Chapter Text
Yuuri was struggling with the yukata, the sleeves of the traditional Japanese garb trailing behind him as he trotted around the room. It hung, fluttering and dragging, too large against his five-year-old body. Yuuri vaguely regrets insisting that he’s a big boy now and can put it on himself. He didn’t realize it would be so... difficult . But if he asked for help now, his big sister Mari would definitely laugh at him…
Huffing, Yuuri heaved at the heavy cloth and gave it another go. He slung it over his shoulders, the ends flapping and ungainly, and then he realized that he’d lost the string to tie it together around his waist. After another few seconds of fruitless fidgeting, he’d managed to get it relatively aligned with himself, but then he wasn’t sure if it was supposed to go all the way around his torso or if he was supposed to just huddle it over his head and hope for the best.
Yuuri pouted, sat down and eventually caved.
“Mama!” He cried. “Help me please, I’m stuck!”
Hiroko came bustling in with a cheery smile on her face. She brought her hand to her mouth when she saw how her son was entangled with the silk fabric. Glancing at Yuuri’s disgruntled grimace, she quickly wiped the smile off her face and knelt to look Yuuri in the eye.
“What part do you need help with, Yuuri?”
“Um,” Yuuri thought about it carefully. “Everything?”
Hiroko nodded. “Everything it is then. Turn around and hold your hands out.”
Yuuri did as she told. He felt the cloth being pulled off him, and relished the feeling of having full control of his limbs again.
“I’m going to put it on and tie it for you, alright?”
“Okay, mama,” Yuuri giggled when his mother’s hand settled gently around his neck as she pressed the fabric to his body. It tickled.
“Turn to face me, sweet. I’ll do the front ”
Yuuri spun on one foot, excited and obedient all at once. Hiroko laughed as Yuuri shuffled impatiently. “Stay still, Yuuri, we’re almost done!”
Her deft fingers threaded the cloth neatly into a small bow. Yuuri turned to admire it, trying not to fall over at the sudden imbalance of weight. Yuuri stroked his fingers over the child’s obi that his mother had tied for him. It was a smooth gray, unassuming but shimmering nonetheless, and it brought out the vibrancy of his actual yukata. He’d chosen his design just a few weeks before at the local tailor; the bright splashes of fireworks across a stretch of blue sky and little drifts of clouds coiling between the colorful sparks made him feel unbelievably happy. He was excited to see the actual fireworks at the festival, booming as they filled the sky.
Mari poked her head through the sliding door. “Are we ready to go yet?”
She grinned a little, seeing that Hiroko was busy patting down the lapels of Yuuri’s traditional dress. Yuuri stuck his tongue out at her before she could say anything, and then Hiroko straightened with a satisfied look on her face.
“Alright, let’s go, before the vendors run out of candied apples!”
Yuuri let out a gasp and Mari turned, her socked feet pattering down the hallway.
Hiroko reached for her son’s hand, and Yuuri’s small fingers met her halfway.
::x::
“Five minutes before the fireworks,” Toshiya runs a hand through his graying hair. Next to him, Mari was tugging on the hem of her father’s yukata, hanging off the cloth playfully and dragging her feet on the stone path. Toshiya, ever the patient man, picks his daughter up and swings her onto his tired shoulders, bouncing her up above the crowd and grinning at her cries of joy. “Is this a good view for you?”
“Yes!” Mari cheers. “Higher!”
Hiroko pauses to look at Mari, concern creasing her brow, and that’s when it happens.
Yuuri’s small hand pulls at her fingers. Hiroko shifts, seeing that Yuuri had stumbled.
Yuuri turns his face upwards to look at her, and his eyes were a brilliant blue instead of his usual, warm brown.
Hiroko startles. What-... her mind is befuddled, and it races through threads of explanation before finally latching to one. It’s soul-switching, she thinks, incredulous with the realization. It’s rare in this world but not unheard of, a phenomenon that scientists have studied for years now. Soulmates are extraordinary and almost supernatural in their existence; unique incidences where two hearts decide that they will find each other at all cost. She never thought that it would happen to her son, and a part of her feels almost sad that it did; she would’ve liked Yuuri to experience love as she had, to love the wrong people, to go through hurt that would make her stronger, and then to finally find the right one.
But a part of her warms to the idea. It’s his first soul-switch, and it’ll be the first of many. Hiroko’s honestly surprised that it happened so smoothly, so quickly and so completely; switches, when they happen, are usually slow. First, emotions trickle over, and then the full switching begins.
And full switching happens usually only when there are shared emotions from both sides.
Her son and his soulmate must share an incredible bond.
Hiroko tightens her grip and looks into those tell-tale eyes. The hand she’s holding; it at once belongs to Yuuri and doesn’t, and a flutter of panic drifts through her heart. She clamps down on it, in a way that only mothers can, and turns to the not-Yuuri.
“Are you okay?” Hiroko asks softly.
The not-Yuuri nods, a little shaky. Hiroko strokes the back of the child’s hand.
Hiroko opens her mouth to ask the name of her son’s soulmate, and then thinks better of it. That’s something for Yuuri to figure out, not for her to pry into. She’s still a little shaken by how blue their eyes are, and how they seem to contrast so with Yuuri’s brown hair.
