Chapter Text

Across the centuries, the soulbound had manifested in ever-changing ways. This supernatural force, running throughout the universe and connecting the fate of those born intended to spend their life together, had always been known for adapting to the customs of the lands and staying updated to the times.

In ancient China, where the economy was famously characterized by the production of silk, an invisible red thread, tied to the ankles, was meant to lead a set of soulmates to their first encounter. In the mystical atmosphere of medieval Europe, soulmates would meet in the realm of dreams before chancing upon one another in their waking hours.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, globalization and the advent of the internet had completely revolutionized the mechanism; whether you lived in Beijing or Paris, the odds were that you would discover the identity of your perfect match thanks to a new unprecedented method. When you became mutuals with your soulmate on social media, a shower of digital confetti would burst on your screen and both your blogs would get deleted. The experts said that the termination of one’s account was meant to encourage the two parties involved to seek each other in real life, instead of relying on long-distance communication. As for the parties involved, they often lamented the impracticality of this expectation, as many of them did not have the means to move permanently or to travel with frequence, so much that it was predicted that the soulbound would once again alter its way of manifesting itself in the course of a few years.

Despite the forecasted adjustment, a whole generation was nevertheless finding itself operating under the described rules and it was to that generation that four-time consecutive figure skating world champion Victor Nikiforov belonged.

At the age of twenty-six, after a night spent together in Sochi, dancing and laughing, at the annual banquet held to celebrate the end of the Grand Prix Final, Victor Nikiforov had followed fellow competitor Yuuri Katsuki on the popular multimedia blogging platform Bluehll and his account had got deleted.

Having Victor at the time more than two hundred thousand followers, the deletion of his blog hardly went unnoticed. It was a matter of seconds before the logical question surfaced in his tag and a matter of minutes before it starred in the headlines of news outlets. “Has long-time bachelor Victor Nikiforov finally found his soulmate?” The press asked, already spurring their readers to guess their identity.

The world champion remained silent.

When Victor had first returned to Saint Petersburg, his hometown and training site, the day after the end of the Grand Prix Final and the banquet, he had wasted no time before he started researching the charming performer with whom he had got better acquainted the previous night. He dropped on the couch, with his pet poodle cuddled on his legs and his laptop open, then entered the other skater’s name on the search bar. He had of course been aware of Yuuri Katsuki as a rising star from Japan and he had admired the graceful ways in which his body moved along with the music, but they had never found each other one against another in the same competition and little he had known of the his engaging personality. Although, at first, Yuuri appeared to be quite shy, he had soon revealed to be a smart, sweet, funny and decidedly festive individual and the night had yet to come to a conclusion when Victor realized he was on his way to develop a huge crush for the guy.

Although they hadn’t really had the opportunity to be introduced and talk to each other during the competition, they had immediately hit it off on the very last day, when Victor had joined Yuuri in a playful dance-off between the skaters informally held in the middle of the banquet room. When the show had become too wild for the other attendees and they had become too tired for dancing, they had relocated to a calmer corner in the balcony, where they had chatted about their love for figure skating and their appreciation for dogs, poodles in particular. Yuuri had confessed, with a timid smile, of having been a fan of Victor since the latter’s junior years. On Yuuri’s initiative, they had held hands looking at the stars and the city lights below them. Yesterday night had been a beautiful night.

A couple of hours was spent rewatching all of Yuuri Katsuki’s available programs and another couple scrolling through the contained amount of entries on his Bluehll blog. Yuuri’s posts where few, but informative, mostly pertaining to figure skating, music or gaming. Typing his name on the search function also returned a collection of broken-link sourced screenshots, which revealed a tendency on Yuuri’s part to remove shorter, wittier remarks.

The next stage was to click on that rectangular grey button bearing the word ‘Follow’. Even in his mindlessness, Victor was filled with trepidation, as if he could subconsciously anticipate the weight of the life-altering action he was about to execute. Still, on a conscious level, his thoughts were very distant from the concept of soulmates and very focused on the memory of Yuuri Katsuki’s soft face, so that, when he eventually pressed the finger on the left side of the mouse, he was in fact extremely surprised when he was redirected to his dashboard and a bunch of colourful confetti started covering the page. After a few moments, a message appeared on screen:

“Congratulation, your blog has been deleted!”

Under the message stood “Next” as the only option, which Victor proceeded to confirm, finding himself at the Bluehll login page, unable to log back. The link to his profile was empty and his personal email address resulted also available for registration; the entirety of his blog was gone.

Victor was more baffled than anything. Fingers in his hair, he raised from the couch to retrieve his phone and see if changing device would allow him to access his blog, to no avail. What had just happened? He was already preparing make a new account to contact Bluehll’s staff when he remembered that that was how the soulbound elected to manifest itself these days. Three decades ago people would be born with the first sentence their soulmate would say to them tattooed on their wrist, but those kind of birthmarks had gradually started to disappear and this was what his generation turned up to have to deal with.

But did any of this matter? The beautiful, charming Yuuri Katsuki was his soulmate and they had found one another. They were made for one another, to skate together on the smooth ice and turn their feet at the rhythm of the music, their hearts beating in synch. Compared to this prospect, the loss of a few pictures, which had no doubt been reblogged thousands of times by his followers, was of no consequence.

The revelation had suddenly got him hungry and dizzy; soup is what he needed to think through the next steps. He went to the kitchen and laid out the cookware and the ingredients. This would be simple. He would have to move to Japan, Victor determined while chopping the potatoes, possibly next spring, after the World Championships, when he was planning to take a year off from competitive skating. He could become Yuuri’s coach, as the two of them had merrily joked the night before. All that remained to do now was waiting for the soup to be ready and getting in touch with his intended.

Except he could not do that, with both their accounts deleted. Victor did not hesitate to create another one, but he had checked and double-checked, and Yuuri and not remade his own account yet. It was possible that Yuuri was at the moment unable to connect to the internet or that he had fallen asleep due to the after-effects of the previous week’s demanding activities. Or maybe Yuuri had just the kind of romantic disposition which preferred to respect the decisions taken by the soulbound and forgo his presence on social media. In any case, there still was no need to panic; after escorting Yuuri to his hotel bedroom and before parting ways from him at the door, Victor had saved his own number on Yuuri’s phone and left with the promise of being contacted once they had returned to their respective countries. When his soulmate would get around to calling him, they would be able to discuss their bond and arrange another meeting.

Victor filled his poodle’s bowl with a fresh portion and sat at the table to enjoy his lunch, basking in the hope of a future filled with love and companionship.

Later that day, his messenger apps erupted in a flow of ‘Who are they?’s. Victor could not understand how they were not able to see who they were. Only one would do for him, still the concurrent disappearance of Yuuri’s smaller blog went largely unnoticed, at least as far as western media was concerned. Only a few, sparse fringe observers correctly theorized on the identity of his soulmate, but not enough for the news to be picked up on a larger scale.

Despite the unending stream of notifications and requests for interviews, the day passed without any contact from Yuuri himself and Victor retired to bed with a tinge of worry staining the colours of his hopefulness.

The following morning, he could not wait any longer. He risked asking Christophe Giacometti, a common acquaintance and rival skater, who also had competed in the Grand Prix Final and attended the banquet, for Yuuri’s telephone number. The man promptly replied, “So that’s who they are ;)” and made no difficulties in releasing the information.

Victor sent a first, tentative text, keeping it light and avoiding any mention of the matter of soulmates, not wanting to pressure Yuuri more than the media surely already had. The message went unanswered.

Christophe assured Victor that he had given him the correct number and that Yuuri had replied to his meme within twenty minutes, not that long earlier. It was also Christophe’s opinion that, being Yuuri a shy person and a great fan of Victor’s, maybe he just needed some time undisturbed to process the situation.

Victor left it at that for a full week and tried to get on with his daily routine. He went to practice, he walked his dog and enjoyed himself with a bit of unnecessary shopping, until his own need to hear from Yuuri became consuming. Was his soulmate not interested in talking to him? Was Yuuri mad because he hadn’t backed up his gaming meta and all his carefully constructed analysis had been lost forever? These were possible explanations for his behaviour. Yuuri’s feelings regarding their bond were as important as his own and he wouldn’t push him into entering a relationship he didn’t want just because, one day, Bluehll shoot a bunch of confetti on their dashboards and erased their blog from its servers. He wouldn’t force him to be interested in him romantically or be interested in him at all, but soulmates were too important a business to risk losing your own due to a misunderstanding. He had to hear the truth from Yuuri’s mouth. With his heart in his throat, he tapped on Yuuri’s avatar in his telephone and initiated a phone call. The device fell from his shaking hand when he discovered that the one he was craving to spend his life with had his number blocked.

Still in his pyjama, Victor started frantically pacing is his living room, causing even his normally tranquil poodle to become alarmed. Again and again, he tried to make the call go through. He asked more than once for Chris to make sure he had been given the correct number.

Victor did not kid himself, only one reason could make his soulmate terminate the only line of communications they had left and that reason was that Yuuri wanted nothing to do with Victor. After all, what had Victor to offer beside his skills as a skater? He was no relationship material and that was also why he hardly had any friends. Yuuri had put up with his advances for one evening, but both of them had been a bit drunk and Yuuri had definitely been emotionally vulnerable. Any pleasantries that might have trespassed between them were not the reflection of his current wishes and evidently went over a boundary that his sober self wasn’t comfortable with.

He called in sick and skipped practice. That would have required changing out of his bedclothes and getting something substantial to eat, when he felt like channelling all of his residual the energy into sorting out the unexpected blow he had just received. Slouched on the couch, just like the day his blog got deleted, he held is phone to his heart and decided his next move. Some dozen clicks and thousands of words later, he had anonymously signed up to an array of forums for soulbond relationship advice. Some of the replies were optimistic, others less so.

“If he’s from another country, this must be the result of a cultural miscommunication.” A user said. “This is a bit behind-the-times, but, in my culture, the older person (or in some cases the person who followed last with the new system) is expected to first ask the parents of their intended for the permission to court them. Younger generations are known to dismiss this kind of formalities, then again you’ll always find some who have been raised in old-fashioned families.”

So, Victor researched Japanese traditions revolving around soulmates. The Wikipedia article was not as developed as he would have wished and there was a general lack of non-Japanese sources about the subject on the web. What he did understand was that soulmates were considered a very delicate topic, which was expected to go unspoken until the involved parties made an official declaration, and that, as for most Asian countries, the red string of fate remained, until recently, the primary method of finding your soulmate. The invisible scarlet threads often resurfaced to connect intended partners even in this technological age; it could be that Yuuri was just disappointed of not been allowed to experience the traditional custom of his nation in favour of a trivial, foreign and notoriously controversial process.

Victor’s eyes shot opened when they read the most creative take of the lot.

“It could be that you and your soulmate have set a precedent in the manifestation of soulbonds.” Veteran poster CiaoCiaoマーク said. “What, if from now on, not only people’s blogs get deleted when they become mutuals, but they also get each other blocked in all other platforms? Sometimes the Bond behaves just like a troll.”

Raised on his elbows, Victor quickly checked the list of his blocked contacts. There was none newer than last November’s unrelenting fan who had got hold of his personal number due to the carelessness of a previously trusted journalist. Surprisingly, he was a bit relieved. He couldn’t bear the thought of darling, sensitive Yuuri being left to believe that Victor had intentionally blocked him.

“Maybe he already had another soulmate who is not keen on sharing.” Another user supplied. This could also be true and the idea was so heart breaking that Victor impulsively closed all open applications and let the phone rest on his chest, the unsupportive black screen hidden front down.

He had barely eaten all day, but he was not hungry. The sun was setting behind Saint Petersburg’s skyline and the room was becoming increasingly darker with every minute that passed. As Victor tried to slow his erratic breathing, the low-battery phone lying flat on his chest began to bleep for a source of electricity, urging its owner to stop despairing about his lost love and to start taking care of the household chores.

For months thereafter, Victor carried on with his life, a lonely existence filled with bouts of depression and feelings of emptiness, redeemed only by the moving constancy of his dog’s affections. No wrongdoing on his part could justify the torture of being teased with the greatest joy a person could possibly experience in order for it to be dangled way from his grasp and for him to be left with the greatest sorrow: to love a soulmate and for your love to be an inconvenience to them.

On the top of it all, the whole world imagined him to be placed at some kind of personal high, while instead he was stuck at a personal low. The speculation surrounding his romantic life never ended and he never made an attempt to make it end, because approaching the subject was too painful and, even more so, doing it publicly. He didn’t share the url of his new blog outside of his closest circle. The loss of the platform he had used to communicate with his fans was, if nothing, the perfect excuse not answer any questions concerning his unfortunate circumstances.

One thing was left to him, the only thing he had ever been successful at and that was his skating. But skating too had now become bittersweet and inextricably tied to Yuuri. He could dance on the ice alone, but his heart yearned to dance with his soulmate, and, when he did dance alone, he could only do so with sadness.

His free skate for the season ‘Stammi Vicino’ acquired a whole new meaning; the Italian lyrics of the music he had specifically commissioned for his program, begging the singer’s beloved to stay close and not to leave, were now wretchedly relatable to his own situation. The aria turned into a cry against rejection, a plea for a connection. It could as well be said that on the last day of the World Championships a price was paid by the winner; with his desperate performance, Victor bought the most impactful presentation he had ever delivered. For the fifth consecutive year, a gold medal hung around his neck.

Yuuri had not qualified for the competition and was rumoured to be retiring. They might never see each other again.