Hyacinth "Hana" Acker
MahouKuroNeko
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Profile
General Information
Family Name
Acker
Name Meaning
Acker is derived from Middle German or English and means "field".
First Name
Hyacinth
Name Meaning
A hyacinth is a flower that is frequently associated with jealousy, sorrow, or loveliness, depending on the color.
Nickname
Hana
Name Meaning
Hana simply means "flower" in Japanese. Hyacinth prefers this name both because it's easier for her to introduce herself in JSL, and because it has less negative connotations than the name her parents gave her.
Age
15
Gender
Hana is cisgender female and uses she/her pronouns.
Sexuality
Hana believes herself to be pansexual, as she doesn't seem to have any preference on gender so long as she likes the person.
Date of Birth
April 22
Place of Birth
Hana was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in America. However, she has lived in Tokyo, Japan since she was "forgotten" there during a family vacation when she was 4.
Handedness
Right-handed
Occupation
Hana is a high school student, and works part-time in the backroom at a flower shop to help pay for her clothes and school supplies. However, if all goes well, she hopes to go into social services when she's older, and plans to open an orphanage specifically for deaf and hard of hearing individuals.
Alliance
Hana is a 1st year student in U.A.'s General Studies course.
Ethnicity
American
Voice and Speaking Behavior
Languages
Hana spent her first few years of life in America, and thus knows ASL, though she's quite rusty at it. She is also fluent in JSL and capable of reading and writing Japanese, though her writing is typically filled with grammatical errors.
Voice Volume
Being deaf and very much under-acommodated as a child, Hana never learned an orally spoken language. By extension, she was never taught to speak.
Manner of Speaking
Hana signs at a fairly slow pace, both to give people the chance to figure out what she's saying and because she occasionally slips back to ASL if she doesn't pay enough attention. It's been noted that she signs in a very "textbook" way, and doesn't seem to know signs for any slang. It's not uncommon for her to have to fingerspell some of the stranger words that weren't in her curriculum.
Personality
Never previously having a place of truly belonging due to her deafness and subsequent upbringing, Hana has largely resigned herself to be the silent, lonely girl in the background who is easily overlooked. She makes no efforts to socialize or connect with her peers beyond silently aiding them, giving them sad smiles out of politeness, or answering direct questions they may ask, as she fears embarrassment or rejection should she do anything more. As such, she can usually can be found at her desk reading while occasionally making subtle, wishful glances towards whatever fun her classmates are engaging in.
However, despite her desire for friends, Hana has a tendency to self-sabotage; not only is she so shy that she has a tendency to run away from anyone who may try to talk to her that she doesn't already know, but she also is quite secretive and tries to keep everyone at a distance. While friendship with her is possible, it takes a strong dedication to win her trust, usually by accommodating her deafness in way that shows that it isn't viewed as an annoyance, such as writing in a notebook and passing to her on a frequent basis, or trying to learn JSL. However, mentioning her flowers, unless in terms of flower language, typically will result in a negative reaction, as Hana absolutely hates her Quirk and refuses to talk about it.
Stemming from her past and her Quirk-caused disability, Hana is not only shy but extremely self-conscious with poor self-esteem and body image. She has a self loathing surrounding her appearance, as she associates her natural hair color with purple hyacinths, which have a horrible connotation to her due to her past and birth name. However, she moreso hates her flowers, as she views them as a deformity and an embarrassment to the point that she uses her hair to hide hem as much as possible. Needless to say, she is not good with compliments, usually outright denying them on the off chance they occur.
As miserable as Hana may commonly seem, the girl does have her good points. She typically seems significantly happier alone, where she's not as anxious. She loves to work in flower gardens, one of the few times she can be found consistently smiling with a twinkle in her eye, and sometimes even off key humming if she's sure no one's around. Furthermore, anyone who befriends her may note that she is very kind and determined, wanting to help others in situations similar to herself in the future, though she does doubt that the future would be so kind to her. Otherwise, she's a major bookworm and a bit of a romantic; she'd love nothing more than for someone to miraculously fall in love with her at first sight, though, being a bit of a pessimistic realist, doubts it would ever happen.
