Well this was difficult to write. Having the prompt 'Hate' is awkward when it comes to pairing fanfics, but hey I tried my best. A couple of things that I feel are actually kinda important:
This is the last update I will do before I start college. I start college in two days (well one day now, as it's just half past midnight) and with my CFS is going to take me a while to actually get settled in, especially as this time round I actually I really wanna do well. (My previous school really screwed me over to be quite honest). but this does mean that I may not update for a week, maybe a couple of them. Which leads me nicely onto my next point.
I have now set up a tumblr just for my productive activites (art, cosplay, writing, very occasionally photography) and a lot of it, probably about 80-90% of it is about writing and that sort of thing. I tend to update it every few days (although that might get more frequent as I get into the swing of it). I generally give updates of how I'm doing/how well things are being written/how long things are taking/what updates or new chapters or stories to expect from me/that general sort of thing. I tend to tell you the second I've updated something as well. (I may also give you sneak previews of stuff if you're lucky ;D). I was also thinking about doing review replies on the tumblr as well. I love replying to you guys, but I lose track if I message you all directly, and I clog up the start of these stories enough as it is.
But I would really love it if you would follow it or at least check it because sometimes I have bad illness flare ups and I can't write for a month or two and the best way for me to tell you would be via tumblr (or maybe twitter, but we'll see how tumblr goes first). Or maybe I happen to have a lot of coursework in one go so I can't write for a month or two. generally frowns upon writing 'chapter updates' that are actually author notes, plus I had one girl complain at me that I had gotten her hopes up of a new chapter and disappointed her when it turned out to be an author's note. So honestly I'm not all that comfortable writing author notes like that. I might consider getting a twitter for this sort of thing as well, I know that there are more people on twitter, but yeah, we'll see how tumblr goes. The URL is .com. There's also a link in my profile.
Anyway sorry for rambling your ears off, here's the chapter!
SUMMARY: Tōshirō was sick of Karin. She never did her work properly & he just couldn't stand her behaviour. He went over to her apartment to tell her if she didn't get her act together she was fired, but he ended up discovering a disturbing scene, causing him concern for her.
Chapter 3: Hate
Tōshirō felt like putting his fist through a wall. She was just so incredibly irritating. Just seeing her face annoyed him these days. When he first hired Karin Kurosaki she was diligent, always punctual, voluntarily did more than her fair share of work and always dressed appropriately. She was basically the perfect employee. But in the past year her behaviour had gotten completely out of hand and Tōshirō was sick of it. It had been getting worse and worse and worse. While she managed to show up at the right time to start work most morning, she often left whatever time she felt like, sneaking out of the office in more than revealing clothes. On occasion, especially recently, she had shown up drunk (so Tōshirō sent her straight back home again). She barely did what was expected of her, Tōshirō could barely stand the sight of her any more. He wished he had never hired her.
At first, judging from her behaviour, Tōshirō assumed that something bad had happened to Karin or someone close to her, so he let it slide. He couldn't really ask what was going on in her personal life to make sure either, as he was her boss it could've been seen as grossly inappropriate. So he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, as she had been such a good employee for years beforehand. But she just kept on getting worse. In the past two months or so her behaviour had been appalling. Karin had been making his life ten times harder than it needed to be and Tōshirō was more than a little pissed. He grabbed the work that Karin was supposed to complete two days ago (which she had 'forgotten' in her office) and made his way to her apartment, deciding that if she didn't complete this by the end of the week she was fired.
After a 15 minute journey in the car, he had found Karin's apartment building. He looked at the address he had written down before leaving his office. She was on the seventh floor, her apartment being number thirty two. He pushed the number seven in the lift and waited a little impatiently for the lift to take him to the desired floor. When the lift doors opened he confidently strode out towards her apartment, intent on not taking any excuses this time round. He went to knock the door until he realised it was already open. Concern flashed across his face briefly. That wasn't right.
