Hayakoko

Hayakoko is the femslash ship between Hayate Tendou and Kokoa Shinomiya from the D4DJ fandom.

Canon
Hayate and Kokoa are both first-year students at Arisugawa Academy as well as members of UniChØrd. In their biographies, it is mentioned that the two met for the first time in middle school. Feeling isolated due to her family circumstances, Hayate found Kokoa's song Kogetsu, which the latter had created in memory of her recently deceased mother, and Hayate resonated with it. After that, she tried her hand at poetry, and ended up discovering her talent for writing lyrics. The two then decided to team up together, and their relationship started progressing to the point where they started dating.

When Hayate confessed to Kokoa, she was very hesitant about how she felt about Hayate, due to both of them being girls. Although she had an idea, she rejected the idea of being together at first due to the confusion, some time later, they decided to officially start dating.

They have opposite personalities: Kokoa, despite her outwardly cheerful appearance and image of an honor student at school, is in reality quite cheeky and cocky. Meanwhile, in contrast to her cool appearance, Hayate is quite carefree and sometimes does things that catch others off-guard, but she is also deeply observant of her surroundings at the same time. As such, she is able to tell Kokoa that she deeply loves her without batting an eye. At the same time, she feels sad that they have to hide their relationship at school and instead just pretend to best friends, but understands Kokoa's reasoning for it.

The two are first shown competing as a duo unit, Haya-Coco, against Michiru at FROLIC, where they end up losing against the latter. They talk a bit with Michiru after the battle and then bid their farewell. Upon arriving to the dressing room, Kokoa completely explodes and starts ranting about how sore she is feeling, and how there's no way her and Hayate's unit could lose in any circumstances. When Kokoa is done, she apologizes and says with a regretful expression that Hayate is the only one she can open up to like that. Hayate mentions she has calculated that Kokoa cooled down in 45 seconds, "faster than before," and Kokoa tells the former she should tell her some reassuring words instead. Hayate repeats both of the things Kokoa told her and causes Kokoa to become flustered. Hayate gleefully tells Kokoa that she is happy Kokoa is able to show her true self to her, and how it makes her feel special.

In the Summer ChØrd & The Four Secrets event story, Hayate explains to Lumina that she and Kokoa are dating. When Lumina asked why they wanted to keep their relationship a secret, Hayate mentions that Kokoa is afraid of peoples' reactions and the fact that there are still many people in the world who don't accept two girls being in a relationship.

Fanon
Hayakoko is currently both girls' most popular ship. The ship became quite popular the moment their characters were revealed and the two were announced to be canonically dating in their respective character descriptions. As they are still new characters, they also barely have any rival ships.

Despite having openly sapphic characters, D4DJ is known for leaving ships semi-canon, the most renowned case being Tsubaoi and other major/"main" ships that could be interpreted as semi-canon, such as Kyoshino, Miyuharu and Nagihiiro. As such, it became a huge surprise to fans that D4DJ has actually canonized their relationship.

At the same time, even though the girls' relationship's canonicity since the beginning and its realistic depiction, some people, mainly in the Western fandom, have created discourse over it and claimed that Hayakoko is "just queerbait" or "another case of lesbian rep not being done right."

Fandom
FAN FICTION

FAN ART

TWITTER

Trivia

 * On October 11, 2022, the admin for the EN D4DJ server's Twitter account tweeted "Happy national coming out day to the entire LGBTQ+ community but also to two Arisugawa Academy first years in particular", right after the girls' profiles had been published.
 * Hayate's favorite foods are "food made with love" and "food made by Kokoa".
 * Hayate and Kokoa's seiyuu, Tenma Yuuki and Yura Akari respectively, are close friends in real life. Yura often posts pictures of them doing things together under the.
 * Kokoa frequently comes over to Hayate's house, whether it's to pick her up for school, or to feed her.
 * At the end of side:nova Season 7 -ENCØRE!!!!!!!-, Hayate mentions that she wants her honeymoon with Kokoa to be in Hawaii.
 * Hayate's summer outfit also includes a T-shirt that has the text "Marital vows" on it.