GOR!!!!! GEOUS!!!!!!!!!!!
Jinai
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Jinai Rao Vailu
a.k.a.
Jinai
age
28
pronouns
she/her
birthday
5 April
birthplace
Nitajo, Aora
job
competitive sailor
Playlist
Stats
Strength
Stamina
Reflexes
Perception
Problem-solving
Teamwork
Cloudlander veteran
ambitious • realist • appears composedJinai was helming boats before she graduated high school, and started sailing professionally at 19, so she knows all the ropes. Her experience has accorded her nerves of steel, letting her maintain focus even when a race comes down to the wire. This is something that her teammate Anqien often sorely needs. But when despair sets in, her poise can get derailed completely, and little can steer her back on course.
Ambitious and demanding, yet down on herself, she feels partially responsible for Anqien's future in sailing. Years of falling short and suffering personal tragedies have taught her to expect the worst; it's what she deserves, or so she thinks.
Her sense of humour is wry and often self-deprecating, and she has a whimsical energy, beneath the patina of jadedness and quiet sorrow. She's no stranger to messing up in very public ways—not that she enjoys it—and together, she and Anqien make up the most high-strung sailing team in the world.
Jinai was born in the archipelago of Aora, but moved to Wulien 19, dedicating her life to the sport after being picked up by Cloud Connectors. She's well-decorated, with at least 20 local titles, yet her lack of international success has long weighed on her. Recently, a scandal with her ex-teammate's conduct and a messy breakup immensely impacted her racing career, and she's decided to retire next year, without a single trophy in international offshore racing to her name.
Trivia
I associate Jinai with orcas (because of her theme song Killer Whales - first video in the playlist), ropes and cables, and sunset colours. She used to work shifts at a bakery on one of Wulien's coastal promenades, but she has since become successful enough to live on prizes and sponsorship grants.Likes
• Sunset• Watching city lights
• Her team, but especially Anqien
Dislikes
• Memories of her ex• Press conferences
• Tabloids making things up about her
Connections
Anqien • teammate
Anqien and Jinai have been sailing together for three years; after the initial awkwardness, they became fast friends with an unparalleled rapport. They're a deadly team that really does not seem that way off the course. Jinai trusts Anqien with her secrets and woes, and occasionally flirts with them for fun. They seem to enjoy it, so no harm done, right?
Telaki • coach
Telaki has never coached anyone longer than Jinai, and they have their own easy camaraderie that makes the partnership work. Telaki sees Jinai as a friend as well as a protege, and tries to advise on her life outside of racing, too. Jinai feels lucky to have someone who cares overseeing her career and learning.
Iki • navigator
Iki is just a little intimidated by Jinai, who is a minor celeb. He makes a point of regularly expressing how honoured he is that he gets to be the weather and navigation expert for this team. Jinai sees him as reliable despite working from the shadows: he's a huge boon to the team and she often attributes wins to him.
Lujang • network / comms engineer
Jinai is, as with Iki, always grateful to Lujang for the invisible work she does for the team. They both sense that they might end up butting heads if they tried to get too open with each other, and have mutually decided to keep things businesslike between them.
0 years old. Jinai was born in a seaside village in Nitajo, Aora. Her parents made their entire livelihood off of fishing.
6 years old. This was the age when Jinai first joined her parents on their fishing trips, learning the ins and outs of driving the boat by watching them take turns doing it. Her parents saw that she was responding well to her home studies, and she started school a year before most children.
12 years old. Jinai fell in love with competitive sailing when the Aorin Cup was won by someone from her hometown. From then, she was on the warpath to become a competitive sailor herself, and her parents supported her in the way they could, by taking her to study under a friend at the yacht club, and letting her helm their fishing boat on weekends.
16 years old. After a year of intense preparation, Jinai became the first person under 18 to win the annual Nitajo Regatta. From then, everyone told her she should pursue bigger trophies, so she did.
“Having the win snatched away so many times…feels worse than losing. Doesn’t it?”
18 years old. Jinai moved to Cisa Aorina for a year, entering the solo regatta of the Aorin Cup with a rented vessel, the Albedo. She became the solo inshore champion—she never doubted that she would. Experts tipped her to be the next big name in competitive sailing, and she was offered contracts with many sponsor companies. But it was Cloud Connectors Co., which operated out of Wulien, that drew her eye.
19 years old. Signing on with CC, Jinai moved to Wulien. For the next two years, she was a solo inshore racer, winning many local and national races and regattas. Then her company decided to transition her to offshore racing, which raked in the dollars. This meant finding her a teammate—that teammate was Kaori Oojima, himself a short course veteran. The two crewed the Cloudlander.
22 years old. The duo made their first bid in the Cross-Helfi Race, and came fourth—an excellent result, for both sailors' first time on an offshore course, if anything. But both were frustrated and determined to improve upon that.
24 years old. Jinai met Josa in the ward where she lived, by chance at first, then intentionally thereafter. A romance blossomed out of those repeat encounters. Meanwhile the Cloudlander team had steadily improved on their standing, till they came first in this year's CHR. On the back of their win, they were invited to the notorious Niro-Helfi Race: they could only claw in a third place finish.
26 years old. The Cloudlanders were in top form, poised to take the NHR this year, when Kaori was dismissed for misconduct. Jinai was introduced to his hastily-recruited replacement, Anqien Liu, who only had a year of experience under their belt. But miraculously, they came second at the NHR, a better debut than they were expecting. This was the start of a promising new partnership.
Bonus trivia
- Jinai is perennially popular in the sailing fandom, and is memetically regarded as "the elegant and sarcastic one." She knows she's popular, too—not that it really makes her any cockier or anything. Quite the opposite—she feels a lot of pressure to perform because so many people admire her.
- Jewellery companies really like to have her model their new products and lines. There's just something lustrous about her, you know?
- Jinai is bisexual. She's had one long-term partner, Josa, whom she was in a relationship with for four years. Before that, she did date around a little bit, but lost those relationships when she moved cities—twice.
- Outside of that, she's been the target of a lot of romantic interest—many people find her combination of looks and skill irresistible. Unfortunately, most of those people are fans—she has politely signing their filographs and walking away down to an art.
- Jinai has been living in the Ni'an ward for about nine years, although she only bought her apartment about three years before the story. It's fairly close to Muli Bay, which suits her schedule.
- Jinai is a fiend for a bit of "spicy" adventure, at least when she is fully in control of it. Running off in the middle of the night, bicycle joyrides with no destination, that's her style. Especially when she's feeling bad. She'll start moving in one direction and keep going until she's too tired to go on—where to, it doesn't matter.
- Though it is within her means to take taxis every day, she cycles whenever she can. Jinai actually derives a lot of thrill from zipping around the ward on her bicycle at dangerous speeds.
- I like to imagine Jinai keeps her hair from tangling with olive oil (or the in-universe equivalent?). It's something she learned from her family.
- Jinai is the trimmer on the Cloudlander because she's much better at micromanaging the ropes and sails to ensure the boat is moving as quickly as possible. Technically she could skipper too, considering her skill with reading the sea, but she can't Weave to save her life, and that's a big strike against her in air-sailing.
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