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An hates Wednesday mornings.
As part of the Disciplinary Committee, she’s required to stand near the gate of the school and write people up for disrespecting the dress code, arriving late and the like. Though it’s not the easiest job being the ‘good guy,’ she still follows through with her tasks the best she can. And if it means confronting an infamous group of delinquents from the all-girls school a few streets down every week, she does it, though unwillingly. It’s a routine, so much to the point that she checks her phone to see the time and awaits their arrival.
She’s wrapped up in a conversation with another classmate when they arrive that morning. “Ugh, it’s them again,” they say, looking past An’s shoulder. “Everyone's really fed up with that group of punks.”
An whips her body around. Surely enough, she hears the laughter she knows all too well. She takes her phone from her blazer pocket to see the time, and sure enough, it’s 8:30 AM as always. Groaning, she slowly turns back to her classmate. “Sorry, just a sec,” She tells them, pulling out her clipboard and angrily walking towards the crowd. It’s just another day on the job for her.
“Look who showed up again today!” She scolds, reaching the rest of the group, who collectively glares at her.
“And look who’s being teacher’s pet again.” One of them responds. An rolls her eyes—it was the lamest insult to ever grace human ears, and she could do miles better than that. But the rest of them snicker at the remark like they always do, except for one; a girl about the same height as her, with blonde hair cascading down her shoulders, shielding her eyes with a pair of sunglasses and covering herself with an oversized letterman jacket. Her fingers fiddle. She seems disengaged with what’s going on within the group and much more interested in the cars speeding down the street behind them. An detects this behavior from her in every encounter–it’s like she’s putting on an act, but doing the bare minimum to maintain it. That is about as far as An ponders on it, though.
“Listen, I don’t really care where you hang out, but can you go a few hundred meters away from here or something?” An begs, shaking her clipboard in annoyance.
The group strangely complies, as they typically do, but this time spits on the sidewalk in her direction before leaving. An physically cringes in disgust. She looks up in the sky and inhales sharply. Usually they don’t get to her, but for some reason that action of theirs hits a nerve. She turns around to look at the flock as they leave. The blonde girl with the sunglasses is looking back at her, but faces forward once An makes eye contact.
An’s eyes go to the ground, where she sees a school ID. She picks it up to determine who it belongs to. Based on the hair color, she realizes the owner is the girl that she locked eyes with the moment before. Azusawa Kohane, huh… she thinks to herself. She looks pretty cute in pigtails.
“Excuse me, wait!” An shouts, hoping to catch “Kohane’s” attention. “You dropped this!”
She turns around at the sound of An’s voice. A second passes by and she loses some of her composure, refusing to look at the other’s eyes again and snatching the card as quick as lightning. She runs back to the group as quickly as she ran to retrieve it.
After a few seconds of pure confusion, with thoughts such as how can someone look so tough one second yet run so cutely the next, An simply returns to her classmate she was previously speaking to.
—
She gets the chance to speak with this mysterious Azusawa Kohane six days later.
It’s evening, and the basketball game the long-haired girl is playing in is going smoothly for Kamiyama. She’s playing against Miyamasuzaka, and the energy that fills the room is intense, which hypes An up. The game reaches halftime, so she uses the opportunity as a bathroom break.
The adrenaline rush flowing through her veins steadily decreases when the group of delinquents from the visiting school brush past her, seemingly coming from the restroom. One is being carried by another on their back; she assumes they’re passed out. When she opens the door, she’s greeted by who she recognizes to be that girl, busy leaning over the running tap to notice An’s presence. Her knuckles are bleeding.
An immediately reacts. “Hey, are you okay?” she chirps, increasing the proximity between the two. She uses this opportunity to get a closer look at the girl’s hands; considering how many scars cover the skin, An assumes this is not her first time in this situation.
She finally looks up at An and gasps a little. There’s a bruise forming underneath her right eye that An was unable to see beforehand from her angle. She can finally see the color of her eyes up-close without her sunglasses on–they’re golden brown, like fresh honey. They’re as rich in color as they are sparkling under the flourescent lights. “I’m fine.” She mutters in a monotone voice, looking back down at her hands.
