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You were always Shouyou.
He was always Tobio.
Even when things were different you two always remained the same.
**
You’re not entirely sure which one of your lives this is, the one where you meet him for the first time. Granted, it’s hard to tell when you’ve lived over and over again in the endless loop that is time, your soul always placed in the past or the present or anywhere in between. There’s a beginning that ties to an end that ties to a beginning that… Well. Life does go on.
You are sure of one thing, though. This exact moment, the moment where you just know, has a very distinct color to it. It is painted cobalt blue around the edges and sits warm and safe at the center of all your lives, like a beacon.
You’re stranded with your cheek pressed against the wet grains of the shore, your body bruised, your lungs filled with saltwater, and the ship you were on mere moments ago has long since been swallowed by the waves. You roll over on your back with great difficulty, half dead at this point, and you can see the pale sky above you, reaching endlessly into cosmos, beckoning you into its embrace. You are the shadow on the ground about to give yourself up to the sun, allowing the winds to gently carry you.
You can feel your consciousness slowly slipping away when you suddenly find yourself looking into a pair of eyes – and you immediately recognize them, despite not ever having seen them before. The realization comes barreling into you so violently your body sinks into the sand beneath you, punched into the dirt by a massive invisible fist, and you cough in sheer surprise, water spilling from your lips.
Those are his eyes. He floats into view and meets you with wide and fearful cobalt, hovering over your aching body with worried hands and panicked words, grounding you, saving you from the flames in the sky. For now you remain a shadow, right here underneath him.
A few seconds pass by and it soon becomes clear that, unlike you, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t experience your meeting as some profoundly earth shattering moment. To him you are just a lucky survivor from a shipwreck, a stranger. But to you, he is your everything.
Ah, you think vaguely. So this is where it begins.
**
You end up living together with him, in this one life with the shipwreck, where you washed up on the beach like driftwood and your soul became aware. No, it isn’t necessarily your first life. But it’s the first life where you learn about your fate. To you it feels important enough to count as a beginning.
You stay in his draughty house by the sea while he tends to your injuries and steadily nurses you back to health. And then you simply remain. You linger long enough to settle down, long enough to decide on your side of the bed and choose your favorite coffee mug. It’s not a bad thing to have a haven like this; somewhere safe to be while you prepare to face indefinite lives of uncertainty.
You know what kind of soul you have. You know you will remember every life that happens to you from this point. You won’t be able to forget a single moment of your past, no matter how many, and in order to erase all the memories you must meet him in the right life, the life where everything aligns, allowing your souls to merge. And who knows when that will happen.
In the meantime you’re going to remember everything for the both of you. You’ll carry the weight of hundreds, maybe thousands, of lived lives on your shoulders, the memories invading your mind, endlessly more and more with each cycle. If you want to achieve happiness you can’t be weak. You can’t ever give up.
You hold his sleeping body close to you, shivering under the blankets as you glance around the darkened bedroom. He has no family. Instead there are pictures of strangers on the walls, random vintage photographs in faded sepia, bought secondhand at the antique shop in town. There’s no rug on the creaky floor and the lace curtains are old and yellowing. Mismatched trinkets occupy every surface, small treasures found washed up on the shore – a beautiful seashell, a perfectly round pebble, a gold coin, a cracked bird skull.
He stopped collecting soon after you arrived. Told you that you were the most beautiful treasure he’d ever stumbled across on the beach, that nothing could top that find. He had smiled softly when he said it and you desperately hoped his soul would recognize yours too, that you didn’t have to embark on your journey after all. That you could just stay here with him forever, in this rickety old house.
He exhales warmly against the base of your throat and you grip him tighter. Deep down you know it’s not the case. This is the soul you seek but he has no idea because you’re both living the wrong life. You’re not soulmates yet, if you ever will be, and you’re so scared of what awaits.
In the end it’s the sea that separates you, mere three months later. It’s brutal but quick; one slip, one big wave, followed by the undercurrent. No one can stay afloat in a watery mass like that, no matter how much of a good swimmer they are. You’re left standing on the beach alone, for the first time with a hollow space in your chest. Your heart is a tight knot in the loop of time and you have no idea what it means to grieve. You’re learning in the most painful of ways.
This is how it happens in this life. You don’t dare to think about the next.
All you can do is continue loving him even better from now on.
**
You go on to live many lives where he does not exist.
