6.

In Shura's oldest, vaguest memory – the earliest instance of her life she could recall - the string around her pinky was already black.

When she was a toddler, Shura made the mistake of asking an older clan woman who was occasionally taking care of her. The woman's face was instantly filled with pity.

"You're strong, Shura," a wrinkled hand covered her own short chubby fingers. "You'll survive without needing anyone."

Shura pieced it together later. The fact that her soulmate had died before she was born.

She didn't feel any loss.

(One couldn't lose something he hasn't had, after all.)

"Hmmph," the scantily-clad woman pushed the remote button with more force than necessary while flipping the television a bird. "What a tasteless show."

Yukio, who was in the teachers' lounge with her, reading reports while she was killing time, sighed. "You shouldn't have watched it in the first place, Shura-san."

"It was good," Shura sighed and leaned so far back from the sofa she could see the serious guy from her head hanging upside down. He was going to give himself an ulcer in the stomach one day, she knew it. "Funny crap…till they have to bring that shit in."

She was replied with silence for a while. Just as the Upper First Class exorcist thought she was being ignored, Yukio remarked, "The red string of fate is indeed overhyped."

Shura snorted. "You don't say."

She observed him perusing through stacks of papers a while longer before her boredom got the better of her. "Yer gonna work yerself to death at this rate," she sighed loudly, half venting her restlessness out, half baiting him. "Think of yer poor soulmate, her heart broken when she sees her thread turn black."

"Heh," Yukio's huff was full of derision, carelessly abandoned in the air. "He can't even see the thread." The sentence was soft but audible, his murmur ringing hollow.

Yukio must really be tired, Shura thought, for the normally detached teen to let out such a revealing response. If the bespectacled genius was himself, he would have stopped at, 'that's not possible,' and let Shura decipher the meaning herself, guessing whether he had no string or his string was already black, like hers.

'He doesn't see.' These words told Shura that Yukio had a (male) soulmate and knew who he was. An unreciprocated knowledge.

Her own eyes couldn't help but stray to her own string. Her black, unmoving string.

In the time her eyes blinked, it twitched.

(Everybody neglects to mention what happens when the other end of your string is an inhuman existence from Gehena.)

7.

Yukio was at his wits' end.

Why would anyone choose to throw away his humanity and be a demon?

"What about your soulmate?" the exorcist shouted at Toudou. At the very least, he hoped to throw the older man – demon – off guard. "Did you think of her before? How she will be affected by your transformation?"

Yukio's plan backfired. A dark shadow overtook the traitor's freckled face. "I saw my string turn black," his growl was filled with so much hate, bitterness and….regret? "When I was busy chasing the backs of my father and brothers."

Oh.

"I'm the same as you," Toudou taunted. "Now that your brother is going to disappear, you already have nothing left."

Yukio's heart dropped to his stomach. Nobody was supposed to know.

He fought and ran with all his might, shooting bullets after bullets of blessed water. Even though there was no tomorrow. Precisely because there was no tomorrow. Draining his powers summoning the Naiads.

His opponent was barely scratched. "Don't you think you are just a tool to protect your brother?" Toudou sing-sang as he stalked after the lower-ranked exorcist.

Relief flooded into Yukio at once. His secret was still safe with him.

"Admit it," the demon came closer, cornering his prey, "you truly hate your brother."

Yukio gritted his teeth and kept his gun held up.

Toudou couldn't be more wrong.

(But he was also right.)

8.

For as long as Yukio could remember, the red string tied around his little finger connected him straight to his older brother's.

But Rin had never acknowledged it.

(If something exists only in your mind, is it real?)

TBC

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