He gently pushed her door open. The concern stayed on his face this time. Her coffee table was smashed to pieces, and other objects here or there were broken or quite obviously displaced. Tōshirō felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he saw a couple of spots of blood on the carpet, the spots creating a trail to what he assumed was a bedroom. Even though he couldn't stand Karin he still couldn't stop himself from being worried. What on earth had happened here? Tōshirō cautiously followed the trail, a little worried that he was going to find the cause of all of the destruction. He looked into the room the blood had led to, which he could only assume was Karin's bedroom. She was sitting on her bed, back facing him, clutching her arm tightly while crying her eyes out.
Tōshirō ran round the bed and over to Karin, suspecting that all the blood had come from her, which now that he saw her properly, clearly had. Karin gasped when she saw him and quickly tried to wipe her tears away. As if her evening wasn't bad enough, her boss had come round to her apartment, no doubt to yell at her, or maybe even fire her. Although judging from the look on Tōshirō's face, he had completely forgotten the original purpose he came over here for.
"What the hell happened to you!?"
Karin really did not want pity right now, it would just make her feel more pathetic than she already did. She shrugged before speaking. "Nothing."
Tōshirō would've laughed if the situation wasn't so serious. "Nothing?" He gestured to her injured arm. "You call this nothing!? Your apartment is a bloody mess, both literally and figuratively, and so are you!"
Karin gave him a death glare at the comment about her being mess. It was true, but she could've done without him knowing that.
Karin saw the look on Tōshirō's face and knew that he really wasn't screwing around. Neither would he leave without an explanation and making sure he was ok. He was actually too nice for his own good, whether he realised it or not. She sighed heavily before answering him. "I had...A minor setback with my boyfriend. Well, ex-boyfriend."
Tōshirō's eyes narrowed. "Your boyfriend did this to you?" It was disgusting that the man that was supposed to take care of her and love her was the one that did this to her.
Karin shot him another death glare. "Ex-boyfriend." She sighed, still struggling to stop crying. "Yes. He was the one that did this to me."
Tōshirō, seeing the state she was currently in decided not to push the issue further, not yet anyway. She looked like she was borderline hysterical, not that he blamed her. "Cmon, you need to go to the hospital."
Karin scowled. "I can go on my own!"
Tōshirō scoffed. "And how are you going to fill the forms in when you're bleeding all over them? And that's even if you can write. Your right arm is the one that's injured. If it was your left, I agree, you could go on you own."
To be honest, Tōshirō knew that she could go on her own perfectly easily. If she couldn't fill in a form, a nurse would do it for her. But after seeing the state she was in, he couldn't really leave her on her own. Even if he did hate her. Plus he was more than a little curious as how she got into this state to begin with. And seeing how she didn't argue that much, he could only assume she didn't particularly feel like being left alone either, which Tōshirō understood.
XxXxXxXxXxX
The nurses at the hospital had frantically stopped the bleeding, and temporarily sealed the wound within ten minutes of Karin entering the hospital. She would however have to wait an hour or so for a doctor to come and seal her wound properly, probably with stitches, knowing her luck. She sighed heavily as she sat down on a chair in the waiting room, Tōshirō sitting next to her. Karin had calmed down considerably since he had found her in her apartment, so Tōshirō decided to see if he could find out what had happened.
He turned to face her before asking. "So, why did he do that to you?"
Karin looked like she was going to cry again. This had really hit her hard. "Because I punched him...It was my fault."
Tōshirō was confused. Karin didn't seem like the type to punch someone unless she had a good reason, so why was it her fault? "Why did you punch him?"
Karin scrunched her eyes up tightly as she felt them begin to water. "I found out that he was cheating on me."
"Oh."
"With three other women."
"Oh." Tōshirō had to admit. He did feel like that was a valid reason for punching him. He thought about it for a second. When he went into Karin's bedroom the bed was all messed up. Tōshirō had to stop himself from grimacing. If her boyfriend had cheated on her in her bed that was even worse.
"I just got so annoyed at him. I just ended up punching him. And of course being the hot head that he is he got pissed off and threw me into the coffee table, which is why I have all of these cuts. The big gash in my arm is because he picked up one of the shards and stabbed me with it. Because you know, how dare I discover that he was cheating on me." Tōshirō stayed silent, he had no idea how to respond to that. Tears had starting streaming down Karin's face again. "I feel like such an idiot."
