𝐈 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐍𝐃

i | ad arbitrium

translation — "at will, at pleasure"
song recommendation — the old therebefore (acapella) by rachel zegler

" when i'm pure like a dove

when i've learned how to love

right here, in the old therebefore "

one year ago, 2022
new york city

Tapping her foot against the ground, she glanced at her watch for the hundredth time in the past ten minutes, which averaged to ten times per minute. Maddening to think about, but not for Kurosaki Tamaki. She was too wired up with anxiety to even consider something like that.

"Where the hell is that woman?" she muttered. "She was supposed to be here an hour ago."

"You worry about these things too much," a friendly voice chastised gently despite knowing Tamaki's character quite well by now. Sharon Vineyard smiled knowingly at the irritated look she received from her fellow blonde. "She was picking up her son and his friend, after all."

"Yeah, I already factored that in," Tamaki sighed. "But she should have been here by now. Wait." She paused, looking back at her watch with wide eyes. "Did she forget about daylight savings?"

"...She might have," Sharon agreed, resigned.

"Which means she's gonna speed," Tamaki continued, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a handheld police scanner that she always had on her person. She turned it on and was immediately alerted of a Jaguar speeding towards the theater, even going on two wheels for a minute. The two women shared exasperated looks. "I'm not bailing her out this time. She owes me for what happened in Kyoto three years ago."

Sharon just rolled her eyes goodnaturedly. "Yes, yes."

~ — — — ~

Soulmate. Noun. According to the dictionary, a soulmate is a close friend or romantic partner with whom one has a deep connection based on mutual understanding and acceptance.

Now, it wasn't truly accurate to say that Tamaki was ignorant about how soulmates worked. It's just that she didn't care about soulmates. She didn't like the thought of someone who supposedly existed to fill part of yourself. To her, because of her position, a soulmate was a weakness that could be exploited by her enemies. And, boy, did she have quite a few enemies.

The way of knowing who your soulmate is was the marks a person receives when they turn twelve years old. The number of marks equals the number of soulmates. Romantic soulmate marks were more elaborate than platonic soulmate marks.

Now, what did this mean for Tamaki? It meant she had to wear a lot of long-sleeve shirts and a lot of pants, neither of which she was against since she liked those kinds of clothes anyway. The reason why?

Tamaki had a lot of romantic soulmates, more than the average person. For the average person, a person has at most five platonic bonds and one or two romantic bonds. Tamaki has so much more than that on both counts.

One of the things about romantic soulmates is that after a certain point in the relationship, they can speak in each other's heads, allowing voiceless communication. They could communicate with each other, no matter the distance. However, the only way to achieve this part of the bond, the soulmates had to have...well, they had to have sex.