“Do you still want to hold my hand?” She asks.
Not-Yuuri nods again, pressing into her side hesitantly. They must be scared, Hiroko thinks. And my Yuuri must be scared to, in an unknown place with unknown people…
But she can only take care of one child at a time, so she gives the small hand a reassuring squeeze.
“We’re going to watch the fireworks together. Do you want to join us?”
::x::
Victor Nikiforov was in choir class thirty minutes ago.
The new choir teacher is strict, a man in his late thirties, already fast balding with the stress of dealing with classes of disobedient, nine-year-old children.
“Quiet down!” The man hisses, tapping his conductor’s baton against one of the music stands propped at the front of the room. The chattering spluttered to a halt, only a few brave whispers drifting from the back of the room. Victor himself was standing near the front, his back straight and his eyes steady on the sheet music in front of him. He liked singing, he really did. It’s just hard and scary, sometimes, when the teacher is looking at him and expecting him to get it perfectly, and he knows that his voice didn’t hit the right note. He hated disappointing people, hated seeing them frown at his performances.
“One verse at a time,” The teacher says, tapping out the rhythm with the stick. “A one, and a two- starting with you, Alexei.”
The first of his classmate starts to sing. They were learning a new song today, an old ballad about the cold of the Russian winter. It’s a lilting, melodic song, and it reminds Victor of the birds that sing outside his window every morning, tapping their small feet on the branches of the old tree in his backyard.
He smiles, and the happiness fills his heart with every swell of the note. He couldn’t wait to sing, couldn’t wait to show off his own voice.
Alexei finishes, and the song travels swiftly through the room. Each child picks it up, line after line, only faltering once or twice, but the teacher is quick to set them back on track. Victor all but bounces in his place, the excitement winding his heart up like a key being wound in a clockwork toy. And finally, all eyes are on him, and he opens his mouth-
And he’s looking at a stranger, his fingers trapped in her hand.
The lyrics of the ballad drift aimlessly through his head, but no sound comes out of his mouth.
Victor shivers.
The woman speaks to him in a language that he is not familiar with, but her tone is soft and patient and it reminds him of his favorite homeroom teacher, Miss Morov. Victor feels a little calmer, so he nods, because it seems like the right thing to do.
The woman makes a pleased noise and asks him another question, gesturing to their linked hands. Victor nodded again, because he was a little scared that if he let go, he would be swept away in this unfamiliar crowd, in an unfamiliar place, and he would never find his way home again. He tries his hardest not to think scary thoughts and instead focuses on the little squeeze of reassurance that he gets from the kindly woman. As long as he continues holding her hand, he thinks maybe he’ll be okay. Later, he’ll think about how he can go home, but for now…
The woman asks another question. When he turns to look at her blankly, she gestures up towards the sky, and the points to the pictures of fireworks on the strange, heavy clothes that he’s wearing.
Victor smooths a hand over the pictures. He’s never seen fireworks before, except for on television.
It would be nice if he could see them in person, just this once.
::x::
Katsuki Yuuri is really looking forward to the fireworks.
So when he finds himself standing in an unfamiliar classroom, brushing silver hair out of his eyes and staring at an angry looking man, he’s cowed into a trembling silence. The person next to him finishes singing the last few bars of some foreign song, and then the classroom falls silent.
There’s a beat of uncertain quiet. Murmurs start at the back of the class, but he doesn’t understand what they’re saying.
The man growls something and clinks his baton loudly against the metal of a music stand, and Yuuri decides that the silence is unbearable and he has to sing.
He blinks and opens his mouth, letting the familiar tune of a Japanese lullaby that his mother would sing to him wash over the room. It was strange, hearing it in a voice that wasn’t his own, but the song itself anchored his panicky heart.
It was the song of the town that he grew up in, about how fishermen would drift out onto the early waves to catch fish, about how the children would play in the sand on the beach, about how fathers would come home late and weary, but ready to show love to the family. Yuuri didn’t understand half of the lyrics in the song, but he loved it when his mother sang it, because the melody was slow but sure, steady like his family’s support for him. It made him a little less scared of the monsters in the closet or the boogie man under his bed and instead made him think of his mother smiling and cooking in the kitchen, his sister building a snowman with him in the winter, his father’s laugh when they watched football together.
He got to the end of the verse, faltered and drifted off. And with the silence ringing in his ears, he could hear something far off in the distance, muffled and hazy like a forgotten memory, but undeniable and getting louder; a steady boom, boom, boom like the sound of his beating heart-
And suddenly, he was back, staring up at the sky as flowers of light bloomed bright against the night, cradled in his mother’s lap. She’s singing the lullaby softly, stroking his hair and smiling down at him.
“Welcome back, Yuuri,” She whispered, kissing him on the forehead. Yuuri leans into the kiss and feels something strange welling up inside him, and realizes that he’s missing the voice that sang the lullaby, the beautiful one that came out of his mouth when he was singing in front of the unknown class.
He wonders if he'll ever hear it again.
::x::
Back in the classroom in Russia, Victor Nikiforov hums the tune to a Japanese lullaby and closes his blue eyes to remember the beauty of the fireworks that he hopes to see again someday.