Amano Toko//XI RPG App
Nov. 7th, 2010 01:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writemeasnack- PLAYER INFORMATION
NAME: JeniOctavia
AGE: 26
PRONOUN OF CHOICE: She
EMAIL ADDRESS: jenioctavia@gmaillcom
AIM SCREENNAME & MAIN PERSONAL LJ ACCOUNT: jenioctavia/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jenioctavia
OTHER CHARACTERS: Gakupo Kamuizerosamurai , Ami Mizuno/Sailor Mercury suseiaquaria suiseiaquaria , and Haku Yowane drunkkaraoke drunkkareoke
RESERVED? No
- CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Toko Amano
ALIAS: Literature Girl
SERIES/SOURCE: Bungaku Shojo//Literature Girl
AGE: 17 in canon, aged up to 19
GENDER: Female
OCCUPATION: Library Assistant
BACKGROUND:
One day, a strange girl was born in to the world. She looked like any other baby girl, with bright eyes and dark hair. A normal child, or so it seemed. But this girl grew up with an odd secret. She was unable to eat real food, because the taste was always so strange. Bitter dark chocolate would taste sweet, sweet chocolate covered cherries would taste salty, and so on. Her parents had a feeling she was going to be odd, though, and taught her how to deal with her bizarre appetite. Her father would always gently tell her “You mustn’t eat in front of everyone. Eat in front of some one you treasure” while patting her on the head. She didn’t quite understand, especially when he said “Someday there will be some one you can show yourself to as you are. Your writer.”, but Toko was a smart girl and accepted that her father was just looking out for her well being. Oddities like her just weren’t that easily accepted in the world, but some day she would find some one who understood her and wouldn’t be afraid.
She learned to hide her strangeness and grew up just like any other young Japanese girl would, reading book after book after book, taking in all the information she could ever get her tiny hands.
But her life took an unfortunate turn when she was barely eight years old. Her parents died in an auto accident, and this would have left little Toko completely alone. Their will stated she was to live with her mother’s sister, an emotionally closed off single mother with a young son about a year younger than Toko. She was sad, naturally, but learned to accept that this was her life and she could do nothing more than move on. Even that young her father had taught her well and left her with many friends, including ones at the publishing company he worked at. This coupled with her getting becoming fairly close to her cousin meant that she was far from alone.
He learned her secret, of course, while trying to help his mother take care of her, but seeing as he wasn’t a writer by any means Toko knew he wasn’t the one she was looking for. So she waited. Attending school, reading books, making friends, all the while waiting and wondering if she would ever actually meet her writer.
Then it happened. By chance she stumbled across a discarded transcript in a pile of rejects for a writing contest at the publishing company her father had worked for. Tilted Just Like the Sky by a writer named Inoue Miu, it had been put aside like so many others submitted to the contest. While waiting for her father’s friend to get on his break one day, she dug through the disqualified entries, finding most of them bad, but soon enough she saw Just Like the Sky sitting there amongst them and started reading.
And she loved it. To her it was the perfect story, raw as it might have been coming from a young writer, and she demanded of her father’s friend that he re-read it and give it another chance. He found it difficult to say no to her and agreed to resubmit it. Ecstatic and overjoyed she practically leaped home, eager to tell her cousin what had happened. She gushed and gushed about it, but the more she did the more she began to worry that something would go wrong. It was, after all, only being resubmitted to the contest. There was nothing saying that it would be accepted for certain. Still, her cousin teased her about being ‘in love’, and she only huffed and told him he was being silly. She didn’t know anything about the author, even a gender, just that Inoue Miu was a pen name, not their real name.
Months passed, and she continued to check up with her friend until finally he informed her that Inoue’s story was in the running for the contest. Anyone passing by the phone booth would have seen a very happy girl bouncing about. Of course this didn’t mean it had won, but it was closer than it had been when the story was in the discarded piles.
The seasons changed, and Toko changed as well, namely by moving in to high school. Right at the start of the year, Just Like The Sky was awarded the publication award and put in to print. Naturally Toko snatched up a copy as quickly as she could.
Even her cousin read it, claiming that this person Toko knew nothing about (pen name, real name and age aside) could possibly be her writer. Toko thought that would be wonderful, but was reluctant to even try and meet Inoue for fear of bothering the author at a time when their book was causing such a sensation.
Over the next several months Toko watched as the book continued to climb up the charts, quietly amused that she had been the one responsible for getting it there. A movie was made, and she often saw people on the train or out in the city reading it. But she never did more than smile at these things, content to keep her life as it was.
