Apology: Sorry guys for taking so long to update this. First off, I'm at college and having a hard time writing pretty much anything and second off, this fic isn't actually my first priority. I have one that has been going on for almost a year and it's the one I'm really trying to work on in my free time. Sorry again.
Disclaimer: I do not own Kamichama Karin
Warning: A little OOC and definitely AU.
Chapter 5: Little Red Riding Hood
When Kazune came down the next morning, what he found wasn't exactly what he had expected. The girls were all rushing around trying to find and pack up Karin's belongings as quickly as humanly possible, and all the while Karin was trying to get ready doing things like putting on makeup and making sure that her dress was completely straight.
Something was up; after all, Karin was just going home, right? So why was it being so important that she look so perfect, so to speak. Once again, Kazune found himself wondering what exactly the deal was with Karin's home life. He decided that he really needed to just ask Himeka about it. Feeling like he shouldn't be spying on the girls, he went back to his room to try and study, although he already knew that he wasn't going to be able to concentrate.
"Okay, one last check," Karin said as they put her last bag of all the available and suitable men's papers by the door, ready to be taken out to the limo when it pulled up.
She put out her arms and spun around a few times so that her friends could look her over and make sure she looked well enough for her Mom to see her. She would have killed Karin if she had just decided to come home in Pajamas like the other girls had decided to do. To never be seen in public as less than perfect was one of her Mom's favorite mottos.
"I can't see any problems," Ami said inspecting Karin thoroughly as Himeka and Miyon nodded along with her in agreement.
Karin smiled, reveling in the moment with her friends, as she was finally packed up, ready to go, and the limo hadn't even arrived yet, so for the time being she could relax.
However, her thoughts were interrupted by two sharp knocks on the door, and she immediately stiffened back up knowing exactly who it was. She was just thankful that the girls and her had cleared out all of the mess that had been visible from the front door. She could see her Mom forbidding her to come back if she found some reason for her not to.
Himeka quickly ran to the front door and opened it wide for Karin's Mom to enter the house. However, her Mom wasn't there, and instead it was one of the butlers from Karin's household looking all prim and proper despite the time of day.
"Mrs. Hanazono was called to assist Mr. Hanazono out of state in some of his business matters and therefore I will be picking up Miss Hanazono and be taking her home," he said all very dignified crinkling his nose slightly at the attire the rest of the girls were still dressed in. Karin mentally kicked herself, if her Mother had been the one to pick her up then she would have seen her friends all dressed in their pajamas and that would have been reason enough to suspend Karin from spending any more time with them, at least in her Mother's mind it would have been.
As it was, she was suddenly very thankful that her Mom had to go meet her Dad, probably to arrange some sort of business party-gathering, her Dad never was the one to be able to plan that sort of thing and it was right up her Mother's ally so it only made sense for her to do it for him.
Now she just had to order the butler not to tell her Mom anything negative even if she ordered him to. Easily done, but next time she would have to be sure to be more careful.
"Bye guys!" she yelled running out the door past the surprised butler, she probably would have to order him not to talk about her running and yelling too, but it was worth it just to see the look on his face.
What Karin expected to be a short weekend from having neither of her parents home, actually became quite long and drawn out after she got home, because the first thing she thought and wrote about in her diary was the sleepover and all that had happened at it. This reminded her of how mad Kazune had seemed to be at her, and suddenly she felt sick to her stomach. Abruptly she began to dread Monday and seeing him again, afraid that he might still be annoyed with her.
After that, the weekend passed slowly and Karin mentally cursed the fact that she finally had a weekend to herself and wasn't able to fully enjoy it because of the fight she had with Kazune. Then again, she couldn't help but wonder why she felt so bad because of the argument with him. In general she didn't like fights anyway, what sane person did, but she always seemed to clash with Kazune anyway, so why was it bothering her so much this time. Perhaps it was because she felt like for once she had truly upset him, or at least more so than usual.
Finally, Monday morning dragged in, and Karin's stomach hurt in anticipation. But as her Mom returned home early that morning and wanted to make up for all the things that they had missed doing over the weekend, she hurried off, not willing to spend any more time with her Mother than she had to.
When the limo pulled up to the school, Karin actually waited, for once, for the driver to come around and open the door for her. Then as slow as was humanly possible, she made her way towards the building trying to avoid a confrontation with Kazune as long as she could.
Looking up at the second floor at the classroom where Karin and her friends normally hung out before school, she caught the eye of Himeka who immediately started to wave to her smiling broadly. Ami, Miyon, and Micchi, who were all sitting around her, looked curiously at what she was waving at, and seeing Karin they started to wave and smile as well. Karin couldn't help but smile slightly to them, only happy that Kazune hadn't seen her yet. He must have been out of the room or sitting out of sight.
