Story Title: Seven Strange Days
Characters: Jun, Momoe|Pairing: Jun x Momoe/Momoe x Jun (Ken x Daisuke & Taichi x Yamato mentioned)
Word Count: chapter: 2,051||story: 2,051||chapters: 1/11
Genre: Romance||Rated: PG
Challenge: Diversity Writing Challenge, J4, 7-15 chapters; Soulmate Challenge; Valentine's Day to White Day Advent 2016, roll dice to determine chapter count: 11 chapters; Chapter Set Boot Camp, #30, 11 chapters; Pairing Diversity Boot Camp, #38, delicate; 28 Days of Love, #15, any pairing; Word Counts Set Boot Camp, #37, 25,000; Easter Advemt 2017: Explore Your World, prompt #15, 2,000-2,500 word chapters; Digimon Femslash Week, day #5, soulmates
Notes: This is my soulmate universe for Digimon. I hadn't meant to start it here, but here it is all the same.
Summary: Jun's been seeing Shuu for a couple of years now, despite their soulmate counters not matching. Now it's a week until hers runs out, and Shuu breaks up with her. As the last week counts down, Jun wonders who her true soulmate will be, and if she even wants one, and what to do when they meet.
"I don't think we should see each other anymore."
Shuu did his best to sound kind about it. Jun knew just about everything about how he talked. Four years of dating gave someone a lot of experience, and she could tell just from his tone and the way he looked at her that he meant well.
"Why not?" She wanted to sound kind herself. The problem with that was that she wasn't in a kind mood right now. Her boyfriend had just told her they should break up and unless he had one hell of a reason behind it, she wasn't going to stop being angry.
He reached across the table to tap at her arm. Jun stared at it for a few moments, then back at him.
"The counter?"
She didn't consider that a hell of a good reason. She barely considered it a reason at all.
"Yours is going to run out next week. Mine doesn't for another two years." He tapped his own, where the numbers quietly cycled downward, second by second, as the inevitable march of time brought both of them closer to their soulmates.
Jun would've ripped both counters off if she could. "What's your point?" She did not snarl the words, but not without a lot of effort. "What if I don't like them? What if you don't like yours?"
If he'd said that was the 'point' of soulmates, then she would've broken up with him because of being an absolute idiot. Not everyone liked their soulmate. Not everyone could get along with theirs. Being compatible and orientation-mated didn't mean that people wanted to get along with their fated other all the time.
There'd been a miniature war between Ken and Daisuke about theirs, she'd learned. Sure, they were sickeningly in love now, but it most certainly hadn't been love at first sight. She still owed Ken a few for the things he'd done back then, no matter how regretful he was now.
But that didn't deal with her problem at the moment. Shuu shook his head.
"I know. I just think it's better if we're both free to meet them, so we know how we want to feel about them."
It kind of made sense. She didn't want it to. It was almost as annoying as seeing Taichi and Yamato making out the first time had been.
They could've at least told her they'd cemented their bond at the age of eleven instead of letting her drift along happily convinced that at the right moment, her timer and Yamato's would run out together.
Seventeen year old her had been an idiot but she wasn't seventeen anymore and she wanted a relationship that could actually work for her.
She'd thought she found it with Shuu. He was kind. He was intelligent. He was good-looking. He actually liked her, and she'd learned a lot from hanging out with him. But now...now all of it came crumbling down.
She couldn't do this. She just couldn't. She tightened her lips together.
"If that's what you want, then." She grabbed for her purse and headed for the door without another word. She left him the bill. He could at least do that much after this.
She'd barely been at the coffee shop for ten minutes. If she hadn't known how much time he had on his counter, she would've expected him to have a new girlfriend ready already. She'd read and seen enough fiction to know how that could work.
Jun didn't really think about where she was going. Going home wasn't that attractive of a thought. Her brother and his boyfriend would be there, and even if all they were doing was just cuddling on the couch watching a movie, she didn't feel like seeing a happy couple.
Which meant she wanted to get where there weren't any people at all, because the more she looked around, the more she could tell there were happy couples all over the place. She even spied a happy threesome!
No one knew where the countdown timers came from. They simply appeared shortly after a child was born, anywhere from a few days to up to five or six years of age. If one didn't appear by then, then it was likely one wouldn't at all. Those who carried blank arms, Blankers, held the unique position of being able to decide their own romantic fate.
Right now, Jun envied them. Hers appeared when she was a week old, and had steadily counted down ever since.
The timer didn't end when one first met one's soulmate, at least not all the time. No one could tell for certain what triggered the ending. There had been cases known where a countdown ended between two people who'd known one another for over thirty years, each happily married to someone else, and then that moment came.
Jun kept on walking. She refused to look at her timer anymore. She'd know when it ended. She'd worked it out when she was fourteen. One week from that day, at two minutes past eleven in the morning.
She considered sleeping in that day, just to see if her soulmate would somehow fall in through her window.
Maybe I still will. She had time. But right now, she didn't really want to meet someone, even the person she might end up spending the rest of her life with. There was really only one person she felt like even seeing, let alone talking to, right now.
