Azumi Nakajima

**Azumi Nakajima** (Japanese: **中島 あずみ**, *Nakajima Azumi*) is a second year student at Karasuno High school and the childhood best friend of Hinata Shōyō. She had a fatal injury making her have a limp seven months prior to the start of Haikyuu!! She is the Assistant Coach of the Karasuno Volleyball team.

## Appearance

Azumi is very tall for her age and has noted she has yet to stop growing. In a way she notes how she resents her height because her sudden grow spurts were a reason for her fatal injury. She has messy brown hair cut short just beneath her ears, she usually lets it lose but occasionally binds it in a small ponytail with a cap over it. She has hazel eyes, pale skin, and a scar along her left leg from operations.

Azumi's schools uniform is very unkept, but she never breaks any school rules. She usually wears black shorts under her skirt. She often doesn't wear the sweater but only the white blouse with the blazer the sleeves usually tucked up, which is usually crumbled up. Azumi says she's bad at tying bows and usually wears the pink bow as a tie. At times she is also seen tying the blazer around her waist with the blouse's sleeves rolled up.

When not wearing her uniform she is usually seen wearing a grey sweater and a leather jacket.

## Personality

Azumi tries to come of as an easy going person, but when first meeting her most people will note she seems to have a bit of an awkward and quiet nature. Azumi is on the autism spectrum which often causes people to have misconceptions about her. She seems to be awkward around new people and has trouble in groups, but slowly throughout the series she is shown to become closer and more at ease around others as she gets to know them better, she always says she likes to be around energetic people like Hinata who give her the push forward she needs at times, but who also don't mind carrying conversations which she sometimes seems to struggle with.

When being more comfortable around others Azumi is quick to go from shy to loud which often scares of people. She seems to enjoy listening to people and gets easily excited around people she's close with, she's also seen to be more joking. Azumi seems to have trouble with sarcasm, both that she often doesn't get it when someone doesn't use an obvious sarcastic voice, she also seems to not have a sarcastic voice and often comes of as death serious when she's trying to make a joke.

Azumi is a big fan of sport, and seems to have a special interests towards the history of sport especially anything to do with volleyball or baseball. Before her injury she seemed to do a lot of sports in her school, having done football, basketball, judo, although she says she mainly seemed to do high jump and baseball competitively and mainly enjoyed to play volleyball in her free time. She explains while volleyball was her favorite sport, during competitions it would be too loud and she'd always get meltdowns because of sensory overload. As high jump and baseball were always outside she wasn't as quickly bothered.

## Statistics

 Stamina
 Game Sense
 Technique
 Speed

Because of her injury Azumi is unable to run without limping and has been advised by doctors to avoid jumping and landing on her left leg. Before her injury Azumi seemed to have a very good jumping ability and an impressive speed. As Azumi was considered quite an athletic miracle it's no surprise she seems to have excellent statistic before her injury as afterwards she started to slack quite a lot until Hinata pushes her to help him become the ace of the Karasuno volleyball team.

Azumi, although sometimes trouble with articulating her words, is very clever and quick to catch on to details as part of her ASD this makes her extremely good at finding certain flaws in techniques and coming up with strategies. Although at she needs time to think of strategies usually they will be very detailed and focus on the opponents weak points and strong points, mostly to minimize their strengths and amplify their weaknesses. The only slight flaw in her strategies is that they often follow the same core structure.

## Trivia

* Favorite Food: Curry
* Current Concern: She always assumes Tsukishima is being sarcastic and it's getting her in awkward situations.
* When Azumi feels scared or threatened, she instinctively hides behind the nearest person as Hinata does this too this often ends with the two clinging onto each other.
* She has a tattoo of a lightsaber on her lower back.
* Her star sign is Scorpio
	+ Ironically Azumi is terrified of scorpions.
* Her parents named her after her mother's favorite manga series Azumi
* She is the main protagonists in the author's fanfic 'When the Ball Falls'