She then pointed to the left telling her friends that she was going down the west path to get to the side entrance to come in. Karin knew that path would take longer to get to the room and that's exactly what she wanted.
Himeka looked slightly confused as to why Karin was taking that route, but only shrugged her shoulders figuring she could just ask Karin when she got to the room.
With that, Karin headed down the path slowly while taking her time to look at all the scenery around her. In that moment, she couldn't help but feel slightly happy about her and Kazune's fight, knowing that otherwise she wouldn't have had an excuse to stay outside for so long.
However, Karin's way was suddenly blocked by a large person, a large man to be exact. At first she tried to just step around him, but as she took a step to the right, he took a step with her. Finally, she took a step back to take a good long look at who this guy was that was smirking at her like the entire situation was just hilarious.
She didn't recognize him. He looked older than her, so he must have been a new teacher or a substitute teacher, either way he didn't seem to know the unspoken rule that teachers had to dress a little nicer than the students, because he was just wearing a pair of baggie jeans and a plain black shirt.
Not only that, but she believed that the little marks all over the jeans were grass stains and she couldn't help but feel a little jealous of him, wanting to go do something like roll around in the grass and not care about the consequences.
His black hair was ragged and looked slightly dirty. When he smiled at her, it wasn't comforting at all; if anything it just made him more intimidating.
Refusing to be rude though, Karin just simply asked "Is there anything that I could help you with?"
When she spoke, his smile just seemed to grow more and more devilish, and Karin suddenly found her heart beginning to speed up. In a second, he had out a knife and demanded "Give me all your money!"
Karin's heart practically stopped at the sight of the weapon in this man's hands. She didn't have any idea of what to do. "I don't have any money," she admitted truthfully. She never brought money to school; she didn't have any reason to.
"Liar!" the man snapped at her taking a step forward and jabbing his knife slightly at her. Karin couldn't help but take a step back fearfully. What was she supposed to do?
"I'm sorry, but I really don't have any money with me," she said once again trying to convince the man.
Despite the fear welling up in her chest, Karin stood her ground knowing that she was in the right. However, when he grabbed her and begun to shake her slightly, yelling something about her being a liar and having a lot of money, Karin couldn't help but act on her instincts.
Without thinking she kneed him… in an area that wasn't too pleasant for him. It should have been no surprise to Karin when he fell to the ground in immense pain, but she hadn't even fully realized what she had just done.
However, now that he was on his knees in pain and weak because of it, Karin decided to run away, too bad he somehow was maintaining a tight grip around her arm. "Let go!" she demanded trying to pull away and getting nowhere with it.
He looked up at her with sadistic eyes, and Karin's heart quickly began to beat even faster. Before she could try to pull away again, he had pushed her slightly, catching her off guard, and slashed his knife up at her face. She didn't have time to do anything but throw up her arms in front of her face as her last line of defense.
She cringed at pain the flowed, as the knife made contact and dug into the back of her right arm. Opening her eyes, the sight of blood seeping out of her arm and starting to drip on her, made her slightly queasy.
"Now give me your money!" the man demanded yet again, still not understanding that Karin had nothing to give him.
Staring at him wide-eyed, Karin just held her arm not having a clue what to do. She could have sworn that she heard something say to run, yet her feet didn't seem to want to follow these instructions and they remained glued to the floor.
The man didn't seem to appreciate her silence, and without hesitation he began to swipe his blade back across at her once again. But as he raised his right arm to slash, a firm grip settled on his wrist as a blond-haired boy held tightly on to him. With a twist of the wrist, Kazune was able to cause enough pain to the man's arm that he dropped the knife, and without farther adieu, he punched the guy as hard as he could effectively knocking him out onto the ground.
"You okay Karin?" Kazune asked looking up at the girl after checking the man to make sure he was indeed unconscious.
"Yeah, I'm okay," she said still holding her bleeding arm already having forgotten about it. Her legs were shaking so much that it was no surprise when the buckled and she started to fall to the floor.
"Whoa there," Kazune said leaping up and catching Karin under her left arm, keeping her from falling. It was then that he saw the cut and the blood that was seeping out. It made his stomach churn in disgust, not so much because of the blood, but because he knew exactly whose blood it was.
"I thought you said you were okay," he said more worried than annoyed. Without another word, he began to take off his jacket and handed it to her, all the while helping her support her weight, because she couldn't seem to stabilize herself.
"Here," he said handing it to her. She looked at him confused.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" she asked holding the jacket, trying to keep the blood on her off of it as best she could.
"Put pressure on the wound, you don't want to lose so much blood," he said sighing as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"But Kazune," Karin protested. He just stared at her like 'what now' and she quickly dove into the problem with this. "If you are supporting me like this, under my left arm, then how am I supposed to put pressure on the cut… I don't think I can walk yet without help." She admitted quietly.
