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She remembers one day in preschool, where one of the teachers pulled out a large, laminated sheet of paper, mostly gray with a burning spot in the corner.
"This is a sheet of most of the colors in the rainbow." The teacher explained, looking around at the crowd of young children. "Most of you can only see one color, and the color you see is the eye color of your soulmate. Today, I want you to point out which color on this paper looks different from the rest. I'll come around the class."
Aoika watched the teacher walk around, kids pointing at the gray spots of the paper, and the teacher will smile and go "That's called Green, dear," or "Wow, that's a pretty shade of Pink!" When she gets around to Aoika, she's smiling, and she holds out the paper.
"What do you see?" The teacher asks kindly. Wordlessly, Aoika points at the corner that's so vibrant it almost burns to look at. The teacher looks at where she points, and grins. "Red, a very bright red."
Red. A strange word for a painful color. "What do you see?" Aoika asks, genuinely curious.
"I saw Dark Blue. Sort of like this." The teacher points at a darker patch of gray. "When you're able to see color, it's like the sky at night." It must be hard to explain colors to a kid who can't see them.
"And my Soulmate?" Aoika knows the teacher can see colors, she managed to find her soulmate years ago, so that means she'll know what color Aoika's eyes are. "What do they see?" She can tell her own eyes are light shade of gray, like her skin, and unlike her hair, which is an unfortunate mix of dark gray and red.
The teacher looks at her eyes, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Pale Yellow." She finally says. "Almost white, I think."
Aoika is in her late teens when the Dark Nebula Organization finds her and her Cygnus, and offer her a job as a trainer. She's in charge of the younger recruits, children of the higher-ups who are somehow the absolute worst at blading? Beyblade wasn't such a big thing where she was growing up, a smaller town that's only just now getting a bey stadium built. But Aoika had fallen in love with the sport when she saw it on television, and spent months saving up to see a battle in person. Cygnus was a gift her parents got her for her fifteenth birthday, a year before she ran away and attempted to strike out on her own.
It seems to have gone well, she thinks, looking down at the check in her hands that's worth so much more than she's ever had before. Nebula may be a shady place, with very nebulous (hah) goals and very strange bosses, but who cares?
It's two years later, when she's nineteen, that she meets her unofficial soulmate. Unofficial, because when their eyes meet nothing happens, and after she gets to know him as a coworker, and later as a friend, she starts to wonder if this whole Soulmate thing is really all that its cracked up to be.
The two of them are standing opposite sides of the stadium, launchers raised and beys raring to go. His bey had hints of red in it, both in parts and in spirit, though in actuality its spirit is more of a pink color.
"Three!" Aoika grins.
"Two!" He responds, face mirroring hers, confident and gleeful.
"One!" He's covered in shades of gray and black, but Aoika thinks she's never seen anything more beautiful.
Their beys fly, Cygnus taking its place in the center, and Dark Wolf circling around the stadium, already going for the attack. Cygnus is able to take whatever Wolf throws at it, and return it with a vengeance, but Wolf is wily and slippery, normally evading Cygnus's parries. The dance is both familiar and exhilarating, and Aoika stares into Mizuchi's gray eyes, and decided then and there that whoever she's waiting for can wait for eternity.
Daidouji is late to dinner. Aoika isn't mad, after he was promoted in the Dark Nebula, he's been coming home later and later, having become the assistant director of the WBBA. Its fine, Aoika tells herself, sitting at a table and watching her children eat their chicken nuggets. Nekketsu and Reiji were the lights of her life, both with red hair that she could barely see, and bright smiles that made leaving the organization worth it.
The front door opens, and Daidouji walks in, haggard and eye bags prominent. He's wearing a red tie, something Aoika bought him a few months back.
"How was work?" Aoika calls out, frowning.
Daidouji groans, shambling towards the kitchen, and sitting next to Reiji, who was in his highchair. "They want me to scout out a village in the mountains somewhere."
"For a stadium or something?" Aoika winces as Nekketsu gets ketchup on her shirt, completely unaware of the mess she's making.
