♫ practically perfect in every way ♫
[series]: Tokyo Babylon and X/1999
[character]: Sumeragi Hokuto (皇北都)
[age]: 16
[death]: September 19, 1980
[the better half]: Subaru (昴流)
***
[character history / background]:
The other Sumeragi twin, Hokuto was born in Kyoto at six a.m. on February 19, 1974, six hours and twenty minutes before Subaru. Their parents passed away when they were very young, so their grandmother, the 12th head of the Sumeragi clan, basically raised them. While Subaru revered the old woman, Hokuto thought that she was cold. They were both trained in the basic art of onmyoudo though they soon found that Hokuto lacked magical abilities while Subaru might be the strongest onmyouji to date.
When they were eight, the twins were separated for a year for Subaru's training in Tokyo --the most miserable year of Hokuto's life.
Later on, at 16 years old, the two of them moved to the city together, living in neighboring apartments. By then, Hokuto had taken on the role of his brother's guardian; taking care of all the domestic and secretarial tasks she could do to support her brother's busy life as a professional onmyouji. Then into the picture comes Sakurazuka Seishirou, the charming veterinarian who claims to have fallen in love with Subaru at first sight. He was what Hokuto had been waiting for: someone Subaru could love who would love her brother back. Playing the part of matchmaker, she egged the two of them on shamelessly.
Yet as the months passed by, she began to sense something dangerous in Seishirou though she could never put her finger on what. Hokuto was scared that Subaru would go somewhere she could not follow, that she would be left alone again like when they were small. She sensed that Seishirou had something to do with it, but she didn't know for sure. What she did know, however, was that if he tried to hurt her dear Subaru, he would die a painful death.
Around this time, she met a dream seer by the name of Kakyou. She quickly developed a friendship with him, sharing her concerns for her brother with him and promising that she would take him to see the ocean one day.
At the end of that year of love, joy and crack, Seishirou lost his left eye protecting her twin from a rabid woman (a wise one did say, "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye…"), propelling Subaru to rethink his feelings for him. Hokuto comforted and helped his brother work through his emotions though she timidly tried to warn him too. She has sensed that Seishirou was dangerous, but also that it was too late to pull back now.
Once Subaru realized his feelings, he went to visit Seishirou to tell him, only to find out that it was all just a bet and that he had lost. The Sakurazuka broke his arm and tortured him, interrupted from killing him only because of his grandmother's intervention --she sent her shikigami, which was destroyed, leaving her crippled from then on.
After the incident, Subaru was left catatonic and Hokuto was heartbroken. Believing it to be her fault, she decided to take responsibility and do what she can for her brother's best. She knew that the Sakurazuka would never leave his prey alone, and that he would come to claim Subaru's life again. She also knew that her twin would never fight back, that he would just let himself be killed.
So she took his ceremonial robes and went to search for Seishirou, finding him a month later. Despite it all, Hokuto still believed in him, that she was not wrong when she saw that he could be Subaru's "special person". She told him that she would never let him kill Subaru. She said that there was a spell that only she can cast that would protect her brother and that she wanted him to kill her instead.
With his hand through her heart, Hokuto told him that she has cast a spell on him, that only Subaru could ever kill him and only he can kill Subaru. But should he ever try to kill Subaru in the same way he did her, the spell would backfire and kill him instead. She tells him about the spell because she wanted so much to be able to trust him. Hokuto reminded him that there is no one incapable of love, before dying with her twin's name on her lips.
***
[character abilities]:
Hokuto can do very basic spells, like drawing a weak barrier for herself or sensing spiritual activities --though extremely far from her twin's ability to do these things. She also presumably had the ability to cast one special spell that would reverse Seishirou's spell were he to try and kill Subaru the same way he killed her, but it is unknown whether or not she can, say, cast the same spell on another person who wanted to kill her brother or cast it now that she's dead. I'm operating under the assumption that she can't.
She seems to be able to do basic martial skills too, enough to be able to protect herself from gangs and police officers at least. Hokuto is a domestic goddess; she cooks, sews, cleans and bakes well. Oh, and fashion sense? What fashion sense?
[character personality]:
On the surface, Hokuto is the direct opposite of her twin: loud, cheerful, vibrant, sprightly and utterly shameless. She is the one who sparkles and beams from within, the one who grabs life by the balls and won't let go, and the one who won't take "no" for an answer. She always sees the glass as more than half-full, more than enough, and embraces the good in whatever fate throws her way.
