Ayumi Eguchi

Ayumi is a cheerful and good-natured girl who tries to see the positive side of things, which is both a good thing and bad thing. She struggles with reading the mood of the situations, resulting in her doing things that have no effect. She easily gets emotional during sentimental moments and is romantic at heart. Due to her ditzy nature, almost everyone around her doesn't take her seriously and is prone to being teased.

She is shown to be quite unaware of her surroundings; inept at adapting to groups and shown by her struggles to read moods. Her passion for blogging also makes her easy to judge and make conclusions without supporting evidence. She is  very keen about the latest gossip/rumors she hears about, and shockingly enough- she doesn’t know the full repercussions of her gossip. Her enthusiasm for gossip is a result of neglect; having been overshadowed by her parents’ and brother’s success, she felt inferior so she pursued it in order to gain attention and success like them.

With her interactions with the water polo teams, Ayumi is able to develop social sensitivity and try her best to understand situations at hand. She also learns to draw the line between validated information and gossip, turning her from a gossiper to a legit reporter.

APPEARANCE

Ayumi is a relatively short girl with long burgundy hair tied into low twintails with flower pins and indigo eyes. She is usually seen wearing the Rikka Gakuen school uniform, with a beige blazer sweater worn on top.

BACKSTORY

Ayumi was born to a fisherman and a financial manager, and is the youngest of the family, with her older brother working as a professional waterpolo player. She, however, felt overshadowed by how successful the rest of her family members were, so she pursued blogging in order to receive recognition and praise. One day her older brother was visiting his old school Yamanami, and out of curiousity she tagged alongside him where she first met the Yamanami Waterpolo Team. The most exciting thing to her was the fact that the waterpolo star, Minato Kiyomizu, was on the team, so she quickly posted rumors about him on her blog a few days after in hopes of getting recognized. This however, was not recieved well by the team and it resulted into even more gossip about him and the team. Realizing the extent of her actions, Ayumi erased the blog post but the damage has already been done. The Yamanami Waterpolo Team became extremely skeptical of her (sans Babayaro and Jojima, who gave her the benefit of the doubt) as a result. Guiltridden, Ayumi tried to appeal to them by willingly helping them with their supplies and managing their practice times. This seemed to ease the team a bit, but they were still cautious.

One day, Ayumi was suddenly approached by a blogger who was interested about the latest gossip she spilled about the Yamanami Waterpolo Team, and proposed the idea of featuring Ayumi's blog, yet the girl was very unsure. When she heard the nasty rumors about Minato and the team from other sites, she was rather disgusted and decided that she was done with gossip. She declined the offer, and proceeded to write an blog post dedicated to her feelings about waterpolo and the team. Touched by what she did, the Waterpolo Team finally gave their full trust, happily welcoming her as their personal manager and close friend. Ayumi, on the other hand, has finally realized that she wants to become a legitimate reporter.