Omfg Mitsuyas Has Me I Reread It Like 5 Times

omfg mitsuyas has me 🥹🥹 i reread it like 5 times

☆ INVISIBLE STRING.

Chifuyu Matsuno, Takashi Mitsuya, and Ken "Draken" Ryuguji as lyrics from Taylor Swift's "Invisible String." Chifuyu owns a pet store and Draken owns a repair shop.

"ALL ALONG THERE WAS SOME INVISIBLE STRING TYING YOU TO ME"

Perhaps the stack of romance novels he had on his bedroom had finally gotten to him, but CHIFUYU MATSUNO was a firm believer of soulmates. He saw them everywhere: in his manga, in the streets, even in the canaries, puppies, and kittens from his pet store. Chifuyu was certain that, just like in literature, he was to get a soulmate of his own. He was the star of his own novel: The Red String of Fate. He was so engrossed in it, in fact, that he swore he had seen a faint, red string carefully wrapped around his pinky. Chifuyu Matsuno yearned for the day in which he would meet 'the one'. Thus, he was blown away one afternoon as you stepped foot into his pet store, with a red string tied onto your pinky, and a naughty Peke J in your arms, bringing what seemed like a 'lost cat' back where it belonged.

"ONE SINGLE THREAD OF GOLD TIED ME TO YOU"

Because TAKASHI MITSUYA believed that, if he could describe the love of a soulmate with a color, he would say golden. All day, non-stop, his little sisters would gush about soulmates, giddily exclaiming how they are one hundred percent real. He would usually chuckle at his sisters' excitement, usually brushing it off as naiveness. He did not believe much in soulmates until he found himself arriving early to school to use the sewing machine to fix his uniform's lettering, only to find you, using his golden thread to sew letters onto what seemed like a uniform. A thread of gold, tying together two delinquents from opposite gangs. You became his muse, his reason to pursue design. It was no surprise that Takashi Mitsuya created a collection based on this secret love, filled with delicate, golden accents, as well as rough, shredded fabric, to symbolize the double lives of him and his soulmate. He titled the collection "The Thread of Gold."

"A STRING THAT PULLED ME OUT OF ALL THE WRONG ARMS RIGHT INTO THAT DIVE BAR"

A hazy, dreamlike encounter. It seemed to have been fate that tied you and DRAKEN together in a place where time slows down. A dive bar, located near Draken's repair shop, was the place in which you ended up, tired from your friends' constant set ups and blind dates as they 'helped' you find a partner. It was time for fate to step in, tugging on your string and pulling you from any dates and making you sit next to a handsome, blond man with a dragon tattoo on his temple at some random, unknown bar in the middle of Tokyo. Ordering the same drinks led to small talk, which led to him confessing that he was there to avoid his friends, as they tried setting him up with women after a breakup with his best friend's sister. Being stuck in the same situation, Draken had a thought pop up on his mind, and even though he was desperately trying to push it away, the sweet liquor had already gotten to him. "Do you think we're soulmates? 'Cause I think so". The dive bar ended up as the place where many dates took place, as it held the memories of being pulled together by the string of fate.

[papamin au 🐅] dog days of summer 🧺

An Insomniac's Guide to Dreams

konoha akinori x reader words; 4580 synopsis; Maybe he could be her guide to accomplishing her dreams. The kind of dreams where a person falls in love and then magically, as if almost impossibly, stays in love. Konoha could be that for her. She just needed him to give her that opportunity.

Konoha looked at the clock, another 2 am shift that had kicked him from this universe into an entirely different one. Nothing was normal after two in the morning.

Especially not that hooded figure.

Definitely not the hooded figure that was lurking straight to the medicine aisle.

Konoha had been working at the pharmacy as a part-time job, hoping that he could use his experience working at the pharmacy to level up and finally apply to a pharmaceutical company after he had graduated college. He was 20 years old, and his older coworker had shifted his graveyard shift onto Konoha at the last minute.

The grey hoodie floated around until they found what they were looking for. Konoha was trying not to spy on them, but it was all he could do during the lateness of the hour.

She pulled her hoodie down when she slammed a bottle of melatonin gummies near the cash register.

Konoha recognized her from somewhere, he thought.

He scanned the bottle, then remembered he had to ask some questions before selling a drug like this to people.

Yawning, Konoha began the miniature spiel, “You need an ID to buy melatonin, can I see a driver’s license or other valid form of identification.”

She rubbed her dark eye bags and gave him a bored look.

“I don’t have my ID on me.”

Konoha responded, “I can’t sell you the melatonin then.” He grabbed the bottle and shoved it under the top of the table and she hit her forehead against the counter, slapping her hand repeatedly on the counter to draw attention to herself.

“You’re like what, 18 years old? Look me in the eye and tell me that I don’t look 18 years old as well.” She put her chin on the table and gave a huge pout, looking up at Konoha. He felt his mouth go dry.

“I can’t sell you the drugs.” Konoha wishes he could’ve, just the way her eyes glimmered a little in the dull light of the pharmacy had his heart experiencing minor afflictions.