Bold and spirited, she firmly holds on to her beliefs about people; that they all deserve respect, agency, compassion, love and fulfilled wishes. Though she acts as her twin's helicopter mom, she is cautious about overstepping her boundaries with other people, preferring to let them make their own choices. Not that it translates to leaving them alone. Hokuto's heart is full to the brim and she just has to spread her brand of sunshine everywhere. Some may find her overwhelming and irritating, but it will be hard not to miss her when she's gone.
Fiercely generous and loyal to everyone she meets, Hokuto is as kind as her brother, though markedly less naive and more street smart. Despite her capriciousness, she is thoughtful, uncannily intuitive and a relatively good judge of character. When she was alive, she was also the only person who truly understood Subaru's heart, although this has likely since changed.
The most important thing in her life is her little brother. She sincerely believes that he is her raison d'être, that the reason for her birth was to protect and support him, to take care of him any way she can and to help him understand his own heart. Hokuto also believes that Subaru is the source of her own kindness, generosity or whatever good others attribute to her. As some might name her his guiding force, he is hers.
Yet Hokuto is not all sugar, spice and everything nice. Fiercely protective, her love for Subaru borders on obsessive, so much so that she has taken it upon herself to direct his path in life since he seems so consumed with other people's concerns to think about his own future. She tries to fight the urge, tries to let him make his own choices, but she is so afraid for his purity and frailty that she keeps him on a short leash, which probably made him even more fragile than he already was.
Blinded by her own love, Hokuto is extremely selfish when it comes to her brother. She coddled him, not because he needed it but because she needed to. She wanted Subaru to have someone to love, so she forced Seishirou onto him, ignoring his protests. Hokuto also chose to sacrifice her life to stop Seishirou from killing him because she couldn't bear the guilt and the thought of Subaru leaving her. She claims to want his happiness, but really she wants him, and her greatest fear isn't his unhappiness but a life without him.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Right after her death, end of Tokyo Babylon.
***
[third person / log sample]:
There could yet be a happy ending to this story.
In hindsight, she saw through him from the beginning; lustrous, sharp, reeking with the metallic scent of blood, the perfect complement, the flip side of the coin, the other half to her little brother. She couldn't tell the future, but she recognized matching pieces if she ever saw one (tea and anpan, Chanel and Armani, boke and tsukkomi, Subaru and--).
By now she has replayed the last year a million times. Rewind, play, pause, rewind, play, wait-- how the hell did she miss--? She wanted so much for him to find someone, something that when he came along, she blacked out all the parts she didn't like and strapped them both onto the roller coaster --full speed ahead!
It was unlike her to do that. Call her impulsive all you want, but she used to pride herself on colliding with the facts head-on, on being practical, a realist. But even realists have dreams, don't they? Even she had wishes that needed shooting stars.
And in hindsight, there was nothing she would have done differently. She wished it didn't have to hurt so bad, but Subaru was so earnest, heart bleeding on the palm of his hand, that he hurt all over, all the time, for everything. Like other people's unhappiness, sickness, death, growing up and love, well-- love hurts like cancer, only you would be more alive for it. And she wished so much that he would live, so much she would give--
So Hokuto prepared 32 boxes in the fridge, each one labelled with a date, time and heating instructions. There was also a loaf of bread on the counter, the other one in the freezer in case he ate too much toast. She stocked up on bottles of milk, eggs, butter, jams, jars of homemade cookies and fresh juices --he was always in too much hurry to eat an apple a day, but he could gulp down juices on the run. She made him strawberries and bananas, carrots and oranges, mangoes, pineapples, blueberries and apples.
She cleaned both apartments once and again, filled the cabinets with rolls of tissue paper, paper towels, cleaning wipes. She sorted his clothes by color at first, then by occasion, then by type, before grouping them together in complete outfits: MON 08/20, TUES 08/21, WED 08/22 and so on.
She scheduled his nurse visits for the next month then left a message for grandmother to come and keep him company. Subaru might forget to eat if no one reminded him, and he might get lonely without her and-- and--
Then she spent the next two hours staring at the fridge door, markers in hand. She began with jagged black lines for the hair, then neat eyebrows and lush eyelashes drawn with precise strokes. Changing to her best shade of green --there was no marker in such bright emerald-- she circled two perfect orbs in the middle of the caricature. She tried to sketch two semicircles --a cat's lips-- but they came out lopsided, wrong. Then she drew the curve of a smile but the line faltered and crossed past the right ear. So she returned the markers to the box, took a tissue to erase her mistakes and left the face without the distinguishing lips.
It could have been either of them.
She could have taken his place, dressed in his white tuxedo and simple hat, and visited first, to see if her little brother's declaration of love would be well-received. Later she could make up some lie about her broken arm and he might cry a bucketful, tell her sorry, sorry, sorry and even if he found out the truth, then maybe the betrayal would leave hairline cracks on his heart but he would leave the wreckage whole. And how! How she could have taken the brunt of it for him --but didn't she say regret was useless, that the past cannot be changed? Though the future, maybe.
She couldn't tell the future, but she knew a fitting ending if she ever saw one. The pieces fall into place.
She has known for the longest time that her life begins and ends with Subaru, and she was glad for the gap in her memory of those six hours and twenty minutes of meaningless, purposeless, formless life before he came and became the reason for everything. Yes, everything. She was the footnote, the foil and if her life had any purpose then it was for him. She knew --yeah, you heard that right, she knew-- that grandmother, the clan, hell the world needed him. She wasn't sure how, but she knew her sacrifice would be no tragedy but a denouement, a proclamation of her life's purpose, finally fulfilled.
And as with every job, when it is complete, there is a sense of bittersweet --at least she thought that was how the song went, and then-- though in your heart you'd like to stay, to help things on their way, you've always known they must do it alone.
But not all alone.
She wanted them both to live because she still believed that it had not all been a mistake. There could yet be-- It was when her brother showed her he was human after all, that he was in love, that she knew she had been right all along. He-- Sei-chan could prattle on about being heartless, cruel, the perfect murderer, whatever, but she still knew the truth: there is no one, no one, no one incapable of love.
So with her blood, she would buy them a truce --an excuse for the Sakurazukamori to stay his hand from his marked prey-- and also a binding spell --for with her sacrifice they would be forever bound in a loop, their wishes and deaths in each other's hands. This was her wish, both selfless and selfish.
Taking up the black marker again, Hokuto wrote her little brother a message: a dash, a twist and a stroke (o) two vertical lines and a kanji that she taught him once, late at night, trying to catch him up with homework (kae) and a decisive line and curve, a dash and a dot (ri!). Then she pressed the tip onto the caricature's left cheek, curving downward then upward, a smile --And who cares if it seemed lopsided or wrong or if it faltered and crossed the lines? What really mattered was once he knew how to love someone so much to want him for himself and maybe maybe one day he would see that love returned.
And yes, there could yet be a practically perfect ending to this story.
***
LJ username: sayarah
AIM: consecrat
Please leave any and all OOC comments, criticism and plot ideas here, thanks! ♥
[character]: Sumeragi Hokuto (皇北都)
[age]: 16
[death]: September 19, 1980
[the better half]: Subaru (昴流)
***
[character history / background]:
The other Sumeragi twin, Hokuto was born in Kyoto at six a.m. on February 19, 1974, six hours and twenty minutes before Subaru. Their parents passed away when they were very young, so their grandmother, the 12th head of the Sumeragi clan, basically raised them. While Subaru revered the old woman, Hokuto thought that she was cold. They were both trained in the basic art of onmyoudo though they soon found that Hokuto lacked magical abilities while Subaru might be the strongest onmyouji to date.
When they were eight, the twins were separated for a year for Subaru's training in Tokyo --the most miserable year of Hokuto's life.
Later on, at 16 years old, the two of them moved to the city together, living in neighboring apartments. By then, Hokuto had taken on the role of his brother's guardian; taking care of all the domestic and secretarial tasks she could do to support her brother's busy life as a professional onmyouji. Then into the picture comes Sakurazuka Seishirou, the charming veterinarian who claims to have fallen in love with Subaru at first sight. He was what Hokuto had been waiting for: someone Subaru could love who would love her brother back. Playing the part of matchmaker, she egged the two of them on shamelessly.
Yet as the months passed by, she began to sense something dangerous in Seishirou though she could never put her finger on what. Hokuto was scared that Subaru would go somewhere she could not follow, that she would be left alone again like when they were small. She sensed that Seishirou had something to do with it, but she didn't know for sure. What she did know, however, was that if he tried to hurt her dear Subaru, he would die a painful death.
Around this time, she met a dream seer by the name of Kakyou. She quickly developed a friendship with him, sharing her concerns for her brother with him and promising that she would take him to see the ocean one day.
At the end of that year of love, joy and crack, Seishirou lost his left eye protecting her twin from a rabid woman (a wise one did say, "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye…"), propelling Subaru to rethink his feelings for him. Hokuto comforted and helped his brother work through his emotions though she timidly tried to warn him too. She has sensed that Seishirou was dangerous, but also that it was too late to pull back now.
Once Subaru realized his feelings, he went to visit Seishirou to tell him, only to find out that it was all just a bet and that he had lost. The Sakurazuka broke his arm and tortured him, interrupted from killing him only because of his grandmother's intervention --she sent her shikigami, which was destroyed, leaving her crippled from then on.