For a moment, Kazune was silent as he thought. Then he quickly began to kneel, helping Karin sit down on the sidewalk. Without waiting to hear her questions about what he was doing, he took his jacket back from her hands and began to wrap it around her arm before tying it off.
"That should do until we get to the nurse's office," he said once again putting Karin's left arm over his shoulder and wrapping his right arm around her waist, so to help her back up to her feet. He tried to let her hold a little more of her own weight, but it seemed that Karin's legs had turned into jelly.
"Sorry," Karin whispered embarrassed at her inability to do something as simple as walk. She didn't understand what was wrong with her. Why did she feel to drained?
"Not your fault," Kazune said causing Karin to whip her head to look at him in astonishment. He refused to look back at her and just kept walking towards the front of the school where he knew the nurse's office to be.
Karin felt her cheeks heat up slightly, she liked it when Kazuen would be so nice, although for the life of her she couldn't figure out why he was being so kind to her. She thought he was mad at her, so what exactly was going on?
"Hanazono-san! Kazune-kun!" a voice yelled. Karin looked up to find that Micchi was running towards them.
"Nishikiori!" Kazune exclaimed at the same time as Karin shouted "Micchi!"
Karin didn't really care to repeat the events she had just gone through and instead closed her mouth and let Kazune do all the explaining. In seconds, Micchi had run back off towards the front office to repeat the tale to the principal as well as warn the nurse that Karin was hurt.
The moment that Karin and Kazune entered the front of the school, people surrounded them wanting to know what had happened. Apparently Micchi had yelled the entire story while telling it to the principal. Now, most of the school already was exaggerating the story and it seemed that most were under the impression that the man had a machine gun, Karin knew karate and had beat him up really good except a stray bullet had hit her in the shoulder, and finally Kazune had jumped into the picture strangling the man until he died.
When the students saw Karin's bloodied up arm with a pretty blood drenched jacket around it, all hell broke loose. They didn't calm until the principal came into the hall and made them all go to class while Kazune helped Karin into the nurse's office.
Upon walking in, they found Micchi waiting for them on one of the chairs meant for patients.
"Out!" the Nurse demanded the moment that Kazune had Karin sitting on a chair by herself. Besides the cut and being a little shaken up, Karin seemed to be alright, yet the nurse demanded that Micchi and Kazune leave while she bandaged up the girl. The two walked out hesitantly, and Kazune couldn't help but look back once at Karin, who appeared to be staring at him for some odd reason. She seemed slightly weirder than normal today, at least in his opinion.
He didn't want to leave her alone in there, but apparently having no say in the matter he still obliged and went to the hall with his friend. Micchi couldn't help but notice this. He smirked at his Kazune, already having a sort of idea of what was going to happen with these two.
"Take good care of Hanazono-san," Micchi said walking out of the front office. "She is like a little sister to me." Kazune looked up at his friend surprised; he hadn't realized that Micchi cared so much about this girl.
"Where are you going?" Kazune couldn't help but ask.
"Back to class to tell everyone where you two are, and let them know Karin's alright," Micchi said as he continued to walk away.
Not a moment after Micchi had disappeared around a corner, the nurse popped her head into the hall and said sweetly "She's all patched up now, you can come back in."
Walking into the office, Kazune couldn't help let out a sigh of relief when he saw Karin sitting looking much better than before, now that all the blood was gone.
She looked up, "Kazune-kun!" she shouted out leaping to her feet upon seeing him. Unfortunately for her, her legs hadn't seemed to have gotten back their complete stability and she started to fall forward. Yet, she didn't fall. Instead, she fell into Kazune who had leaped forward in order to catch her.
Blushing, Karin whispered "Sorry… thanks," refusing to look up at Kazune. He looked down at her confused by her reaction and why she had fallen in the first place. He sent a questioning look to the nurse.
"She is just a little in shock, I believe nothing even close to this nature has happened to Miss Hanazono, so it's just being hard on her," she explained. "Actually, she is doing quite amazing in how fast she is recovering already, she almost can walk again and should be able to go through the rest of the school day with no problems. Let me just go get some pain killers for Miss Hanazono to take for that nasty cut," and with that the nurse left the room, going back into a closet to search for whatever she needed.
Kazune looked back down at Karin who seemed to be finding the floor to be very interesting at the moment. He sighed, what am I going to do with you? "Come on," he said helping her make her way back to the small couch in the room where he could sit with her.
After sitting down, silence filled the air. Kazune could hardly stand it, it wasn't like he didn't like the silence, but he could tell something was bothering Karin, and he just wanted her to spit it out. "How bad is it?" he spit out trying to get her to start talking.
Karin looked up at him with her eyebrows crinkled slightly, not understanding what he was talking about. "Your arm?" he asked trying to clear up the confusion.
