Hanabi Yasuraoka

**Hanabi Yasuraoka** (安楽岡 花火 *Yasuraoka Hanabi*) is the main female protagonist in *Scum's Wish*.

The story begins with Hanabi being in love with Narumi Kanai, her older childhood friend who is now her homeroom teacher. But from the look in Narumi's eyes when he sees Akane Minagawa, Hanabi realizes that he is in love with Akane and not her. Hanabi meets Mugi Awaya, another student who is in love with Akane, who was his tutor when he was in middle school.

Hanabi and Mugi make a pact and begin a fake relationship to satisfy each other's loneliness from their respective unrequited loves, both sexually and emotionally.

## Appearance

Hanabi's full bodyHanabi's facial expressionsHanabi is a very beautiful and attractive young girl (that causes many of the boys in her class to confess their feelings to her) with chin-length black hair that has purple tint with bangs hanging over her eyebrows and her eye color is an ombré of purple and blue where it sometimes appear green (in the anime).

She is usually shown wearing her school uniform, which is a red ribbon, a short-sleeved white collared shirt underneath a dark blueish purple vest and a slightly green grey skirt. She also wears black knee-high socks and school shoes, sometimes wearing the red gym shoes as well.

## Personality

When she's with Sanae Ebato (Hanabi's closest friend), Hanabi is an outgoing and regularly cheerful girl, in contrast to when she's in the presence of Narumi Kanai (Hanabi's love interest), whom she feels timider with and can come off as hostile. But when around Mugi Awaya, she feels more at ease and lets her guard down because she trusts him a lot; he's the only one who understands her worries and who she can share her deepest troubles with. She's often sarcastic and brutally honest to the point others may perceive it as arrogance. This is one of the reasons why Mugi calls her "horrible" when she blatantly told Noriko Kamomebata that she finds her a nuisance. Regardless, Mugi doesn't seem to mind her honesty and even states that he likes her as a whole. Hanabi is jealous whenever some friends of Mugi approach him. Her reasoning is, "I'm just posessive".

She's also observant and analytical, shown when she figured out that there's more to Akane Minagawa than just her clumsy, gentle side, even comparing her to herself.

## Plot

Depicted in both the anime and the manga, Hanabi starts off kissing Mugi Awaya because they are both replacements for the ones they truly love. This sort of unhealthy relationship continues to go on for a while until Mugi hooks up with Akane Minagawa later on where things start to change after Hanabi witnesses Narumi Kanai confessing his love to Akane in the music room, which was a setup that Akane had planned. This causes Hanabi to confront Akane for taking away the person she desired the most and Akane later tells her about her love of making people jealous and getting attention from men. Even more angered now, Hanabi tries to make all the men that are obsessed with Akane fall in love with her as demonstrated with Takuya Terauchi [1], which unfortunately fails. Hanabi and Mugi continue their relationship of passion alone until they decided that they will officially start dating if they get rejected. Hanabi gets rejected, and Mugi does too even though he did get to hook up with Akane a few times. Although both of them got rejected in the end, they did not start dating. Instead, they talked things out in the storage room and decided that despite the feelings they have for each other, they are going to search for real love.

As of **Scum's Wish Decor**, both Mugi and Hanabi haven't moved on from each other and think about the other often. In the final chapter of this series, Hanabi and Mugi meet each other at a concert and accept each other's love and hold hands, signifying the possibility of a genuine relationship beginning between the two.

## Relationships

### Mugi Awaya

Hanabi and Mugi are considered and known as the perfect couple at school where they are both individually popular and when together, admired by others. In the eyes of many, they're a flawless match and their relationship is healthy and romantic. However, that's not entirely true - they share a secret nobody else knows. Despite showing signs that they are clearly in a relationship and having assumed so, they are just using each other as replacements for the ones they truly love. Since Hanabi's love is unrequited, she seek for someone who could understand her, and after finding Mugi and acknowledging his situation, that is the same as hers, they immediately grew closer and came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be bad to soothe their loneliness using each other as substitutes for their love interests. In spite of this, they understand one another and often mutually share their worries. They attempt to fill the emptiness inside their hearts with physical intimacy, with Hanabi viewing Mugi as Narumi Kanai and Mugi viewing Hanabi as Akane Minagawa.

Later on, Hanabi starts feeling weird and more self-conscious around Mugi than before and comes to the realization that to her, he's not a mere replacement anymore - which is shown when she sees Mugi as himself when he touches her. She doesn't see any hope for her love and doubts it will blossom. Consequently, Mugi offers to be her real boyfriend, to which she accepts, though only if they get rejected. As expected, her infatuation with Kanai came to an end and she wondered what happened to Mugi. However, Mugi hooked up with Akane even though he's aware she uses men to fulfill her obsession with being desired by them, albeit that didn't stop him, which caused him to temporarily forget about his deal with Hanabi which in turn made him feel guilty about that. It is implied that Hanabi still has feelings for Mugi.

