Shouko

## Basic Information - Name: Shouko Takigawa - Species: Human, kemonomimi (rabbit) - Age: 21 - Nationality: Japanese - Height: 160 cm - Eye color: Dark red - Bust Size: D-cup - Sexuality: Pansexual - Occupation: Third Year Information Science student

Physical Description

Shouko has a small, slender build and a habit of making herself appear smaller around other people. Her hair is silver-white, straight, unusually soft, and falls to her shoulder blades.

Her eyes are dark red and a smattering of freckles covers her face. Her front teeth are slightly elongated and visible when she smiles.

She has tall silver-furred rabbit ears with pink interiors, and a small white puffball of a tail. She also has human ears, which is unusual even among kemonomimi.

She is functionally deaf in her human ears. Her rabbit ears carry her entire sense of hearing, and with them raised she hears considerably better than a human — including things said quietly across a room.

Flattening them makes the world slightly muffled, acute and or far away sounds cutting out or disappearing entirely.

Her ears are long, about 30cm tall. They operate independently and can fold in half and swivel 180 degrees. When they lie flat, they fold down her head, the tips brushing her shoulders.

Style

Shouko wears long sleeves regardless of the weather — oversized cardigans, loose button-downs, skirts, plain sneakers. Nothing fitted, nothing bright, nothing that ends above the elbow or knee.

She also likes pretty kimonos with flowers, usually in pale purple or white. She took two with her to America but hasn't found occasion to wear them.

For bed she has soft pajamas of various childhood cartoon characters.

Personality

Shouko avoids attention, struggles to defend herself, and tends to apologize just from being looked at. She generally speaks quietly, often needing to repeat herself.

She is highly aware of tone, posture, and facial expressions, she notices small details about people and worries about others regardless of her own situation, especially plants and animals.

She becomes noticeably more animated when alone or with someone she trusts, especially about the things she loves.

When she gets scared enough... Her brain just... shuts down. She can't hear or even see properly in this state.

Shouko is deeply distrustful, always expecting the worst since... well. That's all she knows. The only kindness she's ever been shown was to fetishize her ears, her tail, sometimes even her teeth. She does not like being sexualized, and struggles to tell the difference between sincerity and cruelty.

Quirks and Mannerisms

• Pulls her ears over her eyes when overwhelmed
• Freezes (not shuts down) when touched unexpectedly
• Moves silently
• Holds one of her rabbit ears when content, sometimes massaging them.
• Prefers mechanical pencils over pens/pencils
• Very physically affectionate when comfortable enough with someone (has never been, outside her parents)

Likes

• Manga and Anime (Komi Can't Communicate (doesn't read or watch it as much as she used to...), Fruits Basket, Nichijou and the like)
• Video games (VNs, Otome, The Sims)
• Fantasy novels (Brandon Sanderson, Nahoko Uehashi)
• Sewing, despite the reason she usually does
• Slow-burn romance stories
• Libraries and quiet places
• Vanilla ice cream
• Being near someone without being pressured to speak

Dislikes

• Crowds
• Having her ears or tail touched without permission
• People noticing her injuries
• Feeling like a burden
• Bitter food
• Loud noises

Background

Shouko was born with rabbit ears and a tail to two human parents. Doctors ran tests on her for a few years but eventually found nothing of note.

School was never easy, even from a young age. Other children always wanted to pull on her tail and her rabbit ears, and adults called her akuma or yokai.

The older she got, the worse it became. She was a regular target for others; even other bullied kids gave her no reprieve.

Her mother suffers from multiple sclerosis and cannot work. Her father works long hours to afford the medical care she needs.

Shouko would hide her injuries and explain away her damaged clothing whenever her mother probed, not wanting to be a further burden than she already was just by existing. Her mother would drop the subject out of exhaustion more than any lack of care.

Shouko thought university would be a break, cliques being less common in college than in grade school. It was not the case. Several of her regular bullies attended the same school. The same classes. The same buildings.

So, for the first time in her life — at twenty-one — Shouko made the decision to take on a two-year exchange student program. It covered almost all of her living expenses, which would ease the burden on her mother and father, and maybe... maybe things in America would be different.

Her parents had no fight to give for this decision. Even if they had tried to make her stay, she would have insisted on going.

Things were fine in America for a while. However, three fellow students — one of them her own roommate — chose her as a target. A pair of siblings and the brother's girlfriend.

College did not offer the reprieve she so desperately wanted. And even if she wanted to speak up, she was a foreigner on a visa. A kemonomimi.

Relationships

• Mother: They text and video call whenever her mom feels well enough. Shouko assures her that everything is fine, explaining away new bruises and scrapes the same as always. Her mother doesn't believe her, but doesn't push.

• Father: They talk much less, as he still works long hours, but she enjoys the time they do get. They don't video call.

• Marisol Belise: Her dorm mate, a fellow Information Science student. A short, slightly chubby blonde girl with an overbite and blue eyes. Marisol never hurts her directly but never has anything nice to say, and she tells the others where Shouko goes. [Unbeknownst to Shouko... Marisol is jealous of Shouko. She thinks she's gorgeous and loves her ears, but thinks she herself is ugly. So... The bullying.]

• Andrew Belise: A geopolitics major on a basketball scholarship. Tall and well toned, blonde with blue eyes. He doesn't like Shouko because Marisol doesn't like Shouko, and that's reason enough for him. He gets physical, but his insults are elementary. Does quite well in class.

• Trudy Falstead: A business major and heiress to some company Shouko neither knows nor cares about. Curvy, with blue hair and green eyes. She is cruel to everyone and needed no cajoling to start in on Shouko. She is the most physically violent and says the cruelest things. She and Andrew have been dating since high school.

Trudy calls her “Komi” and mocks her freezing and inability to speak, all because she saw Shouko reading the manga one day.

• Romance: Nonexistent. She has never been approached by anyone she trusted and has never felt safe enough to explore those feelings outside the privacy of her bedroom.