introduction

[meitori]

APPEARANCE

Yuuta has dark hair and eyes, has what is considered a lean body type, and is at the average height for a young Japanese man at 177 centimeters. Due to his upbringing, he is formal in his manner and dress. He has excellent posture, is restrained and focused in his movements, and does not often raise his voice. While proficient in English, he does have a slight accent, which Japanese speakers will recognize as a Kyushu dialect from growing up in Nagasaki. This will not be heard when mass translators are present.

He always tries to make sure that his appearance is neat. He often wears slacks and button down shirts, even at home. He gets cold easily, so he often dresses in layers, liking sweaters and scarves. He is also comfortable in traditional clothing, like yukatas. He prefers to have a bit longer of a hairstyle, and despite his best efforts, his hair always looks a little tousled because of how thin and wispy it is. One distinguishing feature he has is a small mole on his chin.

While not a fidgety person, he has a habit of biting his lip when he is thinking hard or is nervous and pinches the bridge of his nose when he is annoyed.


PERSONALITY

Yuuta is generally a quiet and serious person. He likes to be by himself and this has resulted in him not having the best social skills, but he is typically kind and friendly towards others. He does not have much of a temper. Instead, he has the bad habit of bottling up his emotions and not communicating his needs or wants to others very well. Still, he takes pride in being helpful and reliable. He is very loyal to his family and the few friends he has.

Yuuta is also passionate about environmentalism and conservation. He reads a lot, enjoys gardening and hiking. He also is interested in literature, especially if it does not come from Japan or a majorly English-speaking country. While he does not speak any other languages, he does try to find them in the original text and in Japanese.

When he was young, his grandmother taught him Japanese tea ceremony, which he still occasionally performs for himself and others. Also due to his grandmother, he is very knowledgeable in traditional Japanese myths, legends, folklore, and superstitions. This is more out of necessity due to his powers than pure interest and he makes sure not to advertise it.


WORLD

Luckily, Yuuta’s world is pretty much exactly like our own. Even though he sees spirits and can communicate with them, his situation is the same as many of those in our world who claim to have the same powers: there are skeptics and no real way to prove his abilities scientifically, but there are others who do believe without proof.

Growing up in Nagasaki during the 1990s and early 2000s, he saw a decline in economic growth after a long-running “bubble economy” and political turmoil due to scandals, reactions to disasters both man-made and natural, and general world events.

Despite his powers, Yuuta still grew up as an average kid in 1990s Japan, living in the suburbs with dreams of going to a university to further his education.


BACKGROUND

As the youngest of four, Yuuta was somewhat the baby of the family, but got along with his three older brothers. He was closest to Haurto, his oldest brother, whom he idolized as a hero. He was also close to his grandparents and loved visiting them during summer breaks. Listening to their stories was among some of his favorite things to do. His paternal grandmother also taught him how to cook and shared her love for tea ceremony, hobbies he continues to enjoy.

It also turned out that his maternal grandmother shared something with him as well: the ability to see ghosts and other supernatural beings. Though she was able to teach him how to use and control his powers, this did not prevent spirits of all sorts from hanging around him. His powers got stronger as he got older and he was eventually able to defend himself, but a few close calls instilled a deep fear for all spirits.

This caused many disruptions in his life. Despite being a good student and well-behaved, trying to ignore spirits outside of his home caused some to label him as ‘weird’ or ‘troublemaker’. These views were difficult to get rid of for a while and in the end, he denied that he believed in or could see ghosts.

While his childhood was happy for the most part, his life took a turn when he was twelve years old. While the rest of his family went out for errands, Yuuta stayed home with a cold. When Haruto got off school, he skipped his clubs to look after him. It would have been a typical day, except that when Haruto came home, Yuuta was being held at gunpoint by someone who had broken into their home not long before. The assailant then dragged them around the city and led the police on a wild chase.

Still sick, Yuuta does not remember much of the event, except for when Haruto fought back and was injured because of it. Police closing in, the kidnapper committed suicide, leaving many unanswered questions. For many years, Yuuta felt guilty for Haruto’s resulting paralysis, despite Haurto telling him that he would do it again without a second thought.

After this, bad luck seemed to follow Yuuta: more spirits came after him, teasing and bullying increased, and more. Coping the best he could, be became more withdrawn and solitary. As he and his brothers got older, their father started to have longer work hours and began bringing over ‘clients’ and ‘business associates’ for meetings at their house. Once again, chasing a minor spirit out of his room, Yuuta overheard his father and his business associates discussing something he could only describe as ‘illegal’. He told his brothers, but they did not know what to do—Yuuta could have misheard or misunderstood, after all.

Things continued to be suspicious until police one day knocked down their front door in a sting operation. It was revealed that his father was a member of a yakuza and connected to many illegal and violent crimes. However, the investigation revealed that he had come from another yakuza family and had betrayed them for reasons he never divulged. Using her father’s connections with the Japanese Diet, Yuuta’s mother quickly divorced him and filed for full custody, as Yuuta was still a minor at the time.

Nevertheless, the court case and investigation caused a huge scandal once it became public knowledge. Life for Yuuta and his family became difficult when they agreed to cooperate with authorities against his father and the yakuza. His brothers, who had already moved out and started their own families, were able to distance themselves as the case dragged on. Yuuta and his mother, not so much.

Once he graduated high school, Yuuta wanted to stay with his mother so she would not have to fend for herself, but she convinced him to move to Sapporo where there was less of a yakuza presence. There, he decided to take on what may come at him and hopes to move on from these events, though he still awaits for the day of his father's incarceration.


ABILITIES

Since he was young, Yuuta had the ability to see and communicate with all sorts of spirits and beings, a trait he inherited from his maternal grandmother. Unlike some, he does not need to perform any séances or rituals to establish contact. If the spirit is in this world, then it is just like he is talking to or seeing a living person or object. However, not all ghosts and spirits want to be seen or can be seen right away. He can still sense them with the classic signs and reactions of a haunting: he’ll feel colder, a shiver will go down his spine, he will feel that something is wrong, etc.

Trained by his grandmother in various rites and rituals of both Shintoism and Buddhism, he is able to exorcise spirits through the use of chants and purification rituals. Most of what he does is defensive and he is not the most powerful exorcist ever. If he runs across a spirit more powerful than he or one that is particularly determined, he’ll have trouble with it. His main tools are sutras and salt, but he’s open minded to other ways that might help.

Besides this, his abilities are rather normal. He is handy with a computer, takes excellent notes, has a high reading speed and comprehension rate, and has always gotten good grades. Due to his studies in high school, he is also can speak English pretty well, but idioms and slang tends to fly over his head.


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