After the incident, Subaru was left catatonic and Hokuto was heartbroken. Believing it to be her fault, she decided to take responsibility and do what she can for her brother's best. She knew that the Sakurazuka would never leave his prey alone, and that he would come to claim Subaru's life again. She also knew that her twin would never fight back, that he would just let himself be killed.
So she took his ceremonial robes and went to search for Seishirou, finding him a month later. Despite it all, Hokuto still believed in him, that she was not wrong when she saw that he could be Subaru's "special person". She told him that she would never let him kill Subaru. She said that there was a spell that only she can cast that would protect her brother and that she wanted him to kill her instead.
With his hand through her heart, Hokuto told him that she has cast a spell on him, that only Subaru could ever kill him and only he can kill Subaru. But should he ever try to kill Subaru in the same way he did her, the spell would backfire and kill him instead. She tells him about the spell because she wanted so much to be able to trust him. Hokuto reminded him that there is no one incapable of love, before dying with her twin's name on her lips.
***
[character abilities]:
Hokuto can do very basic spells, like drawing a weak barrier for herself or sensing spiritual activities --though extremely far from her twin's ability to do these things. She also presumably had the ability to cast one special spell that would reverse Seishirou's spell were he to try and kill Subaru the same way he killed her, but it is unknown whether or not she can, say, cast the same spell on another person who wanted to kill her brother or cast it now that she's dead. I'm operating under the assumption that she can't.
She seems to be able to do basic martial skills too, enough to be able to protect herself from gangs and police officers at least. Hokuto is a domestic goddess; she cooks, sews, cleans and bakes well. Oh, and fashion sense? What fashion sense?
[character personality]:
On the surface, Hokuto is the direct opposite of her twin: loud, cheerful, vibrant, sprightly and utterly shameless. She is the one who sparkles and beams from within, the one who grabs life by the balls and won't let go, and the one who won't take "no" for an answer. She always sees the glass as more than half-full, more than enough, and embraces the good in whatever fate throws her way.
Bold and spirited, she firmly holds on to her beliefs about people; that they all deserve respect, agency, compassion, love and fulfilled wishes. Though she acts as her twin's helicopter mom, she is cautious about overstepping her boundaries with other people, preferring to let them make their own choices. Not that it translates to leaving them alone. Hokuto's heart is full to the brim and she just has to spread her brand of sunshine everywhere. Some may find her overwhelming and irritating, but it will be hard not to miss her when she's gone.
Fiercely generous and loyal to everyone she meets, Hokuto is as kind as her brother, though markedly less naive and more street smart. Despite her capriciousness, she is thoughtful, uncannily intuitive and a relatively good judge of character. When she was alive, she was also the only person who truly understood Subaru's heart, although this has likely since changed.
The most important thing in her life is her little brother. She sincerely believes that he is her raison d'être, that the reason for her birth was to protect and support him, to take care of him any way she can and to help him understand his own heart. Hokuto also believes that Subaru is the source of her own kindness, generosity or whatever good others attribute to her. As some might name her his guiding force, he is hers.
Yet Hokuto is not all sugar, spice and everything nice. Fiercely protective, her love for Subaru borders on obsessive, so much so that she has taken it upon herself to direct his path in life since he seems so consumed with other people's concerns to think about his own future. She tries to fight the urge, tries to let him make his own choices, but she is so afraid for his purity and frailty that she keeps him on a short leash, which probably made him even more fragile than he already was.
Blinded by her own love, Hokuto is extremely selfish when it comes to her brother. She coddled him, not because he needed it but because she needed to. She wanted Subaru to have someone to love, so she forced Seishirou onto him, ignoring his protests. Hokuto also chose to sacrifice her life to stop Seishirou from killing him because she couldn't bear the guilt and the thought of Subaru leaving her. She claims to want his happiness, but really she wants him, and her greatest fear isn't his unhappiness but a life without him.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Right after her death, end of Tokyo Babylon.
***
[third person / log sample]:
There could yet be a happy ending to this story.
In hindsight, she saw through him from the beginning; lustrous, sharp, reeking with the metallic scent of blood, the perfect complement, the flip side of the coin, the other half to her little brother. She couldn't tell the future, but she recognized matching pieces if she ever saw one (tea and anpan, Chanel and Armani, boke and tsukkomi, Subaru and--).
By now she has replayed the last year a million times. Rewind, play, pause, rewind, play, wait-- how the hell did she miss--? She wanted so much for him to find someone, something that when he came along, she blacked out all the parts she didn't like and strapped them both onto the roller coaster --full speed ahead!