“Really, not even for me?” She stood up to her full height, and leaned over the counter, propped up with her hands on the counter.

How much could an acquaintance from high school grow up in two years? Konoha was now realizing the reality of puberty, and maybe the reality of seeing people for more than their high school self.

He laughed when he realized it was her, the same 1st year from Nekoma who had followed him around during his last summer training camp in the volleyball club. Konoha laughed a little more, slightly delirious from a combination of seeing an old friend and from having stayed up for longer than 24 hours at this point.

He bought the melatonin gummies for her with his own money. He closed the store early, and locked it up as she cradled the bottle in her arms.

“Why are you still awake, isn’t school still in session for you? It's Wednesday?” He remembered that she must be in her final year of high school. Konoha tried to remember how many more days until she was going to graduate, it couldn’t have been more than a month or so.

She shook the jar, before pressing a quick kiss to the lid. “Insomnia is a clinical issue that happens to occur in around 6% of the adult population, it’s an actual disorder Akinori.”

“I don’t doubt that, but you really shouldn’t be out and about at this time. All the creeps come out at night.” Konoha shudders, he had been exposed to too many issues and body parts late at night.

“I ran out of my sweet, sweet, medicine.” She shrugged, and her hoodie slid off her shoulder a little, exposing skin to the cold air. She could feel the goosebumps crawl over her, so she gently rubbed the junction of her neck to her collarbone trying to generate warmth.

He started to toy with his fingers, wringing them out, avoiding looking at her exposed shoulder. And also definitely trying to ignore the way he saw a lack of a bra strap on her shoulder.

Konoha wants to ask how she’s been the last few years. He wonders if that’s something he should even ask. How close were they really?

He asked where she needed to go, and she said she needed to take a train with a few transfers to get back home.

“I’ll take you home, I want to hear all about what you’ve been up to. ‘Master of None’.” He throws her old nickname out into the wind, and she cringes, shutting her eyes tightly.

“Please don’t ever call me that again. What a horrible stain on my reputation.” She rubs the top of her head in discomfort, remembering her younger years teenage follies.

Konoha chuckles into his turtleneck, letting his tan-blond hair cover his eyes as he shakes his head a little.

“I only got called that because none of those Nekoma players would never ever listen to me. It’s like I wasn’t even a manager.”

“But, oh my saints, did you love that nickname when you realized my teammates called me ‘Jack of All Trades’- you tried to climb me and begged me to listen to you explain how our nicknames meant we were meant for each other.”

She coughed a little, feeling blood coursing to her cheeks, she just cuddled her container of chewables tighter.

Konoha realized he may have teased her a little too much, so he softened the blow of his words.

“You were a cute kid. Very passionate. You could talk for hours on end if there was someone listening.”

There was something about calling her a kid, when in reality that had only been just over two years ago. Konoha knew something was shifting in his mind, something that made him realize that he had missed her.

Longing felt like a bitter pill to swallow. Initially being separated from someone who he’d grown close to was painful, and it matted on his conscience. Then as time went on, that irritation of being away from her faded. Her coming in and shopping where he worked had been a catalyst for a reaction where he grasped just how much he had yearned for her. How much he still felt for her.

“Well, you got stuck with me because you were the only one nice enough to let me talk for hours on end.” She pointed out.

He doesn’t quite remember it like that.

She was an overzealous 16 year old, but he hadn’t known that. He was a lax 18 year old. She was a manager for the volleyball team at Nekoma because her grandpa was friends with Coach Nekomata. Her debate season had ended, but volleyball was still barrelling along.

It was a sense of pride, or perhaps intrigue that drove her to put all her focus on understanding volleyball so she could be the best manager possible.

The first day of camp, she was running around greeting all the other managers, bowing and telling them that she was ready and willing to learn from them. He thought she behaved a little bit like a raging storm, nothing able to stop her in her tracks. She was a whirlwind of excitement, and he couldn’t help but want to know who she was exactly.

“Akaashi, you’re smart, who’s that?” Konoha bent forward to touch his toes, stretching before the first practice round against Nekoma.

Akaashi blinked slowly, trying to solve a puzzle in his mind, “Well, guessing by the way she’s wearing a very red jacket, and the way that Kenma keeps avoiding her while she trails him with a water bottle- I’d have to deduce that she’s Nekoma’s manager.”

Konoha lifted his head, pulling his arms from side to side to embrace the tug of muscles in his body.

“They didn’t have a manager at the last practice match we played with them a month ago.”

“I think she just joined. Kuroo was talking to Bokuto about her earlier. Apparently, she can talk for ages.” Akaashi laughed a little, going over to the rest of the Fukurodani team.

Konoha dropped his arms to the side of his body, and when she finally turned around- successful in getting Kenma to drink some water- they locked eyes. He waved politely, and she grinned with all her teeth, almost jumping up a little.

