the proper route he was aiming for. "I mean, we're not real game developers, we can be forgiven for some bad dialogue, right?"

"It's good enough, given their situation," Kyoko said, knowing exactly what he was talking about even though she'd been focused on her own debugging. "The group inside the beach house has a couple interesting endings as well, all of which seem to work to satisfaction. Let's hope whoever plays this once we've submitted it tries to get all those endings, I'd hate to get docked points because they played less-optimal routes."

Pursing his lips together as he thought about possibly going to see what she was referring to, Makoto shrugged and took his hand off his mouse, shaking his fingers so they didn't cramp up. "We just have to believe that they look at the cast and pick to play as the interesting characters then, huh? Our quirky gamer girl, or maybe the boring everyday guy, and definitely not some of the—"

"Favoritism with the characters based on us, I see how it is."

"—what? No, that's just the route I was checking, it's what's fresh in my mind." Feeling his face heating up with embarrassment for being called out as he had, Makoto pushed his chair back with his feet before standing up, heading towards the door to their workroom for the first time in hours. "I'm going to get some fresh air, I'll be back in a moment."

No response was given, expected based on what had just happened, and when he got to the door there was a moment of considering never going back inside, even after all that work had been done. His name would be in the credits, removing him from the project would be wrong at that point, but maybe he could just call it a day and get to relaxing on the holiday break. The door opened in front of him before he could lay a hand on it, and in walked Hina carrying a box of donuts, one of them hanging from her mouth until she'd closed the door and could remove it. "Well, hiya there, Makoto!" she greeted, bowing her head as she chewed the bite in her mouth. "I finally got back with the snacks I promised! The weather started getting gross but I made it!"

"I see that," he replied, looking at the donuts and feeling his stomach growl at the sight. "I'll get one after I take a break. Where's Sakura, didn't she go with you?"

Hina's eyes widened at the mention of the girl she had in fact left with, and she bounced her head from side to side as she danced around answering the question. "I mean, she might have, but that doesn't mean I know where she is now. For all I know, she stayed at the store, or maybe she came back, who knows?" His blank stare told her that he wasn't buying her ignorance and she stopped what she was doing completely. "She's outside, she had a couple calls to make about something. Things got kinda wild while we were gone, it's a long story but we're going out for a meal after this. Just to see how things are going to work."

"What do you mean, how things are going to work?" He wanted an answer but her girlish giggle and reminder that she had brought snacks for everyone put an end to their conversation and he was left shaking his head once she'd dashed off to deliver her goods. Going outside, Makoto expected to see Sakura standing there as he'd been told she was, but she was nowhere to be found, meaning that he was out there, by himself, feeling a bit like one of the characters he'd just been playing through their game as. Was this something that Toko did as well, which was why she'd written Chiaki in such a way to make her feel like she was isolating herself when she was alone outside? Or was this something that Toko had correctly assumed someone else in the group would do?

"Even with donuts coming in, you still came outside, why is that?" Kyoko's voice caught Makoto by surprise, as he hadn't heard her follow him, and he turned to explain himself to her but found that all words had escaped him. It was beginning to lightly snow outside, and Kyoko looked cold standing there in her miniskirt and jacket, to the point that she was very slightly shivering. "Don't tell me, you wanted to see the weather for yourself after Hina said it was getting bad."

"It's not because of that, don't worry," he told her, before adding, "and it's not because of anything else she said. I think I just started getting a bit into what we've been doing, my mind's really focused on our game and how it plays. I needed to step out and clear my thoughts, that's all."

"Interesting, because up until right now I thought you couldn't care less about our game and our grade." Her shivering was still noticeable, but Kyoko wasn't letting it affect her stern attitude as she spoke. "Let me guess, you've gotten so wrapped up in their story that you started thinking about how it relates to your own, haven't you? You've begun thinking about those who don't have what you have, that you wonder what it'd be like to be like them."

His mind went completely blank at her accusation, his mouth moving but no words beginning to form. Because of this, she took the opportunity to keep going. "Guess what, Makoto, nothing in this world works how our game did. People only lose their marks because they fall in love, they aren't born without them. You've let how clearly fake their love story is get to your head and you need to stop it."

"Ouch," he mumbled, bracing himself for the burn in his hand but finding nothing except a sense of relief. Spreading his fingers apart to see the word that had been there for so long disappeared without a trace, he switched hands to find the other one just as bare. His body beginning to tremble not from cold but from fear, he looked at Kyoko and her confused expression, his reaction something she hadn't been expecting. "Kyoko, you never said what was on your hands when we shared that before. Why was that?"

"My hands were burned in an accident years ago, the nerves completely shot for the most part. I wouldn't feel if someone said anything that was on them, so it didn't matter." She raised her gloved hands and gently removed one of the gloves, speaking as she did. "There were words there, and they still had some meaning, but they did—they just—Makoto, my hand's bare. It wasn't bare before."

"I guess the fake love story we've been working on led to a real one then, because my words are gone too." It was relieving to know that he wouldn't be caused pain by something he frequently said anymore, but to know that his fated soulmate was the rather stern and secretive Kyoko Kirigiri was concerning at best. She'd expressed real love and meaning when she'd told him he needed to stop letting a fake romance get to his head, and now they needed to learn to deal with that, somehow.

But first, finishing their project and getting that over with.

A/N: happy Soulmate AU Christmas, part one!

to fully explain, the AU here is that everyone is born with their first meaningful (as in, romantically charged) words exchanged with their soulmate plastered on their hands. It was a lot of fun to make the pairs I was given work in this! do you think you found them all, as some are understated? c: