Cynical • Emotionless • Empty

University student, smart and has good grades but hardly approachable due to her lack of interest in other people or anything else. She shows no interest, no emotion, nothing that could make people want to have a conversation with her. Even then she barely replies if ever, only going through the motions in the daily life, seemingly having no purpose. She will be harsh and rude if it means she can be left alone. Her eyes are so cold they reflect no light or any sort of emotion. Always negative, always cynical, never sees the good side of things. Despite her lack of voiced interest, quite observant when it comes to her surroundings and people around her, but she more often than not uses it to make sure everyone stays away from her. Due to past happenings she put a lid on most of her feelings to the point she is unable to tell if she even has any sort of desires, things she likes, things she wants to do. She deeply hates and doubts herself, it showing in her absolute lack of self-care or worry for own wellbeing, she doesn't mind getting hurt at all, as long as it gets her closer to accomplish her goals and finally putting an end to her suffering. The only thing keeping her alive, and in return the only thing that can let her finally die is accomplishing her revenge on whoever brought her and people connected to her so much suffering. Has virtually no connections with people as she decided to cut everyone off by herself. Terribly depressed, suffering from heavy PTSD, mental health wise the medication is the only thing that keeps her alive and somewhat sane. Her physical condition isn't any good either, most of the wounds she got in past are still affecting her health in one way or another. She's embarrassingly weak and fragile, even a primary schooler could win a fight against her. Deep down, her real feelings probably are there, but is anyone able to reach them?

History

In Himeji family, the custom is to make women born with pink hair the head. While Sanae wasn't born to Himeji family, due to her mother leaving it before she was even born, the current head and Sanae's grandmother Sayaka due to certain "complications" was forced to convince Sanae's parents to let her become the heir. Sanae's mother refused to agree at any point, which eventually lead to a conflict with her husband and their divorce. As for Sanae herself, at first she wasn't really aware of the conflict itself, as a child finding a passion in piano, even placing in some contests. After her parents’ divorce due to lack of finances she had to stop taking lessons and practiced by herself. Her grandma reached to only her this time, to convince her to become heir to ease her mother's workload who was left alone taking care of her children. Sanae reluctantly agrees, starts studying enough to become a Straight A student and skip her final year of primary school, without actually graduating. She loved both her mother and her sister dearly, so she wanted to not cause them any worries. Sanae's mom found out about Sanae getting support from her grandmother eventually and forced her to stop it, but after some time she herself lost her job and was unable to support her children. While she found another one, it was based in a completely different region of Japan, and since she couldn't didn't want to take her children from the place they both loved and grew up in, she left them for some time. That was the moment, where Sanae's sister eventually snapped, blaming Sanae for all the misfortunes that happened to befall them and decided to get rid of her. While Sanae had absolutely no idea what's happening, she realized that her sister must have hated her all this time. She hurt her right hand, rendering her unable to continue piano professionally ever again, but ended up dying due to Sanae trying to defend herself. It took a great toll on her and on her mental health, especially that her grandmother used her influences to cover up said incident and make both Sanae and her sister victims of it, even finding a criminal to answer for it. Sanae was to walk free, seen as completely innocent, but her mind was never the same. She became depressed and absolutely lost any reason to live, but as much as she wanted to, she never could kill herself. She also cut ties with her mother completely, unable to face her after murdering her own sister. After that, her grandma became sort of her legal guardian, she changed her last name to Himeji to more or less start anew, though she mostly didn't leave her bed at all for an entire year. Frustrated with herself, she faked her own improvement to be able to go outside and that's when her grandmother happened to ask her for help with a certain case of really cruel suicides lacking the signs of third party present. Sanae agrees, hoping it might change her own approach to herself, and maybe push her a bit closer to forgive herself and move on.

Lullaby for Withered Flowers

As a request she received from her grandma and her high school's principal, she took on a case centered around a streak of really cruel suicides and transferred to a school in Tokyo Metropolitan Area. As the investigation continued, she made a few friends, even fell in love and enjoyed some parts of high school everyday life. However, culprit she was supposed to find caught up on her earlier, even finding out about her past. Thinking of it as a fun playtime, they challenge her to find out their identity in a certain time period, at the same time planning to make her one of their victims. On the way Sanae loses a few friends to the culprit in one way or another, suffers more and more from mental breakdowns and overbearing feeling of guilt, eventually deciding that the only way she can bring it all to an end is to kill the culrpit and then die herself. While she managed to kill the culprit after they absolutely mentally broke her down, at the last moment they reveal how she was just used and set up by her own family from the very, very start and how pitiful her life was. That causes her to change her mind and try to survive, only to take revenge on whoever did that to her.

Petal Gathering

Four years later, her life is in stagnation as, as broken as she became that day, she emotionlessly goes through the motions until she can find out who hurt her to kill them so she can finally die herself. And it is then when Touya accidentally runs into her, once again setting the wheels into motion.