Chapter Text
Azumane Asahi had always known that his childhood friend was not to be messed with.
In kindergarten, instead of playing with dolls and doodling with the other girls, she’d read action manga by herself in the corner of the classroom. In elementary school, she’d play dodgeball with the boys and hit them with the ball so hard that they’d cry. When they got to middle school, Azumane saw her less and less since he joined the boys volleyball club. He did hear, however, about the numerous fights she’d get into. Not just verbal fights, they were physical fights. And she’d win these fights, too.
When they started going to high school, he heard that she’d joined the calligraphy club so she'd have an after school activity. But that didn’t stop getting her out of trouble.
Azumane usually took these hearsay half-heartedly, until one day in their second year of high school. On that day, he fully understood why the other kids from school gave his friend that formidable nickname:
Karin the Demon.
It was a chilly day in February. A new school year had begun not too long ago, but for students who were in sports clubs, practices were already in full throttle. Classes had finished for the day and Azumane was in the gym practicing volleyball with the other club members. He vaguely remembered seeing the girls from the calligraphy club in activity when he passed by their club room. Then, sometime during volleyball practice, he saw, from the open gym door, Karin and her friend—what’s her name again?—leaving school.
After about thirty minutes, volleyball practice was just wrapping up. It would have just been any other day, if it weren’t for Karin’s friend bombarding into the gym with tearful eyes.
“Azumane-kun!!” the girl shouted towards the gym while running with panicked steps.
A few of the other club members looked over at her curiously along with Azumane.
“Fujii-san?” said Sugawara, Azumane’s teammate, classmate, and friend. Ah, Fujii, that’s her name.
The girl named Fujii did not respond to Sugawara; she had come straight for Azumane. The worry in her eyes alarmed him.
“Azumane-kun, please come quick!” Fujii sputtered. “Karin-chan is in trouble!”
Before he could think, he was running alongside Fujii. He’d have to apologize to the other team members tomorrow for not helping with the gym cleanup. While running with Fujii, she filled him in about what happened.
A couple of sleazy-looking guys approached them and were being very pushy about taking them to dinner even after they said no. Before they realized it, the sleazy guys were backing them into a dark alley. Fujii was extremely nervous at that point, but Karin was calm. Karin told Fujii to make a run for it while she took care of the guys. Fujii resisted, but Karin reasoned that Fujii was a fast runner and could get help quicker. Reluctantly, Fujii listened to Karin. And somehow, the first person she could think of to ask for help was not the police, but Karin’s tall and scary childhood friend, Azumane Asahi.
The sun was beginning to set then, and Azumane was getting worried. Despite what other students called her, Azumane saw Karin as a small and slim girl. Sure, he was a big guy for his age, but that’s not the point.
When they finally got to the dark alley where Karin was supposed to be trapped, Azumane’s heart nearly jumped out of his rib cage from a deafening scream. Azumane realized a second later that the scream was so deafening because it happened right next to him. It was Fujii who screamed. And he’d expected to see something terrible to have happened to Karin for Fujii to scream like that, but Karin was standing right there in front of him.
What was really terrible was that the two sleazy-looking guys were twitching on the ground, groaning in pain. One of them had a black eye and the other was holding his nose while blood trickled down between his fingers.
Karin turned her head towards her friends. Her long black hair was a little disheveled. She herself had a single drop of blood on her cheek, but Azumane was sure that that was not her blood. The blood on her knuckles gave him that assumption.
“Yuuko-chan?” She addressed Fujii first, then her childhood friend. “Asahi?”
After that incident, Karin would get a week-long suspension from school and expelled from the calligraphy club. Fujii would live the day and tell of the horrifying scene of Karin, soaked in the color of blood by the red sunset, standing over the two guys like a demon.
Azumane had seen it with his own eyes and could see why his childhood friend got her nickname. And although he hadn’t spent as much time with her as when they were kids, he still had a shadow of a doubt.
He doubted that the friend he grew up with, Oniwa Karin, was actually a cruel person.