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Eijun is seven when he wakes up to find a brilliant, scarlet string tied around his left pinky finger. He stares at it quizzically, wondering when—and how—it got there. He doesn’t recall ever seeing a red string like this, nevertheless tying it around his finger.
And, of course, the first thing he tries to do is show it off to everyone, deeming it as some prank pulled by his friends or family.
At home, he tries showing his parents.
At school, he tries showing his teachers and his classmates.
On the field during practice, he tries showing his close friends.
“Gramps, look! There's this weird string!”
“Mom, Dad! Look at my finger!”
“Wakana, don’t you see the string?”
"Hey, do any of you guys see it?"
“I don’t see anything, Eijun,” they all say, their faces laced with concern.
Well, he tries to.
Because he's the only one that can see it.
At eight years old, he tries to find the end of the red string.
He tugs on the string to see if the end will eventually come to him, but it only appears to be an endless trail. He follows the direction of where the string is going, but it only leads him to a train station—a place that is far beyond his reach.
“Tricky thing, aren’t ya?” he grumbles, glowering down at the string.
It doesn’t respond, but Eijun feels like it’s taunting at him.
In the precipice of turning nine, Eijun stops searching for the end of string and attempts to get rid of it.
He tries to untie the knot, but the simple knot does not budge.
He yanks on it, pries at it, and to his dissatisfaction, it doesn’t work.
He takes scissors stolen from the kitchen and tries to cut it off. That doesn’t work either.
By the end of the day, his pinky finger is aching from all the pulling and clawing, and yet nothing can sever the red string that has mysteriously appeared on his little finger.
After six years of confusion and frustration, Eijun is thirteen when he stops his long search and simply tries to live with it.
Sometimes he would absently loop the string around his fingers to pass time during class. It serves as a distraction as the long, dreary days went by.
Sometimes he would tie knots along the string and watch as they magically undid themselves, returning back to their previous state as if nothing happened.
Soon enough, the string feels like a normal thing to Eijun. It rarely causes him any trouble—other than the times when the teachers bark at him for not paying attention in class— and on the mound, it doesn’t affect his playing.
But there are times when Eijun feels this longing, this nagging ache in his mind that wants, yearns, to know where the string leads. What awaits for him at the end.
Eijun is in his last year of junior high when he finally discovers what awaits for him at the end of the red string.
Or rather who awaits him.
Sixty feet and six inches from the pitcher’s mound, the red string tied around Eijun’s pinky finger is just as present on the one tied around Miyuki Kazuya’s as the ball flies past Azuma’s bat and falls straight into his open mitt.
Lips curl into a grin, and then:
“Nice pitch.”
“Sa-wa-mu-ra.”
An arm slings around Eijun’s shoulder, and his face immediately twists into a scowl at the familiar voice drawled into his ear.
“Miyuki Kazuya!” he hisses. He ducks out of the catcher’s hold and turns to face him. “Stop doing that! You’re going to give me a heart attack one day, I swear to god!”
Miyuki throws his head back and laughs. “Oh, Sawamura, always one to dramatically exaggerate things. And that’s Miyuki-senpai to you; show some respect to your upperclassman.”
“Nuh-uh! I’m not gonna call you that until you earn it, crappy captain!”
“How stingy of you! You wound me!” Miyuki snickers. “Anyway, Coach wants me to catch for you. But if you’re going to be that way…”
At the words “Coach,” “catch,” and “for you,” Eijun drops the distasteful facial expression and cries out with big, pleading eyes, “No, no, Miyuki-senpai! Pleeeeease catch for me!!”
Miyuki grins smugly. “That’s better, you brat. Now, stop wasting time and get your butt to the bullpen!” The catcher snags Eijun’s wrist and drags him towards the bullpen.
Eijun tries not to stare too hard at the red string tied around their fingers, connecting them.
At night, Eijun lays awake, his left hand dangling above his head. In the dim moonlight that filtered through the wonky window blinds, the red string glints in the cold, unfamiliar darkness.
And somewhere on the other side, probably fast asleep in his dorm room, is Miyuki Kazuya.
In some odd way, an invisible piece of thread is connecting the two boys, tugging and pulling them to each other. After all that has happened, from leaving his hometown to play in Tokyo to meeting all sorts of talented, powerful baseball players, it’s the very string that’s around his pinky, the only very thing that has been a constant in his life.
It's probably wishful thinking, but Eijun can’t help but think of fate.
“What is it with you and my hand? Is it some kind of fetish you have?”
“Huh—?!”
Eijun abruptly spits out his water, reduced to a coughing fit by Miyuki’s sudden question. The catcher is looking at him incredulously, awaiting an answer.