He thought she was definitely cute. A little ball of energy sure, but she radiated something beyond just excitement, she carried a sense of eternal optimism. And that was something Konoha would’ve killed to have as a high school student. It wasn’t that he had an extreme form of depression, or that his anxiety was serious enough to warrant a prescription. But he did experience the ruins of chemical imbalances more so than the next person.

She was inclined to watch Konoha, because he seemed naturally good at all the elements of volleyball. He could do everything at a level that was higher than most, from solid foundational receives to a slightly more technical serve.

To say she was infatuated would be an overstatement, because she really was just a girl with a huge crush on a boy.

Instead of sitting with her own team at the lunch break she had made her way to Konoha, asking if she could sit with him. He looked around, and saw that Komi was using his hands to make an insistent gesture of ‘no’ by slicing his hands back and forth in front of his face.

He had ignored Komi and patted the spot next to him on the concrete stairs into the gym.

Akaashi had been right, she could talk about anything and everything, her mouth moving faster than Konoha’s own brain. He only got to make small remarks when she took a bite of her lunch, chewing on the rice quickly but thoroughly so she could keep going on about a movie she had seen last week.

“What do you think?” She looked at him with expectant eyes.

Konoha swallowed his chicken, “Of Better Days?”

She nodded rapidly, Konoha’s head almost hurt a little at the motion.

“I haven’t seen it, I’m not a big fan of international films.” He shrugged, eating another piece of chicken from his plate, looking out to see groups of boys mingling.

Not once during his time with her at that camp did he wish he had spent it with anyone else. He was completely content just listening to her talk, with her occasional periods of interview-like questions for him to answer. A few times during the camp he would sit at one of the regular tables with an agglomeration of fellow players, and she wouldn’t go over to him.

When he looked around though, she was sitting alone in the same spot they had sat at during the first day. Using her water bottle to draw shapes on the grey pavement steps. He tried to wave her over, but she knew how other people looked at her. They would get this sheen in their eyes that told her that they did not want to listen to her, but that only made her talk more, trying to prove her worth.

Konoha had finished his food quickly, grabbing his own water bottle and sitting next to her.

“Let’s work together to make a drawing of Kuroo as a cat.”

The way her mood shifted, from feeling the sting of loneliness to the thrill of getting to spend time with the person she deemed as the best looking boy at the camp, was extremely beneficial for her happiness.

He didn’t mind filling the role of her friend during camp. He did feel a slight scorn for all the other boys and girls at the camp though. It was rude to be so blatant about their dislike and irritation at her.

On the second to last day, Konoha woke up in the middle of the night, needing to go get water from the vending machine in the gymnasium.

He scratched at his stomach while putting in his coins. Then he saw her, in a thin strapped black tank top and short shorts. She was playing with a hacky sack, kicking it with her knee then when it would land on her foot, she shot it up so she could alternate feet.

She was talking to herself as well. He listened to her chatter about music, about art, about that annoying thorn she’d found in her shoes that made her foot bleed a little. He could listen to her talk forever and never get bored.

Konoha put another few coins in the machine, getting a second can of orange flavored water. She was in the main area of the gym, but she had been facing away from the entrance to the gym, so when Konoha cleared his throat, she dropped the fabric bag full of rice on her head.

“You shouldn’t wear a tank top, it's dangerous.” Konoha handed her the drink when she bounded up to him.

She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head to the side, “Why would it be dangerous?”

“Someone might think you’re trying to seduce me.” He joked, cracking open his can and taking a deep drink of the nectarine tinged fluid.

Her eyes went wide as she reached down to a bench where she had put her jacket, she slid her arms into the sleeves.

Konoha chewed the inside of his mouth a little. Maybe over the course of a week he’d gotten in over his own head, developing a slight attachment to her. He pushed the thought away, remembering that she looked slightly uncomfortable. He had created a mentality for himself, one where he was supposed to view her like a younger sister. Hell, he had a younger sister her same age.

His stomach twisted a little.

“Sorry. Sometimes my jokes don’t exactly land how I intend them to.” He brought the can up to his mouth again, needing something to lubricate his increasingly drying throat.

She zips her jacket all the way up, the collar comes up to her chin. “It’s alright.”

Konoha looks down to avoid eye contact, trying to find a way to diffuse the slight stagnation in the air, but his eyes only land on the plush of her bare thighs. He could feel his ears turning red when he saw how her shorts dug into her thighs a little, creating a divot, and then the rest of her thigh seemed even more thick.

“I heard that there’s supposed to be really bright stars tonight.” He offered, turning on his heels to exit the gym. She followed him closely.

When he stopped in the center of the field next to the gym, she rammed into his back, getting bounced backwards a little. He caught her by the arm, tugging her upright.

“Woah there, I don’t want you falling for me quite yet, I haven’t even shown you my best qualities.” He snorted slightly.

She buried her face in her jacket, he could see her furrowing her eyebrows in an abashed way. The butterflies in his stomach would not stop fluttering. The little sister comparison stopped right in that moment, as she gave him a shy downturned smile.

It couldn’t have been later than midnight at most, but the way that he kept dozing slightly and opening his mouth to fix the air pressure around his head let him know that he was staying up much longer than he should’ve.

