[Spirit Class 9 | Hazard F] Kumomi Aiuchi

» Name: Kumomi Aiuchi; Kumi to her friends
» Age: real age 80-85; visual age 25-30
» Gender: female
» Race: Plus

» Association: the "big sister" of Hanako Yamada (not related by blood, but they grew up together, back when they were both living)

» Appearance: with 1,82m/5.97ft Kumomi is very tall, although not as tall as Hanako. She is very slender, with a fair complexion and an elf-like face of exceptional beauty. Her eyes are of a dark and rich brown and her long hair is of a satin black.

She likes to wear kimonos with beautiful and lively patterns, but is usually restricted to simple plain colors.
For work she wears pants and a tunic, both tight enough to not get in the way.




» Purpose: Kumomi is created as a crucial part of Hanako's personal plot. Kumomi and Hanako (back then she was called Ameko) grew up together as normal mortals and also died together. When they arrived in Rukongai they remembered, looked for and eventually found each other (although it took a bit over a decade). They lived together as sisters up until the attack that cost Hanako her memories and her arm.
Kumomi is to make a reappearance to help Hanako's character development. I want to use Kumomi as a connection to Hanako's past, a help to uncover more memories and tie the Ameko of the past and the Hanako of the present together.
The story of Kumomi has been developing for a long time in my mind and is, basically, the story of Hanako as well, albeit from another point of view.



» Personality:
Kumomi is a kind soul, mild mannered, friendly and helpful, yet independent and strong. Almost everyone she meets likes her instantly. She just seems to be a person that is harmony in human shape.
Since her early childhood as a human she has lived with and cared for young Ameko, the neighbours girl. Although she was only one year older she saw herself as an older sister for Ameko and took this responsibility very seriously. That alone goes a long way to describe her character.

She is very patient and hard to anger. Instead she likes to laugh and when she does it brightens every room. She can often be found humming to herself a soft tune.

She loves art, especially music, with the erhu being her favourite instrument.



» History:
The girl named Kumomi Aiuchi grew up on the outskirts of a very small japanese town, right next door to the Sato family. They (the Sato's) also had a little daughter, Ameko, a year younger, and the two of them were as thick as thieves from day one.
The Aiuchi and Sato families knew each other for decades and especially the fathers were good friends. So it was natural that they would meet often and the daughters would grow up together. To the girls it was as if they were sisters. That they each had their individual parents was of no concern to them.

As soon as the little Ameko learned to speak one of the first words she said was "onee". Of course not very well articulated, but right after mother and father she said big sister and meant Kumomi with it.

Ameko and Kumomi grew up with lots of nature to explore and thankfully very lenient parents, who were willing to overlook many a mischief the kids were up to. Since they were so close in age, the two could do almost any activity together as a pair. And although Kumomi was one class above Hanako, they went to the same schools, since the region didn't offer too many choices anyway. But that was just fine to the girls. They were in fact so inseparable that usually they didn't bother to correct anyone if they were mistaken for actual sisters.

A black day came in the summer when Kumomi was 18 and Ameko 17. Kumi's parent's had decided that she should move to Tokyo, study at a university there and marry a young student of medicine, Shiro Takeda, who belonged to a wealthy and important family. This union would bring a lot of wealth to the Aiuchi family and the village, but it also meant that Kumi had to leave her beloved little sister behind.

Things weren’t easy for Kumomi from that point onwards. She left for the big city far too soon and her life there was hard and filled with duty. Shiro was an intelligent man, but incredibly dull. He tried to shower her with affection, obviously struck by her beauty, only he wasn’t really good at it. Kumomi played along anyway. After all, he really tried his best to make her feel at home in Tokyo. Even so it took her a great deal of time, to get used to her new life. Not only was she a country girl, used to take ten steps and be inside of a real forest, living in a village where she basically knew everyone and everything. In Tokyo, everything was new and foreign to her. All the people were strangers, everything was so hectic, so sterile and cold. However, eventually she settled in, her studies progressed well and sooner than she had expected the day of the wedding came.

