Chapter Text
To put it simply, Sakura is a girl. She was a girl when she was born and still is one.
Normally this wouldn’t affect her at all, but it was the rest of the world that seemed to have a problem with it and made it their mission to always remind her of it.
She was raised at an orphanage with a few other kids her age. And everyone, especially the girls, would always comment about her appearance with disgust.
The thing with girls is that they don’t punch, although sometimes Sakura wished they did. Sakura had always been strong, something she took pride in, so she knew she could take them on if they were ever to try and fight her. And even if they got a few lucky punches she would rather have that than what they did to her.
Instead of giving her a bruised jaw or black eye, they would whisper among each other whenever she entered the room. Petty insults and names quiet enough to seem discreet but loud enough for her to hear. They would step on her toes whenever they were walking near her and stick their foot out when she walked down the stairs.
Other times they would drop her plate, spilling all her food and leaving her with no dinner. Or steal her shoes and hide them somewhere in the house, causing her to be late for school. This would cause her to be constantly scolded by her caretaker who no matter how much she told her it wasn’t her fault she would never believe her.
This of course didn’t surprise Sakura since she could clearly hear the word ‘demon’ being whispered by her caretaker after each scolding and unfair punishment.
This problem only got worse in school as she got older.
It was bad enough that the teachers didn’t like her, but rumors had quickly started circling the school about her.
Sakura did not enjoy elementary school. Most of it was just a blur of insults and bad memories she would rather forget. But there was a certain event that stuck out.
It was the last day of elementary school before break. The school held a stupid ceremony with the kids' parents and teachers but Sakuar didn’t even bother showing up.
Instead she went to a nearby park wanting some time by herself. But just as she saw the park in sight she felt a hand pull her hair back as she stumbled back.
By the time she regained her footing and got back, she saw three boys from her class circling her with evil smirks. She felt someone shove her from and behind towards one of the kids, and that kid shoved her against the next. Round and round she went being pushed as they dug their nails on her arms when she got close with laughter and insults being spat at her face.
“Stop it! Stop!” She yelled but they just laughed harder, and the people walking by didn’t even look her way.
Finally she was able to regain some balance and pushed the boy before he could push her. She wasn’t able to push him as hard as she would’ve liked and the boy only stumbled a few steps back, but he was very angry.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” He yelled. He got right in front of her and pushed her with much more force than before. She landed on the ground as the three of them got closer.
The usual train of insults came and Sakura found herself tightening her fists. The angrier she got the more she realized just how sick they made her feel, but then one of the boys took a step closer, placed his hands on his knees and leaned in. He just said one simple word. “Disgusting.”
Sakura saw red.
She immediately got up. Fast and abruptly causing the boys to take a mid-step back except for the boy that had just insulted her.
“What is it?” He said, straightened up.
Sakura took a step back, refusing to let him see her face.
“Aw! Is the ugly girl gonna cry-”. He didn’t get to finish that sentence.
Sakura twisted her body and raised her fist. She used every ounce of strength she could and punched the kid right across the face, sending him flying and tumbling to the ground.
For a second no one said anything then the boy started sniffing and crying at his now bruised cheek.
“Hey!” A boy said as he pushed her back to the ground. “What do you think you-” Sakura refused to let him finish. She brought her leg up and kicked him in the stomach sending to the ground with a coughing fit.
There was only one boy left standing as he trembled on his feet. Sakura stood up and walked over to him. She didn’t care that she was shorter, she didn’t care that her arms were covered in scratches from now or earlier days before, and she didn’t care if she was covered in dirt.
Right now she was the strongest, and that meant she was better than them.
She stopped right in front of the boy. He was trembling and Sakura couldn’t help but voice her thoughts. “Pathetic.” She turned around and walked away as she heard the boys scramble to their feets and run in the opposite direction.
She reached the park that was thankfully empty, and climbed up a tree as high as she could. She found a sturdy branch and sat down with her back to the trunk.
It was easy to forget about everything when she was surrounded by leaves and branches, and being high up made her feel safe. Mainly because no one was there to hurt her.
She looked at her hand as she clenched her knuckles. She didn’t know that punching someone would hurt her. Thankfully she wasn’t bleeding, that would have been a problem.
Dropping her fist down she recalled how the boy had looked at her after she punched and kicked his friends. Sakura can’t remember the last time someone looked her in the eye. The boy was trembling and had looked at her with fear.
She didn’t know how to feel about that.
“Tch, whatever.”
