2 - Upside Down
"It is ridiculous, they even started calling the company. You should see it, Tetsu."
"Many people are searching for their soulmates, Aomine-kun. They are not lucky enough to find it in their childhood friend like you."
Instead of, per se, her parents.
"Well, you don't. Kise here isn't searching either."
"Mine stabilised in high school when I was still modelling. My soulmate might see me in magazines or commercials and I wouldn't know a thing." He adjusted his bangs and gave a white-toothed smile, "Finding your soulmate is nigh impossible for famous people." He gave an applause break but only met Aomine's rolled eyes and Kuroko's indulgent smile. He continued, serious, "That's why I find Akashi's tenacity admirable."
"Right," Aomine drawled in the sudden silence.
Even Kuroko, who knew of the man from his two friends' stories, wasn't sure admirable was the word to describe his tenacity. Scary, maybe? Bottomless?
Then again, they were talking about the man who created a new age in mobile technology.
"How are your orders coming along? Will you make them on time?" Kuroko said and then took a bite of his sandwich, waiting his friends' reactions.
Aomine groaned as Kise's model smile to turned sheepish.
Kuroko was learning to take his enjoyment wherever he found these days.
"Well…kinda?"
"Akashi is a witch. There has to be a spell." Aomine whispered, glancing around. "Who can gain so many orders with one speech?" After one last glance to the windows of the neighbour building, he attacked his bento with fervour as if to hide his tracks.
Kuroko had long since accepted his friends with their quirks.
"The phone looked good."
"You watched the presentation, Kurokocchi?"
"No. I saw Aomine-kun's prototype."
"Oh," Aomine and Kise gazed at their mobile phones, put side by side on a step of Kuroko's kindergarten entrance, sitting next to them. "Can't believe it is over."
"It isn't over Aominecchi! Now we have to update and improve it. We already received update requests."
Aomine laughed, "yeah, like putting Akashi's soulmate sign to its back."
"Eh?"
"Told you it is ridiculous Tetsu. Akashi's sign is more famous then the phone."
"Don't begrudge him Aominecchi."
"I'm not. Still weird though. He receives thousands of soulmate sign photos every day and looks at each of them."
"Does it work like that? You recognise your soulmate by looking at their sign?"
"I wouldn't know. Mine didn't work like that." He shrugged, "by now, I saw Akashi's more than my soulmate's."
"Gross!"
"It is on the internet, idiot!" He reached for his phone, made some gestures that opened a search engine and wrote his co-worker's name. Then shoved it to their faces with a "see."
Thus, Kuroko saw Akashi's soulmate mark.
"We know what it looks like, Aominecci."
"What does it look like?" Kuroko asked.
"I mean…that. Nothing to me, a bunch of shapes. Guess it would mean something to his soulmate."
Kuroko reached for Aomine's mobile. Enlarged the picture. Then rotated it.
"It is better upside down. Now it looks like a high school geometry problem," he gave the mobile back to its owner and returned back to his lunch. "Whoever finds x must be his soulmate."
Akashi's phone buzzed. At this point, nobody at the office reacted to it.
He had already turned off it's twitting and tinging sounds. It kept on buzzing on its place all day long. (Connected to power - apparently its battery couldn't handle intense social media notifications. Should work on it.)
Akashi reached for it and checked his notifications.
"It is the same sign," Kise said over his shoulder, voice full of wonder. "Is she the one?"
"It is a tattoo," Akashi sighed. Kise deflated. Aomine laughed.
It was so weird to see his sign on someone else's shoulder. Something quite like his sign anyway.
"It is like horoscopes," Midorima said from his desk, adjusting his glasses. "They should be complementary, not matching."
"Like symmetrical? Mirror? Side by side it writes soulmate? Over each other, it writes their names? They change colour? It shows their hobbies?"
"I don't know, nanodayo! You should ask Akashi."
"It should mean something to their soulmates."
"Any luck today?"
"No," he said, already focused back on his screen. "I only see meaningless shapes."
He looked at 5692 soulmate signs today. We were going to reach the total number of his social media followers if he continued to do so for the next 25 years.
Ignoring the fact that he earned a few million after his revelation.
"Don't lose hope," he imagined his soulmate saying, "I will be waiting."
Yes, yes, Akashi didn't want to make his soulmate wait though.
"Aka-chin, call from a fan page. They interpreted your sign. Want to do an interview to ask if it is true."
He wanted to groan.
"I wouldn't know. It is supposed to mean anything only to my soulmate."
Not even himself. What a difficult system. How was Akashi to know if the person wasn't spouting nonsense?
Then again, he would have taken a better photo if he knew he would receive interpretations. (He would have thought about it if he didn't act in panic.)
Or rotate it before uploading, at the very least.
"What was the webpage?"
Five minutes later, Akashi was hitting his shoulders in an attempt to clean Murasakibara's crumbs and losing his fight to hold back his groan.
"I fail to see any sunshine, green-hedged houses or kids in your mark, nanodayo."
"Or, what was it, 'happiness beyond eternity'" Kise cackled.
Akashi's eye twitched.
He refused 25 years of this - there has to be a faster, more efficient way.
"Upside down or not, Tetsu's interpretation was better."
Akashi's breath hitched. Upside down?
"Who is Tetsu?"