Likes
-Flowers/gardening
-Rainy days
-Shoujo manga
-Lavender tea
Dislikes
-Cold weather
-Bugs crawling on her
Fears
-Hana has eisoptrophobia, also known as a fear of mirrors. She doesn't go out of her way to outright avoid places with them in most cases, but she always avoids looking at them, largely due to not wanting to see her reflection. Additionally, due to the stigma surrounding orphans in Japan and how difficult their lives can be even after leaving the orphanage, Hana is extremely wary of the future.
Physical Appearance
Hair Color
Hana's hair is around the same shade of purple as a hyacinth flower would be, a fact that she very much hates. If she could decide what color she thought would look good on her, she'd dye it in a heartbeat.
Hair Length
Hana's hair comes to around mid-back, with long bangs around breast level framing her face and shorter straight bangs reaching just past her eyebrows.
Hair Style
Hana always wears her slightly fluffy hair down in messy, usually slightly tangled or out of placed waves. She has small pigtails on the sides of her head, which are often slightly lopsided and bound with pastel pink or yellow ribbons.
Eye Color
Hana has clear, sky blue eyes.
Piercings
Despite very much wishing that she had ears to pierce instead of her flowers, Hana does not, and thus does not have pierced ears nor any other piercings.
Height
Hana is slightly taller than the average girl in Japan, standing at 170 cm (5'7).
Weight
Hana is just barely at the lighter end of being a healthy weight, weighing in at 53.5 kilograms, or 118 pounds.
Body Type
Hana's body is that of an endomorph, having soft curves and not much muscle. However, due to not always having enough food available, Hana is fairly thin for her body type, though does not look unhealthy.
Quirk: Flowears
Hana's Quirk gives her to flower buds that replace her ears, which grow back if cut off and are the reason that she is deaf, due to strange roots growing around and even through the bones necessary for her to hear. These buds bloom into various species and colors of flowers to represent her mood (or two moods at once) and cannot be controlled consciously, though they can wilt if Hana is dehydrated. As such, anyone who knows flower language or pays enough attention to Hana can tell her emotions at all times, much to her embarrassment.
While the possible flowers and their meanings are technically endless, Hana has quite a few that appear often enough for their meanings to be noted. Closed buds, for example, occur when she is either emotionless or fairly neutral. Meanwhile, yellow hyacinths occur when she is jealous and purple when she is sad. Yellow tulips signal happiness, while yellow carnations indicate disappointment, daffodils loneliness, and petunias anger. Bluebells appear rarely as a sign of friendship or desiring one, while red roses have appeared, much to her humiliation, to indicate a crush.
Attire
School Uniform
Hana wears the U.A. uniform in a fairly standard way. The only difference is that she typically wears a gray sweatervest over her button up instead of a blazer and prefers black tights over the usual knee-high socks.
Casual Outfit
Hana's most commonly used casual outfit consists of an oversized, pastel pink sweater adorned with light yellow flower-themed embroidery. This is accompanied by a black, pleated skirt that reaches midthigh, pastel purple and yellow striped tights, and a pair of black boots that come to mid-shin.
Stats
Strength 3/10
Hana can lift basic stuff, but has little muscle and certainly can't lift heavier objects.
Speed 3/10
Hana doesn't really run outside of P.E. and even then, she's not at all the athletic type.
Stamina 4/10
As someone who's most rigorous activity is tending to plants and occasionally moving them around the store, Hana doesn't have much stamina.
Teamwork 5/10
Hana is a rather kind person who does her best to get along with anyone. However, language barriers often make it hard to interact.
Intelligence 7/10
Hana was academically intelligent enough to get into U.A.'s General Studies department. However, her grades are fairly middle of the pack there.
Background
Family
Mother
Name: Kelsey Acker
Status: Kelsey's probably alive, but Hana isn't sure
Quirk: Bloom
She can make budding flowers bloom at her touch. They still die in the same amount of time though...
Relationship: Kelsey named her child Hyacinth due to her sorrow and how jealous she was of other mothers having "normal" children. Needless to say, she wanted nothing to do with the girl and made no accommodations for her. She refused to learn sign language, and largely pawned the girl off on a nanny whenever possible.