It’s frightening. At first you wonder if you were wrong about him, that his soul wasn’t the soul you were destined to love, but the world without him is so obviously and painfully empty. You feel it in your bones, how wrong and unwelcome it is, and you figure this is just your luck. It’s not like you can control where you end up or what state the world is in, at any given time. And you definitely can’t control him, the path of his fate, or the whereabouts of his soul. The world is so small and fragile and time and time again you’re dropped into the current of a life with not so much as a whispered ‘good luck’. Of course you’d run into a life like this sooner or later.
The reasons for his absence are different every time. Sometimes it’s caused by war, illness, or murder. Sometimes accidents, carelessness, despair. Sometimes poverty, cruelty, stillbirth.
You can’t do anything about it, only pray and hope that his soul carries over the way you know yours will, and that he won’t get too far ahead. You live in a constant state of urgency, always with the need to be better, to catch up. To be done with this life only to move on the next.
These lives never turn out that well for you, and it’s a cruel twist of fate that you always seem to be stuck in them for a very long time. It appears you’re unwillingly living in spite of things. You’re facing your life because you have to. You fend for yourself until it resets. It makes you hope he really is worth it.
One of these miserable lives is exceptionally long. You have endured the same loop over and over but this one stubborn life stretches on forever. It’s an empty life, as empty as the world feels, filled with nothing but loneliness and memories, a void with your face on it. This is the waiting room to your next life, but your place in line is always being skipped, pushed back.
Enough already, you think, as you enter your 99th year. He’s not here. Please let me move on.
Still, you have no choice but to continue living this life, for as long as it takes. You live it until you’re 109 before the gods take pity on you.
**
If there’s one thing you could really do without, it’s the strange in-between lives.
They never make much sense and are always a mess, all jumbled and lazily thrown together, fillers between cycles. They exist on the bizarre end of the spectrum, and most of the time you’re not even yourself. You’ve lived as the alley cat behind his house, the butterfly landing in his hair, the goldfish he caught at the matsuri. You’ve been chained down in your temporary vessel without the ability to speak or evoke any meaningful bond beyond a fleeting smile or a joyful spark. These lives all end in the blink of an eye, a pointless intermission, a comedy staged by some cruel god. You suppose it was never a given, that you would always be reborn human.
But then there’s this life.
You’ve settled in a no name town somewhere, a place constantly blanketed in thick fog, with narrow streets, wide-open fields, and people who talk and whisper behind your back. You wonder if you’re in for yet another witch-hunt or some other superstitious nonsense when you suddenly meet him, and you soon learn it’s about something else entirely.
It’s because you bleed from holy wounds.
“You have stigmata,” he says and reaches out. He carefully grabs your wrist and hums, eyes narrowed in silent appraisal, as though he’s seen it before. You think it’s odd that you never really noticed until now.
He’s the only person in town willing to talk to you so you stay with him. It feels strange in a way you can’t explain. His soul is definitely there, you recognize the familiar spark in your chest every time you see him, but the sensation is off somehow. It’s like you’re watching him through a rainy window, his features blurry and distorted. You don’t mention it because you enjoy the way he holds your hands; gently, possessively.
“Maybe they’ll canonize you.” If he intends for it to be a joke it doesn’t sound like it. “You’ll become a saint.”
“You’d have to be dead for that,” you reply. “And religious.”
He’s beautiful in this life, to no surprise. The cigarette between his long fingers trembles a little as he side-eyes the wound in your palm, studies the way it blossoms into an angry rose on the back of your hand. You can’t tell what he’s thinking and you’re not sure if you like it. He’s usually so easy to read, no matter his reincarnations.
“I used to be devout, you know,” he admits, vaguely and quietly, cobalt blue shifting their attention to your other hand. Your palm begins to ache. “Maybe this is a thing that should be exorcised.”
You rub your wrist, frowning. “Exorcised?”
“Yeah. Driven out.” His tongue swipes quickly across his bottom lip and he nods once, thumbing the tip of his cigarette. “I could help.”
Later, you reluctantly learn the meaning behind his suggestion, your limbs paralyzed and your hands bleeding. You can only watch, in increasing horror, as he mounts you, blue eyes fading to red, and it’s not at all the exorcism you expected.
Maybe you never even had stigmata in the first place. Maybe they’re delusions and you’ve simply been driven to insanity. Maybe he’s showing you how devoted he is because he is in fact an incubus. He could even be the devil. All reincarnations are possible.
So much for being devout, you think.
It’s an unholy union and you don’t know what to do. All you know is that you’re living a nightmare. You would much rather be accused of witchcraft and burned on the stake all over again.
But you still love him, despite everything. That’s perhaps the strangest, most insane thing about this whole surreal life. Once again you see it through to the end somehow. He’s not going to let you live much longer anyway.
