Now that she’s a little older, a little wiser, (and better-versed in high school biology), Shirayuki finally concedes: she wasn’t one of the rare few with heterochromia iridium. With a grunt, Shirayuki decides that even those people weren’t exempt to the laws of the universe anyway.
She can no longer deny the fact — she really has a soulmate out there, somewhere.
“It’s not like I’m against soulmates,” Shirayuki almost blows out the bunsen burner when she huffs at Suzu. “I would just like to have a say in it, that’s all.”
Suzu glances past Shirayuki’s shoulder as he stirs the solution in their beaker, the glass rod clanking dully against the container. Shirayuki stills when she hears his crush laughing with her lab partner — her boyfriend — toward the back of the classroom.
“But we don’t have a say,” Suzu murmurs.
He didn’t care to have a say. In fact, by the start of the new school year, he’s wanted out of the whole soulmate business. With his own two (different colored) eyes, Suzu had witnessed his crush’s eye return to its original turquoise.
Like a remorseful puppy, Shirayuki hangs her head. “Sorry… Suzu.”
Suzu’s eyes were involuntarily following every bobble and flick of her high ponytail, and he struggles to focus back on their experiment. “I’m sorry, too.”
They watch the steady blue flame of the burner. It was mesmerizing.
“I still stand by what I said though,” Shirayuki blurts, absentmindedly poking at the front of her oversized goggles. Despite her reluctance to accept the phenomenon, she couldn’t help but touch her special eye when she was happy or sad… or mad… or even curious.
“I won’t even know anything about him until after I meet him. How can my eyes just know we’re soulmates? What kind of person would even like me anyway?”
Shirayuki had rarely fantasized about her soulmate as a child; it took a class reading about melanin and the stroma to finally pique her interest. After all, how could she not be curious about gold eyes? About the people who had them? It was a color that seemed to be more rare than her own.
“I wonder what kind of person he’s like. Is he charming?”
Scary?
“When would I meet him, and where?”
What were the chances of meeting a person so rare?
“I’ve never met someone with a golden eye, Suzu. But I guess some people never meet their soulmate anyway—“ Shirayuki knocks a crucible off their table. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that—”
Suzu’s controlled sigh sounds more like a hiss, and his eyes flick across the room again. With his patience shorter than normal, Shirayuki finally bites her tongue. “It’s cool, Yuki. I’ll reweigh the powder…”
Without the chemical she knocked down, Shirayuki is stuck on that step of the experiment. Her eyes settle back onto the burner’s small flame.
Does my soulmate really exist?