Father
Name: Dale Acker
Status: Dale's probably alive, not that Hana would know
Quirk: Hear-All
Slightly larger, pointy ears allow him to here anything in a kilometer radius.
Relationship: Dale never wanted children, let alone a loud one with a disability, and so he never cared much for Hyacinth beyond his annoyance at keeping her condition a secret from society and having to pay for her nanny and various accommodations.
Backstory
On paper, the family that Hana was born into seemed wonderful. Dale was a successful businessman while Kelsey was born into wealth in Hollywood, California. The two had met by chance during Dale's travels and, after several years of him flying back and forth to visit, the two decided to get married and move to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Dale had been offered a better position. And, with money being no real issue, it was no surprise that the house they picked out was extravagant. It had a kitchen; 3 bathrooms; a living room and lounge; a dining room; plus five bedrooms, so that Dale could have a home office, Kelsey a walk-in closet, their newly adopted chihuahua her own bedroom, and the live-in maid her own quarters. The one thing they didn't have or plan for was a nursery.
Not only was a child unplanned, but Kelsey was one of the unusual cases in which she did not know she was pregnant until she was in labor at the hospital. And to say she wasn't happy about the fact was an understatement. Both her and Dale were decisively childfree. Furthermore, the child was born with strange flowers instead of ears and standard testing indicated that she was hard of hearing, with a high likelihood of get getting worse with age given that it seemed to be Quirk related. However, realizing how bad it would look for them to abandon the child right after birth, the couple felt forced to take her in. Kelsey, angry about the flower "deformity" on her unwanted child decided upon the name Hyacinth, a not so subtle comment on her sorrow of having a child, and her jealousy towards those who were childfree or at least had a "normal" child.
Said feelings were readily apparent from the moment that Hyacinth was brought home. Rather than tending to the girl herself, Kelsey persuaded Dale to employ several nannies and a wet nurse, all under nondisclosure agreements. The staff quarters of the house got rather cramped, between Hyacinth's crib, the live-in maid, one of the rotating nannies, and often times the wet nurse. Hyacinth was provided for and told who her family was, but as her parents focused only on their work and social media, it was clear she wasn't loved by them no matter how many random gestures and sounds she made, trying to copy what little conversations she observed to communicate.
Hyacinth was never taken out of the house save for doctors appointments, one of which where she was declared fully deaf when she was around 1. Even then, she was kept in a separate room, or a hall, always away from other patients to save her parents embarassment and thus never met anyone her own age. Rather, her only company remained the nannies who could no longer communicate with her as well, as the young child was not a good lip reader.
When Hyacinth was able to walk shortly after, and Dale was at his wits end at no one being able to scold his unruly child for sneaking into his office to "pester" him, he hired a tutor specializing in teaching ASL to hard of hearing and deaf children. Hyacinth, not really growing up with a language she could understand previously, struggled quite a bit, but eventually began to associate her tutor's sign with whatever he was doing or pointing at. It took longer still before she was able to do slow, shaky signs that were simpler in nature, largely the alphabet and simple words like "mom." However, with neither parent nor the nannies learning ASL, it didn't do much good as it still looked like random gestures to the other occupants of the house. Hyacinth didn't seem to understand that, however, as her attempts to communicate with her parents only increased, much to her parents' annoyance. Finally, around age 4, Hyacinth thought she succeeded in getting her parents' attention.
Dale had been assigned to travel to Japan for a rather important business meeting. Seeing an opportunity to get Hyacinth out of the house so perhaps she'll learn how she "should" behave, he decided to make a family vacation out of it. Furthermore, after years of disapproving looks from his staff, he decided that rather than nannies, his wife could care for the girl. It was just for a week, after all, and with no one in Japan knowing his wife or daughter, there was no way for it to negative impact his public appearance. Of course, Hyacinth was overjoyed to finally spend time together.