Tōshirō looked over at her. She almost looked, well, broken. "You're not an idiot."
Karin laughed darkly. "Oh really? I fell for his stupid little game! He was so nice in the beginning. Really romantic, understanding, pretty much everything you'd want in a boyfriend. But the more I liked him, the more distant he became. I kept trying to get his attention, I kept trying to spend as much time as possible with him. The more I liked him, the more he ran away, like he was playing with me. He just kept on getting worse and worse. He kept glaring at me and giving me dirty looks when I said something he disapproved of. He always got angry with me if I said I didn't want to sleep with him. He always belittled me. He made me feel worthless. I feel like...like he put a spell over me or something and this," she pointed at the bandage on her arm, "was a huge wake up call."
Tōshirō stared at her the entire time she said that. Watched her actions and body language. Her behaviour over the past year made so much sense now. This guy really had played her like she was a game. He had made her fall in love with him, just so he could use her. He had manipulated her into making her do what he wanted to do. The worst thing was is he was cheating on her with three other women, and presumably doing the same sort of thing to those women as well, probably just for 'fun'. It was sickening.
All of her actions made sense. The leaving early, the dressing in revealing clothing, arriving drunk, not doing her work. She was doing all she could to get his attention, to spend as much of her time with him as she could, including doing stuff she didn't want to do. He knew from office parties and whatnot that Karin wasn't much of a drinker, and if she did drink then it was only small amounts, but in the past 3 months she had shown up to work drunk out of her mind 7 times. It was all for this man. To try and get his attention. To try and please him. To do what he wanted her to do. To try and get the original, loving man he was in beginning back.
It all sounded far too familiar for his liking as well. It reminded him of his older sister, Momo, who had fallen prey to exactly the same sort of behaviour. Tōshirō looked over to Karin who was wiping her tears with her sleeves, trying to stop crying. He felt bad for shouting at her all of those times when she didn't do her work. He should've just investigated into her home life, regardless of the risks. He had seen this happen before and it sucked, seeing it happen again. How could he have ever hated this poor woman? She was a wonderful employee before this had all happened and he enjoyed working with her, but as she got worse he ended up hating here. But finding all of this out, what had happened to it, the scenario similar to what had happened to his sister, the reasons why she did all of those things...he just couldn't hate her any more. He hated this jerk she used to 'date'. He hated him for using Karin, for toying with her, for changing her.
The happiness and determination that once filled her eyes looked like they had been sucked out. Her spirit seemed broken. Tōshirō could barely stand the sight of her, but for completely different reasons to the ones he felt earlier on in the day. Her expression was exactly the same as Momo's, when this had happened to her. After hearing what had happened to Karin, almost in an instant Tōshirō felt like an idiot for hating her. He couldn't even think about hating her any more. If anything just because he reminded him of his sister, who he dearly loved. The huge amount of pity he had for her wasn't helping either.
XxXxXxXxXxX
Tōshirō sighed as he closed the front door of Karin's apartment, thoroughly exhausted. He waited with her the entire time she was in the hospital, and he wanted to make sure she got home safely. The doctor saw no point in putting her under anaesthetic for a couple of stitches in her arm, so he had injected her arm with powerful painkillers that lasted about ten minutes while he stitched her arm up, and then he gave her powerful painkillers to be taken orally afterwards. They were very effective, but they had made her a little woozy, so Tōshirō wanted to see to it himself that she got into the apartment safely. He had sat her down on her sofa before going into the bedroom to change the sheets, disgusted while doing so. It looked like her ex-boyfriend had cheated on her in her own bed.
He didn't particularly want to change the dirty sheets, but he knew it wasn't going to do Karin any good to sleep in the same sheets he had cheated on her in. He found some spare bed sheets in a cupboard and put them on the bed. By the time he was finished Karin had already fallen asleep. Tōshirō carefully lifted her up and carried her over to the bedroom, gently putting her in the bed and pulling the covers over her. After that he cleared up the living room a bit, not wanting Karin to injure herself on the shards of the coffee table again. He also took out the photos of her and her now ex-boyfriend, knowing that seeing those wouldn't do her any good.
