Miu Asakura

Miu Asakura (Asakura Miu) is a character in Bungaku Shoujo. She is the main antagonist for the first half of the main story.

Appearance
She has orange hair and red eyes. While she was in middle school, she had a long pony tail but after her failed attempt at suicide, some time before her reunite with Konoha, she cut her hair short.

Background
As a child Miu dealt with emotional abuse from her family. They constantly fought and always ended up dumping their sorrows onto her. To escape from the cruel world around her she would read books about fantasy stories. She would share them with her class saying they were true and because of this the classmates made fun of her. One day she told one of her stories to her classmate Konoha Inoue. instead of making fun of her he believed her and began asking her to tell him more stories. The two became close friends but slowly she ran out of stories and had to resort to copying the stories she had at her home. Konoha did not know they were copies and years later when he almost read one of the books she copied she prevented him from doing so. One day when she went to his house she noticed that he was devoting a lot of his attention to his pet bird. When Konoha went to get food for it she murdered the bird in cold blood. This would be her first truly twisted act and would show how obsessed with Konoha she was. Miu would also ask Konoha if he loved her but he was too shy to say. Later in middle school, whenever Konoha would get close with a girl she would lie to the girl to push the girl away from him. One time Miu told a girl that Konoha liked that she had sex with him, causing the girl to slap him and tell him that she hated him.

One day Miu and Konoha discovered that a writing contest was being held. Konoha told Miu to enter and his pressure led to her mailing in blank sheets of paper to make it look like she entered the contest. Little did she know that Konoha had entered the same contest under the name Miu Inoue. This led her to hate him for doing the one thing that she wanted and Miu ended up attempting suicide by jumping off the roof of their school. This act would scar Konoha for life.

Plot
Years later Konoha moved on and made new friends at high school. His closest friend was the high spirited and mysterious Tooko Amano. One of the girls from the school named Nanase Kotobuki ended up getting injured and Konoha and Tooko would visit her. Little did they know Miu was observing them from her hospital room. Miu ended up meeting a young girl from Konoha's school and convinced her to begin sending Konoha mysterious letters. Konoha and Tooko began to investigate the letters and discovered that a picture drawn in them matched one drawn in a certain collection of stories. When they finally caught the girl responsible she told Konoha who had been sending them. This freaked him out and brought back the terrible memories from what had happened.

One day he went to the hospital and the two reunited. Miu began right away in trying to lie about Konoha's friends and tell him to stay away from them. His friends told him not to trust her and Konoha slowly began to try and figure out what she really wanted. While doing so he discovered her plagiarism and as things became clear in one visit to her hospital room she told him that she hated him and why. After going into depression over what she said he later got a message that led him back to where she had tried to kill herself years ago. There she revealed her feelings that she wanted him to go where ever she did. Konoha agreed to this and the two almost committed suicide together. Luckily Tooko saved them in time and made Konoha come to his senses.

On the way home that night Miu ran in front of a truck to kill herself but again survived. Konoha knew the only way to save her from herself was to be by her side and gave up on school and on being with Tooko and the others to be with her. When Nanase discovered this she attacked Miu to get her to come to her senses and to stop controlling Konoha. During the fight Miu confessed how she wanted Konoha all to herself and all of her emotional dependency issues with him. Tooko showed up in the hospital amidst this strife and revealed that she had talked to Miu on the phone before and that she knew how to make her happy.

The group arrived at an observatory where Tooko explained the meaning she had gotten from Konoha's story and how it related to his relationship with Miu. In the book the roles of the two were reversed but it was made quite clear that Konoha had thought the world of Miu from what he wrote. Tooko then explained how the author of the story that Miu and Konoha had loved as kids went through hardships in life, lost the bonds of those closest to him, and was never truly acknowledged until after he had died. Tooko asked Miu what she wanted to be and Miu explained how she once had dreamed about bringing happiness to others.

Tooko told her that this was Miu's true happiness. Miu explained how her parents were never happy and imagined how great it was to bring them happiness and become a writer. Miu realized at that moment though that she could not do this and instead copied from others and tied Konoha down. Miu said that she only had foulness and darkness within herself.

Tooko told her that people going through unhappiness and difficulty is what creates great stories but Miu said that those stories would never return to her. Tooko tells her to search for those stories herself and by reading the emotions others are trying to convey through stories she can be inspired herself. Tooko tells Miu to raise her head and look at the sky and that stories are as countless as the stars. Tooko asks Konoha why he wrote his book and he reveals that he wrote it to express his feelings towards Miu. Konoha tells her that he loves her and that she gave him the stories that he cherishes that made his world beautiful. Konoha tells her that he is happy because of her and she says that she always wanted to hear that she brought someone happiness. She says that she is sorry for what she did and thanks him for writing the novel for her. She decides that she will stand up on her own from now on.

Later, she developed a romantic relationship with Kazushi.

According to a 6 year time skip (6 years after Touko's graduation), she's volunteering in a children's center.

Konoha Inoue
Miu both loves and hates Konoha at the same time. He's the only one besides her, her only friend and reader. She's so obsessive with him to the point of doing everything, including hurting Konoha and his friends to keep him close forever. However, due to his constant urge to write new stories and her inability to imagine beautiful things, she suffers great stress. In addition, while she knows she is just a dirty, twisted normal girl, Konoha always innocently looks up to her and recognizes her as his ideal angel. Thus, when being with him, she feels even more ashamed of her dark side. To make the situation even worse, the two participate in a writing contest. Despite trying her best, Miu couldn't create any new stories and just hands in blank sheets of paper, while Konoha's novel wins the 1st prize. Miu is desperate because her loyal reader has just stolen her dreams, her imagination, her stories - the last things she possesses. She both wants to destroy him and be in his mind, so she decides to fall out of the school's rooftop before Konoha's own eyes to scar him forever.

After her reunion with Konoha, she continues to destroy his relationships but ultimately fails. After a long talk with Tooko at the end of vol 5, she has changed for the better and becomes his friends once again.