That week vacation was the best week of Hyacinth's life. Her and her mom visited the park, the zoo, the aquarium, and just about every other child-friendly place Kelsey could think of. Of course, it was largely to distract Hyacinth so Kelsey didn't have to deal with interacting with her, but the child didn't know that. She was perfectly content looking at whatever was interesting and occasionally signing barely discernable words to her mother, not that Kelsey understood them anyways. It really seemed to Hyacinth, however, that maybe her mom had started to have an interest in her. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case in the slightest.
At the end of the week, the crowdedness of the airport gave Kelsey an idea. Giving Hyacinth her suitcase and pinned a note to her shirt, stating to Dale it was in case she got "lost" and slapping Hyacinths hand away from it until she understood to leave it alone. The family started navigating the airport together. However, it wasn't long before the family decided to use the restroom before getting on the plane. Kelsey simply "forgot" to wait for Hyacinth in the restroom, Dale didn't question it, and the two went back home to America without the girl, who was left behind.
It didn't take long for security to find out about the abandoned girl, as she was running through the airport frantically while crying at the top of her lungs. However, none of them knew how to communicate with the girl, as she didn't know Japanese and, even when they tried talking in talking in whatever English they knew, the girl didn't speak to them. When she started signing ASL, one security guard finally realized that perhaps the girl was deaf. It took along time to find an interpreter in the crowd, longer still one that was able to speak ASL rather than JSL. But eventually, a man moving to Japan for work stumbled across the scene and was able to help.
"Are you lost?"
Hyacinth responded slowly and shakily, crying the entire time. "Yes."
"Can I see the paper on your shirt?" Hyacinth didn't understand most of those words, but when the man pointed at it repeatedly, she eventually caught on and handed it to him, who read it and said something to the guard. Hyacinth was confused why the guard suddenly gave her a hug and gestured her to sit. She guessed she should just obey...
Hyacinth wasn't sure how long she sat there with the guard, but eventually even more people showed up. One seemed to be talking to her, not that she could hear it, while another was signing. Hyacinth didn't recognize most of the words being said though, something that must have shown on her face as they quickly stopped, and turned to the previous man. He told Hyacinth that her family had gone back to America and that she was staying there in Japan. She wasn't really sure what that meant though.
Between Hyacinth's deafness and an assumption that she had likely been abused or neglected if her parents felt it acceptable to abandon her in a foreign country, social workers decided to send her first to a short-term therapeutic institution to treat any behavior issues. Thankfully, due to at least having the attention of nannies and a tutor growing up, she didn't display any kind of developmental delay common of neglect. Rather, the institution's concerns were her trauma from being abandoned at the airport and the fact that she seemingly had no way to communicate with the Japanese population. As such, the next few years were spent in the facility for treatment.
Hyacinth found that she wasn't allowed to leave the facility, which she was fairly used to from her upbringing. However, she wasn't fond of always staying in her room, being let out only for one on one classes with a tutor, who worked for hours a day teaching her the JSL alphabet, facing some resistance as Hyacinth very stubbornly kept trying to use ASL. When the tutor finally started spelling out words that she didn't recognize for an object she knew the ASL for though, she realized that maybe she wasn't doing it right. And, grasping some of the base concepts from ASL, learning JSL turned out to be easy enough. She still made mistakes on signs, and mixed up ASL with JSL, but she slowly was able to finger spell in JSL correctly and moved on to learning individual words and phrases. She struggled significantly with the sign for "hyacinth", and also couldn't spell it correctly often. As such, her tutor created a name sign for her using the sign for "flower" instead, which she, while sloppy, was at least able to do. And, it turned out helpful when, at age 6, she was sent to classes in the institution.
The other kids didn't seem to know JSL, and Hyacinth struggled to talk to any of them, getting weird looks if she tried. But at least the teacher had an interpreter, and Hyacinth was able to follow at least some of the classes that way, despite not knowing enough JSL to fluently follow everything that was said. What she did learn, however, was the Japanese alphabets, which, when related to JSL, weren't too hard for her to keep straight. And with JSL being used daily around her, she soon started to pick up on more and more vocabulary and was able to at least hold basic conversations.