But bad news never seems to be far away, and she was crushed to learn that Inoue Miu was no longer writing. There would be no further novels from the writer. Toko only let herself mope about it for a while (while lying in the park face down and letting leaves cover her - her cousin was amused, to say the least) but quickly got over it, moving on with the thought that maybe Inoue wasn’t her writer after all.
One day, though, something amazing happened. While putting up fliers for the Literature Club (of which she was the only member and president by default) she passed by one of the lower grade class rooms and heard some one giving out the cleaning assignments for the day. One of the names was the very name of the author of Just Like The Sky. Surprised and curious, she ran to the window and looked inside, spotting a male student younger than herself walking towards the board. She stared in a strange sort of happy shock, and though he turned and saw her, she took off before he could find out why, exactly, she was staring.
That day she ran the entire way home, all so she could gush to her cousin that the very writer she was so enamored with actually went to her school. Her cousin pointed out that he was no longer writing, though, but Toko countered with excited determination that she would some how make Inoue write again.
The next day Toko was eating lunch outside as she so often did, nibbling on a good book and enjoying its flavors when she realized... she was being watched. She looked up only to find that the very writer she had been idolizing, the very student she was determined to make write again, was staring at her, confused as to what in the world she was doing.
Some quick thinking had Toko using the situation to her advantage, she demanded to know his name and class, then promptly demanded he join the Literature Club. She wasn’t even giving him a choice in the matter - he had seen her well hidden secret and she, of course, had to make sure he was going to keep it under wraps. He tried to refuse, asking who she was, and she simply responded that she was Amano Toko, a Literature Girl.
From that day on, there was no escaping her for him, and he was basically blackmailed (in the most gentle of ways, really) to write her a “snack” every day after school, all the while forced to listen to her go on and on about stories and their flavor. Even when he was writing a snack for her, Toko would nibble on some other novel and proceed to ramble on and on about its content and what it tasted like. But just like her father said, she was able to be herself in front of Inoue, which was something she had wanted for most of her life.
Even though their relationship was strange, their friendship grew, and Toko unknowingly began to develop feelings for her writer. She ignored them, uncertain to what those feelings even meant and convinced that she was simply falling in love with his stories all over again. She was always Toko-senpai to him, and she was always there to make sure he didn’t stop writing, even if they were just small short stories.
The two of them certainly had their share of adventures together. From setting up the Literature Clubs “Love Letter Box” to finding out about Inoue’s old class mate who attempted to kill herself after the publication of his novel. The only problem with learning this was realizing that she was even more manipulative than when she and Inoue were friends in middle school.
Though Toko did her best to give to give her younger club member the space he seemed to need during that time that he was trying to understand what his old friend wanted, though she helped from time to time, the first being when his friend asked “What was Campanella’s wish?”, referring to the old story Night on the Galactic Railroad. Toko’s incredible knowledge of all things literature pointed Inoue in the right direction, but also made him painfully aware that his friend had been plagiarizing stories for years. Several of the stories she used to ‘make up’ for him were plagiarizing author Kenji Miyazawa.
She was not the person Inoue thought she was, and to make matters worse, she was being nothing but cruel to him. Returning home from studying one day, Toko found him standing stock-still on the other side of a rail road crossing, looking to be near tears. She crossed over quickly and got his attention, touching his cheek and pulling him out of his trance, though it only caused him to actually start crying. She comforted him, deciding not to press on what issue was bothering him so deeply, but walked home with him in hopes that her company would be enough. He didn’t speak of it either, instead focusing on the fact that Toko was getting ready for her final tests for the school year - tests that would determine if she would get in to her first pick of universities. Noticing that she was getting cold out in the winter night air, he put his gloves and scarf on her, claiming she couldn’t afford to get ill when she had her tests to focus on. He gave her his writing pencil, and they shared a tender moment on the sidewalk-stairs going up the hill, both praying that Toko would get in to her university.
She went home, slept, and went to her tests as planned, unaware for the most part that Inoue was having even more problems with his unstable friend. It was only when she went to visit another friend at the hospital that she was told something was very wrong with Inoue, and that she had to go help him. She raced from the hospital to the old elementary school Inoue had attended, finding him and his friend on the roof... on the other side of the railing, preparing to both jump. She just barely stopped Inoue from going over by running to him and calling to him, though his friend very nearly took him with her anyway, refusing to let go. He kept her from going over, catching himself and her at the last second, only to later have her jump in front of a truck and nearly kill herself anyway.
