Chapter Text
A figure looks in a mirror, feeling a slow, quiet sense of wrongness fade the slightest bit by the sight of the reflection.
The source of this fade?
The skirt.
The skirt isn’t pink or blue or black. It’s red.
The red of happiness.
A smile stretches across a face completely unused to making such an expression.
A door slams open and a woman calls out. “Sakura-san where are you-”
The mirror reflects the look of horror as it’s dear admirer turns around.
Only to be greeted with a look of pure, nose turning, gut churning, tear jerking disgust.
“What’s wrong with you?”
The girl clings to a pole as she stands on a crumbling ledge. There’s no steps down.
Only a tightrope heading into the abyss.
A child couldn’t sleep the night after the woman quite literally threw the child to the streets, tossing it’s meagre belongings out the window.
The child sat in the grass, crying into a cat plushie until a black car rolled up.
A man walked out, picking up the child and it’s belongings like he was handling trash.
In the car ride, the child listened to the man on the phone he held on speaker with no regard for his heartless comments.
“Nothing we could do. Nobody else would take him.”
“Of course, when he looks like that.”
The child stayed awake that night, staring at the ceiling.
The ledge crumbles further. The girl clings to the pole tighter.
“Haruka-san, I want you to dye your hair before you start this new school.”
“Why?”
“Because you have to.”
“What colour?”
“Black.”
“Why black? I hate it.”
“It’s a normal colour. You need to look normal.”
“What’s normal?”
“Stop asking questions and just do what I say. Please Haruka-san. I… I don’t think another school will take you if you get thrown out of this one.”
“I was thrown out because of my hair colour?!”
“It was one of the reasons. You weren’t exactly… kind to your classmates.”
“They pulled my hair. I told them to stop.”
“You bit your classmate Haruka-san that is not acceptable behaviour-”
“Oh but hair-pulling is acceptable?!”
“Oi, I told you to dye your hair black. How many times do I gotta say it?!”
“Say it all you want, I’ll never do it! In fact I’ll grow it even longer!”
“Haruka-san!”
“Fuck this!”
“Sakura Haruka!”
The ledge is almost gone. The girl takes a shaky step across the platform, placing her foot on the rope which sinks under her weight.
Her hair reaches her shoulder blades now. She combs out the knots in front of a mirror, a book with braiding techniques in front of her, her phone displaying a video of someone doing a small braid in his hair behind his ear.
“Just remember, a braid is all about showing off who you are and how you want people to look at you.” The American voice says, the subtitles translating. “The fancier your braid, the prettier it looks! But something simple and cute can be more approachable.”
She doesn’t know if she wants people to approach her. They’re mean when they do.
But she’s seen girls with braids in their hair before. She thought they looked pretty.
Maybe… maybe she could look pretty some day.
A door opens. She doesn’t bother facing the disappointed face the mirror reflects for her.
“Again? That’s why I was against it.” The man in the doorway says.
A woman’s voice calls out. “What harm can he do with learning to braid? Maybe he wants to be a hairdresser some day.”
She doesn’t bother answering. This isn’t about her.
“It’s not right. It’s not a job a man should have.” The man hisses.
The woman replies. “I’ll be happy if he gets any job at this point. The sooner he can be independent and leave, the better.”
She ties the braid off with a small red band.
Red for passion.
She lost her happiness a long time ago. She’s not bothering to look for it now.
But she will not surrender her passion.
The girl takes a step forward on the tightrope, head held high in pride.
The rope creeks under her weight.
A girl sits outside the teacher’s office, most of her black hair cut from the neck down. She has bloody knuckles, a bleeding nose and so much rage brimming under her skin, she might just explode.
The other chair is occupied by her wailing hairdresser. His nose is broken, his hand adorned in bites, his arms bloody from when she dug her nails in hard enough to break skin.
His adoring mother comes screaming into the hallway, drawing him into a hug while he cries harder and harder. Bundled in her arms, he points an accusing finger at the girl.
“He’s crazy! Okaasan, he tried to kill me!”
“Hush, hush my love. Don’t mess with him.”
“He’s clearly dangerous.”
The girl turns to stare at them.
They flinch, cuddling each other tighter.
Her grip on her lost pigtail tightens.
The wind threatens to knock the girl off her tightrope, her arms swinging wildly.
But she rights herself.
“Sakura-san why are you home so late?!”
“Did you hear? Another fight.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Why would I lie to you?”
“You’re such a nuisance.”
“What else is new?”
“Don’t take that tone with me young man-”
“I’ve told you before, haven’t I? I’m not a man.”
“This would be easier if you weren’t a man. You wouldn’t have the strength to do these terrible things to the good people who live in this town.”
“You say that as if I were a man.”
“Sakura-san we both know that’s tr-”
“Do you want me to show you why I got in another fight? It’s because someone said something just a stupid as you said to me.”
“How dare you threaten me, your own aunt-”
“When did you last act it?”
“...go to your room. I won’t bring food to you.”
“Fine by me. I’d rather starve than eat with you.”
The girl keeps her eyes straight as she walks across the tightrope. She can’t see the end of it.
She tries to stay steady on the tightrope as it hits her.
“Huh? Is that him?”
Faces staring at her like she’s a monster.
“Seriously, the worst.”
Hissing words like vipers circling prey.
“More like, what’s with the hair?”
Exasperation used to her difficulties, but no less resentful of them.
“Nah, his eyes are even worse.”
Disgust and hatred mixing toxically.
“What a plague.”
The wind won’t stop rushing up to destroy her balance.
“Gross.”
The girl falls from her tightrope.
The wind rushes to meet her, deafening every other sound in her head aside from the blood rushing through it.
She looked for somewhere she could use her strength to find a place in the world.
A place for the losers and the delinquents and the scum of the earth.
A place for the fist fighters and the strongest shitbags.
A place for people like her.
She applied and got the acceptance email barely a day later.
She grabbed her only thing of sentimental value, a red satchel holding her hair ties, a brush, a comb and a single red scrunchie. She took as much money as she’d been hiding in her room in various spots over the years out of their safe crannies. She only stopped to write a note about her intentions and her wish to be left alone.
After she found a place, they wired rent money to her account, but never spoke to her after that.
Sitting in a room empty aside from the futon she’d bought as soon as she set foot in this town, separated from everything that had ever haunted her, it should’ve been peaceful.
She never thought escape would feel like such a hollow victory.
The day before Furin High’s entrance ceremony, Sakura Haruka enters Makochi.
She’s wearing her hair in a rope braid tied off with her red scrunchie. Instead of the boy’s pants, she has black leggings and a red skirt reaching her knees. But the Furin High’s jacket fits over her broad shoulders well.
She wonders if the green clashes with her red and hopes it does.
It’s her red for strength.
It doesn’t matter if green doesn’t suit her. She doesn’t need any other people or colours in her life.
All she needs is strength.