By the time she entered middle school rumors about Sakura being aggressive and violent without reason were already circling around the neighborhood.
It wasn’t like she started the fights. They came to her and she defended herself with her fists. Like one time when a boy threw her stuff out the school window and all over the mud.
He laughed as if he actually did something meaningful, before Sakura punched right in the nose, she couldn’t really kick effectively with the skirt. The boy immediately fell to the ground as blood and tears started streaming down his face.
“Really? Just one hit?” She asked, her face showed nothing but boredom as she walked away. “You’re embarrassing.”
Unfortunately for her, the boy had an older, and much stronger brother. Him and his goons cornered her on her way back from school and beated her to a plum.
“You know if you had just stayed down and taken the hits, things could have gone a lot smoother.” He said to her, Sakura couldn’t do much but glare as she leaned on the alley wall for support clutching her badly bruised arm. “You know normally I wouldn’t hit a girl, but for you,” He gave her a wicked smile. “I’ll make an exception.”
Sakura practically crawled her way back to the orphanage and somehow made it all the way to her bed.
She learned two things that day. One, she needed to learn to take care of her injuries. She barely had any money but a simple first aid kid should do. If fighting was going to become a recurring thing then she needed to find the best way to recover quickly and get back on her feet.
Two, boys are really strong. She already knew that. The guy she had just fought was only two years older than her and the way he punched was brutal. She knew she’ll never be as strong, but she could improve other things. Her speed, flexibility, stamina. Sakura was going to become the strongest, without strength.
The rest of her first year of middle school was filled with one to many fights, not that she minded. In every fight, won or lost, she learned something new and that was always helpful.
One day after a particularly tough fight Sakura came back to the orphanage and treated her wounds in her room. One of the girls opened the door to her room, not even bothering to knock and took a quick look at Sakura. Sakura didn’t even look her way, but she could hear the insults being thrown at her.
She couldn’t even tell what she was saying. After hearing the same train of insults her whole life from the same people, her mind just didn’t have the energy to deal with it, instead it just faded into the background. Of course this didn’t make the experience any less painful.
She finally looked at the girl at the door with an annoyed look. “If you’re going to keep insulting me, at least come up with something more creative. I’m getting tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.”
The girl's face puffed up in anger and she immediately stomped away.
Sakura just rolled her eyes and went to get ready for bed.
It wasn’t until the middle of the night that she regretted sleeping.
Sakura had always been a light sleeper, but by the time she stirred awake there were already at least five girls crowding over her bed.
“You said you wanted us to get creative right?” Whispered one of the girls. “Well how’s this?”
Apparently there were more than five girls and they all grabbed Sakura and pulled her down the bed. She tried to break out of their grips but there were too many girls holding her down and she was still injured from earlier.
That’s when she heard it. The quiet little snip of scissors right above her hair. They were cutting her hair off.
“Wait no! Stop!” She yelled.
“Come on, no one ever liked your hair. We’re just helping you get rid of it.” The girl with the scissors said as she kept snipping.
It didn’t matter how much she yelled, her black and white hair kept falling all over her bed.
At one point one of the girls tried to cover her mouth to stop the screaming but Sakura bit her hand as she started crying. It was at that moment that their caretaker barged into Sakura’s room.
Immediately all the girls let go of her and the scissors were hidden. The caretaker's eyes started searching each of the girls and her eyes landed on the girl who was clutching her hand with a bite mark and then at Sakura with disgust.
All together the girls twisted up a lie about how Sakura had asked them if they could help her get a haircut, but midway during her hair session Sakura started hitting and screaming at everyone out of nowhere.
“You know how she is, miss.” Said one particular girl to their caretaker. “We try our best but in the end she will never change.”
“Stop lying, you are the one’s-.”
“Quiet!” Yelled the caretaker. Sakura stopped what she was going to say, she knew it was pointless. “Girls go back to bed, I have some things to take care of with this one.”
They all left and Sakura was left alone with her caretaker. She didn’t even bother reacting when she raised her hand, palm up. It wouldn’t be the first time, or the last.
Sakura’s second year of middle school started and multiple things have changed.
For one, her hair had grown a bit. It was still really short but the uneven edges now simply looked messy instead of the total disaster it once was. She also started wearing the boys uniform. Fighting with a skirt was too complicated, even for her.
Her life at the orphanage just kept getting worse. The caretaker kept complaining about how much stress she was under with all the girls who were now more interested in ditching school rather than actually attending it.