But how could he not, when she was looking up at the sky with admiration.

He pointed to the stars that represented Orihime and Hikoboshi. Everyone knew the story of the two star crossed lovers, a princess and her cow-herder. They had been so in love that they failed to tend to their duties, so her father had separated the couple. They could only reunite every year on July 7th, when the magpies created a bridge for the couple over the milky way.

That night, that they sat together under the stars, had been July 7th.

“I can’t see them.” He could hear the way she was making a frowning face, upset at not being able to see what he could see.

“Here, let me help.” He scooted closer to her, the length of their sides against one another, as he lifted her hand and tried to point out the star Vega, for Orihime. When he was satisfied that she was pointing right at the star he checked in with her, “Do you see her?”

Her soft no comes from much too close to his face. In Konoha’s excitement, he had brought his head closer to hers, trying to replicate what she would be seeing as best as possible. They were almost cheek to cheek.

He pulled away slightly, just enough for some space to exist between them.

“I only see you.” She breathed out.

Konoha choked.

He immediately stood up.

“We have matches tomorrow, I have to get back to bed.”

She got up to her feet, nodding to Konoha’s words.

The last of camp, after all the games were played, and the barbeque devoured by rowdy teenagers.

She was helping to put away bags and other miscellaneous supplies into Nekoma’s bus. And Konoha was leaning against the bus that would take Fukurodani back to their school. Akaashi had shoved his duffel bag into the compartment under the bus and walked to Konoha.

“Kuroo told me that she’ll be their manager for the rest of the season, so she’ll be at Nationals, if Nekoma makes it.”

“Nekoma will make it.” Konoha stated it with finality. Akaashi could see how Konoha was staring at the way she was struggling to lift a heavier bag.

“You know you can go and help her right?” Akaashi inspected his fingernails, suppressing a grin.

Konoha reached into his backpack, ripping a piece of paper from his notebook and scrawling out his phone number. He passed his bag to Akaashi and tucked the slip of paper into his pocket.

She was trying to hoist the bag with her arms, leaning really far backwards. Konoha grabbed the handles of the bag from her and tossed the bag into the bus. She smiled and thanked him.

“Fukurodani’s bus leaves in another hour or so, when are you supposed to head out?” Konoha leant on his shoulder against Nekoma’s bus.

“In around thirty minutes.”

So he asked her what she was going to do over the next few days, and she talked.

She had gotten through around fifteen minutes of talking and was in her zone, completely engrossed in following the rabbit hole of her own mind. Konoha’s hand was sweaty, as he tried to think of just the right pocket in her black backpack to slip his number into.

Eventually, Coach Nekomata told the team to gather around and she bowed to Konoha, saying her goodbye to him.

He just grabbed her by the loop at the top of the bag, rushing to put the paper into the main section of the backpack. She tried to walk forward but was tugged into staying in place with Konoha’s grip.

“Uh, yes?”

“Get home safely.” Konoha beamed, “Alright?”

“Alrighty.” She tilted her head back and forth, twisting her shoulders in a content giddiness.

He moved his head up to the sky and tightened his face, “So cute.”

She wiggled a little, and he released her bag. She asked, “What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Okie dokie.” She held onto the straps of her backpack, shifting it around to be comfortable on her back.

She walked over to her team, letting Coach Nekomata pat her head a little bit.

Konoha rubbed his face, climbing into his bus and slumping into his seat. Bokuto got into the seat in front of him, but turned around and put his chin on the top of the chair to face Konoha.

“What’s with the sour attitude, Mr. Jack of All Trades?” Bokuto made a face of intense focus, intent on Konoha’s potential answer.

Akaashi put a hand on Bokuto’s shoulder, giving the answer Konoha couldn’t articulate, “He’s fallen for Nekoma’s first year manager.”

Konoha stood up, not realizing he had put his seatbelt on, so he got rope burn around his neck as the seatbelt prevented him from actually going anywhere, “She’s a first year student!?”

Akaashi laughed, grabbing onto his stomach. Bokuto’s jaw dropped.

“You’ve been hanging around her all week and you neglected to ask what year she was in Konoha-san?” Akaashi wiped tears of humor from his eyes.

Konoha groaned, pulling his legs onto the seat as he hugged them.

Bokuto looked at Akaashi, “Well he’s positively forlorn. Did I use that word right?”

Akaashi nodded.

Konoha helped her get onto the train, making sure she didn’t trip from the platform to the main portion of the train. The train was mostly empty, with a few people standing or sitting a fair distance apart.

They sat side by side and she opened the container of her melatonin, lifting the lid to her nose so she could smell the berry flavored medicine.

Konoha folded his arms, bringing one leg to rest over the other.

“You know, I was surprised when, after the camp, you didn’t contact me at all.” Konoha felt a little strange, asking about something from what he deemed as a long time ago.

“How would I have contacted you? Believe me I did want to keep in touch, but we never exchanged numbers.” Just smelling the melatonin had her a little bit sleepier.