Understanding flashed on Karin's face before she looked down at her right arm, all bandaged up in pure white bandages. "It wasn't that deep actually, I shouldn't even need stitches." She paused not sure if she should really go on, but as she looked up at Kazune and found him nodding at her, she decided to continue. "It does kind of hurt though," she admitted quietly, hoping that Kazune wouldn't tease her about being weak or something.
"Next time just run away, why on earth did you just stand there and let yourself get cut?!" Kazune suddenly exclaimed. He hadn't known how much he hated the idea of Karin getting hurt until now. Looking back at Karin's face, he was surprised to see her just smiling at him and looking him straight in the eyes.
"What!?" he said confused by her sudden change of behavior.
"You care," she simply said.
"What?" he asked again, if possible even more confused.
"You cared whether I got hurt or not," Karin said as her cheeks began to change a slight pink. She couldn't continue to look him in the eye and instead opted for closing her eyes and putting her head back as if she was looking at the ceiling. "I thought you hated me," she confessed to him.
"Well you are kind of annoying but I don't hate you," he admitted back, teasing her slightly.
Once again, a silence came down between the two. However, this time, Karin was the one to break it. "Are we friends?" she asked truly wondering what to call Kazune.
Looking over at him, she found him smiling at her before nodding to answer her question. Karin couldn't help but smile back.
Just then, Karin and Kazune heard some kind of commotion coming from outside in the front office.
"How could you let this happen?! I swear someone is getting fired today!" they heard a voice bellow.
Another, higher pitched voice rung out annoyingly against the first one asking, "Where's my baby? Is she alright? If she got hurt, where? Was it on her face?"
"I pity the child of those parents," Kazune said lifting an eyebrow at all the ruckus the two were making.
"So do I," Karin said sadly before trying to stand up on her own.
"Whoa there!" Kazune said for the second time that day, as he leapt to his feet to help Karin stabilize herself. "What are you trying to do? You should be trying to rest as long as you can!" He said sharply, worried that Karin was going to push herself too hard and end up getting hurt all over again.
"I suggest you escape when I go out there," Karin said seemingly random to Kazune.
"What?" he asked confused.
"Don't worry, I'll be fine, I can even walk now," Karin said pulling away from Kazune and taking a few wobbly steps towards the door. He wasn't that impressed by it, but couldn't do anything as Karin walked out of the nurse's office.
Immediately he heard the two annoying voices scream, "KARIN!" So those are Karin's parents. Kazune felt immediately embarrassed at his comments.
He walked over to the door and opened it as quietly as he could, trying not to be noticed by anyone. Turns out all his effort was completely in vain, because Karin's parents probably wouldn't have noticed him even if he had made a huge ruckus.
Karin's Mom, a petite woman with too much make up on, was currently checking over her face for any type of injury and saying something about how thankful she was that no visible damage was done and there still was hope yet for Karin. Kazune was confused by that comment, what was there hope still yet for Karin?
The girl's Dad, who was big enough that Kazune was sure he never wanted to get on this guy's bad side, was so enraptured in yelling at the principal and threatening to take away all the money they had so generously donated to the school because of this atrocity. The principal was constantly shrinking away from this huge man and looked as if he was about to just run out of the room in pure fear.
He could completely understand why Karin seemed annoyed with her parents.
Giving a small wave to Karin, that was returned by her along with a little smile, he slipped out completely unnoticed by all the adults and he headed to class.
"I swear you better tell me what you are going to do to fix this problem!" Karin's Dad spit out in the principal's face.
"A-already se-se-security cameras are b-being p-put up b-by all the g-gated entrances," the man managed to stammer out, scared half to death, with good reason.
At that time, the nurse came into the front office saying, "Yes, now security is going to be tighter than ever. This was just an accident; apparently that man was some escaped convict or something, scary to think that he got out of jail." Karin's parents seemed to have no real affect on her and she was as outspoken and demanding as always.
"Thank goodness Mr. Kujyou was there or else this scratch might have been a lot worse," she said motioning Karin's arm before adding, "he stopped a lot of the bleeding with his quick thinking, and I believe that he was actually the one to knock the criminal out."
For a moment both Mr. and Mrs. Hanazono were quiet, something very rare between the two of them. A quick glance at each other reassured the other that they were indeed thinking along the same lines.
"Ahem," Karin's Dad cleared his throat demanding everyone's attention. "I want to meet this Mr. Kujyou."
Little Red Riding Hood: Umm basically Karin got attacked like Little Red Riding Hood, and was rescued by Kazune who could be seen as the woodsman. That's basically the only connection; yeah I know it's farfetched.
Hope you all enjoyed this though, so basically Karin and Kazune are now definite friends, and Karin's parents want to meet him, what could that be about? Keep writing.
FFG- Jo