Futami

Backstory: When Futami was young, she was bullied and mistreated by students in her dance school. However, after she confronted the teacher, he laughed at her and ignored her. One day, one of her bullies punched her, shoved her down, and began beating her. When she tried to stand up to the bully, she pushed the girl away from her. The teacher saw this and reported her for "assaulting another classmate". When confronted by the principal, she was berated for her actions and no one would listen to her side of the story. Since the other girl was much more cherished by the school due to her family's background as dancers and huge donors of the school, people laughed at her when she tried to stand up for herself. This caused Futami to quit. She decided to stop speaking up about her problems and asking for help. Futami also stopped looking people in the eyes and became very distrustful and paranoid about the gaze of others. She became homeschooled and focused on only dancing for a whole year, which caused her to burn out and lose her passion. When she was sent to regular school, no one talked to her at all at first. However, she was required to join a club. She decided to join the shogi (Japanese chess) club. She beat the first person she played against, with knowledge of only the basics. Futami came to enjoy shogi and began to speak more to the members of the club, specifically Kiel ( toyhou.se/644729.kiel ). Kiel was the one who convinced her to get back into dancing. Futami and Kiel became extremely close, and when deciding where to go to high school, they both tried for the same one and got in. Futami worked really hard to get to a good dance school for college and was even accepted to her dream college. However, in her junior year, her father lost his job and could no longer pay for her to go to college. Her mother, trying to salvage her daughter's dream, placed her in an arranged marriage so that she could pursue her career. At first, she didn't trust him at all. She pushed him away, but he came to meet her consistently, even protecting her day after day from people who gossiped about her. They became closer, but Futami still felt anxious. However, she discovered that he was bullied by his peers because he wasn't Japanese, and had to transfer schools many times. With this, Futami accepted him and they made a mutual decision to let their relationship develop naturally. After a year of dating, Futami and her boyfriend, Jack ( toyhou.se/968975.jack ), became engaged. Jack's parents paid for her to go to the college of her dreams along with Kiel and Jack. She enjoyed college life a lot and established herself as one of the finest dancers in the school. Due to her hard work, she was invited to perform overseas at a festival in Hawaii. However, this required her to stay outside of Japan for a year. Futami was sure that her fiancé would reject her leaving, but she wanted to follow her heart. After a long, heated argument, Jack broke it off with Futami but decided to keep his promise that he would fund her dreams because he still loved her. Futami asked Jack to wait for her, and they promised that they would see each other again in a year. Futami worked as hard as she could away from Jack, but ended up falling into a state where she couldn't keep going anymore. She lacked the friends and the support that she had in Japan, which kept her going. Futami became extremely stressed and fell into a state where she couldn't continue dancing properly. However, one of the other dancers noticed this and confronted her. The dancer introduced herself as Minako. Minako slowly but surely became Futami's friend and supported her throughout practices. One day, Futami discovered a yearbook from her old school, realizing that this Minako was the same as her bully from many years ago. Panicked, Futami planned to return back to Japan so that she wouldn't have to work with someone that caused her too much trauma in the past. After learning that Futami knew she was the same person that hurt her badly in the past, Minako quickly tried to get her to agree to dance at the festival again. Minako apologized for her mistakes, and Futami hesitantly accepted. After this, the tension between them felt nonexistent, and Futami could finally move on from the past.