“I, uh, I put my number into your bag. When everyone was getting ready to leave, I put a piece of paper into your black bag.” Konoha rubbed his arm, getting ready to accept that maybe he had been the only one to have developed a crush that week.

“Oh, I didn’t bring a backpack to the camp. It must have been someone else’s that I was wearing.”

Konoha slumped into the seat further.

She had finally made the connections in her brain.

“You liked me!”

“It was kind of hard not to.”

“And here I was, living my entire high school life thinking that I had been head over heels for someone who had never liked me back.” She said simply.

“Had been? As in, no longer?”

She pursed her lips a little, tapping her chin.

“There’s something about the phrase ‘had been’. It carries a sense of loss, it carries with it a feeling of belonging. Like what had been was extremely personal.”

“You make no sense sometimes.” Konoha chuckles into his words.

“Maybe something better to say is, here I am. Living life wondering when we’d meet again.”

The train came to a halt, and he checked that this was the stop they would get off on. She tucked her bottle of drugs into her hoodie pocket. The street was entirely empty, and the street lights flickered a little from time to time.

“So, you want to go into pharmaceuticals?”

“Yeah, it’s a decently lucrative business, comfortable enough to live life with some extra money for this and that.”

They stood under the flickering street lamp, Konoha digging the toe of his foot into the concrete ground.

She felt a little bit like the world had frozen in time. Here he was, after two years, drawn to her yet again. She hummed for a moment. Then make a request for Konoha.

“Wait for me.”

Konoha lifted his head to make eye contact with her. Tilting his head a little, he made a look that could only be defined as inquisitive.

She really did love him. Call it instantaneous love, her crush that she had held onto for much longer than necessary, but she felt something for this sandy-haired drug dealer of hers. The way his light brown eyes almost seemed like a rushing sand dune in the right lack of light. Or the way that he had subconsciously reduced their distance from their walk, train ride, to now standing inches apart.

What kind of a person was he to show kindness to an annoying first year, taking her under his wing for an entire week. Solving emotional worries, relieving anxieties of where to sit or who to talk to, making her feel at home in a place that had decidedly rejected her before it even got to know her.

Maybe he could be her guide to accomplishing her dreams. The kind of dreams where a person falls in love and then magically, as if almost impossibly, stays in love. Konoha could be that for her. She just needed him to give her that opportunity.

“Wait for me, one more year, once I graduate. Let’s date.” She grabs his hand, and he lets her. She clears her throat a little, “Let’s give love a shot?”

“I think I’d like that a lot. It’s a deal.”

Dreams aren’t reality. Because sometimes reality is better than a dream.

She was chewing away at a piece of literature, trying to dissect Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams novel for her Sleep Science class. Becoming a Sleep Scientist wouldn’t do much for her own horrible sleep schedule if she wanted to make it through her Doctorate successfully. Despite Konoha telling her that sleeping was important for her well-being, she had the tendency to ignore what he said sometimes- it would only be one more all-nighter anyway.

He’s asleep in their bed, nuzzled into her pillow and not his own. He’s wearing one of her hoodies to bed, her favorite one from high school that had been two sizes too big.

The beige highlighter reminds her of Konoha, and she has to rip her eyes away from him to get back to her book.

Work at the pharmaceutical company had been long, especially with the rolling out of their new drug the past few weeks. Konoha was the head of the project and needed to be at work almost twice as much, even though he felt bad leaving her alone in their apartment for long intervals of time. He always brought home bagels and an apology disc, of a movie she had been wanting to watch, for her to add to her collection of physical copies of movie CDs.

Their shared shelving system was an agglomeration, her DVDs and books on one side of the shelf, and then his photos, astrology novels and miniature telescopes on the other side.

When she accidentally dropped the highlighter onto the floor, Konoha’s head shot up. It was a mess of dirty blond hair from sleeping.

“Aki, go back to sleep.” She coaxed.

“No, it’s cold when you’re not here.” He turned around and opened his arms to put emphasis on his point. “I’m basically a snowman right now.”

She closed her book, tucking the bookmark in. Slinking her way from the desk to the bed, only to slump into his arms and hug him tightly.

“Much better.” He slides over to his side so she can lay out on the bed more comfortably, and she brings her legs to lay on the bed. “I’m all warm now, thanks to you.”

Sometimes a dream is just a girl with the boy who made her feel seen.

Other times a dream is a boy who finally finds someone to let him feel a little more happy everyday.

i love haikyuu i wish volleyball was real :(

this is so funny 😭😭😭

Gojo is the typa guy who would listen to Karma on repeat just because he's Gojo

The Voice, Part 1/2

VoiceActor!AU. Nanami Kento is the most acclaimed and beloved voice actor of his generation. When the mysterious woman of his dreams is swept away from him in a moment of passing fates, will he ever find her again?

Full credit to @delirious-donna for dropping this into my head fully formed.

The next part will be all smut. No apologies.

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It began with anime; the first embers of your gentle obsession sparked to life, and you felt like the woman who had discovered fire. The voice. His voice.