It was unlike her to do that. Call her impulsive all you want, but she used to pride herself on colliding with the facts head-on, on being practical, a realist. But even realists have dreams, don't they? Even she had wishes that needed shooting stars.
And in hindsight, there was nothing she would have done differently. She wished it didn't have to hurt so bad, but Subaru was so earnest, heart bleeding on the palm of his hand, that he hurt all over, all the time, for everything. Like other people's unhappiness, sickness, death, growing up and love, well-- love hurts like cancer, only you would be more alive for it. And she wished so much that he would live, so much she would give--
So Hokuto prepared 32 boxes in the fridge, each one labelled with a date, time and heating instructions. There was also a loaf of bread on the counter, the other one in the freezer in case he ate too much toast. She stocked up on bottles of milk, eggs, butter, jams, jars of homemade cookies and fresh juices --he was always in too much hurry to eat an apple a day, but he could gulp down juices on the run. She made him strawberries and bananas, carrots and oranges, mangoes, pineapples, blueberries and apples.
She cleaned both apartments once and again, filled the cabinets with rolls of tissue paper, paper towels, cleaning wipes. She sorted his clothes by color at first, then by occasion, then by type, before grouping them together in complete outfits: MON 08/20, TUES 08/21, WED 08/22 and so on.
She scheduled his nurse visits for the next month then left a message for grandmother to come and keep him company. Subaru might forget to eat if no one reminded him, and he might get lonely without her and-- and--
Then she spent the next two hours staring at the fridge door, markers in hand. She began with jagged black lines for the hair, then neat eyebrows and lush eyelashes drawn with precise strokes. Changing to her best shade of green --there was no marker in such bright emerald-- she circled two perfect orbs in the middle of the caricature. She tried to sketch two semicircles --a cat's lips-- but they came out lopsided, wrong. Then she drew the curve of a smile but the line faltered and crossed past the right ear. So she returned the markers to the box, took a tissue to erase her mistakes and left the face without the distinguishing lips.
It could have been either of them.
She could have taken his place, dressed in his white tuxedo and simple hat, and visited first, to see if her little brother's declaration of love would be well-received. Later she could make up some lie about her broken arm and he might cry a bucketful, tell her sorry, sorry, sorry and even if he found out the truth, then maybe the betrayal would leave hairline cracks on his heart but he would leave the wreckage whole. And how! How she could have taken the brunt of it for him --but didn't she say regret was useless, that the past cannot be changed? Though the future, maybe.
She couldn't tell the future, but she knew a fitting ending if she ever saw one. The pieces fall into place.
She has known for the longest time that her life begins and ends with Subaru, and she was glad for the gap in her memory of those six hours and twenty minutes of meaningless, purposeless, formless life before he came and became the reason for everything. Yes, everything. She was the footnote, the foil and if her life had any purpose then it was for him. She knew --yeah, you heard that right, she knew-- that grandmother, the clan, hell the world needed him. She wasn't sure how, but she knew her sacrifice would be no tragedy but a denouement, a proclamation of her life's purpose, finally fulfilled.
And as with every job, when it is complete, there is a sense of bittersweet --at least she thought that was how the song went, and then-- though in your heart you'd like to stay, to help things on their way, you've always known they must do it alone.
But not all alone.
She wanted them both to live because she still believed that it had not all been a mistake. There could yet be-- It was when her brother showed her he was human after all, that he was in love, that she knew she had been right all along. He-- Sei-chan could prattle on about being heartless, cruel, the perfect murderer, whatever, but she still knew the truth: there is no one, no one, no one incapable of love.
So with her blood, she would buy them a truce --an excuse for the Sakurazukamori to stay his hand from his marked prey-- and also a binding spell --for with her sacrifice they would be forever bound in a loop, their wishes and deaths in each other's hands. This was her wish, both selfless and selfish.
Taking up the black marker again, Hokuto wrote her little brother a message: a dash, a twist and a stroke (o) two vertical lines and a kanji that she taught him once, late at night, trying to catch him up with homework (kae) and a decisive line and curve, a dash and a dot (ri!). Then she pressed the tip onto the caricature's left cheek, curving downward then upward, a smile --And who cares if it seemed lopsided or wrong or if it faltered and crossed the lines? What really mattered was once he knew how to love someone so much to want him for himself and maybe maybe one day he would see that love returned.
And yes, there could yet be a practically perfect ending to this story.
***
LJ username: sayarah
AIM: consecrat
Please leave any and all OOC comments, criticism and plot ideas here, thanks! ♥