Her partner sighs, removing his glasses and rubbing at his temple. "No, the population is barely above a hundred. Its supposedly a Bey Village? And they want me to investigate what types of bladers live there, or something. I'm sure I'll get more details later, bur today they were frustratingly vague."
"Hmm." Aoika's knee is bouncing. What is a bey village, she wonders. How is it any different from a regular village with beybladers? "When do you leave?"
"Next week." Daidouji smiles, exhaustion lining his face. "Will you be okay?"
"I'll be fine, and so will the kids." Aoika promises, getting to to her feet and beginning to clean up dinner. "Now, go get changed. Nekketsu might want to play with you later."
She's alone when her daughter comes home from school in tears. She kneels down, wrapping her arms around her baby, wondering what in the world could have made her child so sad.
"I can't see a color." Nekketsu hiccups into her shoulder, small hands gripping her shirt. "The teacher showed us colors and I couldn't see any of them!" They both stood there, arms wrapped around each other.
Soulmates were a… touchy subject in the Shiratori household, especially after Daidouji had found his soulmate in Koma Village, and left shortly after, taking Reiji and never contacting Aoika again. The argument the two had still haunts her at night.
"It was idiotic to think that this would last forever."
She wasn't idiotic. She was just…
Aoika tried her best to not take her grief out on her daughter. She may have avoided Beyblade and Soulmates like the plague, but she truly did try her best whenever Nekketsu brought those topics up.
"Maybe your soulmate has black or gray eyes?" Aoika did her best to comfort her daughter, ignoring the disgust that turned over in her gut.
Nekketsu shook her head. "But, but, I've seen it! The color! I couldn't see it on his papers, and he told me I didn't have a soulmate!"
"Your teacher said that?" Aoika scowled. At Nekketsu's answering nod, she scoffed. "If you didn't have a soulmate, then you would be seeing all the colors, not gray!"
"R-really?" Her daughter whispers, hopeful. Aoika nods, even though she's not actually sure if that was the truth. Sure, there were lots of people who say they've always seen color, but most people speculated that it was possible they met their soulmates as babies. Still, it was incredibly cruel for Nekketsu's teacher to say that to her.
"Where have you seen the color?" Aoika asks. Nekketsu immediately pulls away, running down the hallway and disappearing in her room. After a few moments and a couple worrying thuds, Nekketsu reappears, clutching tightly onto a near white shirt with thick, dark stripes.
"It's sort of like this!" She points at the stripes. "The stripes are still sort of gray, but sometimes when it sparkles I can see it!" Nekketsu turns to her mother, eyes expectant and happy.
"Dear…" Aoika chuckles. "I don't know what color that is." Nekketsu wilts, and she drops the shirt. "Maybe we can go to a craft store? They label their colors there."
Nekketsu gasps, tears long gone, and immediately jumps in excitement, pulling at Aoika's hands, impatiently dragging her out the front door.
"Let's go let's go let's go!"
It's hard to breath, now. She's barely awake for a minute at a time. Nurses come in, giving her medicines and taking her blood, hoping, one day, that they might be able to cure her.
Aoika knows she's done. There's no more life for her, she's coughing up blood and breathing no air. The hospital knows it. They're currently waiting for a doctor to come by and pull the plug.
Nekketsu is probably going to be sent to live with Daidouji. At least she'll be able to reunite with her brother. Aoika searched for her parents, when she first got sick. But sadly they had died a while ago, too old to live on.
It's fine. She hasn't even hit thirty yet, but its fine. There's a faint knock at the door, and a tall man walks in, looking down at his phone.
"Ms. Shiratori, I don't know if you're awake right now, but I'm—" He looks up as he speaks, and his eyes are red, bright and vibrant and burning. The world is already faint, and gray, and painful, but Aoika knows that if she could turn her head, the sky outside the window would be the most brilliant of blues. The doctor's face twists in pain, even as his gaze darts around in agonized amazement.
I'm sorry, Aoika can't say. She's already dead, already unmoving and still, just awake enough to rip away this strangers whole world.
God, I am so, so sorry.