You were not the only one, you were sure, as you diligently bought audiobooks in his voice, the words steeping in whiskey and smoke; played games with his voice threaded to the soul of a character; watched his voice brought to life on screen, and his characters were tinged with gold.

He was faceless; Nanami Kento, the most beloved voice actor of your generation, was a man of mystery, preferring to stay out of the limelight with stubborn insistence. You did not mind. His voice was enough, for you, soothing loneliness, companionable and smooth. It balmed the sores of your soul.

News outlets hunted for him. People gave up family members and colleagues, touting them as the owner of the voice belonging to Japan's beloved master of the spoken word. You knew they were wrong. Again, you didn't mind. Your obsession held no possession; there was no bite, no ownership.

You simply allowed the dulcet tones of a stranger to lick you to sleep every night. You simply dreamed of knowing him better. You simply dreamed of his voice, guiding you through your peak. In all other ways...you were perfectly 'normal'.

Heading to work in Tokyo snow, you caught yourself slipslid into the downstream of Tokyo commuters, flowing into Shibuya's subway. The crowd undulated in one direction, shoulder to shoulder, and you squirmed through, pressing through the sweat-coffee-toothpaste-cologne miasma until you claimed a spot on a train.

The people packed around you. Your back pressed to another, much broader, much firmer back, and you were quietly thankful for the stability it afforded you. As the train moved, and you wobbled, crying out, you felt the back stiffen and move with you, as if to anchor you. You were, again, grateful, and had to be so without words, corseted by societal expectation.

The train clatter-clattered through the twisting wormholes of the underground, dipping in and out of orange lights. You had just begun to relax, chilly from the morning snow, warmed by the back against yours.

The train screeched to a halt, halfway through a tunnel. The bodies around you cried out as one, shunting forwards with inertia. You heard a grunt of surprise from the back against yours, rumbling through you, a brick wall as you fell against him with a squeak. The cries died out. A few solitary noises of complaint...until the lights went out.

Plunged into darkness, you felt the collective heartrates rise, slow and mumbling, while yours rose exponentially with your breaths. You felt a chilly sweat down your spine, trapped in the dark in a tin can with nobody and no-one and you only barely heard the tannoy announcement apologising for a fault on the line and you'd be moving in a few minutes but it was a few minutes too long and--

"Hey. You're okay. Take my hand."

The back pressed to yours rumbled; it was the only thing that told you you hadn't imagined the voice. The voice. That voice. Other voices around you began to chat, too, societal norm sidetracked by shared peril.

"Just take a deep breath. With me. Take my hand."

Long fingers in the dark. A broad, warm hand clasping yours. You clung, reaching your other hand back to clasp his other hand, too. You stood like this, back to back, both hands plaited, while you gasped, hyperventilating.

"It won't be long. We'll get moving again. You're safe. You're safe."

You couldn't catch the tears before they fell, tumbling down your cheeks as you hiccuped, and apologised.

"--God I'm-- so stupid I-- I'm so sorry-- thank you--"

"You're not, I...I feel it too. It's alright. It's alright."

You couldn't believe what you were hearing, absolutely certain to your very core that this man must be the very same man you listened to every evening. The secret voice. The man of mystery. You felt yourself calm, dreamlike as you spoke, stroking a thumb against his palm. You respected his choice for anonymity.

"...are you okay?"

A pause. You felt his back stiffen against yours.

"I'll...be fine. I avoid the subway, usually, but work necessitates it today. I have no logical reason to hate it. There's no reason I should be scared."

You smiled, soft. "A phobia isn't logical. You can't reason your way out of it." You bowed your head, eyes closed in the dark, your heart bounding, unable to pretend you weren't hopelessly, ruinously in love with this man, now you held his hands in your own in some bizarre twist of fate. "And...thank you."

"No. No...thank you." He paused, tapping his fingers against your hand, jittery with his own restrained terror. His words tumbled, unbidden. "Shit, I hate it down here."

"Trauma from an alternate universe or something, huh?" You joked, gentle as you held him, now. "Just...think of it as night-time. In your bed. Calm, and dark, and warm."

"...not usually this many people in my bed--"

"--oh really? There are in mine--"

He laughed hard, kindling a blush in your cheeks, and you rested your head back against his shoulder, glad he couldn't see you. He spoke again, his voice smiling.

"Well if you keep picking up strangers in trains..."

"You call it 'picking up strangers in trains'. I call it 'Tuesday'."

The theatre masks flipped, comedy overtaking tragedy, your worlds reduced to just each other, in the dark. You talked, and talked, all easy banter and comfort. You raised his hand in yours, and he felt a tug in his gut as you accidentally wiped the tears from your cheeks with his plaited finger instead of yours.

"Using strangers as handkerchiefs now?"

"I haven't had my coffee yet, hush."

"What's your usual order?"

"I like a vanilla latte. Why?"

"So I know what to get you."

