ix.
day nine
on the ninth day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
a sign of where she was with red string
rated K+
genre: fantasy-ish & romance
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According to Japanese legend, there exists what is called the red strand of fate. It is a string that ties two hearts together, a string that makes the two people of the connected hearts what we may know as "soul mates." However, despite its existence, many fail to find their soul mates. The string is invisible to many, and sometimes respective soul mates do not find each other in the same places, sometimes finding themselves on opposite sides of the globe, feeling an inexplicable urge to travel the world like a tug upon their heart.
And that's how many describe the feeling of being around their soul mate—like gravity. It feels like a constant pull towards the other person, urgent, needy, but natural, as if they expected it to happen, like the feeling was a known law of physics or a fact of nature.
However, when the bond between a couple becomes so raw and powerful, and the two are so very, very close—the red strand of fate may actually appear.
And some people—though very far and few in between—are actually able to see them.
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Sakura felt she had this talent, which by normal girls' standards, was something girls could—well—normally do. Ever since she was little, she had always had a keen eye for seeing who would end up with who; even the most obscure couples did not escape from her watchful eye.
Like, for instance, in middle school, when she voiced her suspicions about Ino and Shikamaru eventually ending up together, despite the fact that popular opinion and rumors had it that Ino was dating Kiba. After all, the school's head cheerleader would never date the lazy brainiac president of the mathematics club, especially when he most likely had a thing for tomboy-ish Temari.
And Naruto and Hinata? Sure, there was that thing about opposites attracting—but with Hinata constantly fainting around him, looking as if she had induced a one hundred and five degree fever every time he said hello and Naruto being as dense as a black hole, the majority shook their heads at Sakura's prediction, despite agreeing that, if the two ever were together, they would make the cutest couple.
Even when Sakura put her vote on Neji and Tenten getting together did the whole graduating class disagree. With those gorgeous rockstar locks of his and his impeccable style, everyone was convinced of his closet gayness, and Tenten was probably too busy with the kendo club to even think about dating boys.
And yet, when high school came around, all three of the couples Sakura predicted would come together ended up announcing their relationship status—via Facebook, of course.
Which always seemed to happen around Christmas time.
To everyone watching all of the relationships unfolding, Sakura's power was unsettling yet quietly respected. There were times when people came to her for advice on relationships, gossip, maybe even her logic on how and why she thought so-and-so would get together—all of which she gave rather generic answers to, disclaiming any and all her thoughts with the default answer: "I just know, I guess."
And truth be told, that was the truth.
Or at least, half of it. The other half included something even Sakura wasn't sure herself about what was happening.
Sometimes, she'd just be walking around, talking with a friend and laughing at a story or something when she sees a very thin red string dangling from someone's ring finger, flipping against air resistance as the person walked. Sometimes the excess string was long enough to the person's feet—which seemed to trip them up every now and then—but sometimes the red string was simply a thin ring around the ring finger.
The first time Sakura saw that red string on someone's finger, she couldn't help but stare after it, feeling the hairs stand up on her neck and a jittery feeling in her limbs.
"What is it, Sakura?" her friend had asked, looking in the general direction Sakura's eyes were looking.
Sakura pointed to a girl sitting nearby and whispered, "Did Koharu just start wearing that red string as an accessory?" She whirled around to stare at her friend, who frowned. "Don't you think that's kind of weird, wearing a piece of string as a ring? I mean, unless her boyfriend was just cheap or something and—"
"Sakura," her friend said, staring at her. "What are you talking about?"
Sakura blinked and held up her left hand, pointing to her fourth finger. "The red string on her finger that has a piece of it still dangling off."
Her friend laughed. "Sakura, you weirdo—there's nothing there."
When Sakura went home, she researched it—and by research, she just typed in "red string" and "ring finger" in the Google search engine—and found a curious, old Japanese legend about the red strand of fate.
And everything made a bit more sense—the tugging feeling people got when they saw their soul mates (which was the string shortening the distance between the two soul mates), the clumsiness always present in a girl in love (which was the person just tripping over said red string, which elongated bit by bit to track down one's soul mate), and the adoption of the Western wedding tradition of rings, which were placed around the same finger as that which the red string occupied.
And Sakura definitely saw all of that happening when she saw those couples getting to meet each other—the string elongating and shortening, the tripping, the paralysis she saw in Hinata (which was her getting tangled up in said string). She saw it happening to everyone around her when she began to identify different widths of string upon each and every one of her peers' ring fingers.
They all had them to some degree…
Sakura sat in the red string-ridden café, bringing her coffee cup to her lips to sip her caramel macchiato. Taking a satisfying gulp of caffeine, the returned the cup to its place on the table before reaching over to rub her bare ring finger.
… so why didn't she have one?
Sakura had actually waited quite patiently for the past few years. She'd graduated from high school and gone onto college and soon, medical school, gently rebuffing men who came up to her with the intention of dating her, always finding their ring finger surrounded by a thin string of red.