**
The reason your journey is taking so many lives is because he rarely loves you back in any of them. It takes you half a century before you accept that reality. And once you do it’s crushing.
It’s been a while since you ended up in a life where he was as lovely and breathtaking as the first one, the one in the old house by the sea with all the trinkets and vintage photographs. It is the most distant but also most precious memory you have. You cling to it like a lifeline every time he rejects you.
If it was possible you would pass on this life, just stop wasting your time and head straight on to the next one. If it weren’t for the fact that a kindred soul needs gentle persuasion you would’ve given up a long time ago. But you have the gift – or curse – of reincarnation memory, whether you like it or not. That alone leaves you with no choice.
And you do love him, wholeheartedly, even when he rejects you, even when he leaves you, even when it’s one-sided and he loves someone else.
He’s your best friend in this life. The situation is familiar. You’ve assumed the best friend role many times before, keeping your love for him a heavily guarded secret, and you’ve stopped trying to change his mind. The love between you will remain unrequited here, no matter what you say or do. Making advances is not worth it.
That’s not to say the heartbreak isn’t real.
Another person has entered his life, making him feel the things you were supposed to make him feel, a stranger leaving their imprint on a soul that’s meant to be yours. He speaks of them with misty eyes and a soft smile, and it’s both hurtful and infuriating.
If he’s your first love can I be your last?
You always think this. You always have some hope that the relationship will end, but because you’re a good friend and a comfortable shoulder to cry on you never say it out loud. Of course you don’t. It doesn’t matter anyway. You’re too far down on his list, as if he’d ever even look at you in that way.
He comes home one late night, fumbles with his keys several times, sways unsteadily in place. He looks disheveled but happy, his skin sweetly scented with beer and a stranger’s cologne.
“He’s the best,” he says, his words slurred, and grins widely. “I had so much fun.”
You awkwardly help him out of his coat and boots, try not to let your touch linger too long on his arms and chest, try not to grip his waist too tightly as you help him to bed. You fight against the urge to lie down next to him and instead you force a smile, turning your face toward the shadows. You’re a good friend. It’s all you can be. It’s not like you wanted this life anyway.
“I really love him,” he continues, sighing happily into the pillow. “I should introduce you two.”
“There’s no rush,” you say evasively. You refuse to even spare this person a single glance if you can help it. Hopefully come morning this conversation will be forgotten. “I’m sure he’s nice.”
“I’d like my best friend to at least meet the guy before I marry him.”
You go still for a moment, the blanket in your hands drooping limply. You don’t like the direction this is headed. If you don’t leave now he’s going to say something you’d rather not hear.
“Stop talking nonsense,” you mutter, your voice barely holding it together as you fumble blindly, halfheartedly tucking him in. “You’re drunk.”
“I know I’m drunk.”
Don’t say it.
“But I really do love him.”
Please don’t say it.
He smiles to himself, a shade of cobalt in the darkness. “I think he’s my soulmate.”
These lives are the worst. His soul is so stubborn, so uniquely him, that it can’t be charmed or persuaded that easily. You walk through years and years of lives like this one, ordinary lives where you’re always lingering in the doorway waiting for him, but he’s already settling down with someone else. He’ll never be ready to move on because he doesn’t want to. Instead he hangs back, happy with what he’s got, and it just so happens that it’s not you.
It’s a life that makes you cry. Hundreds of years have passed but this is where you choose to let your tears fall. You’d rather he hated you. Or even better – you wish he’d stop pinning you to the ground and free you instead, allowing you to float up into the sky and finally catch fire.
But you’re human. The universe created you. And you must live this life as well.
You shield your eyes from the sun and keep going.
**
You’re starting to lose faith, slowly. You may be with him but life still won’t let you have him and it’s making you doubt. If things haven’t aligned by now they probably never will, and frankly you’re sick of him and his hard-to-get soul. After centuries of fruitless efforts you feel you deserve at least something.
You’re tired and angry and frustrated, frustrated enough to choose someone else, someone who’s not him. You let others do what you’ve always wanted him to do. You let others kiss you in the hope he’ll somehow taste them. You let others make love to you in the hope he’ll catch the scent of them. You let others touch you in the hope he’ll know and finally realize.
You love him, because you’re an idiot who will always love him, but you also want him to hurt in some way. It makes you lose a part of yourself in the process. You become bitter and mean and resentful and you keep this behavior up for many, many lives until he confronts you in one of them.
“Why?” he asks as you drop your bags on the kitchen floor, along with the announcement that you’re leaving him.
