1 Chapter 1: Prologue + The Painful Past (part 1)

- - - - prologue:

The red string of fate...

This is a string that ties your hand with your soulmate, there could be two strings, but that's on the uncommon-rare side, but is definitely possible.

The string looks like an average red thread, but is glossier, and can stretch as long as across the world.

There is no accurate time when you precisely are going to meet your soulmate or the age when you start seeing the string.

There definitely were people who couldn't see it, but that made them 0.5% of people who couldn't see it from birth. The next were the people whose soulmates were dead, this made up about 4.5% of the population; in some cases, the string redirects your soulmate, changing the person you are destined with. The next types of people are the ones who have given up on their soulmate, this makes up about 9.7% of the population; the people who have given up on their soulmate/soulmates will have a pretty hard life ahead of them, since blocking a soulmate requires a lot of effort, let me give you a step-by-step procedure:

1. First you have to take a blade or something that can cut your skin and place it next to you with a bottle of water, that has salt mixed in it.

2. Trace the string on your hand to find the spot with the knot, make sure that it's precisely there, then dab it with the saltwater and close your eyes and say "break." two-three times.

3. The third step is the hard one... You take the object that can cut you to the knot that you dabbed with saltwater, you only need a few drops of blood, but it's preferred to cut a "cross" on there.

4. Once you've done that, all you need to do is focus deeply, and the string you see will be gone...

This may be the method that is commonly used- and works...

But it also has a few tradeoffs for threesome/poly relationships, since two people can see the string... the third-string doesn't completely disappear, in fact, it turns close to invisible, but can be seen in the sunlight, glistening. The other tradeoff is that usually this fact is not shared with the public, so people do it anyway and the outcomes are not always good. The third tradeoff is that the other two individuals can easily sense the pain, or happiness of the person who shuts them off, but it can't be easily detected from where.

The final, but most important tradeoff is that the other two individuals can also experience the pain the other individual is feeling, ex. If the individual who has shut the other two, falls and bruises their knee- the other two individua𝘭s may experience the same pain at different low levels...

As I had mentioned earlier, threesome/poly relationships are uncommon or rare... Since the compatibility of the people can vary, they are easy to break up.

If the person who has stopped the relationship has emotional changes or loses focus, the string on all three of their hands tighten up twice, and if the person who stopped it regains focus on the string, everything changes to how it was before, except for the fact that the other two people can see the string for that period of time.

- - - -

[Tobio Kageyama]

Kageyama never really expected his soulmates to be them. He already knew from the moment Oikawa-san tried to punch him it wouldn't work, he also knew that Oikawa and Iwaizumi were soulmates, to begin with, he could see the glossy red string tieing them three together. The question that had always ringed him was that could they see the string back at that time? If he hadn't shut them off, would they have excepted him?

He got off his bed and grabbed the volleyball and began tossing it up and down, the thumps of the ball hitting the top wall gave vibration to his empty house. He sighed and stopped throwing the ball, and rolled her sleeve up, and removed the wristband that covered the scar left by the cross, and the other recent scars... he lived alone, it wasn't like his parents were dead- well one of them was, his mother.

His mother passed away in a car crash in Tokyo, he remembered rushing to the ER with his father when he had learned the news, he still remembered how his father's eyes were there sprinkling with the hope that his mother would survive... before the accident, I think that everyone remembers Kageyama being happy, having good grades, optimistic, sympathetic, and had the will to be included in everything.

Just like his father, he also had the small glimmer of hope that his mother would survive, but that was all washed away, when he saw the doctor with apologetic eyes walk out of the ER, he clearly remembered what the doctor had said, "I'm really sorry for this news... Mr. Kageyama, but I'm afraid nothing can be done to save your wife..." he remembered the painful expression his father was reflecting, "can I at the least see her for the l- last t- time?" the last two words ached him whenever he thought of them.