Before he left the apartment he wrote her letter explaining everything that had happened, as the doctor had warned that the painkillers could possibly cause her to forget what had happened, however unlikely it was. He went into detail, and explained that if she knew what was good for her, she wouldn't go anywhere near her ex-boyfriend again. In the letter he told her to take a couple of days off work to recover, and he left her his personal phone number, and his sister's, as Momo had gone through and recovered from the same sort of thing. Tōshirō knew that Momo would be more than happy to help her if Karin decided she wanted it.
He sighed as he leant against Karin's apartment door. He couldn't lock it, because there was only one set of keys. He would either have to lock them both in, which was a problem because Tōshirō really needed to get home, or he would have to lock her in and take the keys with him, and wake up very early to unlock the door so she wasn't trapped. It was just a lot easier to keep the door unlocked. The thing is, he wasn't convinced she was safe. What if her ex-boyfriend came back to her apartment? He felt like it was unlikely, but it was still a possibility. He was afraid to leave her alone. Tōshirō looked at his watch. It had gone past one in the morning. He had to work early in the morning.
Tōshirō walked along the apartment corridor and heard noise coming from one of them. He figured he could at least ask. He knocked on the door. A woman with quite a young, upset child in her arms opened the door. Tōshirō was about to tell her that it didn't matter, but he spotted what he assumed was this woman's partner in the kitchen warming up milk. Tōshirō hoped that meant that they could help him. He wouldn't feel right asking the woman to help him if she was on her own. She had to look after her son. But thankfully that wasn't the case.
A little awkwardly, he explained what had happened to Karin and asked if the couple could watch out for noises in Karin's apartment, in case her ex-boyfriend came back. The fairly new parents, judging from the baby, had agreed, the mother looking particularly horrified at what had happened. The woman explained that she and her husband woke up pretty easily at the minute due to their child always needing something, so they should be able to wake up and help Karin if she needed it. Tōshirō thanked the couple profusely being setting off to go home to his own apartment.
XxXxXxXxXxX
Well it had taken her a while, but Karin had managed to get her life back together, and was starting to get over her bastard of an ex-boyfriend. It had been difficult, after all they had been together for just under two years, but Tōshirō's sister was helping her through it. The two of them had become good friends. Momo had given her some very useful suggestions, all of which she had tried. Get busy with work, take up a hobby or two, have a proper tidy up or redecorate her apartment, she had done all of them. Keeping herself distracted had helped Karin a lot, because the more she thought about what had happened, the more pathetic and useless she felt, which didn't help her at all.
She buried herself with work, catching up on the stuff she didn't do, taking on projects she wouldn't normally do, she even went on a business trip to England, which was much more fun than she expected it to be. Due to focusing on her ex-boyfriend for so long she had lost a fair few friends, but on the trip she found herself making friends with her colleagues. She felt like Tōshirō had set it up and she knew she should've been annoyed, but honestly, she was grateful for it.
She had taken up football again, having abandoned it when she moved to the city she was currently in. Not intentionally, but it had happened. She had managed to get on a five-a-side team, which again led her to making more friends. Karin had ended up taking up cooking as well, trying out recipes that her sister sent her. She messed up occasionally and she wasn't as good as Yuzu, but she felt like she had made a good start.
Karin had also ended up redecorating her apartment. Momo had suggested spring cleaning, or maybe repainting a room or two, but she ended up going all out. She really wanted a change, and whenever she looked at what her apartment used to look like, she was reminded of what had happened in it. Besides she was sick of the old look anyway. Karin had sold the majority of her old furniture and bought new ones (including a new coffee table that wasn't mainly made out of glass). She re-carpeted the floors as they were bloodstained, and painted all of the rooms. The living room now had cream walls with red curtains and sofas, and her bedroom was now cream as well, save for one wall behind her bed which was now teal, which had curtains and bedding to match. It had been a few months now, and she was coping. She wished she could progress faster, but Momo had told her this is something you can't rush and she was doing remarkably well.
