Flowered Daggers (Akira Kurusu/P5 Protag x Fem!Reader)

Ch 0 - Prologue

Today was just another boring day at Shujin Academy. Or, it should have been. The school was abuzz with all the rumors about the new transfer student that would be attending next Monday, ranging from mundane to obviously exaggerated and ridiculous. But given that this was a new student whom no one had ever met before, it was hard to tell what was truth vs exaggerated gossip.

What you did know, however, was that the new student was on probation and your school allowed him a second chance. And as far as you were concerned, if the school had deemed him fit to attend, that was good enough for you.

This being said, you yourself had experience with rumors floating around about you, particularly back in middle school when you stood up for a friend who was being bullied. Up until that point, you were fairly quiet and only spoke in class when the teachers asked you to answer a question. You were more talkative during lunch with the few friends you had at the time, but when one of them started getting harassed and you learned that the teachers were doing nothing to help, you snapped when the bully was bold enough to approach during lunch one day.

You don't do anything to the bully as physical violence was grounds for immediate punishment, and being sick often gave you a disadvantage in the physical category, but you were loud. Even more so when the bully grabbed your arm and squeezed hard while commanding you to shut up. You caused so much of a scene that the teachers had to step in. And when your parents were called, you continued to cause a fuss until they satisfied your sense of justice by calling their parents to have a conference with the teachers and your parents. Ultimately, the bully was suspended by the fact that they left bruises on your arm.

Your mission at the time was a successful one and your friend was never bullied again, but you earned the reputation of being far more than you appeared. And as with any gossip and rumors, it always got exaggerated. At first, other students commended you for standing up for your friend, but as time went on, the heroics faded to more unsavory comments. At first it was simply that you were more bark than bite, but then others would chime in and make the story more "interesting", and it escalated to the point that you were slightly ostracized until the rumors died down. You didn't really care back then so long as you had your few friends who supported you.

However, life changed over the course of middle school and on into high school. The few friends who had stuck with you had moved due to their parents changing jobs or were accepted to other high schools. You chalked it up to fate, but that didn't help the fact that some of the same people who gossiped about you attended your same high school. And with your support group gone, your shy nature took a stronger hold while at school.

However, the problem became two-fold as your parents also became more strict as the years went on. They were at home less and less and began making business trips overseas for weeks to months at a time. As such, you were in charge of taking care of the house by yourself. They were also getting shorter and shorter tempers, but because of the slow progression, you naturally adapted to it. You knew it was stress from their jobs, your mother being a chemist and your father a lobbyist in the same pharmaceutical company. But since they didn't physically abuse you or kick you back to the foster care system, which was your greatest fear, you simply did as told and kept your head down as much as possible. In more recent years, the urge to yell right back at your parents grew stronger, but the few times you did, they held your medical bills and foster status over your head, quickly taking the wind out of your rebellious sails.

It wasn't the best home life, but it wasn't the worst, or at least not as bad as others you overheard about while at school. Despite the yelling and occasional grounding for not getting chores done "just right" or "on time", you were still grateful to your parents for adopting you and giving you another chance at life. So, you simply reminded yourself to suck it up and deal with it or to stay away when you knew it was a particularly bad day for them. It also helped that you were now a second year and nearly out of high school. Another couple years to put up with and then you would be truly free, not just free to do what you wanted when your chores were done.