Shiori Ishida

Supporting protagonist

17

Female

Extremely long hair that reaches, at maximum average length, to the middle of her calves. Can grow longer under Kanji's influence

Black (previously), bleached blonde (currently)

5'8''

173 lbs

None

Thin, somewhat lean, much of her height is in her legs

Pale white

Asian Human

Black (previously), yellow (currently)

Very socially reclusive and somewhat introverted, but is very competitive when given something to compete over. Desires friendship but subconsciously pushes others away

Very prone to gesturing with her hands while speaking, even when there's not much to really gesture towards

She has a deeply ingrained desire to be better than others due to her upbringing

She's a fairly big show-off but tries to mask it under false modesty, overly competitive and not receptive to friendship or kind remarks without a lot of effort on the part of the other party

While she respects them, she is deeply distrustful of authority figures. Is uncomfortable around Americans, as well as many monsters who originate from Japan. Has a harsh hatred of humans after her upbringing and learning about what happened to other monsters

She is extremely intellectually gifted, and is very receptive to different types of teaching

Chemistry, cooking, and video games

Watermelon

Unemployed

Holds left-leaning beliefs

Shintoism

Golden yellow

Her hair

Owls

Mid-High School, was a second year in Japan before leaving to the U.S.

Born in Japan, Shiori was the daughter to a successful business CEO. As a child and well into her teenage years, Shiori was pushed towards the same level of success as her parents, leading to much emphasis being put on her performance in school. Her parents would oppressively monitor her performance, and would deal out severe punishments if she dropped below constantly getting top marks in her classes. Shiori, convinced that this was normal, strove to become the best in her classes, leading to her inflated sense of competitiveness. She was not a popular kid by any stretch of the imagination, and was rather disliked for how she acted. However, she never intended to turn everyone against her, the only end goal she wanted was the approval from her parents that she never got.

Even with this level of conditioning, Shiori wasn't perfect. Her grades dropping was the only condition her parents needed to subject her to abuse. While mostly taking the form of extremely harsh verbal abuse, any attempt at talking back was met with the physical side of the abuse. After the verbal and sometimes literal beatings, Shiori would be starved as continued punishment. This style of punishment through continued starvation weighed down heavily on Shiori. Her health took a drastic decline from malnourishment, and it was clear that, if this kept up, Shiori wouldn't be around for much longer.

Around this time is when Shiori started noticing the odd things. Her hair was usually kept cleanly cut short, but she found that it had begun speeding up its growth. And when she cut her hair, it would invariably grow back to just as long as it had been before, if not longer, mere days afterwards. Food also began disappearing with no trace left.

That's when it happened. Late one night, the same day as another period of Shiori's punishment, the young girl awoke in the middle of the night to find herself being dragged through the house, soon realizing that she was being dragged through by her own hair. As her hair, moving on its own, began to gobble up all the food the house had, Shiori realized that she had become a futakuchi-onna, a monster that has the outward appearance for a normal human girl, but hides a ravenous mouth on the back of her skull, which developed in response to her body's need for sustenance, or any food at all. The mouth, controlling her hair like many pairs of tentacles, consumed every single piece of food it could, and then moved on to eating the very material that the house was built from. Eventually, it stopped, and seemingly went to sleep. Shiori, disgusted and ashamed with this new transformation of her body, ran out of the house and never returned, fearing the wrath of her parents.

Wandering the streets, Shiori's new second mouth still kept its appetite, and continued eating whatever food it could get its tendrils on. Eventually, as it consumed more, it began to grow, and as it grew, it eventually developed its own personality. It called itself Kanji, and had an abrasive and irritable attitude. Kanji, while retaining his appetite, also gained a penchant for stealing and pick-pocketing. After only a few days, Kanji had stolen so much money that an idea formed in Shiori's head. She secretly met up with one of her only acquaintances from school, Hitomi, and was able to buy herself a plane ticket to the United States. With this ticket, she was able to escape the streets of Japan and found herself on the eastern coast of the foreign country.

Kanji, however, was still a problematic part of Shiori. While the two were able to form a semblance of a rocky friendship, Kanji's bad habits still shone through, and his abrasiveness put him out in the open in a restaurant full of unwitting humans when he attacked a man who had begun harassing Shiori. Running from the restaurant before Kanji could injure, or even kill the man, the scene caught the attention of an undercover monster, who was observing the conditions of the town at the time. Being chased down by the monster, Shiori was found and learnt of the existence of monsters. She was offered a place to stay at that town's monster mansion, where she resides to this day.

April 23rd