The doctor had hesitated but nodded, once in the ER, his father hadn't even looked at Tobio, instead, he rushed in the ER and kneeled next to his wife, he held her hand and sobbed while saying, "t- the string is d- disappearing-" he stuttered before his wife pressed her cold finger against his lips and motioned for Tobio to step into the room with her other pale hand, "I love you guys, my king, and our prince, I- I l- love you so f-fucking m-much..." the hand she used to motion toward Tobio was dropped, Tobio's father, leaned in to kiss his wife, at first she kissed him back, then she breathes turned shallow and the kiss was broken, and that's when Kageyama made the mistake he still regrets.

The tears in his eyes built up and began to fall, then he said something that he still regrets, "I h-hate you m-mum! H-how could y-you l-l-leave me and f-father l-like that!" saying that he had run out of the ER, leaving his dying mother behind, who hugged his father and sobbed until her breath got shallower and could not be traced... Kageyama had run into the garden behind the hospital and sat down next to the small stream surrounded by trees, making it hard for him to be traced, he stayed there breathing normally, just letting his eyes do the work for him, he stayed motionless and quietly listened to the stream's flowing water... This was a few months after he had shut his soulmates off; when he was about 12 years old.

Life got even harder, he frequently lost focus and re-saw the red string, this tired the heck out of him, and on top of that, his grades started slipping, he became more "snappy" and "bossy" whenever someone would miss his sets, he'd yell at them, especially to his friend named Kindaichi. This eventually got him benched in between the middle school's volleyball game since the whole team decided that they didn't want him there, he didn't cry when got benched, instead, he was a bit too shocked to realize his mistake, yet he kept his emotionless stare and watched his team get beaten.

Tobio had one trigger though, the name "king" brought back the memories of his father, who god knows where is, but he knew that he was alive since every month he would receive money from him, to pay the rent and bills. There was never a location from where it came from. But there was a promise he kept to himself, that he would forgive his father if he ever met him again.

He never really cried, as much as he wanted to, he would suppress his emotions as much as possible, giving off an emotionless aura. He always tried to remember the last time he cried; it always led back to his mother's death - and before that, the time when his grandfather had passed away - and about two years before that, when his older sister left for the university.

It was triggering of course, given the fact that he started suppressing his emotions; once, after school, during his third year, Kindaichi had pinned him to the wall and asked him, "what happened to the King we used to know? The one that would laugh at small things? The one that would be persistent in chasing his dream?"

He's dead, Kageyama had thought.

Occasionally his thoughts would stray off thinking if it was his fault his mother died... since she was the one who had decided to buy him a new volleyball along with the groceries, this is relevant because they usually shopped nearby, but his mother decided on going to buy him a volleyball along with a Volleyball jersey which had AOBA JOHSAI written on it... this is what had impacted his choice of choosing High Schools, Aoba Johsai never rejected him, instead he just changed his decision and went to Karasuno.

Ironically, he remembered a conversation he had had with his cousin and grandfather about fate. He remembered his grandfather laughing when his dark-haired cousin asked the old man about fate; with the cigarette creating small grey clouds, his grandfather had answered, "Fate is defined as forces outside of your control that make things happen, the supposed force, principle, or power that predetermines events."

Kageyama was never the type of person who easily was able to remember what people looked like, probably this is what caused him to forget how his cousin looked, other than the basic fact that dark hair ran in the family. "So you finding and falling in love with your soulmate is inevitable?" His cousin had asked.

With a soft sweet voice, his grandfather had responded, "perhaps so. But not all things in life are sugar, majority of them are sugarcoated; what I want to say is that it doesn't always guarantee that your relationship will be smooth-sailing."

He closed his eyes, rolled his sleeves back into place, and just thought of how he could make things up with the tiny tangerine, he was just practicing in the gym when an orange-haired kid came up screaming, and the next thing they know is that he is serving and the boke misses, knocking off the principal's toupee; then they were kicked out of the gym to "get along." He opened his eyes and closed them again and tried to drift off to sleep, tomorrow was going to be a hard day for him...

- - - -

Thank you for reading

1817 words.