Karin sighed as it became apparent that there was no one in the apartment she was knocking the door of. She looked at her watch, figured it wouldn't be too long till he got here and sat down neatly on the floor, pulling a book out of her bag. Karin had managed to read a few pages before getting distracted by her own thoughts. She made a mental note of the page she was on and put the book back in her bag. She supposed Momo was right. She was doing pretty well, all things considered. She sighed, a little edgy waiting for the owner of the apartment she was leaning against to arrive home. The fact that she had managed to get a crush on someone was particularly impressive, or at least Momo had said so.
Karin was a little frightened that it was a rebound thing though. Momo had encouraged her to go after the guy she liked but Karin refused. She didn't want to start dating him to then find that the spark she thought was there actually wasn't within a few months. Besides, she couldn't really date him anyway. Even if she wanted to. Which she didn't. It just wouldn't work. She wasn't completely sure a relationship would work between the two, never spending that much time with each other anyway, and it would be near impossible to date him anyway. Unfortunately it was a little hard to forget about him, regardless of how hard she tried.
She looked up from the floor when she heard footsteps coming towards her. 'Speak of the devil.' The guy looked a little surprised to find her there.
"Karin! What are you doing here?"
Karin stood up from the floor and fished out a large folder out of her bag. "You said you needed this by today, so I'm giving it to you."
He took the folder out of her hands. "Well yes, but why didn't you come to the office instead?"
"I wouldn't have been able to arrive in time, it was too far away. I had to go and copy some of the sheets, and get some of them laminated and after I finished that there wasn't enough time to get to the office. It's like 20 minutes away from here right?"
He nodded. "Yeah."
"Exactly. I needed to give this to you, and by the time I would've gotten to the office you would've already left. So I decided to come here."
"Well, fair enough I suppose, but...How do you know my address?"
"Momo gave it to me."
"Ah." He should've known.
"Well anyway Sir, I should probably go. Hopefully the project is ok."
"I should hope so, you don't usually spend this time on projects. You're cutting it pretty close, deadline-wise."
"Yeah I know. Sorry about that Sir."
Tōshirō shook his head. "It's fine. You got it to me in the end, thank you Kurosaki."
Karin rolled her eyes at the name, she wasn't too fond of being called that. "You know you can call me Karin."
"I shouldn't. You work for me, I should refer to you formally."
"You speak as if we're in the office."
"I see your point, but my point still stands."
Karin rolled her eyes again. "You're hopeless. But anyway I should go."
"Very well, Kurosaki."
Karin glared at him when he emphasised her surname, causing him to smirk. "You know it's all well and good being all formal and official with names and whatnot, but surely teasing like that would draw more attention to the idea of us not just working together, you know?"
Tōshirō shrugged. "We're not in the office. You were the one who pointed that out."
Karin almost succeeded in keeping the grin off her face. Almost. "Oh, so it's ok to flirt with me now?"
"...Maybe."
Karin smirked before swiftly turning 180 degrees and saying "See you on Monday Sir." as she was confidently striding away.
Yeah...Tōshirō really didn't hate her any more.
Yeah I gotta admit, this isn't the best thing I've written, but the prompt 'Hate' was really difficult. Just the summary alone was really difficult to write. Hopefully the next one 'Miracle' will be easier. There might be a few mistakes here and there, but honestly I wanted to get this posted before I started getting stuff together for college and stuff, so if there are mistakes, please tell me and I'll correct it some other time. But jeez, am I ever nice to Karin in my stories? Poor girl has to deal with a lot.
I would absolutely love it if you guys would review! I would love to know what you guys thought of this chapter, plus it would be great to get feedback on the whole review replies on tumblr. I should point out, you don't need a tumblr account to check my lunatasha blog, you can even send me messages without a tumblr account (but they would be anonymous). But really it would be great if you could follow, because I would love to communicate to you guys more and keep you more informed about updates and chapters and stuff, seeing as they can be a bit unpredictable at times.
Anyway, the next chapter prompt is 'Miracle'! I hope you look forward to it, even though there'll probably be a bit of a wait for it compared to these past couple of chapters, hopefully not too long though.