Meanwhile, not much actual progress was made on the girl's trauma. She understood she was abandoned, and slowly wrapped her head around the fact that her parents didn't like that she couldn't hear, but she still felt resentment and pain surrounding the issue. Also, she seemed far too shy and reserved, which workers assumed was the result of trauma. Plus, her flowers seemed in invariably be purple hyacinths, which they had figured out seemed to happen when she was sad. And her trying to tear them off repeatedly didn't bode well either. As such, despite her being able to communicate now, it was decided that she would be held at the institution until further notice, likely when they thought she'd made enough progress recovering to function in a normal children's center.
The years that followed were rather lonely, as Hyacinth was forced to stay inside the facility, either in her room or in a classroom with peers that largely were too invested in their own reasons for being there to attempt to socialize with her much. There wasn't much progress with her trauma either; if anything, going that many years without leaving the building seemed to be making her mood worse, as purple hyacinths were giving way to daffodils. As such, when she was ten, Hyacinth was given permission to help in the facility's garden. She'd still be within facility property, and never left unsupervised, but maybe it would help her make some progress.
It helped more than anyone could have hoped. Not only did Hyacinth's flowers turn to yellow tulips, which the workers scrambled to figure out the meaning of, but she seemed to become rather invested in flowers in general. Once, shortly before her twelfth birthday, she even asked a worker to help her search up the various meanings of flowers. Finding out what her name meant, however, dampened her spirits considerably. She had figured out by then that she hadn't been wanted, but finding out that even her name symbolized that fact hurt. Or maybe made her angry. Possibly both. At least it was something to talk about in therapy though.
Therapy was what finally allowed Hyacinth to sort her feelings out. She didn't remember much about her parents, but anyone who'd leave their child in a different country alone was probably a shitty person that she shouldn't miss. Did she hate them? Not quite, but close. She certainly had doubts that she would choose them over the boring prison she currently lived in. And she definitely hated her name and, with her therapist encouraging it as "moving on," she decided she'd go by Hana, like her name sign, once she got out of the institution. And, seeing that she was one of the best behaved residents, had completed the goals set for her, and that the facility needed the funds to spend on other kids, that turned out to be soon. She's be transferred to a children's center and would be allowed to attend a public middle school for the first time.
Adapting to a new environment again was difficult. While Hana was used to other kids being around, she wasn't used to sharing a room with 7 other girls the way she now did at the children's center. The fact that they all seemed to know each other, and ignored her the second they realized she didn't speak, certainly didn't help. Her school, however, was a stark contrast, as Hana was sent to a public middle school in Tokyo specifically for the deaf.
While life at the children center was fairly easy to settle into once she just ignored the other girls' presence, life at school was significantly harder. Hana had never been around any deaf or hard of hearing individuals before, and quickly found herself to be an outsider. The others didn't exclude her, exactly, but they signed too fast, with words and inside jokes that Hana didn't know, and the poor girl often couldn't keep up. Even when she did, her own signing was slow and shaky. She wasn't sure if the smiles, corrections, and slowed down conversations made to accommodate her were friendly or not, but she did appreciate it regardless. However, she really wasn't fluent enough to follow a group conversation and, given her limited conversations with people her age previously, she also just had no idea what to do. It was, all in all, quite overwhelming and Hana quickly found that she'd much prefer to sit in her seat reading one of the library's shoujo manga than attempt to join in whatever her peers were doing and risk making a fool of herself. Plus she felt bad for her classmates always having to accommodate her. Surely it was a pain?
Despite sidelining herself from her class quite often, Hana otherwise did fairly well in her classes, only occasionally having to glance at her neighbor's notes to figure out what her teacher just said, as she didn't know the word in sign. Her class voted her as the class gardener, which Hana would have been thankful for if it wasn't for the fact that she was pretty sure the boy who nominated her, who's name sign seemed to be a modified version of "River" did so because "she has flowers on her head so she's perfect for it!" No one had ever mentioned her flowers in a positive way, so she assumed the boy was bullying her and quickly avoided him whenever possible.