Needless to say, things were not going well for Toko’s beloved writer. And they became worse when it was revealed his friend, while surviving the impact of the truck, seemed to suddenly have memory loss and couldn’t recall anything past fourth year, including her own age. She acted exactly as she did back then, convinced that she’d simply had an accident and that her and Inoue were still attending school together. That compounded with the fact that she was supposedly paralyzed from the waist down meant that she would likely never recover.
This wouldn’t have been so bad if Inoue didn’t take all the blame entirely on his shoulders. He quit attending school, and even worse, resigned from the Literature Club to always be at his friend’s side, helping her. Reluctantly, he told Toko that he could no longer write for her. He had taken his friend’s stories away, and could never write again, and he wanted to stay by her side and fullfil her wish no matter what. She tried to convince him otherwise, that she still wanted to read his stories. He insisted, bowing politely and leaving. She was understandably upset, but let him go, swearing even as he walked out the door that she would wait for him and his stories, no matter how long it took.
It didn’t sit well with her, though. She could feel something was wrong about the situation, wrong about the way Inoue was just giving up everything. It didn’t seem like him, and she knew she had to do something, anything to keep him writing. He was hurting, his friend was hurting him, and Toko realized this. More than that, he had a gift she refused to let go to waste just because some one was being selfish. So she headed to the hospital a few days later, knowing he’d be there with his friend.
She arrived in the middle of an unlikely catfight, the friend that she had visited at the hospital days earlier pinned to the ground by Inoue’s friend who was screaming that if she didn’t keep lying he would leave her. Her injuries were clearly completely over exaggerated, and she had been lying to keep Inoue with her. She was crying while admitting she had apparently seen him with Toko the previous, visiting the very same girl she was pinning to the ground right then, laughing and enjoying themselves together. She convinced herself she would lose her friend forever, and when she leaped in front of the car she took the opportunity to start pretending she was a child again, like back when they were in school together. She was devastated that she had lost her own happiness, and the only way she knew to get it back was to quite literally possess Inoue.
Toko interrupted then, offering to help the girl find happiness. She formally introduced herself as she always did (“As you can see I’m a literature girl”) and offered to help them find Campanella’s true wish.
After making a quick call to the grand daughter of the school’s owner to ask for use of the observatory, she led Inoue, his friend and their other two companions inside. It was here, using the light show that the observatory offered, Toko revealed something she had never shown to anyone - her powers of projection. Turning the room in to a beautiful, bright view of the cosmos, she explained the story of Campanella and Giovanni in the Night on the Galactic Railroad, comparing it to Inoue’s story Just Like the Sky, and in turn comparing that the relationship of the two characters in that to Inoue and his friend. It was difficult to convince her that she could still find her own story, and that even though her home life was sad (apparently the root of so many of her mental instabilities) she could still find happiness on her own, but Toko assured her she was still as beautiful on the inside as she ever was and that her story was not lost forever. It was then that Inoue took over talking to her, explaining his own emotions and admitting that he loved her dearly as one of his best friends, and that he wasn’t going to leave her if he could help it.
Toko knew they were going to be alright, and used that moment to leave, her projection remaining in the room until she was a good distance away. Inoue naturally took note of her departure, though, and went running after her, looking in every place they usually walked for the girl.
He very nearly missed her, too, getting to the station just before her train showed up. When he asked why she left the observatory early, she admitted that she passed her tests with flying colors and, of course, got in to the university of her choice. She was leaving, and though she never said it out loud, she knew it was going to be difficult to say goodbye to some one who had become so special to her. It became apparent, though, when he asked for her address and promised to visit, and her response was a sad, quiet shake of her head. This even after he had offered to return to the Literature club and keep it running in her absence. Inoue asked why, and she turned to him with a sad smile, starting a projection once more of a train moving through a seemingly endless ocean, with a starlight night sky reflected while she quoted a line from another of Miyazawa’s stories about what true happiness really was.
Sitting in the train projection as it moved through its endless sea, illuminated by one very large star in the immensely starry sky, Toko admitted that she remembered every one of the stories he wrote for her, and that she wanted nothing more than to have him be her writer forever. She recalled warmly the days they had spent in the club room, how she anticipated his snacks every day, but admitted that she also knew a day would come when she couldn’t accept his snacks anymore. She couldn’t keep the stories for herself - his gift was meant for the world. He was meant to be everyone’s writer, not just hers.
He wanted to continue to be her exclusive writer despite that, but she wouldn’t let him, not with that weighing heavily on her heart. She was a literature girl, who loved all stories, so much that she could eat them up, and to take away another great story, or even many stories, from the world would be even more heartbreaking than having to say goodbye... to some one she loved. She was unaware, at that moment, that Inoue felt the same way about her. They were taking separate paths, and that was that.
