Porcelain

Porcelain was born Azami, into the affluent Hingan Sengoku family, thus known for her early years as Sengoku no Azami. Appearances, prosperity, and status quo were all of the utmost importance to the Sengoku family, and it was because of these traits that Azami's life had a rough start and a hard climb. From as early as she can remember, her parents harshly punished her for speaking out of turn, and when she was especially misbehaved in their eyes, she was confined and later beaten. Because of this, she perhaps learned it was best to not speak in most situations, and over time this developed in to uncontrollable selective mutism.

Nothing Azami could do would please her parents, however. Even when she acted as the model child—polite and silent, subservient and observant—she was regarded as nothing more than an object, like a porcelain doll. When the Sengoku family sought to chase opulence by relocating to Doma, they had no mind to continue raising the young girl, and she was ultimately sold to the Hanazono Brothel, owned by a man named Kuchiki no Nao. She was too young to work as one of the girls, so she was put to work cleaning the establishment and doing laundry, a job she held for years until she came of age.

Nao developed a sort of fondness for her, and at times treated her much like a daughter, though she was unfortunately unaccustomed to any sort of kindness and could only respond awkwardly if at all. Azami's young life in Hanazono wasn't bad—she learned to read and write and made a friend or two of some of the older girls, and she was at least no longer abused and neglected.

When Azami did come of age, she requested a job as one of Hanazono's girls, which Nao was initially hesitant about. Still, though, she was permitted, and before too long she became the most popular girl in the brothel. Clients requested her for her unique appearance and silent dutifulness, and she amassed a collection of regulars who would come visit her whenever they had the time. Due to her appearance she became known to clients as "the porcelain girl", and soon took the alias Porcelain. When asked her name, she'd answer "Kuchiki no Porcelain", and eventually abandoned her birth name altogether.

One day, Porcelain was hired by a man introduced to her as Asakura, who spent a small fortune to be with her for a great length of time. When presented to Asakura, she was very quickly off-put by his strange behavior, though she stayed with him to do her work since he was spending so much money on her. Throughout their time together, Asakura tried to badger her into speaking to him, and refer to him as "husband" or "master" at different points, among other things. When their time was eventually nearly up, Asakura told Porcelain to come with him, to become his wife, so that they could spend every day of their lives like this. It was then that Porcelain finally spoke; a simple "no". This seemed to madden Asakura, however, and he attacked her with a knife he'd hidden in his belongings, plunging it into her right eye. Porcelain fought to defend herself for the first time in her life, despite the unbelievable pain of her now-mangled eye. Unable to truly fend off Asakura, in desperation she threw the room's lanterns, soon setting things ablaze; in the chaos and smoke, she was able to escape, and ran as quickly as she could for as long as her body could last. She eventually lost consciousness in a wooded area an unknown distance from Hanazono.

Upon regaining consciousness, Porcelain found herself in the care of a familiar regular client, a man by the name of Yasu. She was nursed back to health, though her right eye could not be saved and was removed entirely, leaving just a horrible scar where it once was.