Shrugging on her doctor's coat and returning her cup to the counter with a nod of thanks, Sakura headed out to the train station, checking her watch to make sure she wouldn't be late for the next stop.
Frowning to herself as she purchased a train ticket, she wondered if it was really a blessing or a curse that she seemed to be the only one to be able to see the fabled legendary red strand of fate.
'After all, what good is it to be able to see what I don't have?' she thought to herself as she boarded the train, careful not to tangle herself in the vast, claustrophobic wirings of red string, and vaguely listened to the overhead monitor announcing the stop.
She thought about another way to spend another Christmas by herself as the train doors slid open.
"Sumimasen," said a man with spiky black hair as he boarded the train, squeezing in enough to be standing right in front of Sakura.
The sound of his voice made her insides tingle. Sakura could only see the front of a nicely pressed suit and smelled the dark scent of cinnamon and sandalwood on his person. She yelped when she felt the train take a sharp turn, lurching into the chest of the man with the black spiky hair. Startled, she looked up at him and fumbled with an almost apology before the sight of his dark eyes stopped her.
The sinful way one end of his lip curled up was almost unfair. He held onto her upper arms. "It's quite all right," he said in that smooth tone of voice of his.
Quickly, she extracted herself from his arms, flustered about the close contact. Vaguely, she could hear the next stop being announced. "I-I'm sorry," she said again. "Normally I'm not so forward with strangers."
He chuckled, the sound a deep rumble in his chest. "Forward. That's funny."
Sakura rolled her eyes. "Making jokes at my expense, I see," she teased, finding it odd that someone for once understood her humor.
"I'm quite certain you meant to make such a bad pun."
She glanced up at him from her fiddling fingers and gave him a shy smile.
When the doors opened, he stepped away and looked over his shoulder at her. "Thank you for making conversation with me; I normally don't do so."
She nodded back at him. "Thank you for catching me."
His smirk nearly made her knees buckle on the spot. "It's as if you fell for me." He raised his left hand to her in final thanks, to which she raised hers.
And in that moment, both of their eyes widened.
There was an empty spot on the other's ring finger.
She saw him rushing toward the train in a moment, and she reached out for him—
"No!"
—only for her hand to meet the cold metal of the doors.
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It was Christmas.
Sakura didn't feel much for getting out of bed—after all, it was just her kind of luck to find someone who might have been her soul mate on the train, only to finally notice last minute the bareness of his ring finger.
But when the snow came, Sakura honestly couldn't resist running outside and playing. She bundled herself up and walked around town, waving to couples she saw together, laughing at people who tripped over their red strings, smiling sadly at people who's strings didn't connect, until she found herself at the town's Christmas tree.
She stared up at the star standing tall and proud atop the tree as she stood about a few kilometers back. Walking up to the majestic piece of nature and enjoying the crunch of snow underneath her boots, she stopped.
The man with the spiky, chicken-butt resembling hair stood at the foot of the tree, staring at her with such regality it made her feel as if she needed to present him with fanfare and confetti. He wore a tacky sweater and a turtleneck underneath, his jawline taut from the cold and the sight of her. Despite the redness of his nose—which she thought made him resemble Rudolph with a slight internal laugh—his aristocratic nose stood high.
She didn't even notice that she had walked up to him until she found herself with her hand upon his chest, staring up at him. Blinking away something in her eye and attempting to swallow the lump in her throat, she smiled up at him. "You…"
Her breath caught in her throat when he took her left hand in his and pulled her mitten off, staring in amazement at her ring finger and stroking its bareness before he pressed his lips to it.
Finally, she found her voice. "Do you see the red strings, too?" she asked in a whisper, as if she were afraid of having anyone else overhear their conversation.
He pressed a kiss to the palm of her hand, closing his eyes as she cupped the side of his face. "Yes."
"You don't have one yourself," she said, admiring the length of his bare ring finger.
"No."
Her bottom lip trembled. When she felt him kiss away wet warmth on her cheeks, she found she was crying. "I've been waiting for you for so long," she said.
"I know," he said. He held her face in his hands, kissing her cheek with more strength. "I know. I've been fighting tooth and nail to find you, my flower."
She smiled through her tears and laughed. "I don't suppose you're named after the famous samurai 'Sasuke,' are you, my warrior?"
At her words, he smirked and brushed a hand through her pink hair. "And I don't suppose you happen to be named after the sakura trees you seem to resemble, my flower?"
Quickly, before any more tears could fall from her eyes, she threw her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his, giggling when yet another person tripped over his red string of fate.
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author's note: I've always been really interested in the idea of soul mates—especially when it comes to the Japanese idea of this 'red string of fate' kind of thing that goes on. The more I thought about it, the more I went, well, what happens if there are people out there without strings, or people who could see these strings?
And thus, this short drabble was born.
One of my favorites to write. Was it your favorite to read? c:
