Chapter Text
There aren’t very many people in this town who don't recognize Kotoha. It comes with the territory of running a frequent hangout place of Bofurin—mess with her and you’d be asking for hellfire to rain on you, regardless of their policy on strictly not enforcing violence but subduing disorder.
Today’s hoodlums didn’t seem to get the memo.
“I told you to get out of my way.” Kotoha can already feel a headache coming on.
This is for your sake, you know, she thinks, a dull pain shooting up her nape at the memory of the cost of damages that Bofurin incurred the last time someone came after her. It was a street not far away from here. Some of its residents still call it the dead zone after what Umemiya had done, what with thugs steering clear of the area as if they'd be hunted down by the devil itself if they did. I'm not the one in danger here.
“C’mon, don’t be like that, babe. Ain’t there anything ya wanna do? Somewhere you wanna go?”
Deep breaths, Kotoha. “I’d love to,” her face twists into an angry scowl at the smug upturn of the guy’s mouth, “smash some eggs right into your ugly mugs, but my hands are full and that’d be a huge waste of eggs. So, no. I’ll hold back.”
Food is precious, after all. Even if she’s starting to consider the logistics of shoving the leek in her shopping bag up where the sun doesn’t shine to get them off her hair.
Judging by their malicious laughter, Kotoha knows it’s a lost cause. She knows it well; there’s no getting through the empty skulls of guys like this.
“I like a woman who can fight back, but if you’re too hard-nosed…" Perm hair and his entourage leer at her. "You might end up hurting that pretty face of yours.”
One of them digs their fingers into her arm and she thinks this is it, she’s going to grab the leek and commit an atrocity towards this innocent vegetable in the name of self-defense, when out of nowhere, a hand drops over the pervert’s shoulder.
“Hah?” Perm hair asks.
He goes down before Kotoha can even process what’s happening.
An unfamiliar boy—two-toned hair, she observes with surprise, wearing Furin's uniform—drags his unconscious body by the collar of his shirt, a furious twist to his expression before it drops into irate discontentment at the involuntary groan of pain he shakes out of the guy.
After seeming to realize that the thug is out like a light, he sighs, drops him skull-first on the ground, and then walks away.
He's already halfway down the street when Kotoha’s brain kicks back into gear, calling out to him and struggling frantically to hold onto both plastic bags with one grip. The kid walks surprisingly fast. “Hey, you!" she yells. "Wait!”
She grabs his arm. The taller teen’s steps stall before he completely comes to a stop.
That same look from earlier, like he’s readying for a fight, falls on her with a single-minded intensity and Kotoha only slightly reels back. She’s used to this so it won't work on her.
At the very least, she knows how to tell apart someone who genuinely wants to hurt her from someone whose default expression is a hostile scowl.
“I just wanted to thank you,” she says.
A moment passes. Kotoha watches as he seems to process what she just said, eyes glancing down at her hand which she carefully removes, and then back up at her face. He looks around him in confusion.
And then he taps his pointer finger against his chest mutely. Me?
Something clicks in Kotoha’s head.
“...You’re the only one standing here,” she says after a moment. His eyes drop to her mouth.
Could it be…?
Red floods the other teen’s face as his shoulders jump to his ears, face contorting with his embarrassment. He opens his mouth as if to tell her off, but nothing comes out aside from a wordless exhale of air. Appearing to change his mind, he closes his fist and places his thumb under his chin before moving it forward. He shakes his head and points at Kotoha.
[Not. You.] He signs.
Kotoha stares at him, her lips parted with surprise. Oh.
-
He writes Sakura Haruka beside the list of groceries she bought that morning in rough and slanting lines with a clumsy grip around the pen. The notepad is a little too small for him so the last strokes go way past its borders.
In return, Kotoha writes her name under his and says, “I’m Kotoha Tachibana. Nice to meet you, Sakura.”
He stares up at her with uncertain eyes.
He’s an expressive kid, his thoughts as clear as day whenever Kotoha does or says anything towards him, and it reminds her of the neighborhood cats that would occasionally find their way to her cafe’s doorway in search of food, hissing and pulling back with their furs raised when they see her approaching. Kotoha can tell he's wary of her.
“You’re not gonna eat?” she asks when he does nothing but stare, making sure to enunciate her words clearly. "Do you not like omelet rice?"
He reads her lips with a mildly unsettled expression before he jolts in surprise and glances down at the plate being pushed in front of him.
Hastily, Sakura grabs his utensils and shoves a generous serving into his mouth. Kotoha has half a mind to tell him to slow down—honestly, he'll choke himself if he just shoves them in like that—when his face brightens after his first bite.
Kotoha ultimately decides against it as she leans on the counter to watch him eat. What can she say? It's flattering to see the kid's face openly scream how delicious the food she worked hard to perfect is.
He takes a couple more bites before grabbing the notepad again. [ Takeoff? ] he writes in rushed lines.
Kotoha pauses.
...Takeoff? What about a takeoff?
Sakura’s cheeks puff up with every bite and he stares at her with eager eyes, finger pointing down at the plate until she finally understands.
Laughing, she takes the pen and draws a line across the word. [ Take-out. ] She corrects. [ We don’t do that here. ]
The other teen blinks down at the word, flushing slightly before his eyebrows deepen in thought, mouth twitching around the ghost of a whisper. Take-out. He swallows. Taking the pen that Kotoha has placed down, he scribbles it a few times in small characters.
He glances back at her, and she nods with a smile. “Take-out,” she says.
Huh. He bites on his spoon as he stares off in thought. Kotoha studies his profile curiously.
Now that she has the chance to, she stares her fill. It’s an interesting look, for sure. She knows a handful of people with crazier hairstyles but it’s her first time seeing someone's coloring naturally split down the middle, the way Sakura's is. Even his eyebrow and eyelashes on his left side are white.
No, apart from that... Kotoha stares. What really caught her attention the most was—
[ Your eye. ] Sakura’s face immediately contorts as he reads the first half of what she wrote from his peripheral, the corners of his mouth sharply dropping in a scowl as he freezes. Leaning over the counter, Kotoha takes the opportunity to come closer and peer into the color of his iris.
"—!!!"
Startled, Sakura leaps off his stool. And then he raises his fists like he just might fight her.
“...I wasn’t trying to pick a fight with you,” she says, inwardly amused, as she lifts the notepad to his eye level so he can see the rest of what she wrote. This boy has the most interesting reactions.
[ It’s pretty. Like a marble. ]
He looks at her like she lost her mind. It's a purely technical skill to be able to convey that fluently with just his facial muscles, actually.
Kotoha needs to learn how to do it. She might make Umemiya cry but that's a risk she's willing to take.
Sakura cautiously inches back into his seat before snatching the notepad and flipping it to a new page. He's still shooting her a suspicious glare.
[ You're weird. ]
Kotoha quirks an eyebrow at him. "You're weirder for trying to throw hands with me. I was just looking."
Sakura scribbles something illegible before he crosses it out.
[ ytooclospersonal space?? ]
Oh, now that Kotoha thinks about it. "...You're right. That was my bad. But I wanted to see it from up close."
Sakura bristles and taps the word weird in the notepad twice.
They spend the rest of his breakfast locked in an occasional trading of words on paper. He’s a little bit of an odd kid, high-strung, and easily embarrassed over the most innocent of things. Despite it all, Kotoha can tell he isn’t a bad kid.
A little rough, maybe. Misguided, she thinks, at the deep and cutting scrawls of words when she asks about why he came here—lowest of the low, hated, worth nothing but their fists, and on the spread of a new page, big enough to devour the entire space, I’ll be at the top of Furin—but that is only the surface of it.
"He really helped me out. Please do let him know I'm grateful, Kotoha-chan."
Sakura is a kind kid. And truthfully, watching him do that simple act of kindness made Kotoha feel like an idiot for thinking he was just an abrasive, immature child, no matter how briefly.