It was held in Kumomi’s home village, to honor her parents. It was also the first time for months that she met Ameko again, who had prepared a surprise for the wedding. Kumomi’s favourite instrument was the erhu, and Ameko had sacrificed practically all of her free time for the past year to learn the instrument and play a song for her big sister. It was beautiful and more than one guest teared up hearing it, including Kumomi, and had to have his or her make-up redone afterwards.

After the wedding, Kumomi’s life changed again. For the worse.

The dull and freshly graduated doctor became arrogant, ill-tempered and paranoid. At first it was only a little. Looking over her shoulder when she texted, some small questions about what she did on her day. At first Kumomi thought he was simply showing interest. Then she began to see small signs that he was, for example, going through her purse or searching her phone. She let it slide the first few times, but when she finally confronted Shiro, he tore off his mask completely. He became quite the tyrant, wanting to control Kumomi’s every move, to know everything she did and said, and manipulate her with lies and deceptions. With time it became so bad that he even tried to confine her to their house. His mood was considerably more relaxed when she was at home and in his sight, but as they said: even a golden cage was just a cage. And this cage was only golden from the outside.

Things got so bad that Kumomi began to be afraid of her own husband. Only two years after the wedding, three years after she left her home village, she decided to flee. Not knowing where she could go, she took the first train back home. She arrived in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, walking from the train station several kilometers to her parent’s house. No, if she was honest to herself: to Ameko’s house. The two young women met in the middle of the road.

And the two women died in the middle of the road.*

The spirits of the recently deceased women were found pretty quickly by Shinigami and guided to Soul Society. Sadly they didn’t arrive there together. Kumomi’s memories were a bit fuzzy, but intact. She spent years trying to find Ameko. But since the Rukongai is huge she had to give up eventually and settled down in a small village far out in the Outer Rukongai, because it reminded her of her home in the mortal realm. And it became her home for quite a while. They didn’t have much, out there, but they also didn’t need much. They were far away from the rich inner districts, but also far away from the poorer districts, where crime was flourishing. Even the most desperate thieves left them alone, mostly because even the most brickheaded one knew, there was nothing to steal. The community that lived out there was warm and welcoming and Kumomi soon became a member of a big family.

Only a short time after this she met Ameko again. It was by sheer chance, a lucky encounter in one of the vast forests, surrounding the village. Kumomi was looking for firewood, when she met a young woman that was looking for mushrooms. Lo and behold, it was Ameko!

Ameko herself had retained most of her memories and set out on a journey to find Kumomi, but was forced to give up after she realised how unlikely it would be. It turned out that both women had abandoned their searched only about a year before and now, a bit over a decade after their arrival, they had found each other again. It seemed that they had arrived in neighbouring sectors of Rukongai, which is probably why they found each other at all.

They continued to live in Soul Society, as they would have liked to live on earth: as sisters, sharing a small hutt, working in the village and their gardens and trading with other settlements. It was still a poor and simple life, but for the two women, it was the happiest they had ever been, be it in life or death, as they simply lived their lives the way they wanted. And they continued so for the next forty-ish years.

Until the night of the fire. The night of the attack. Many dark and tall and clawed creatures swarmed the village like locusts. They destroyed the huts, ate the villagers and set everything on fire. It was like a bad dream, like a fever nightmare. One just wished to wake up and find their mommy to be there. But Kumomi didn’t wake. She tried to flee with Ameko right behind her. They had almost made it out of the village and into the deep woods when Kumomi turned around and saw that Hanako wasn’t with her anymore. Something had caught her, dragged her back and was ripping her apart. Kumomi couldn’t bear to watch her sister die and ran.

She ran like hell, until she collapsed. Eventually she found her way into the inner Rukongai, where she was taken in by a family, whom she served from then on as a housekeeper. They saw that something horrible had happened, but didn’t press Kumomi for information and Kumomi didn’t volunteer any. It took her years to accept what had happened and, even though she was her charming and happy self on the outside, she never forgave her for running away. For her to be truly happy again, it took almost another decade. By now she had accepted that Ameko was gone, although it was incredibly painful to even think about it. But she couldn’t change things and she had to go on.


*they don’t know how they died. Each of them was embracing the other, not paying attention to their surroundings.



» Powers: No special powers. Kumomi can fight a bit with hand and feet and with a Jo, although not in any formal technique, and only on the level of a normal, powerless Plus.

END OF THE POST