He felt a matchstrike of success as you squirmed against his back, pressing your plaited hands to your forehead. He let his eyes drift shut, sick of being lonely, maybe ready to let a stranger into his odd, isolated little world--

"...I'd love that. Thank you. And...your voice. I--"

The train rattled to life through the pitchcast tunnel, and he grunted, bracing himself as you fell against him again. He felt a spark of happiness, a lurching joy that you'd mentioned his voice, perhaps knowing who he was all this time but treating him like any other person and shit we can go out for coffee but is it too soon no no she'll respect the secret I've got a feeling she will--

The train lurched again, in the dark, and he heard you squeak as you fell away from him, the startled thump-thump and cries of strangers shuffling in this tin can. A white-orange light appeared at the end of the tunnel, the train rushing towards it, but his hands were empty.

You scrambled to get up from the floor, nobody's hands reaching down for you like his had. As the train bathed in light, you were hidden, masked by legs and bags, and you couldn't see each other, not that you'd know who you were looking for. You rummaged frantically, to get up, get up, come on you silly bitch, and you couldn't, and the train stopped, the doors opening with a tiny announcement.

You opened your mouth to call his name-- and clamped it shut, immediately, face twisted in conflict.

You managed to stand, and turn just enough to see a sea of black hair with pink tips and brown hair with ombre highlights and honey-blond undercut hair neatly parted and a head above the rest and no hair all shaved off and--

The teeming crowd pushed you off the train. You left your heart behind with a man who could not pick you from the crowd, despite his frantic eyes hunting, and hunting and hunting.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Nanami Kento's stomach ached with lost potential. Sat in his chair at the recording studio, the staff there sworn by non-disclosure agreements, Kento read the same line over, and over, and over.

No amount of practice could inject it with enthusiasm, and he snapped, growling his way through the line and pressing his forehead into one broad palm. His agent piped up.

"Oh! That one was good. Stick with that--"

"No, no..." Kento rumbled, miserable. "Not like that. It doesn't suit the character, I just...I'm not in the best frame of mind today."

Kento felt dirty even admitting it aloud, a consummate professional who laid aside his true feelings for those he needed to portray in recording. His agent's eyebrows flicked up, and he sat beside Kento, nervous.

"That's...not like you, Nanami." Ijichi eked out, hesitant. "What's wrong?"

Kento slopped his script onto the side, hands plaited in his lap. He knew before knowing that the only way he would be able to find you, was exercising his own influence over the media world. If Nanami Kento was looking for someone, the whole of Japan would stop to help him find them. And, yet, it was risky. And dirty. And risked scaring you away.

There was no way you could know each other on the quiet Tokyo subway system, unless he decided to go completely gung-ho and stand at a station with a sign looking for The Woman In The Dark Who Held My Hands On The Train And Made Me Laugh which is fucking mental frankly but not mad if it works and it's worth the risk I think I want to know her want to know--

"Ijichi." Kento's agent perked up, his tired face pinched in servitude. "I have a favour to ask. A big one."

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

After that morning, listening to Nanami Kento's recordings simultaneously fell flat and elated you, all at once. While their power spun gold through you, with the backdrop of real life connection with him, that peak then crashed, falling into the despondency and despair of knowing you would never have that intimacy with him again.

You couldn't approach him, in any form. Even his agency was a closely guarded secret, and anyone who did find out was swiftly dealt with, you were sure. Hordes of fans fawned over him. You were thrown into obscurity by the sheer volume of the clamouring masses.

The darker, self-loathing part of you seeded the doubt that he'd even want to hear from you. You swung between certain misery that you had imagined such intimate chemistry, and elation over the significance of the moment you had shared.

Weeks passed. You looked at every stranger on the train, sometimes trying to catch their eye, as if that gold thread would connect between your pupils. Any man could be him. All you knew was his voice, the touch of his skin, and the feel of his hands in yours.

One morning, alone and queuing for coffee, it all changed. Your jaw dropped to see the news splashed across a Tokyo billboard, its newscaster silently helped along by subtitles.

The voice of Japan, Nanami Kento, searches for mystery woman!

You froze, your whole body blooming into fine botanicals, brought to life like a greenhouse in summer.

You abandoned your place in the queue, stumbling out of the coffee shop doorway with a little dingaling from the bell above you. Wide-eyed, your shoulder bag dropped to the floor, and you stood, famous in anonymity, caressed by the eyes of millions and none all at once.

**Are you Nanami Kento's mystery woman?**

**Hundreds have already come forward, claiming to be the one!**

**The search begins!**

You grabbed your phone, clamouring to access the same newscast on your screen, shoving your headphones in with trembling fingers. The voice of the anchorwoman fed into you.

"...have already come forward, and Nanami Kento is yet to find his mystery woman!

When the subway train he was travelling on was plunged into darkness, Nanami-san reports talking to a woman who was separated from him when the train began moving again.

Now, unable to stop thinking about her, he has recorded her this message:"

You clenched within, clutching at your chest to hear Nanami Kento, speaking to you again, and your eyes filled with tears, threatening to spill over in one great hiccup.