“Wha—hah—what do you mean?!”
Miyuki arches an eyebrow at him. "Really?"
“What kind of nonsense are you talking about, dear captain?! ARE YOU OKAY?!” Eijun laughs a tad bit too forcefully, and he’s praying silently that his face isn’t red. He knows how observant Miyuki can be, and he’s very sure that no one is buying his rather unconvincing act.
Finally, Miyuki drops the conversation and shrugs. "Alright, suit yourself.” From the other side of the cafeteria, Kuramochi barks at him to get his ass over here, and with an exasperated sigh, Miyuki gets up and goes over to the shortstop.
Next time, he decides, it’s better not to be close to Miyuki too much.
Because the red string always makes him stare. No matter where he is, no matter how chaotic the cafeteria can be when it’s packed with starving baseball players, the string always find its way back to Eijun’s pinky, something he has truly found enthralling.
Eijun closes his eyes and listens to the soft pitter-patter of rain falling down, inhaling the earthy scent of dampened soil and grass. A few feet away from him, a screen of water streaming down the slanted roof of the dugout cuts him off from the rest of the world, shielding off the stormy gray sky up above.
“I was expecting a certain idiot to go out running laps in the pouring rain.”
Eijun opens his eyes and cranes his head back. Miyuki is standing behind the bench, looking down at the pitcher. Eijun turns away from him and grunts, “How the hell did you find me?”
“I had my suspicions.”
His chest tightens into a knot, his lower lip caught between his teeth to stop the words that threaten to come out.
They do anyway.
“I should’ve seen that last home run coming.”
The scene has been replaying in his head all evening, no matter how many times he tried to make it go away. It’s that harsh sound of a metal bat meeting the ball that keeps echoing in his ears, even though it’s been a few hours since that match happened.
Miyuki sighs, as if he knew he was going to bring it up. “Sawamura, it wasn’t your fault,” he says. “I made the bad call. You’re not at fault; don’t think too hard about it.”
Eijun tried to do just that. Get over it, it was only a practice match. But what happens if it wasn’t a practice match, but a real one? What if he made that slip-up, and it costed more than just a mere practice match? “I could’ve—shaken my head or something, I don’t know. Done something. I knew something was off, and yet I just panicked and I—and I—”
“Sawamura, stop.” The sharpness of Miyuki’s tone shuts Eijun up. His voice becomes more gentle and soft when he continues, “You played well today. That’s all I can ask for. He made the hit off us, so if you’re going to shoulder all the burden, let me lighten the load.”
Miyuki slides into the space next to Eijun, and together, they stare out the rain in silence, but the loneliness of it isn’t as present as before.
His hand subconsciously twirls around the red string, and he takes the chance to spare a glance at Miyuki to see if he’s still looking at the rain.
Miyuki’s eyes aren’t on the rain either.
“Here you go.” Miyuki gives him a bottle of Pocari Sweat, and Eijun gratefully takes it. It’s late at night, definitely long past their expected curfew, but the two boys were too restless to be entrapped in their blankets, and so they ventured out to play some catch. The cold, chilly midnight-cloaked air surrounds them, with fogged wisps of air puffing out from their ragged breaths.
They lean against the vending machine as they crack open their drinks and take a sip, the soft whirl of the machine blurring to white noise. The slicing wind rakes through their sweat-soaked hair and burn their flushed cheeks, but the adrenaline is still rushing through Eijun.
His eyes drop down to the red knot delicately tied around Miyuki’s right pinky, dragging his gaze along the red string that lazily loops downward, and then swings back up to where it meets Eijun’s left little finger.
“Hey, Miyuki?” he asks.
“Yeah?” Next to the vending machine, Miyuki’s face is tinged with the greenish-blue light, and the sight of it ceases Eijun’s breath.
Growing up with the metaphorical red string of destiny tied around his finger made Eijun somewhat of a romantic. It made him believe in fated encounters, that everything happens for a reason. And maybe it makes him appear hopeless and starry-eyed, but he simply stands firmly to his beliefs, turning the other cheek when someone calls him an idiot for being so optimistic.
But he has proof, and it is as clear as the baseball he holds in his hand whenever he stands on the mound, ready to throw to the mitt that awaits for him. He feels it every time their gloves make contact with each other in a thump, feels it every time that piercing gaze glittering from behind an open mitt meets his own eyes, the mischievous grin worn when he has something up his sleeve.
Fate had brought them together that one summer. Not sheer luck, not coincidence, but an enigmatic force that had drawn an unrefined southpaw from Nagano and a talented, well-known catcher from Tokyo to the diamond to strike out a monster. Partners, Miyuki had called them. “Let’s slay this monster together, partner.”