She hauled her cell phone out of her purse and tapped a quick message to Momoe.
Are you busy? I need friend hugs.
The answer came back in a few moments.
Friend hugs available. Where do you want to meet?
Once that was sorted out, Jun decided her next move would be the nearest grocery store. There were certain time-honored ways to deal with a break-up that didn't involve actual screaming and she was ready to indulge in at least one of them.
Ice cream. Ice cream and her favorite drinks and a nice long roasting session about what horrible things they'd like to do to Shuu, none of which they'd ever actually do, but, my, wasn't it fun to think about them?
"He broke up with you because of your timers?" Momoe scooped some ice cream into her mouth, shaking her head the whole time. Her own timer ran out roughly the same time that Jun's did, which hadn't made either of them happy for the longest time.
I'm going to meet someone and she's going to meet someone and I bet we're going to be half the city apart when it happens. At the very least fate could've been kind enough to put them close to each other when it happened. Jun would've liked to have seen whoever it was that was going to interest Momoe.
Jun let out a long sigh of her own just at the thought of it. "Yeah. I still can't believe it. I mean, I knew it probably wouldn't be forever." She waved her arm where the counter still kept on ticking happily away. "But I didn't think he'd just go ahead and dump me."
She glowered at the counter for a few moments. If she ever met who decided these things should be a thing, she'd give them a few good kicks to the face. It didn't matter how useful they could be. Right now, this was why she'd lost her boyfriend and not even for someone she could see and talk to and think about, but for someone she couldn't even be certain that she'd like. Soulmates were a tricky proposition.
Momoe grabbed for her drink, a thoughtful look in her eyes. "You know, if it turns out you don't really like whoever it is, he might want to ask you out again."
That was true. And Jun slammed her drink down on the table at the thought of it. "If he does, I'm telling him no." She made her mind up on that in a heartbeat. If Shuu didn't like her enough to stay with her while she met this hypothetical other person, then he didn't like her enough to go long-term anyway.
If nothing else, it helped her face what happened a little better.
Then she noticed some of her drink spilled out of the glass, and squawked, trying to clean it up, not wanting to wreck things in Momoe's apartment. It wasn't a very big place, but it was hers, and after spending most of her life in a crowded room with more siblings than anyone had a right to, Momoe liked her privacy, and being able to keep things clean of her own will.
"It's all right," Momoe reassured her, tossing over a towel to help with the clean up, and probably hoping to stop Jun's constant apologizing. "Hey, did you want to stay over tonight? Couch is free."
As it usually was. Momoe wasn't the most sociable person ever. Jun knew she had other friends, and had met some of them. But almost always, she stayed in her little apartment by herself, and gave every impression of enjoying herself that way.
"Sure. Daisuke's probably got Ken over tonight." Jun made a face. Those two very seldom could keep their hands off each other when they were alone. Again, completely happy for them, and that they'd worked through their rough beginnings, but she still didn't want to see a happy couple right now.
Momoe nodded in agreement before she gestured over to her impressive rack of movies. "Want to watch something? I've got a couple of good horror flicks."
Exactly what Jun wanted to see right now. Horror and damnation and rage against the heavens not cutesy romance of any kind.
Two movies and a proper dinner later, Jun stretched out on the couch, already sound asleep, as the last set of credits rolled. Momoe sat near her, preparing to take the movie out, and making certain that everything remain quiet while Jun slept.
Mental note, find a way to shred Kido Shuu's internal organs and put the remains back in him.
Ah, if only she could. She knew both she and Jun would feel better about the whole thing in the morning, and if not then, probably in a couple of days. And then the excitement would hit: the terror and the wonder of knowing that their counters were about to run down and they would finally, after a lifetime of waiting, meet their soulmates.
Momoe hadn't given much thought to hers over the years. She'd seen a few people that she liked or thought were cute, and she'd dated a couple of them. Nothing ever came of it beyond a couple of kisses, which made her wonder what the whole big deal was in the first place.
Sometimes even now, she wondered if she were … different in some way. Not like other people, at least not most of them.
Well, she'd find out soon enough. There were so many different types of soulmates, romantic and sexual, friendship and familial, and others that she didn't remember offhand. Wasn't there even something that people called 'soulhate', for those who seemed born to loathe each other from that climatic moment?
That one she couldn't fully wrap her head around but she'd studied a little history and it happened on occasion.
At any rate, soon enough Jun would be happier. If nothing else, the mystery of who they were both bonded to would be solved, and then Momoe thought they could both move on with their lives without any more mysteries turning up.
She extracted the movie from the player and put it back in the case before getting up and reaching for a blanket to tuck around Jun. Like always, her friend slept like the dead, hardly moving a muscle. Momoe watched her for a few moments, wishing her the greatest of dreams, and then headed to her own room. At least tomorrow was her day off. She suspected Jun was still going to need a few more friend-hugs before the week ended.
And no matter who or what or where her soulmate, or Jun's soulmate, happened to be, Momoe wasn't going to let meeting them override matters with her best friend.
To Be Continued
Notes: So, my Digimon soulmate universe. Such fun, such fun!