This resulted in quite the comedic scenario in which River, pretty sure he had done something wrong, began bringing an assortment flowers to school every day, and handing Hana whatever one's she had on her head, mistakenly believing her Quirk made whatever flowers she was thinking of at the time. As such, the messages he was sending got progressively weirder. Disappointment. Jealousy. Anger. Hana was pretty sure he was harassing her. Once, he even made the mistake of giving Hana purple hyacinths, and barely got out of the way in time as the now black-rose-bearing girl attempted to slap him, then stormed out. It was around then that he finally realized that maybe he'd been doing something wrong again.
Hana wasn't happy to see River the next day, though for once he didn't give her one of the flowers he saw on her. Rather, he dumped an entire bouquet of fifteen roses on the desk before pointing to something in the book he'd been carrying. An apology?
"You know flower language?"
Hana was confused. So he DID know what he was telling her with the flowers? Was he just a bigger jerk than she thought?
"No, I looked this up yesterday."
"Do you know what the flowers you gave me mean?"
The boy paused, then frantically flipped through the book. He paled considerably, then more with every flower he read about, a mortified look on his face.
"I thought they were just flowers you liked! I've been trying to apologize for weeks!"
"I don't control what flowers bloom." Hana was pretty sure she messed up the signs for 'control' and 'bloom' just then given how hard she was shaking in laughter, but if she had, the boy didn't correct her. He was too busy bowing repeatedly, seemingly apologizing profusely.
Things went largely back to normal after that, River occasionally stopping at Hana's desk to say hi, without flowers, but otherwise socializing with his own friends. In fact, the only time the two groups merged was towards the end of Hana's first year, when River and his friends were bickering and he decided to get her opinion.
"Hana! Don't you think we should attend high school?" He said something else, hands moving quicker than usual, as if he was agitated, but Hana didn't understand.
"Maybe?" She replied. "Why?" The friend jumped in, signing more. Hana stared, baffled. "Sorry. Could you write that? I don't understand."
The boy complied, taking a few minutes before passing her a paper. He had essentially been complaining that high school wouldn't matter, as most local companies wouldn't hire deaf individuals anyways. Society didn't care enough to try to accommodate them. Hana hadn't thought of that before, but given that she'd always been kept separate from others, and then always in specialized school, she could see the reasoning. Actually, the orphans she lived with seemed shoved aside too...
"I agree but," she paused, not sure she knew how to say the next part. "Maybe we can make things better after we graduate."
"Like what?"
"We could open more places for deaf people. JSL classes." She couldn't remember how to say interpreters, but quickly wrote it down. The boys nodded in response.
"We'd probably need to go to good schools to have a chance though. And not many schools around here allow us."
The conversation died off there, but it got Hana thinking. What did she want to do in life? She didn't know. As an orphan, she had no family to support her. She didn't have anyone who she spike to often enough to consider a friend. She'd be kicked out of the children's center at age 15. Could she even go to high school and pay for a place to live? In the weeks that followed, she thought about it all more and more, and wasn't sure she liked the answers she came to. If only there had been deaf orphanages, or even a deaf elementary school when she was kid, maybe she wouldn't have felt so alone. Maybe she'd speak better JSL and wouldn't be so awkward and shy even now. Could she do anything to help future generations though?
The comment of good schools made her think, and she found that, while famously a hero school, the U.A. High School nearby also had a General Studies department. And, given the amount of Quirks and their unusual drawbacks, U.A. didn't seem to have any restrictions on disability. It was, theoretically, a school she could attend. And, from what she read, a very good, prestigious one. She doubted it would actually work out, but for once, Hana decided to have hope, and spent the next two years of middle school studying as much as she could so she could hopefully pass the U.A. Entrance Exam.
A hologram of All Might signing maybe one word a minute, frantically flipping between pages of a JSL book and having horrible grammar, was both the scariest and most hilarious thing Hana had ever seen. Just what had she gotten into?
Resources
Shout outs to:
Cae for helping me with all the details pertaining to deaf/HOH community and learning ASL/JSL.
Bendi for general proofreading of the backstory
Tami for helping with the Quirk name
Resources used for flower language:
Resources used on society, language, and deaf culture (many more were read):
Progression of Learning Sign Language
Children in Alternative Care in Japan
One reason why Hana doesn't read lips
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