In the end, Hanabi moved on from her past love interest, finally being certain that she loved Mugi throughout the course of their past relationship, but was blinded by her very own will of filling her void of loneliness and the awareness of the fact that the person she once loved would never share the same sentiment, and as a consequence never reflected on how she felt about Mugi. Having resigned, they decided to proceed with their lives without one another for a short period of time. After meeting again, they realize that they love each other. And despite that they decide to let each other go with feelings of mutual admiration, respect and sympathy. So they end their former relationship and move on to find true love which they both deserve.

In **Scum's Wish Decor**, Hanabi hasn't moved on from her feelings of Mugi and despite being with lots of friends during their time apart she still loves him. She later meets Mugi while working as a staff member at a concert venue and the two of them accept each other's love and hold hands, possibly starting the genuine relationship that both of them had hoped for.

### Sanae Ebato

Sanae is Hanabi's best friend (and as Mugi Awaya said, her only female friend) where they met at a train heading towards their exam when Sanae found herself being harassed by a man. Hanabi, concerned and disgusted, saved her from the train molester, which made Sanae instantly fall in love with her. Although Sanae has feelings for Hanabi and even began a physical relationship with her after confessing her love, Hanabi could only see her as a friend. Atsuya Kirishima (Sanae's cousin) asks her whether she's truly in love with her best friend or if it's just sexual attraction. After some consideration, Sanae gives up on Hanabi and attempts to end their friendship, but Hanabi refuses and proposes to become friends again after she's been given some space and time to think about it instead. At the end of the series, they go back to being friends.

### Noriko Kamomebata

Deemed as annoying by Hanabi, she first met her during preschool days, having been fought to each other. Later on, she appeared again as the one to stop Mugi Awaya and Hanabi from kissing each other. She introduced herself as Moka, which is short for "Most Cutest Angel", but Hanabi directly called her by her real name, irritating her. Over the course of the story, Noriko was seen pleading or even asking Hanabi why she picked Mugi and it usually ends up with Hanabi asking why Noriko has to butt in or tag along with her and Mugi. After their breakup, Noriko saw Hanabi and questioned her again but this time, with her leaving and Hanabi smiling.

Noriko is deeply against Hanabi and Mugi's relationship.

### Narumi Kanai

Narumi is Hanabi's childhood friend, homeroom teacher and her first love whose mother died when he was young and he usually went to Hanabi's home to get homemade meals. For Hanabi, he was her irreplaceable person and she stated she could not find anyone like him or even someone who could replace him. However, Narumi was unaware of her infatuation and always told everyone around him that she's like a little sister to him. Hanabi knows that Narumi has feelings for Akane Minagawa, but Hanabi also knows that Akane isn't seriously interested in him. After Hanabi confessed her feelings and got rejected, she started seeing him as more of a big brother figure than a love interest.

### Akane Minagawa

Akane is Hanabi's music teacher and as to what can be implied whom Hanabi seems to hate her and she knew Akane had a different personality than the one she shows at school, but she's unaware that Mugi Awaya desperately wants to stay oblivious to that. She once mentioned that Akane smelled like cigarettes, hinting that she really isn't what she seems. Of course, Hanabi also knew Akane played with both the feelings of Mugi and Narumi Kanai, questioning her about it, but the only response she would get was either a fake smile or laugh. There was one time Akane even boasted she "did it" with Narumi, infuriating Hanabi. As time went on, Hanabi found out Akane is manipulative and narcissistic, who finds pleasure in drawing people in to her and discarding them after she got what she wanted, which increased her hatred towards her.

### Atsuya Kirishima

She has no ill feelings towards him, and actually takes his advice about being honest with Sanae seriously.

### Takuya Terauchi

Hanabi has no interest in him. But since he has interest in Akane, Hanabi tries to get revenge on her rival by making him fall in love with her. He is openly sleazy and tries to advance on Hanabi. She turn hims down multiple times and eventually learns that she can not respect him or herself if they continue seeing each other. He is the first to leave, as he has other young women to engage with and he is bored of Hanabi.

## Etymology

* The name **Hanabi** means "fireworks/firework" (花火).
	+ The vocabulary word for fireworks literally means "flower, blossom" (花) (**hana**) and "fire/flame/blaze, light" (火) (**hi**/**bi**) .
	+ The theme song of the show, *Uso No Hibana* or "Spark of the Lie" in English, is a play on her name.
* Hanabi's surname **Yasuraoka** means "comfort, ease, convenience, boon, accessibility, amenity" (安楽) (**yasura**) and "ridge, hill" (岡) (**oka**).

## Trivia

* Hanabi's birthday is on May 27 and her zodiac sign is Gemini**.**
* Hanabi has a blood type of A.

## References

1. ↑ Chapter 1