Post by chidoriyoshino on Aug 1, 2010 6:19:42 GMT -5
Series: Persona 3.
Name: Kouki Hayashi (legally Sakura Hayashi).
Gender: Identifies as male, though physically and legally female.
Height: Five feet, four inches. Exactly.
Weight: Kouki avoids scales, but slightly heavier than average - with all the extra weight in his chest, it seems.
Age: Seventeen.
Class: 2-E.
Clubs: Kouki is on the volleyball team, much to his displeasure. He's a much happier member of the music club, as well.
Likes:
~Peace: ...but not quiet. At his happiest around people, Kouki's idea of a perfect day is a warm spring afternoon with no responsibilities and nothing to weigh on his mind. If he had his way he would always be surrounded by smiles and laughter, and if he could be granted a single wish he would not hesitate to ask for world peace. When his world, and the people in it, are happy, Kouki is happy.
~People: Though he is no longer quite the social butterfly his parents pressured him to be, he loves being around people. Most of his spare time is spent in coffee shops, libraries, parks - anywhere he can be assured of a bit of company, and maybe some intelligent conversation. It bothers him that he often feels unwelcome around his classmates, for he would love to be friends with as many of them as possible.
~Music: He took singing lessons as a child and was quite good at them, and though he no longer sings - bothered by how unmistakably feminine his singing voice is - he's retained a great love of music. He plays piano fairly well, and he enjoys music club more than anything else at Gekkoukan High.
~His older sister: Twenty-seven-year-old Tsubaki Hayashi is the reason her little brother is who he is, and Kouki absolutely adores her. When his parents reacted badly to his coming out as transgender he moved in with Tsubaki, and he doesn't plan to move out of her apartment any time soon. Half his best friend, half more of a mother figure than his mother is, Tsubaki is undoubtedly the most important person in his life.
(It doesn't hurt that she believes everything he tells her about Personas and the Dark Hour, even though she lacks the potential herself; she's seen Kouki's Persona firsthand, and she is nothing more than supportive as he struggles to figure out his power.)
Dislikes:
~Abuse of authority: Though he usually gets along fairly well with authority figures, he can't stand those who abuse the power they hold over others. From parents who put too much pressure on their children to, say, Classic Literature teachers who try to dictate what their students can and cannot be, they all rub Kouki the wrong way. Overcoming the way he was raised to stay silent and not make waves is easier said than done, but he's trying.
~Violence: More than anything else, though, he loathes violence in any form. He would never hurt another living being intentionally; he's the sort of person who catches bugs to let them go outside instead of killing them, and he would step into the middle of a fight with no regard for his own safety just to make it end.
~Crying: If someone is crying they aren't happy, and when someone isn't happy Kouki longs to fix things for them and bring a smile to their face. Accepting that some people don't need or want his help is a constant struggle... and that isn't even counting the people who aren't people. Hearing his Persona crying inside his head every time the Dark Hour hits has made him come to hate the sound of it.
~Cherry blossoms: Even if he cared to, he couldn't count the number of times he was told, as a child, to be as pretty and graceful as the delicate flowers that were his namesake. He associates them with the things he was forced to be, and there is nothing but negativity to be found in those memories.
Personality: As a child, Kouki's personality was dictated by the wishes of his parents, and even now that he's escaped their stranglehold he is, in many ways, the perfect child they molded him into - perhaps because it simply comes naturally. Impossibly polite and well-spoken, with manners enough to impress any adult he comes across, he all but radiates a proper upbringing and respect for his elders and his peers alike. Even those who have proven themselves unworthy of his respect are treated with the utmost politeness; two wrongs, after all, do not make a right.
Under the layers of etiquette and proper upbringing is a boy who wants very few things, and who puts himself at the bottom of the list. No mood is too dark for him to find a little bit of light in helping others, and his needs and desires never come above those of the people around him. His upbringing has left him convinced that to want things for himself is selfish, and such deep-set insecurities are not easily chased away.
He's always been as honest as is possible within the strict confines of Japanese etiquette, and even now that he has come to terms with who he truly is he struggles with that identity. Presenting himself as male feels like a lie even as it feels far more truthful than the label of "female" ever has, and lying to everyone he meets feels like the most selfish act he's ever committed.