Design information: Futami's main outfit (furisode) is reminiscent of not only her culture but my own as well. It's not her only outfit but it is a significant outfit. Purple orchids are a symbol of royalty and admiration, white orchids symbolize innocence and purity, and roses are generally perceived as the flower of love. The pink shade of the kimono symbolizes innocence, while the red obi symbolizes feelings of anger and frustration, which stains the innocence. However, the anger is "cut in half" by a gold rope, which represents hope for the future, new beginnings, good luck, and enlightenment. The furisode is a formal Japanese outfit worn by an unmarried woman. The reason why purple is a prominent color in Futami's design is that her Hawaiian side originates from Kauai. Kauai's island color is purple. However, she was born on Maui, whose island color is pink, which also ties into the color of her clothing. The gemstone for February is also an amethyst, which is also purple. Leonardo Da Vinci believed that amethysts could make people more intelligent and drive away evil thoughts. Futami is a descendant of Kamehameha the Great (King Kamehameha). Futami has cat ears and Jack has sheep horns; this creates a sort of "unorthodox" relationship and is a metaphor for interracial marriage/relationships. Notably, everyone else in this universe (see http://toyhou.se/~world/10546.quiet-academy/characters/folder:all/order:name/1 ) also are kemonomimi. In this universe, animal ears are built off of experience and childhood influence and usually appear around the age of 10 through 14 in girls and 12 through 16 in boys, which are when puberty normally happens in humans. In Japan, it is the norm for girls to hope for a feline's ears to enhance their femininity. Futami's ears are gray and made of tightly intertwined Pele's* hair, which are fine threads of volcanic glass. This is used to represent the aftermath of a large explosion, which often causes trauma or a long-lasting impression. Not only that, but cat ears heighten hearing, creativity, stability, and agility. People who have cat ears often have larger amygdalas, which trigger the fight, flight, or freeze response in people. This is why she is bad with crowds and easy to frighten. Notably, people with larger amygdalas have a shrunken hippocampus, which is responsible for memories. Due to this, when she looks back on things, they are usually a heavily emotion-influenced version of the same memory. Overall, these characteristics put people at high risk for PTSD. Futami's heightened hearing causes her to be able to hear gossip that people may believe she may be unable to hear. This has caused her to hear many rumors about her and her friends in the past. Creativity is a value which is needed to produce and bear original content, especially for visual or performing artists. Stability is something that Futami has always wanted in life. The cat ears help to balance out her thinking when she needs it the most. Agility is something that Futami needed to have to run away from her problems or the things that she hated. It enhances the speed and the complexity of the dances she is capable of doing. The jewels wrapped around the rope on her obi are actually a unclasped friendship bracelet given to her by Kiel. It holds tourmaline and a blue sapphire. Kiel created the bracelets out of the materials that she had bought from a jewelry maker (Zin). Futami wears this constantly after receiving it (near the end of the first year of college). The sapphire in the bracelet given to her is a talisman. The main reason for its existence for Futami is to increase concentration, but it also preserves chastity and protects her from any major sickness. This sapphire is meant to bring order, healing, and focus to Futami's mind as well. Pink tourmaline, the other stone in the bracelet, is a gemstone that often quells fear in people. It promotes relationships, humanity, and is a stone highly valued in the spiritual realm. Mindfulness, a practice in which you attempt to be in the present, is often associated with this stone. Mindfulness enhances concentration, clarity, and equanimity. Futami is someone who often does this on her own as the practice of mindfulness shrinks the amygdala, enlarges the pre-frontal cortex (which is what helps people make decisions), and makes the hippocampus grow. However, the tourmaline also brings a stabilizing force as well as a cool-headed state. This is a recent addition to Futami's life when she gets to Hawaii so it has not affected her yet, but it eventually becomes a huge driving force in her life. The roses on her bows are for masking the scent of her natural pheromones, which make her more attractive. Because Futami hates it when people look at her, she uses this to lower the chances of someone noticing her presence. She obtains roses from the school's gardener and often gets them from performances as well. Futami does bon odori, nihon buyo, and Kagura. These are traditional Japanese dances that are performed today in festivals. The festival that Futami is practicing to perform at is the Okinawan Festival in Hawaii. It is annually held on Labor Day weekend. Futami is 12% Hawaiian and 88% Japanese. I chose this because as someone from Hawaii, it's hard to see that a lot of people are misrepresented and considered as unintelligent and/or poor, or that Hawaii is completely isolated when many people do travel outside of the state. She is Japanese because Japan is a country that generally is racist towards mixed people (half people), and I wanted to also show hints of that in my story. The reason why she was not treated properly as a child by her teacher is due to the fact that she is not fully Japanese. People often believe that Japan can do no wrong but like any other country, it's made mistakes and can still show bias towards people that are different. No country is perfect and I wanted my story to reflect that as well. Hanafuda is a card game that is often played by yakuza in Japan but is casually played in Hawaii. This shows a few of the differences between Futami's upbringing and someone who is raised by fully Japanese parents. The white tern, or Manu-o-Kū, is the official bird of Honolulu, Hawaii. Honolulu is the only city in the US in which white terns nest. Manu-o-Kū stands for "Bird of Kū" in Hawaiian. Kū, who is the god of war in Hawaiian mythology, is represented by a feathered figure. Some people also believe that Manu-o-Kū derives from ohu, which is mist or cloud in Hawaiian. These birds are considered vital to voyaging, since they nest on the land but go to the ocean to find food. This is an important bird in Futami's dancing career. After moving to Hawaii, these birds are often following her around. When she learned their meaning, they became an important anchor for her, bringing her back to reality when she gets caught up in her own nightmares. Futami doesn't have any special powers or traits that are unique to her. This is because I thought that trying to create a story where a character was "chosen" or "special" would be unrelatable. I wanted the way I presented her story, her hopes, dreams, and future to make her a unique character. In Futami's world, ordinary people can become amazing. While prophecies are completely based on a fixed mindset, that fate will always come for you, Futami challenges this concept time and time again with the help of Kiel and Jack. In her world, Futami, who is seen as inferior to the general population, is capable of shining brighter than the stars.

*Pele is the goddess of fire, lightning, wind, and volcanoes in Hawaiian mythology. In some versions of the Hawaiian creation story, she is said to be the one who created the islands of Hawaii.