He has responded to this many times before, asked you exactly this question, but never in this way – never quietly, with tears in his eyes and his neck bent. You’re used to anger and frustration following in the wake of that little question, you’re prepared for yet another heated fight, but the sudden change makes you waver uncertainly, at a loss for words. This isn’t what you’re used to. You’re not used to seeing him actually hurting, and you’re definitely not used to finding yourself face to face with the pain you caused.
“Did I… do something wrong?” he asks, and the way he says it makes you crumble.
You’ve spent the last few lives breaking his trust over and over again, only to find out you’re not as strong as you thought. There’s nothing honorable in the way you’ve acted; you can’t justify it. You’ve just been cruel.
“No –” you manage, your voice cracking. “I promise you didn’t… You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
He turns back to the dishes and twists the cloth inside a coffee mug, cleaning it carefully before slowly putting it to dry on the rack. His slumped back looks vulnerable like this, the width of his otherwise strong shoulders somehow shrunken, and all you want is to hug him. You just can’t bring yourself to take that first step forward.
“Please – forgive me,” you plead breathlessly, praying this hasn’t delayed your search by another hundred years. “Don’t leave.”
“You were the one who said you’d leave.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I guess it’s just like that,” he replies in a voice that can barely be heard. His back remains turned away but he has stopped moving, his hands submerged in the sudsy water, foam stuck to his elbows.
“Like what?”
“Not meant to be.”
You want to start over again immediately. You wish for a chance to correct your mistakes and mend everything that has been broken, but in the end you still have to live the rest of this life knowing you hurt him.
**
There is comfort in knowing you’ve lived lives where you both were happy.
Even after all this time you return to memories of the first life, which has emerged through the years as something ideal and perfect, a lighthouse rising up from all the other lives. Of course, it wasn’t ideal or perfect – you wouldn’t be repeating these cycles if it was – but it’s something to find joy and encouragement in.
It could have been a good life… but you wouldn’t go back to it, even if you had the choice. When the time comes, if it ever does, you won’t hesitate trading this old memory for the life you’ve been tirelessly seeking all these years. It’s all you want.
In the meantime however your thoughts often return to that little house by the sea. You think about the way his hair would dance in the wind, the way his cheeks would turn rosy in the cold, the way the sun would set on his sharp features, softening them in gold and honey. You think about his eyes, forever cobalt blue.
It’s a nice memory. You would give it up in a heartbeat.
**
It’s been a while since the last time you were born in Japan.
Your home is a small town in the countryside, one of those rare places where everyone knows everyone but where you actually feel like you belong. And yet you struggle finding your way. Recently you began seeking passion in a sport that’s foreign to you, wondering what you’re even chasing after anymore. Truth is you’re here because you were inspired one day and you took a chance, deciding to go all in. You have to spend this life on something, too. That’s it.
You restlessly weave your way through the crowd, further into the heart of the local gymnasium, your gut churning nervously. The tall roof above you echo with loud chatter and the hollow bounce of volleyballs, and around you the air is filled with the distinct smell of rubber, sweat, and aerosol. You seek your friends, looking around – and suddenly he’s there, out of nowhere.
Once again he walks into your life.
The whole world melts away for a blinding second as he passes you by, the ground shifting violently beneath you. It’s been an endlessly long time since you felt this way about your ever-fated meeting and for a moment you swear you can smell the sea, hear the waves crashing in the back of your head. It feels like the first time you met him, in the grainy sand on the shore, with saltwater on your lips and the whole world reflected in your eyes. The currents brought you here, this time as well, and it dawns on you that this might actually be it.
Oh, you think. Soulmates. Soulmates at last.
Maybe this really is the one life, the one life where everything you suffered will be worth it, where everything aligns and finds its place, where you can let go and forget and finally live happily. Maybe this is where you drift ashore and settle.
His familiar cobalt blue eyes are anchored in a thunderous storm, crowned with a deep frown, a stubborn ruler of a kingdom he’s unwilling to share, a commander weak enough to break. He’s blistering rage and tender vulnerability and he’s beautiful, unlike anything you ever came to know in the past.
But it’s still him. It’s Tobio. You would know your Tobio anywhere, in any life.
Later, when you confront each other in the bathroom, you can tell in the very core of your ancient wandering soul that he felt the connection, too. You’re witnessing the small beginnings of your soulmate’s awakening and maybe he doesn’t understand it right now but you have faith he eventually will. It’s going to be a challenge, like always, but you love it. It feels right and that’s enough for you.
The past releases you, an eternity’s worth of memories lifted from your shoulders. This life is the life you’re going to live.
You forget everything that was and you start over – one last time.