These internal struggles remain just that, unvoiced to anyone but his dear sister and hidden behind a smile and caring words... but keeping everything to himself can be terribly lonely.
As much as he is grateful for a roof over his head and food in his stomach, for an education and a chance to make something of himself, something feels as though it's missing. No amount of throwing all of himself into being there for others can fill the hole left by needing more than just one person to be there for him.
History: Kouki was born and raised in a small, rural town, coached from a young age to make up for his disappointment of an older sister. Tsubaki had dared to move away from home and devote herself to school instead of a husband, and their parents desperately wanted their last child to be everything Tsubaki wasn't.
And for a while, Kouki - or Sakura, as he still thought of himself then - was the perfect daughter. Polite and soft-spoken to a fault, Sakura never complained about her life being so structured that she could barely breathe; she let her childhood be a blur of play dates and pretty dresses and empty praise. She let her parents push her into singing lessons and away from sports, let them encourage her to study art and literature at the expense of her grades in math and science. That she wasn't happy wasn't important. The last thing she wanted to be was a disappointment.
Tsubaki had moved out when Sakura was only five, and their relationship had been barely existent before then; their parents had kept them apart as much as possible, as though afraid Tsubaki's rebellion would rub off on Sakura. When Sakura was eleven and Tsubaki was twenty-one, the older Hayashi sister started writing to the younger, wanting a better relationship with her than she had with their parents... and Sakura was eager to write back.
In Tsubaki's letters, and the visits that followed, were promises that Sakura didn't have to be the perfect daughter their parents wanted. In Tsubaki's company Sakura found a place to vent her frustrations. It was with Tsubaki's help that, on her fifteenth birthday, Sakura chopped off her long hair and tore up the carefully compiled list of boys her age worthy of her attention. And it was with Tsubaki's guidance that Sakura realized she wasn't really Sakura at all.
Her parents were furious, and downright refused to accept that their beautiful, talented daughter felt more like their beautiful, talented son. So she moved in with Tsubaki, and when Tsubaki's job transfered her to Iwatodai near the end of Sakura's first year of high school Sakura moved with her.
In Iwatodai, nobody knew her. There was no pressure to uphold the Hayashi family reputation, and so she decided not to try. She took two months off from school and simply stopped being Sakura. That name, and the gender associated with it, remained on the paperwork submitted to Gekkoukan High, but the student who enrolled wore a boy's uniform and went by a boy's name.
Things didn't go as smoothly as Kouki had been hoping. His homeroom teacher didn't at all approve of him, and though he was allowed to keep the uniform that was about all he kept. Forbidden from using the boy's restroom or joining the boy's sports teams, he was forced onto the girl's volleyball team and his biological gender was soon known by the entire school.
In many ways, being Sakura was easier. But there is still one person Kouki cares about not disappointing, and if Tsubaki has taught him one thing it's that there's a great deal of satisfaction in shunning the easy path.
Appearance: Despite his best efforts, Kouki doesn't look particularly masculine - but all that effort means that he at least doesn't look out of place in a boy's Gekkoukan High uniform. He can pass as a somewhat androgynous boy if he dresses right, and rarely gets addressed as female by strangers, and that's enough for him for the time being.
He's dead average in height - for a girl, which makes him notably shorter than he'd like - and a tad on the heavier side of average, with most of the extra weight, as far as he can tell, in his chest. Constantly keeping his chest bound to appear the way he feels most comfortable is, ironically, uncomfortable, but he is at least good at it and at layering clothes to hide the bandages, and the only people who know they're there are his teammates on the volleyball team... well, and everyone they've gossiped to.
His hair is a deep purple in color, so dark that it appears black with the occasional flash of purple highlights in the sun. It's barely long enough to pull back in a ponytail, which is how he wears it the vast majority of the time; out of his face and out of his way, but not as outright foreign as short hair feels to him. His eyes, too, are dark, a storm-cloud gray.
His uniform is always faultlessly neat, as are any other clothes he choses to wear; he favors short-sleeved button-down shirts layered over shirts with long sleeves and well-fitting jeans, and takes pride in not looking scruffy if he can at all help it.