"I'm not sure how to begin this. To...the woman who held my hands on the train. I'm not ready to leave it there. We had more to say to each other, and I know that you knew who I was the whole time. Knowing that you put that aside, to treat me with kindness, as a stranger...is more important to me than you know. I know you'll be able to answer questions that no other woman can."

His voice paused, and you pressed your fingers to your lips, now weeping in silence in the bustling Tokyo street. He spoke just once more.

"I owe you a coffee. Please...come forward."

As the recording ended, you gasped, a great breath of relief leaving your lungs. Your throat burned with having held your breath throughout his whole message to you. A helpline number rolled across your screen, and you spoke it aloud to yourself, still sniffling, shaking fingers punching it into your screen, until you looked up, and froze at your own reflection in the window.

You felt a familiar pang of disgust with spotting yourself reflected back at you. Your face was puffy, tearstained and mascara-smudged. You drank down every flaw, feeding it into the same positive feedback-mechanism that had fed your own self-loathing for years. Your finger stopped, hovering over the call button.

Nanami Kento was sure to be disappointed. Your hand slumped, your phone resting against your thigh, a number uncalled. Your heart squeezed so tightly, your chest hurt. You deleted the number off your screen. You abandoned your coffee. You walked to work, unable to face another subway journey, knowing for certain he wouldn't be there.

You were sure another woman would come forwards, able to convince him that she was the woman he was searching for.

Between recordings, Kento hurried back to the phone, set up exclusively for him in the studio. He answered call, after call, after call, coolly rejecting woman, after woman, after woman.

You were inimitable. Kento waited. Your call remained uncalled.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Another week passed. Kento's lines went unrecorded as he worked his way through thousands of calls, each one a fake, a phoney, desperately trying to fit their foot into a glass slipper not made for them.

Pulling at his hair, shrunken by despair, Kento slumped with his face in his hands. He felt a coffee nudged in front of him. Ijichi sat beside him, always with a baseline air of nervousness.

"Have you considered," Ijichi began, considerate, "that she's worried about how she looks?"

Kento lifted his face out of his hands, staring into the silent recording booth, fingertips steepled against his chin. His voice dragged, heavy with the effort of another conversation he didn't want to be having.

"I have." Kento responded, thoughtful. "I just...hoped it wasn't that. I'm also aware that...perhaps she doesn't want to meet me, like I want to meet her." Kento paused again, the silence gravid between he and Ijichi, Ijichi's eyes downcast as he listened in concern.

"I should think that's unlikely." Ijichi replied, following Kento's gaze into the recording booth. "If what you've told me is accurate, and I'm sure it is, you two shared an irreplaceable moment. There's no way she could have missed the news, it's the talk of Japan. You felt no ring on her finger, so she's probably neither engaged, nor married. She hadn't finished speaking to you, before you were interrupted."

Kento listened, eyes sinking closed, jaded and exhausted. His hope rotted with rejection, his efforts rust-nibbled and tainted with the embarrassment of pouring himself into the open, vulnerable as he had never been before-- except, with you.

Kento was forced to face that, for whatever reason, you did not want to find him. Despondent, his belly full of rocks, he eyed the connecting cable at the back of the phone.

"I don't think I can handle another woman pretending to be her, Ijichi. I think...I think I'm done. She deserves peace and quiet. I think it's time to call it a day."

Ijichi made the briefest noise of despair, moving to stop Kento as Kento grabbed the cord in the back of the phone, ready to cut it off.

The phone rang.

Ijichi's eyes flicked to Kento, eyebrows rising up to his hairline.

"...just one more?"

"...I don't know, Ijichi. I'm tired of the disappointment. This has been a fool's errand, some horrible wild goose-chase. I'm supposed to be a professional, and I'm so behind on my recordings, and--"

"They can wait. Just one more."

Kento sighed. The phone continued to ring, and with one huge hand, Kento silenced it by picking up the receiver.

You held your breath, sheltered from a storm in a phone booth, chilly with the wet and anticipation. Closing your eyes in the Tokyo nightlights, you could almost be in the tunnel again. You clapped a hand over your mouth to hear his voice, weary and hesitant, but him.

"...hello?"

You gasped, a single great sob bursting forth. Silence on the other end of the line, as you babbled, sniffling, almost drowned out by the slamming of the rain against the glass.

"I-its me, it-it's me. I'm...I'm the woman from the train."

Silence again. A deep, uncertain rumble.

"If I buy you a coffee...what would your order be?"

"A vanilla latte."

Silence again, an ember of hope. "I called it 'picking up strangers on trains'. You called it--"

"'Tuesday'." You laughed, bubbling through your tears.

Kento clasped a hand over his mouth, his face crumpling, his eyes welling up as roses bloomed in his mind. He took one deep shuddering breath, blowing out before his chest could burst with the anticipation.

"Instead of a handkerchief, you used..."

You laughed, and Kento's face finally cracked, laughing himself as a couple of tears crept down his sharp cheekbones.

"...your hand. I used your hand. Rudely."

"Oh, god. Oh my god. It's you."