Of course she took out her stress on Sakura.
Sakura’s response to this was to just avoid the orphanage as much as possible. Everyday after school she would walk around town instead of going there. Sometimes she would even go as far as sleeping in the alleys and go a few days without food just so she could stay away from there.
She only went there when she was hurt, hungry or just really desperate for a bed to sleep on. But even those visits were short.
As for her walks, Sakura found them pretty interesting.
She quickly found the streets of the bad part of town where small gang fights or even just fights in general broke out daily. While these may scare the common person, Sakura found those streets sort of educational.
She was already a great fighter, probably the best at her school, but seeing the fights on the streets, especially from older guys, Sakura found out that she still had a lot to improve on.
She never really initiated any fights, mostly just watching from a distance and later mimicking the moments or fighting styles of whoever had won. Of course she couldn’t expect to completely avoid every fight, so whenever anyone tried to challenge her she was quick to put them in their place.
Mainly on the ground with one to many bruises.
Things were going smoothly, until they didn’t.
Sakura laid on the ground with her back on the wall in the middle of an alley, bruises all over body and blood on her mouth. There were three other guys scattered across the alley thanks to her, and she would have felt pretty good about herself for beating them if it wasn’t for the fourth guy.
She wasn’t looking for a fight but when a guy crept up from behind her demanding she give him her money her immediate reaction was to punch him straight in the face.
This led to two more guys showing up and while they were definitely better than your average thug, Sakura was able to knock them out.
It was the fourth guy that was the real issue and the reason she was in the state she was in.
The fourth guy was a full grown man towering over her as he got closer.
“You know, you caused quite the commission here.” He said with a smirk. His hand surged forward, too fast for Sakura to react. He grabbed her by the throat and easily lifted her off the ground like a ragged doll. Sakura tried to fight him off but her arms couldn’t reach him and her body was too injured and tired.
“I’ve heard the rumors.” Continued the guy, ignoring the way Sakura clawed at his arm. “About the two-toned wretch that came to watch the fights as if they were shows. Only last time I heard, she was a girl.”
What? She thought. But she didn’t get the chance to think further when she felt the man’s grip tightened around her neck. She gasped for any bit of air she could get but it was just getting harder.
“You don’t look like a girl.” The guy remarked. He lifted his hand and pulled off Sakura’s hood, revealing her two-toned hair. The guy grabbed her white hair in a fist, pulling the hair from her scalp. “You know some people might even mistake you for a guy.” He slowly stroked his hand down to her neck.
Sakura's eyes widened.
His hand went down to her shoulder and her stomach. It made her feel sick.
No! No! She wanted to scream. His grip got tighter around her neck.
His hand landed right at her waist where the end of her shirt was. “Only one way to find out.”
Sakura’s mind went into auto-pilot. She used her arms to raise her lower body and landed her heels right at the guy’s nose.
The man immediately dropped her to the ground. Her throat was burning, every breath hurt, but she needed to get out of there. Now!
She immediately exited the alley and ran like crazy. She didn’t dare look back, too afraid to see if the man was right behind her. Her throat burned and her whole body was screaming but she didn’t dare stop.
After what felt like an hour she immediately collapsed in an alley. Her legs could barely move and every breath she took was closely followed by a fit of coughs.
She crawled her way next to the wall for support but couldn’t get up. She was shaking. Sakura brought her knees close to her chest, trying to compose herself but the tears came anyway.
It hurt her throat to cry but she couldn’t stop. She cried silently making sure no one could hear her and see her in this state. She never wanted anyone to see her like this.
“You know that school in Makochi?”
“You mean the one filled with delinquents?”
“Yeah, that one. It’s kinda scary how things work there.”
“For sure, I heard there are fights almost everyday among the students. And sometimes they even fight near the town.”
“I’ve heard of that. Some say that they even fight nearby gangs just for the thrill.”
“That 's crazy! Who would even do that?”
“Apparently the students at Bofurin do it to assert dominance and prove that they are at the top among all the other boys there.”
The two friends continued their conversation as they drifted out of earshot.
“Bofurin High, huh?” Wondered Sakura. It was the week before her first day as a third year in middle school. Her hair was still short and her voice was no longer as soft as it used to, instead it had a weird roughness to it.
She looked, well, like a boy. Not that it mattered to her, she didn’t particularly care. And besides it helped her prevent any other incidents.
She let out a tired laugh. “Bofurin doesn’t sound that bad to me.”