Evoker: Standard issue, though with the Kirijo Group's name and any other identifying marks crudely filed off. He got it from his sister, who knew a guy who knew a girl who knew a girl's brother who knew someone online who... at any rate, it cost probably more than it should have given the condition it's in, but it works.
Weapon: Kouki doesn't carry a weapon. If he were forced to engage in a physical fight he would use his fists, though he would be extremely reluctant to do so.
Statistics:
~Academic: 3. Though he studies hard and applies himself, he struggles with some subjects and gets unremarkable grades.
~Charm: 5. He's kind and flawlessly polite, traits drilled into him by his parents.
~Courage: 5. Being a pacifist has not made him a coward by any means.
Persona: The following information is for Kouki's ultimate Persona, as she awakened before he moved to Iwatodai.
~Name: Andromeda
~Appearance: Here (contains artistic nudity)
~Arcana: Temperance
~Drain: N/A
~Weak: Strike
~Null: Light
~Resist: N/A
~Skills: Hamaon, Megidola, Diarahan, Recarmdra, Recarm, Amrita, Survive Dark, Invigorate 2
Andromeda appears in the form of a beautiful nude girl with her wrists bound in chains, tears glittering in her eyes. During the Dark Hour Kouki can hear her crying inside his head, and she grows positively hysterical when Shadows or other Persona-users are nearby; she seems able to sense them, though Kouki has never been able to intentionally utilize this ability.
Kouki has never used any of Andromeda's offensive skills, and it would take an extreme emergency, putting the life of someone he truly cared about at risk, to make him do so.
Though he's been aware of the Dark Hour and his Persona for several years now, Kouki is only beginning to understand Shadows, and it's only in the past few months that he's done what research he can and acquired an Evoker. There's a lot he doesn't know, but even though he can tell, in a way he can't quite understand, which of his classmates are Persona-users he's reluctant to ask for guidance or advice. He's very aware that many of his fellow students think he's weird or even crazy, and he's been made wary of instigating interaction with them.
Did you read the rules...? Cold touch of my trembling gun - I close my eyes to hear you breathe...
Name: Kouki Hayashi (legally Sakura Hayashi).
Gender: Identifies as male, though physically and legally female.
Height: Five feet, four inches. Exactly.
Weight: Kouki avoids scales, but slightly heavier than average - with all the extra weight in his chest, it seems.
Age: Seventeen.
Class: 2-E.
Clubs: Kouki is on the volleyball team, much to his displeasure. He's a much happier member of the music club, as well.
Likes:
~Peace: ...but not quiet. At his happiest around people, Kouki's idea of a perfect day is a warm spring afternoon with no responsibilities and nothing to weigh on his mind. If he had his way he would always be surrounded by smiles and laughter, and if he could be granted a single wish he would not hesitate to ask for world peace. When his world, and the people in it, are happy, Kouki is happy.
~People: Though he is no longer quite the social butterfly his parents pressured him to be, he loves being around people. Most of his spare time is spent in coffee shops, libraries, parks - anywhere he can be assured of a bit of company, and maybe some intelligent conversation. It bothers him that he often feels unwelcome around his classmates, for he would love to be friends with as many of them as possible.
~Music: He took singing lessons as a child and was quite good at them, and though he no longer sings - bothered by how unmistakably feminine his singing voice is - he's retained a great love of music. He plays piano fairly well, and he enjoys music club more than anything else at Gekkoukan High.
~His older sister: Twenty-seven-year-old Tsubaki Hayashi is the reason her little brother is who he is, and Kouki absolutely adores her. When his parents reacted badly to his coming out as transgender he moved in with Tsubaki, and he doesn't plan to move out of her apartment any time soon. Half his best friend, half more of a mother figure than his mother is, Tsubaki is undoubtedly the most important person in his life.
(It doesn't hurt that she believes everything he tells her about Personas and the Dark Hour, even though she lacks the potential herself; she's seen Kouki's Persona firsthand, and she is nothing more than supportive as he struggles to figure out his power.)