An instinctively grabs the girl’s wrist to determine how seriously injured this girl was, rotating it around to observe her wounds on her hands. The girl flinches; she tightens her wrist and pulls it out of An’s grasp.
Her overprotective nature takes over. “Did you get in a fight with them?” An asks, referencing the other delinquents.
“Don’t worry about it…” she murmurs to herself.
“Too late now,” An states. She gestures towards the door. “Let me take you to the nurse’s office, okay?” She asks, almost like a request. The blonde gives in and measly trails behind An.
As they walk down the hall, An takes the moment to introduce herself. She turns back to the girl. “Shiraishi An, you can call me An.” She immediately follows with, “You’re Azusawa-san, ri-.”
“Kohane.” She quietly corrects her. An nods, follows with a “got it,” and faces forward.
The taller enters the office first upon arrival, pulling out the nearest chair for the other to sit in. As Kohane settles in, she frantically opens cabinets and drawers to gather supplies to treat the seated girl’s injuries. After a minute, she puts everything she needs on the floor near the legs of the chair and kneels in front of Kohane.
“You should take a chair too…” She utters in a barely audible whisper.
“Nah, I’m good,” An answers, pouring alcohol onto a cotton ball. “no need to worry about me!” She then takes hold of the girl’s hand to clean it.
And this is all the two say for a while. An takes note of how soft her hands are, despite how beaten up they appear to be. The girl concentrates on An’s meticulous moments, watching as the cotton rubs over her knuckles. She occasionally flinches due to the stinging feeling, but is compliant nonetheless. Not once does she attempt to look at An.
After a few minutes of cleaning, An quickly glances up at Kohane, delicately drying her hand. “How’re you feeling?”
“Okay,” Kohane nervously replies. She takes a pause. “Why are you helping me?”
“Well, I’ve been scolding you and your friends for weeks now, yet you were so distraught that you didn’t bat an eye at me walking in.” An states, grabbing the bandage next to her. “Can I ask what happened?”
“I, um…” Kohane begins, opting to look anywhere but at An. “I said that we should find a better hangout spot, but…”
An begins to wrap the bandage around Kohane’s hand.
“They like to mess with you, but I was so sick of it. I told them that spitting in front of you was too far, so one of them told me to loosen up a little and it unfolded from there…”
“So that’s how it happened, huh…” An says, not acknowledging that the reason they fought was because of her. “Who won?”
Silence. They both giggle. An seals the bandage with medical tape.
“No one will hang out there anymore...” says Kohane at the end of their laughter.
“So you can win fights, yet when I call out for you you run away as fast as a hamster,” An teases. “You’re an interesting one, Kohane~”
“H-hey!” Kohane instinctively puts her head in her hands out of embarrassment. An slowly takes her hands away. Yeah, she would look pretty cute in those pigtails again, she thinks. She holds the side of her face that’s injured rubbing her thumb over the bruised spot. I’m not entirely sure how to treat this, though.”
“I-it’s okay…” Kohane mutters. Her face turns a deeper shade of red as she places her hand on top of An’s to remove it. It was a moment of intimacy that An wasn’t expecting but didn’t mind, and she secretly hopes Kohane feels the same.
Her orange eyes fall onto the clock on the wall, and she has a moment of realization. “Shit!” Halftime definitely was over at that point. She rises from the floor and frantically begins to put supplies away, but Kohane interrupts her by putting her not-bandaged hand on her shoulder. “I’ll take care of it.”
To be honest, that makes An’s heart skip a beat, but she has to play it cool in front of this girl who can knock her out. “Thanks, I appreciate it!” she says. “Um, wanna stop by my school tomorrow morning? I can uh… ‘scold you.’ And you won’t annoy me, I swear on my life.”
Kohane giggles. “Sure, An-chan.”
An stops dead in her tracks, taking the sound of how Kohane says An-chan to heart. It throws her off: how does a girl who just knocked someone else out say her name so sweetly like that? But to play this off as something totally different, she turns to ask one final question.
“What day is it tomorrow?”
She thinks for a moment. “Wednesday, I think?”