“It was right for you to choose Furin,” she says a while later, and it’s precisely because she has realized there is more to Sakura than meets the eye that Kotoha needs to tell him, “but you will never make it to the top.”
She watches the rush of emotions as he reads her words with his eyes, anger sparking at the forefront of the depth of his gaze.
“Sakura,” she says as she writes a few words under his bold declaration and lays it down on a table for him to read, “you might have some skills. You might be strong. But that’s not enough, because you…”
Sakura grits his teeth and the emotion on his face shifts as his gaze traces over what she had written. It’s not anger in his eyes, Kotoha realizes. It’s never been that from the beginning, although it might resemble it.
“...are alone.”
—It was fear.
Sakura leaves in a storm as he shoots a withering glare at the notepad like it would catch on fire if he tried hard enough.
He’ll come around, Kotoha knows. If it’s someone like him, then it will only be a matter of time until he does.
-
The loud rattle of Sakura collapsing against the rolling shutters of a storefront catches their attention amidst the celebratory cheer of the townspeople. He's staring down at the old lady reaching for his injured ankle like he's terrified out of his mind, his entire body pressed harshly against the steel of the shutters as he tries to avoid her touch.
A part of Kotoha aches at the sight.
What did this child have to go through to fear people the way he does?
“...I’m sorry, baachan,” Kotoha says, smiling a bit as she gently places a hand on the old lady's back. “He can’t hear you so you might have startled him. I’ll handle it.”
She heaves a relieved breath. "I leave it to you, dear." And then she smiles worriedly at Kotoha. "Could you tell him this old lady is sorry for scaring him?"
Sakura flinches and when Kotoha looks at him—when she sees the guilty twist of his lips—she knows she doesn't have to.
Kotoha kneels in front of Sakura without another word. Maybe it was on her, too, for wording it the way she did. It must have hurt him, must have pushed him to be more reckless when he shouldn’t have been.
And still, he protected her. He was prepared to take the beating in her place right then and there. If Hiragi and the others hadn’t arrived, then...
It's odd. Kotoha hadn't even known the boy for a day, yet she didn't doubt for a moment that he would have kept protecting her until the end.
Her hands are gentle and steady as she works to treat his injury.
“I said you were alone," she tells him, "but I can tell that you’re not alone because you want to be.”
It was there in the easy way he selflessly gave himself over and over for strangers who had nothing to do with him, even though he had been hurt enough times to develop a fear of them. He's a kind person who has been mistreated and thought the worst of.
Sakura’s teeth grind together. She smiles helplessly as he keeps his gaze resolutely locked on the movement of her mouth. His face says everything he couldn’t.
I don’t need anyone. I’m fine being on my own. I'm doing all of this for myself.
“You saved me, Sakura. No matter what you're thinking, you saved me who you didn't know twice." Kotoha slowly stands up. "That's proof that you haven’t given up on others yet, isn't it? And you don’t have to.”
Sakura's head drops to his chest, as if he could keep Kotoha's words from reaching him if he averted his eyes.
That does nothing to stop her. Isn't it great, then, that they had more than one way to talk to each other?
Retrieving the notepad from her apron's pocket, Kotoha offers it to him. It's still open on the same page that she had left it, her pristine handwriting a sharp contrast to the awkward lines of Sakura's own.
See? Kotoha thinks at the pained expression that gradually bleeds onto Sakura’s face like he might cry. I was right.
“We’re willing to face you head-on, so..." she smiles at Sakura when he raises his head, and he's still afraid, she knows, they know, they can see it written all over him, but he's looking back at them and that's all that matters, "...look up and face us, too.”
[I’ll be at the top of Furin!]
[You can’t do it alone.]
Don't be scared. I said you were alone, but you don't have to be. We're here, aren't we?
Kotoha says, “Once you give it a try, you’ll find what you’ve been looking for.”
At the very least, she thinks, I'm here.
(Sakura's final flying kick after that was a sight to behold. To Kotoha, it felt like the beginning of something amazing.)