Dislikes:
~Abuse of authority: Though he usually gets along fairly well with authority figures, he can't stand those who abuse the power they hold over others. From parents who put too much pressure on their children to, say, Classic Literature teachers who try to dictate what their students can and cannot be, they all rub Kouki the wrong way. Overcoming the way he was raised to stay silent and not make waves is easier said than done, but he's trying.
~Violence: More than anything else, though, he loathes violence in any form. He would never hurt another living being intentionally; he's the sort of person who catches bugs to let them go outside instead of killing them, and he would step into the middle of a fight with no regard for his own safety just to make it end.
~Crying: If someone is crying they aren't happy, and when someone isn't happy Kouki longs to fix things for them and bring a smile to their face. Accepting that some people don't need or want his help is a constant struggle... and that isn't even counting the people who aren't people. Hearing his Persona crying inside his head every time the Dark Hour hits has made him come to hate the sound of it.
~Cherry blossoms: Even if he cared to, he couldn't count the number of times he was told, as a child, to be as pretty and graceful as the delicate flowers that were his namesake. He associates them with the things he was forced to be, and there is nothing but negativity to be found in those memories.
Personality: As a child, Kouki's personality was dictated by the wishes of his parents, and even now that he's escaped their stranglehold he is, in many ways, the perfect child they molded him into - perhaps because it simply comes naturally. Impossibly polite and well-spoken, with manners enough to impress any adult he comes across, he all but radiates a proper upbringing and respect for his elders and his peers alike. Even those who have proven themselves unworthy of his respect are treated with the utmost politeness; two wrongs, after all, do not make a right.
Under the layers of etiquette and proper upbringing is a boy who wants very few things, and who puts himself at the bottom of the list. No mood is too dark for him to find a little bit of light in helping others, and his needs and desires never come above those of the people around him. His upbringing has left him convinced that to want things for himself is selfish, and such deep-set insecurities are not easily chased away.
He's always been as honest as is possible within the strict confines of Japanese etiquette, and even now that he has come to terms with who he truly is he struggles with that identity. Presenting himself as male feels like a lie even as it feels far more truthful than the label of "female" ever has, and lying to everyone he meets feels like the most selfish act he's ever committed.
These internal struggles remain just that, unvoiced to anyone but his dear sister and hidden behind a smile and caring words... but keeping everything to himself can be terribly lonely.
As much as he is grateful for a roof over his head and food in his stomach, for an education and a chance to make something of himself, something feels as though it's missing. No amount of throwing all of himself into being there for others can fill the hole left by needing more than just one person to be there for him.
History: Kouki was born and raised in a small, rural town, coached from a young age to make up for his disappointment of an older sister. Tsubaki had dared to move away from home and devote herself to school instead of a husband, and their parents desperately wanted their last child to be everything Tsubaki wasn't.
And for a while, Kouki - or Sakura, as he still thought of himself then - was the perfect daughter. Polite and soft-spoken to a fault, Sakura never complained about her life being so structured that she could barely breathe; she let her childhood be a blur of play dates and pretty dresses and empty praise. She let her parents push her into singing lessons and away from sports, let them encourage her to study art and literature at the expense of her grades in math and science. That she wasn't happy wasn't important. The last thing she wanted to be was a disappointment.
Tsubaki had moved out when Sakura was only five, and their relationship had been barely existent before then; their parents had kept them apart as much as possible, as though afraid Tsubaki's rebellion would rub off on Sakura. When Sakura was eleven and Tsubaki was twenty-one, the older Hayashi sister started writing to the younger, wanting a better relationship with her than she had with their parents... and Sakura was eager to write back.
In Tsubaki's letters, and the visits that followed, were promises that Sakura didn't have to be the perfect daughter their parents wanted. In Tsubaki's company Sakura found a place to vent her frustrations. It was with Tsubaki's help that, on her fifteenth birthday, Sakura chopped off her long hair and tore up the carefully compiled list of boys her age worthy of her attention. And it was with Tsubaki's guidance that Sakura realized she wasn't really Sakura at all.
Her parents were furious, and downright refused to accept that their beautiful, talented daughter felt more like their beautiful, talented son. So she moved in with Tsubaki, and when Tsubaki's job transfered her to Iwatodai near the end of Sakura's first year of high school Sakura moved with her.
