Personality

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Compliant | Even-tempered | Protective | Unabashed | Apathetic | Forgetful | Rash

Imposing in height and veiled wear, Haruka cuts a striking figure... from afar. While aloof in face, they're cooperative enough to sweep if a stranger handed them a broom, yet without a leash are just as prone to wandering off in distraction instead.

Haruka's tact also leaves much to be desired, loose-filtered despite their placid manner. Double speak is lost on them — or they simply no longer care for the dance of shame and unspoken etiquette. But rather than being from a jaded view, they speak with sincerity… for whether they do or don't understand, they’re occupied more by comfortable routine, fleeting indulgence, and their next lunch.

At their core, Haruka follows instinct and those they favour, sensible or not. On some level they still believe it their duty to look after others. Yet despite their blasé forwardness of Supposedly lived years, with a patchwork personality that recognises little of itself or how to feel at depth, sometimes they need the minding instead!

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History

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childhood

Haruka grew up on temple grounds off Song-Lu’s coast, the child of a widow remarried to the shrine’s head priest. With a youth following the spiritual vocation, Haruka studied well, yet fell behind as their quicker-learned half-sibling took better to the mantle instead. Still lagging among human apprentices, they were assigned one day to mind an unusual guest— the daughter of those who owned these water’s pearls, sent to a simpler living to right her temper.

Come time to return to the capital and with a new friend, Eiko asked them along after convincing their feelings of displacement and her parents to oblige her new hire. Fearing not to ever see her again otherwise, Haruka’s young heart agreed.
So for the next lifetime, they served as a personal attendant and guard on her ventures: around a stage, gossipy courtships, marriage with another house, an early widowing, children raised, a tidied repute as a patron of the arts, and eventually, at the end of her twilight, her private funeral rites.

♦[100 - 180]

On a promise Haruka continued serving her family like an odd heirloom, bonded well with her children — if less so over the next generations, finding the frivolity, whims, and faces of humans changing too fast with every season and fortune. Yet they held unquestioning heart to follow wherever the line went, no matter the troubles the children stirred in their adventuring through life. Haruka was simply there to watch and help chase off any rats, different as their view was… until said Changed Fortunes and Frivolous Whims found them injured one night, with their ward vanished.

When Haruka was unable to recall who was there and what happened in his lodgings despite being involved, nor even seemed to care in an alarming heel-turn of their usual, they were dismissed from employ after the investigation. Failure to protect someone was one damning thing; the misfortune of a likely curse upon them entirely another.
So they retreated to childhood shores and a mother’s aid, piecing at what was now missing in their spirit: Anger, despite being discarded. Tenuous threads. Frustration? Melancholy for wasted years, clinging to a ghost they could no longer see in a bloodline's features. They remembered little and felt less, but perhaps curse was more blessing in the end.

♦ [180-200]

Haruka became an assistant caretaker of the coastal shrine, detached but dutiful as they reworked themself, yet still too irreparably lacking to conduct more responsibilities. They acquainted with the superstitious Chiba villagers, who’d taken the coincidental recovery of an ill family member with the dark elf’s sudden appearance on shrine grounds as an auspicious sign. (ok

After years of mistaken yet not unwelcome kindnesses, when Haruka heard of a young Chiba run off against her family's wishes, a familiar sensation welled in a way they recognised from the first time they left these shores: Worry? Curiosity? Reciprocation? Whatever they felt, at her family’s behest, Haruka returned to the capital tracing her steps.

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Current:

Though soon found, Gorou Chiba’s nebulous search for a cure to her grandfather’s mysterious affliction convinced Haruka to let her stay in the capital. 🆗 But for her young ineptitude, they assumed guardianship despite their own flaws. Minding her as best they could amidst the burgeoning conflict, Haruka funded her ventures with their past savings, indifferent to both politics and her nose for red herrings in other lands.

Only after Firefall left its unforgettable mark did Lucky Haruka insist Gorou abandon her fruitless quest and go home. But now she wished to stay to aid the capital’s recovery, an altruism that again, they couldn’t refuse. 🆗

So Haruka continued watching their mousy charge, careful to steer her from wherever gangs or military involved. But when mother summoned them to the shrine to answer the Chancellor’s call for the enshrined shards, their re-found contentment turned upside once again.

Too divorced from their roots to understand Atros’ pull, and too detached to dwell on what was lost to fire, instead the ensuing madness simply proved even their esoteric knowledge had use to others. Now in Peony Village, in the impassive understanding of what it means to love and lose in endless cycles, Haruka can only start over, once more and as ever, recalling the one person who would’ve adored what’d become of their mad city!

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Additional Info

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• Blossoming characteristics: black nails, mucosa, tongue
• [ stash refs on dA ]

• Advanced Conjurer [26/36] – Eihi [B, large (8)]; Haruya [B, large (8)]; Akito [C, giant (4)]; Shizue [C, Medium (4)]; Nanase [D, tiny (2)]
• Tool: collar, mask, carvings & tattoos. Technique: music & movement
• Specialisations: [Augmentation] & [Everbond]

• Curse: Haruka’s spirit was bitten during the incident with the Eight Flowers. Years are missing from recall and their depth of emotion hollowed. While they can still use magic, they contend with a reduced reservoir and increasing drawbacks.
• [ The red stains in their hair appeared after their cursing, and grow out redder when cut. It tends to look like they're like bleeding from the head, so they arrange affected locks into a sidetail to cover most of it. ]

• dance, flute (for the shrine), shamisen & zither (taught by eiko, recall questionable). Use in magic [scout peripheral]
• Sews amateur little matching doggy clothes for their familiar to begrudgingly wear
• collar & mask from eiko; mousy wooden knick-knacks on their person courtesy of the Chibas
• Nibbler with a Massive Appetite. Likes vegetables and flowers, but has a black thumb
• Favourite hobbies include napping in sunny spots, feeding birds and squirrel-watching.

Relationships

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