Eijun wonders if Miyuki believes it, too.
(He hopes he does)
“Have you ever heard of the Red String of Fate?”
When Eijun is sixteen, the string snaps and breaks.
It’s the Fall Tokyo Metropolitan Tournament finals. Bottom of the sixth inning, Seidou against Yakushi.
Eijun doesn’t remember much; he remembers clutching tightly on the rails of the dugout until his knuckles turned bone-white. He remembers seeing the catcher laying on the ground limpless. He doesn’t remember screaming, but his throat is sore and scratchy.
The red string simply breaks, just like how Miyuki does.
Eijun is sits restlessly in an uncomfortable hospital chair, holding onto Miyuki's hand in a deadly tight grip.He stares at the frayed knot of red string tied around Miyuki's little finger, loosened and darkened. Eijun looks down at his own pinky, and the state of the string is the same as Miyuki’s.
Damaged and loose, but not completely gone.
Not completely hopeless.
He is so focused on his discovery that he doesn’t notice when Miyuki wakes up.
So Eijun jumps in his seat and almost falls flat on his back when a gruff voice says to him, “You definitely have a hand fetish.”
Instead of retaliating the tease, Eijun tears up and he crashes into Miyuki, wrapping his arms tightly around the catcher’s waist.
“You’re so stupid,” he huffs, burrowing his face into the crook of Miyuki’s neck.
Miyuki scoffs. “I don’t want to hear that from you.”
“This was from the Seiko match, wasn’t it?” Eijun asks. He lifts his face up to glare at him. “This injury… it was there before. You hid it, didn’t you?”
He lets Miyuki’s silence answer his question.
“You—you are a terrible human being, Miyuki Kazuya! How could you be so reckless? You should’ve told us that you were hurt!”
Miyuki tugs at the fringe that falls over Eijun’s eyes before pushing back the hair away from his forehead, laughing softly. “This is exactly the reason why I didn’t tell you. The last thing the team needed was their bratty and loud-mouthed southpaw worrying about me. Plus, we’re locked for Senbatsu, so in the end it’s not a big deal—”
“Not a big deal?” Eijun snaps. “It's a big deal to me! We’re partners, Miyuki! As a battery, we look after each other!” He probably looks ridiculous, spouting out nonsense, especially now that there isn't a filter between his brain and mouth, but he doesn’t care. He tightens his lethal grip on Miyuki’s hand, trembling fingers interlocking around the captain’s. “I care about you and your dumb, snarky ass, and I will until the very end, so you’ll just have to get used to it! Because—”
Eijun inadvertently pauses; something close to trepidation bubbles in his stomach, because god, it’s utterly ridiculous how nervous he is, and Miyuki is looking at him now, wide-eyed oblivion and curiosity on his stupid, pretty face. He takes a deep breath, lets it out.
But it’s now or never, so screw it.
“Because I’ll be here as long as you need me to!”
There is no 'I love you,' no spur-of-the-moment kiss, but the unsaid confession that underlies in Eijun’s words does not go unnoticed. He watches as Miyuki’s eyes widen, a red flush tainting his cheeks. Then a genuine, shy smile spreads on his lips. Miyuki nods and says, “Okay.”
They stare at each other, swimming in their own embarrassed thoughts that they don’t hear the soft, measured footsteps or the privacy curtain being pulled back.
“Miyuki-kun?” the nurse calls, stepping forward from behind the curtain.
The two boys jerk in surprise and whip their head around, lowering their hands and scooting away from each other. “Y-yes?” Miyuki says unsteadily. Eijun drops his head down to hide his reddened face.
The nurse looks back and forth between them, lips quirked up knowingly. “It’s time for your medicine,” the nurse says while handing him a small, plastic cup. Miyuki thanks her as he accepts the cup and a glass of water, still mildly flustered.
Eijun jolts when he feels a palm splay over his hand, warm callouses enveloping his own. He glances up at Miyuki and flashes him a beatific smile. He turns his palm around and laces his fingers with Miyuki’s. The other boy beams as he looks down at Eijun, eyes glimmering.
With that, Eijun decides that a silly red string isn’t something he’s too worried about, because sometimes, some people choose their own destinies.
And he would choose Miyuki Kazuya every single time.
Eijun wakes up to the blaring of his alarm clock. Grumbling, he reaches out to silent it as quickly as possible in fear of a certain senpai punishing him in the form of a deadly headlock.
In the corner of his eye, he sees a flicker of brilliant, scarlet red near his left little finger.
He grins.
“Tricky thing, aren’t ya?”