The Amaori Haruna Side of the Story:
Season 1
HER VISION TURNED RED, and next thing she knew, Haruna was swinging her fist right into Minato’s face. There was a dull smacking noise followed by a scream. Then panting. Ragged breathing.
Minato fell onto her backside, clutching her cheek. She looked up at Haruna. “What the hell?” she demanded. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you so hung up on this?!”
Haruna stepped forward, but before she could go far, Seira leaped in between the girls.
“Stop it!” she shouted. “Stop it, both of you. Aren’t you friends?”
Haruna gritted her teeth. She wanted to hit Minato again, but instead she screamed at the top of her lungs:
████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
But before she could hear herself scream all over again, Haruna came to with a lurch alone in her bedroom. “Wha?” she mumbled.
Before her, the TV screen—left on while she’d dozed off—showed the results of her last ranked match. Whopping defeat.
“Oh. Right,” she said.
She must have fallen asleep after her last game. Her sleep schedule and daily rhythms were all topsy-turvy. No wonder she felt tired in the middle of the day. Without badminton to burn off her excess energy, she lacked the comfortable feeling of fatigue, which quickly translated into lower quality sleep. She used to go running in the afternoons, but all the eyes on her stung. What girl her age went running in the middle of the school day? So she soon gave that up too. Now she ran laps around the neighborhood early in the morning or at night.
Haruna stifled back a yawn. “I’m so goddamned bored.”
She threw her arms out and flopped onto her side. She looked up, but there was nothing new to see. Just the same old ceiling. She held her hand up and watched the light come through the spaces between her fingers. Her hand was good as new. The only mark of the incident left was that persistent, icky feeling from punching someone. She didn’t know when it would go away, if it ever would.
“God. I hate this,” she groaned.
She rolled over onto her side and started to screw around on her phone, just for the heck of it. Without anyone to compete against—be it in schoolwork or games—she didn’t have the motivation to do anything. Still, even with nothing to do, her days passed in a blur. She’d go to the park and practice her swing with her racket, but she could feel the sensation of playing in a real match slipping away by the day. She felt like she was bleeding out. Or, if not losing blood, then something else just like it. Something physical and vital.
Some days, the things Ajisai, Satsuki, and Mai told her reared their ugly heads. Other days, her insecurities needled at her without end.
But she had already made up her mind: two months. No matter how bored she got, no matter how shitty she felt, she refused to deviate from her plans. No, those plans were not changing on her watch. Not one bit.
“But oh my god,” she moaned. She raised both hands up over her head. “I’m just. So. BORED!”
She could scream all she wanted in her bedroom, because no one was ever going to hear.