Masachika Kuze

Masachika Kuze is a first-year student at Seirei Private Academy, serving as a General Affairs member for the student council.

Appearance: Masachika has black hair and is often seen in a disheveled appearance. He's usually seen wearing his school uniform. Despite his opinion of his looks as 'painfully average', multiple of his peers and friends believe he is quite attractive.

Personality: He's an unmotivated, sloven student with a hobby of being an otaku, staying up late most nights. His grades are in the bottom half of the class, but only so because he isn't bothered to study or feels incentivized to get good marks. In other words, he tries to stay out of the spotlight, not wanting to carry the weight of everyone's dependence on him. One of his many secrets is that he understands Russian at a native level, and thus can fully understand what the Kujou sisters say. He is carefree, all jokes, and messes around. Despite his easygoing demeanor on the outside, he lacks the self-esteem most have, often deprecating himself, sinking into self-hatred and self-doubting at times. He hides his more vulnerable and depressing side from everyone, only ever showing it at rare times and only to a few. Despite his outside appearance of nothing note-worthy, Masachika is in fact quite intelligent, reliable and quick-witted, but generally tries to stay away from the spotlight, preferring to work in the shadows. Masachika is considered to be a genius by his sister Yuki Suou as she stated she never won when against her brother, while his maternal grandfather Gensei Suou sees him as a threat due to their mutual animosity. Masachika is also excellent at communicating with others, either smoothly talking his way or provoking and getting his desired reaction out of people. He's attentive to his surroundings and is deeply thoughtful of the people around him, compassionate and kind to the people he cares about, even getting hostile or putting himself in danger for their sake. Though he acts mostly nonchalant and cool, he can be consumed with overwhelming emotions, and just like Alisa, he can feel jealousy and possessiveness over the other.

Background: When he was under the care of his grandfather back in elementary school, he was able to understand Russian due to his grandfather making him watch a lot of Russian movies, about 20 or so. Masachika himself has never been to Russia before, nor does he have any relatives who live there. He also never mentioned his ability to understand Russian at school, so the only person who knows of his skills is his little sister Yuki in the neighbouring class. Masachika was once a part of the Suou household, however, when his father and mother divorced he chose to leave with his father, Kyoutarou Kuze, instead of staying with his sister Yuki. As a result, the head of the Suou family, Gensei, removed him and Kyoutarou from the family name and forbade Masachika and Yuki to let anyone know that Yuki is his biological sister. While he may appear like a nobody on the surface, he has a heavy past and many unresolved issues. He hides his lack of self-esteem, which is often the reason why he is unable to respond to other people's feelings or his own. Many of the things he was taught and raised to assist him in life but also in becoming the next head of the Suou household; striving for his academics, the creative arts and such, were nothing but to earn him the praise he wanted to hear so badly, but in the end, ended up losing more, resulting in a guilty and heavy mind.

Relationships:

Yuki Suou: As the role of an older brother, Masachika deeply cares for Yuki, often indicating his great familial love for her in various incidents. Despite the constant banter and playfighting occurring between one another, Masachika makes sure that Yuki is content with whats revolving around her life. Even though Masachika burdens his past, he never tries to show it around Yuki in order to keep the joyous atmosphere between the two. Yuki is considered Masachika's "otaku buddy", frequently engaging in otaku conversations and mentioning manga-like scenarios similar to real life events happening in their daily lives. The two ran the middle school student council together as president and vice president. Masachika did so as he felt obliged to help out his sister. She later asked him to join the high school student council and be her running mate again for the following election but he turned down her several times. Unbeknownst to him at the time, the price of his freedom from the Suou family was for Yuki to take his place as heir of the family. And ever since their reunion at Seirei, he has been feeling guilty that he left Yuki behind.

Alisa Mikhailovna Kujou: Masachika is very considerate of Alisa, driven by a strong desire to protect her, even though he refuses to believe that what he feels is love. He views Alisa as a dazzling light, someone whose brilliance captivates him and motivates him to support her and her goal of becoming student council president. As he often admires her from afar, Masachika plays along as she teases him in Russian, secretly understanding her while acting like he doesn’t know what she’s actually saying. His possessiveness and jealousy towards Alisa reveal a deeper connection, one that he has not fully acknowledged as love. Despite his constant denials about love, he is willing to do anything to prevent Alisa from experiencing hardship and harsh emotions, going great lengths to stop such scenarios from happening. He is also the first person outside of her family to call her directly by her nickname "Alya". During the beach trip in the summer break, Masachika finally realized that Alisa had genuine feelings towards him, even though Alisa hadn't accepted those feelings at that point. Towards the end of the summer, to help out Hikaru and Takashi with their band's situation, Masachika asked Alisa to become the lead singer for the band. As the band practiced more, Masachika would start to feel jealous for the attention Alisa is giving to his friends, which Alisa noticed. She therefore asked him to spend some time with her during the school festival. For Alisa, she would not accept those feelings until the sports festival in October. It is unclear whether he loves her romantically with absolute certainty, as he is stuck in the conflict between Alisa and her sister Maria, which coincidentally is also his childhood love.

Maria Mikhailovna Kujou: After meeting Maria in the student council, Masachika simply found her a warm and lovely person. Due to Maria claiming that she had a boyfriend, he never saw her in a romantic light. During the summer holidays, Masachika found out that Maria was in fact the girl she met at the playground all those years ago. She then revealed that her "boyfriend" that she had been telling everybody about was in fact Masachika himself. Masachika on his end also has unresolved feelings due to the way they parted in the past. She then confessed her feelings to him but requested Masachika to respond to Alisa's feeling first without revealing their shared past to her. Near the end of the school festival in October, Masachika took advantage of a sudden piano match to play the piano for her. He did it partly to fulfill the promise he made to her years ago but also for him to find closure and say his farewell. However at the end of the contest, Maria gave him a hug and admitted that she was still in love with him before getting interrupted by Alisa. During the sports festival, Masachika participated in a scavenger event where he was tasked with bringing someone else's girlfriend to the finish line and he settled on borrowing Maria. However following the event, Maria threw a fit at him upon learning the theme of his hunt as she did not consider herself to be the girlfriend of anyone but him. She then demanded a romantic date from him as an apology. She made her demands in spite of the fact that she asked him to address his feelings for Alisa first, which he had not done so yet.

Ayano Kimishima: Ayano is Masachika's former maid and childhood friend, therefore he trusts her. However he is also somewhat wary of her as a campaign rival since she used to serve him, she can predict what Masachika might do in certain situations. He is often surprised by her suddenly appearing without him noticing her getting close due to how quiet she is. There have been occasions where he got annoyed with her but they often came about because of Yuki's orders which went against his own interests.