♥ kiki ♥

kiki wears her heart on her sleeve, whether she wants to or not. her palette and appearance change wildly depending on her mood, which she usually desperately tries to keep neutral. do you know how embarassing it is to have a cute girl walk by and light up with rainbows?! especially given her luck with romance, it almost always goes terribly for her, every encounter almost always resulting in some sort of tragedy. she tries to ignore it altogether and focus on her studies to become a fashion designer, but when you're ignoring it is always when it strikes, isn't it?

most of her problems, however, aren't from crushes, but from her friends, who she routinely makes and loses. the slightest altercations tend to send her into a heartbroken state - and she often overanalyzes every single statement and movement as justification as to why she's been thrown out again. with the amount of ink she regularly loses from crying and panicking, it's suspicious to some as to how she's even managed to survive this long. she spends most of her time attempting to be as normal as possible - but every day it feels more and more like a fool's errand.

Like most Lieblingstiere, no one knew what was going on with Kiki, and her younger brother Logan, as they grew up - strange glass parts and colour-changing ink? It was bizarre! If that wasn't bad enough - being a young kid who's every emotion was put on full display for everyone to see was humiliating - and it led to a lot of bullying and exclusion from the other kids. For a long time, Kiki and Logan were each other's only friends - spending all their time either together or alone. Kiki was fine with it - talking to other people was scary - and she just wanted to read and gossip with her brother. You can imagine her betrayal, then, once he started ditching her and attempting to fit in with the "cool" kids. It seemed like the only person she could trust had turned their back on her - and everything shattered. She spent all her free time alone - wandering the halls of the highschool, or holed up in the library. No one could reject her if she never gave them the chance, right?

After highschool, she took a gap year, trying to sort out what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. Nothing stuck out to her - just her brother pressuring her to pursue fashion. After all, she was so good at designing! As much as she felt like it was a waste of time - it was compelling. As adults, they had reconnected - despite Logan moving out the second he was able to. Kiki would visit his apartment every now and then, mostly to help clean it, and to spend time with his cat. She reluctantly went into art school, studying fashion design. It was much harder work than she would've anticipated - and she often stayed late at the school, trying to finish assignments, sinking more and more of herself into the establishment. While at the college, she tried to continue her general strategy of avoidance - but was unable to fend everyone off, and wound up creating tenuous friendships that she would then obsess over and run into the ground. It seemed her cycle had begun again - black ink staining her projects, lightheaded from crying.

One night, wandering out into the woods to try and clear her head, she broke down, miles away from anyone who could help her. Collapsing, she passed out, more than expecting to die in exactly the way she thought she would - draining her silly little head. Instead, however - she woke up on a couch, with an IV in her arm. After ripping it out in disgust, and realizing she wasn't dead, she looked around.

Who was this strange man who saved her life, and why was his ink so horribly black?