In Iwatodai, nobody knew her. There was no pressure to uphold the Hayashi family reputation, and so she decided not to try. She took two months off from school and simply stopped being Sakura. That name, and the gender associated with it, remained on the paperwork submitted to Gekkoukan High, but the student who enrolled wore a boy's uniform and went by a boy's name.
Things didn't go as smoothly as Kouki had been hoping. His homeroom teacher didn't at all approve of him, and though he was allowed to keep the uniform that was about all he kept. Forbidden from using the boy's restroom or joining the boy's sports teams, he was forced onto the girl's volleyball team and his biological gender was soon known by the entire school.
In many ways, being Sakura was easier. But there is still one person Kouki cares about not disappointing, and if Tsubaki has taught him one thing it's that there's a great deal of satisfaction in shunning the easy path.
Appearance: Despite his best efforts, Kouki doesn't look particularly masculine - but all that effort means that he at least doesn't look out of place in a boy's Gekkoukan High uniform. He can pass as a somewhat androgynous boy if he dresses right, and rarely gets addressed as female by strangers, and that's enough for him for the time being.
He's dead average in height - for a girl, which makes him notably shorter than he'd like - and a tad on the heavier side of average, with most of the extra weight, as far as he can tell, in his chest. Constantly keeping his chest bound to appear the way he feels most comfortable is, ironically, uncomfortable, but he is at least good at it and at layering clothes to hide the bandages, and the only people who know they're there are his teammates on the volleyball team... well, and everyone they've gossiped to.
His hair is a deep purple in color, so dark that it appears black with the occasional flash of purple highlights in the sun. It's barely long enough to pull back in a ponytail, which is how he wears it the vast majority of the time; out of his face and out of his way, but not as outright foreign as short hair feels to him. His eyes, too, are dark, a storm-cloud gray.
His uniform is always faultlessly neat, as are any other clothes he choses to wear; he favors short-sleeved button-down shirts layered over shirts with long sleeves and well-fitting jeans, and takes pride in not looking scruffy if he can at all help it.
Evoker: Standard issue, though with the Kirijo Group's name and any other identifying marks crudely filed off. He got it from his sister, who knew a guy who knew a girl who knew a girl's brother who knew someone online who... at any rate, it cost probably more than it should have given the condition it's in, but it works.
Weapon: Kouki doesn't carry a weapon. If he were forced to engage in a physical fight he would use his fists, though he would be extremely reluctant to do so.
Statistics:
~Academic: 3. Though he studies hard and applies himself, he struggles with some subjects and gets unremarkable grades.
~Charm: 5. He's kind and flawlessly polite, traits drilled into him by his parents.
~Courage: 5. Being a pacifist has not made him a coward by any means.
Persona: The following information is for Kouki's ultimate Persona, as she awakened before he moved to Iwatodai.
~Name: Andromeda
~Appearance: Here (contains artistic nudity)
~Arcana: Temperance
~Drain: N/A
~Weak: Strike
~Null: Light
~Resist: N/A
~Skills: Hamaon, Megidola, Diarahan, Recarmdra, Recarm, Amrita, Survive Dark, Invigorate 2
Andromeda appears in the form of a beautiful nude girl with her wrists bound in chains, tears glittering in her eyes. During the Dark Hour Kouki can hear her crying inside his head, and she grows positively hysterical when Shadows or other Persona-users are nearby; she seems able to sense them, though Kouki has never been able to intentionally utilize this ability.
Kouki has never used any of Andromeda's offensive skills, and it would take an extreme emergency, putting the life of someone he truly cared about at risk, to make him do so.
Though he's been aware of the Dark Hour and his Persona for several years now, Kouki is only beginning to understand Shadows, and it's only in the past few months that he's done what research he can and acquired an Evoker. There's a lot he doesn't know, but even though he can tell, in a way he can't quite understand, which of his classmates are Persona-users he's reluctant to ask for guidance or advice. He's very aware that many of his fellow students think he's weird or even crazy, and he's been made wary of instigating interaction with them.
Did you read the rules...? Cold touch of my trembling gun - I close my eyes to hear you breathe...
