Ardent Hope II. Chainsaw Man x Male Reader Insert.

9. Old Ways and Names.

"You're going to be great, honey." was the last thing Haruko's father said before leaving the house, right after caressing her cheek, just a couple of months ago. Of course, nothing more than a business trip, all of them thought, but departing from his house was always something they found difficult to go through, even if it was for just a couple of weeks. To be completely honest, Haruko's father never thought of this moment to be a farewell, and for him, this was nothing but a way of saying 'good luck' to his daughter, who had to take an extremely important exam tomorrow.

For Haruko though, this was completely different; she was entirely convinced these last words she heard from him were meant to be something more! It was difficult not to think about it that way, her father always had a liking for puns, wordplays and a particular taste for poetry, literature, and speaking in ways that could be disregarded as completely incoherent, but always with a bit of truth for the well-versed in the art that was hearing him ramble. It was as if he always chose the exactly right words to use in the exactly right moments. So, when her father departed home in the evening of the Eleventh of September, her entire world took a turn for the worse, as on the Twelfth of September, the day her father arrived the city of Nikaho, in Akita Prefecture, he was one of the first victims of the Gun Devil's attack.

Haruko knew she was going to be great, she just had to figure out what exactly was she going to be great in.

So, to find out she had failed almost a third of all the exams she had taken this year was outrageous, to say the least. Her mother had been nothing but a pain in the ass to her, or at least that's the way she saw it, and every day that passed there seemed to be less and less opportunities to actually be "great" in something! Fourth East High School was a heavily populated academy with a growing number of students that seemed to be doing far better than her.

"This sucks, you know?" Haruko told Inoue. Her voice, tired and raspy, made sense of the whole of her imagery in that moment, throwing a rock at a small pond as she stared into nothingness. Luckily for her, Inoue didn't care about such things as her performance, something that seemed strange compared to the usual stares of slight disdain Haruko would get every now and then from other students.

Inoue was a bright person, shining in almost every aspect you could ever imagine, or maybe, that's the way Haruko saw her as a whole. She had beautiful blond hair the length of her shoulders, a very unique heritage from her mother, and on a sadder note, the only thing she kept from her.

"I'm sure it'll get better." Inoue said, staring at the sky looking like a blooming sunflower. "Spring break is just around the corner, maybe you just need a couple of months to rest." Although sometimes cloudy, this day was one of the few in which it had not rained at all, something that had become far less common than usual since the arrival of the strange, stale storm that was surrounding Tokyo. "Relax a bit, take some days for yourself." Inoue's smile seemed to brighten the day altogether for Haruko. "These days have been rough, and this storm and the ocean's behavior had seemingly made everyone kind of paranoid, it's weird actually."

"I.... kinda like it, you know?" Haruko said as she stared into the foggy, darker clouds in the horizon, and that seemed to spark an actual idea on her mind. "Oh, maybe that's a sign! Do you think I'll make a great meteorologist, or better yet, something like, studying the oceans!?"

"That's... not a bad idea at all! You should try for it!"

"If that goes wrong, I might as well try for the Public Safety Devil Hunters!"

"And that's a death sentence." Inoue's voice got lower as she tried to sound stern and serious about this. "I know I can't convince you not to go there if things go wrong, but you promised me that it would be your very last option!"