Aeka Natsu

Early Childhood

Aeka was born in Morioh to her parents Hanae Natsu (a Japanese native) and Donato Cornetto (a visiting Italian mafioso) on November 2nd, 1983. Her father was absent for most of her early childhood, only coming to visit on holidays or other rare occasions, before altogether disappearing when Aeka was around six years old. As a single mother, Hanae was overprotective of her daughter to the point of Aeka becoming rather sheltered and naive; developing the tendency to be kind to people blindly to the point of it being considered a flaw, as well as being pretty clingy to people who show interest/kindness to her. Being so sheltered caused her a great deal of difficulty with social interaction, and her autism didn't help. She was awkward and tended to be seen as 'weird' to other people, leading to her being very lonely during her early childhood despite how friendly and outgoing she was.

Drawing and a Family Curse

As she started growing up, she started slowly closing herself off more and more, and as a result began to channel her efforts into her natural born talent: drawing. Since she was rarely ever allowed to go outside, she started doodling objects she found around her house.. starting out with small sketches, before starting to pay more attention to lighting and shadows.. and eventually coloring. After years of this (and rapid improvement), she started noticing something strange; duplicates of those objects randomly showing up where she'd been drawing, then disappearing again after some time had passed. This greatly confused Aeka, until one day ... she turned around to see a floating, reddish-pink, robotic-looking hand behind her surrounded in a slightly yellow aura. She screamed and grabbed her open sketchbook, before proceeding to smack the hand with it.. which to her surprise, caused the item she had sketched on that page to duplicate and appear before her. She was.. incredibly confused to say the least, but eventually calmed down and decided to experiment a little. Aeka cautiously touched her sketchbook to the hand again, which duplicated that same item exactly.

The floating hand began to follow her all throughout the day, and eventually, when her mother got home, Aeka decided to ask her about it. Hanae was confused for a moment, before realizing that her daughter was showing symptoms of the 'Natsu family curse' showed by all of the women in her family; a stand. But.. she decided to play it off and pretend she saw nothing 'for Aeka's safety'. This, however, just further confused and scared Aeka.. who lived the next few years believing she was haunted by a ghost who could duplicate items when its hand touched her drawings. After a while, as she further improved her drawing abilities, the 'ghost' started to show more and more of itself to her.. until near fully unveiling into the state it is when she entered high school at Budo-Ga Oka at (with only its legs missing), which she named 'Strawberry Fields' after the Beatles song 'Strawberry Fields Forever.

As she continued improving her drawing skills (and thus grew more and more introverted), eventually came the time where she had to enter high school. It was there where she met the first people to ever truly understand her; her first friends, the duwang gang.

Meeting(?) Josuke

The dismissal bell had rung, and Aeka had gathered her belongings and started heading home. On her way out of the school gates, someone seeming to be rollerskating darted right past her. When she looked back to see where that person had come from, she sees a boulder of concrete that had been ripped from the ground hurling at her. Completely on instinct, she materializes her stand, Strawberry Fields,'s hands in the form of gauntlets on her hands and brought her arms up to cover her face to soften the blow. The boulder falls to the ground and her gauntlets dissipate.. and when she looks up, she sees a boy nearly a foot taller than her with a purple pompadour running at her looking very distressed. She brings her arms down and he begins apologizing profusely, before.. healing her injuries? and running off again to chase that rollerskater. She is.. very confused, to put it simply, before glancing down at the ground to look for that boulder... but it's just straight up gone. The ground is in tact, like no giant piece of concrete had ever been hurled at her. Odd.

ACTUALLY Meeting Josuke

Aeka is not satisfied. Aeka wants answers on what all that had been about. So.. she decides to seek out that boy she saw the next day at school before class starts. She asks around for him, even running into Okuyasu.. who points her in Josuke's direction, but is also very suspicious as to why a 'cute girl' is seeking out his best friend. Regardless, Aeka makes her way to Josuke, who's putting his stuff in his locker.

He instantly recognizes her as the girl he'd accidentally hurled a boulder at the other day, and begins apologizing profusely again- but to his surprise, Aeka immediately asks how he healed her injuries. He stutters a bit, before vaguely explaining that it's an ability he's had since he was a kid. Aeka picks up on his reluctance, and much to his surprise again, materializes Strawberry Fields right behind her and bluntly asks if he can see him. Josuke is.. flabbergasted. He materializes Crazy Diamond behind him as well and nods, and this time it's Aeka's turn to be shocked. There's.. other ghosts out there?? Other than Strawberry Fields?? She immediately drops that blunt and closed off persona she'd crafted over the years and starts enthusiastically inspecting and asking questions about Crazy Diamond, until she hears Josuke call it a 'stand'. She asks what that is, and Josuke finally explains to her what it is after all these years. She sighs in relief and mentions that she thought she'd been haunted by a ghost her whole life, and Josuke laughs at that and tells her he thought the same until someone had explained it to him. They bond over that and their stands in general until the bell rings, and Josuke asks if she'd like to have lunch with him and his friends. She enthusiastically accepts, as she'd never had lunch with people before, and they say goodbye and head to their respective classrooms (where Okuyasu pesters him about Aeka and why she was looking for him when he gets there lmao).