The projection ended, putting them back on the platform with Toko about to board the real train, doors still open. Inoue admitted that she was the reason he was able to write, to which she asked him to become a real writer, so she could read his novel some day. She returned his scarf and boarded.
Inoue grabbed her arm and yanked her back, kissing her before she had a chance to leave. She was shocked, and didn’t properly respond, only stepping back inside the train with a slightly dazed expression. The doors closed, just as Toko realized what had happened. She pressed her hands to the window as the train started to move, looking desperately at Inoue as he started to run after the train. It was too late, though, and the train left the station, taking Toko away and out of Inoue’s life.
There wasn’t much she could do about it, though. It hurt terribly to know she had given up the one thing she truly, truly loved, the one person who truly loved her back, but she couldn’t just drop everything and go back home after working so hard to get in to Hokkaido University. So she did what any girl does after a broken heart - buried herself in her work and tried to move on with her life.
Two years later she met some one, another mutant, who was finally able to explain her strange powers, and gave her the option to transfer to a university in America that had connections with a place known as Xaiver Institute. With this transfer came a job in the library at the institute which would offer the the chance to learn more about mutant abilities and how to control them better. She jumped on the chance despite knowing that it would take her further and further from Inoue.
At least, that’s what she thought...
PERSONALITY: Toko is probably the most bubbly, hyper, excitable book girl you’ll ever meet. She loves life, and loves books even more. She lives on books quite literally books and takes constant joy from trying new stories and the flavors therein. She clearly loves life, but it seems she might just love books a little bit more.
Her obsession with books has naturally given her very high intelligence and an almost encyclopedic knowledge of all things fiction, and a very in depth knowledge of just about everything else. She could rattle off a fact about just about anything in seconds flat, and if you let her she would ramble on for hours about one subject or another, especially on matters of fictional works. This makes her just the tiniest bit oblivious to the real world at times, but powers aside she’s actually a very grounded individual who doesn’t get reality and fantasy mixed up. She may, however, make a lot of analogies about a situation that’s happening and something that happened in a book.
Books come up a lot. That’s just something you have to get used to with Toko.
There is one side to her, however that is almost never seen. Her cheerful personality at times is a shield against the things she doesn’t want to deal with. Sadness in fiction is one thing, but in real life she’s already experienced a lot of pain and doesn’t care to relieve it. And she doesn’t want others around her to hurt either. She hides whatever pain she’s feeling at the moment behind warm smiles, choosing to keep it to herself rather than share. But it doesn’t mean that she’s bottling up her feelings, and she’s far, far from a broken child.
She is a literature girl, one who loves all the stories of the world, so much so that she could eat them all up.
APPEARANCE: Toko has very, very long blue-black hair that she wore in braided pigtails during high school. In the finale of the movie she’s shown returning to the Inoue residence after some absence with her signature pigtails missing, though it’s easy to assume she simply tied her hair up instead. As the style was the same as her late mother’s, she’d be hard pressed to get rid of heir long locks. Her eyes are about the same color as her hair. She’s about average height for a Japanese woman, small in build and stature and while she lacks curves she is still very feminine in body.
POWERS: Illusionist - Toko can project illusions to those around her. They have to be standing relatively close, and the stronger her feelings (either for the person/people involved or for the story she’s reading) the stronger the projection. Sometimes she’ll project from the story she’s reading just for her own amusement.
ANYTHING ELSE?: A side affect of Toko’s mutation that has been in place since she was a child is the fact that she cannot taste normal food properly. Flavors are mixed up to her and she’ll often mistake something sweet for something salty, something savory for something bland. However if she eats a page from a book, it tastes like a world of flavors to her. Depending on what’s going on in the story she will be gifted with flavors right out of gourmet restaurants, and she some how instinctively knows what they are. An example being that a story called First Love was like hot Carmel apples, until the main character learned of his loves betrayal, and the hot Carmel became cold and congealed to her.
On that note, she actually LIVES on books. Because regular food has strange flavors to her, and books contain so much, she is only full if she eats pages. However she takes care to only take the corners of pages.
She’s also resistant to hot weather (it never seems to bother her) but has a problem with cold weather, as she’ll often sneeze and shiver when she hasn’t been out all that long.
This app was written with permission from Taco (mun of Konoha Inoue) to use their combined history together.
- RP SAMPLES
First-person sample:
Hello, Xaiver Institute! I am Amano Toko, University student, library assistant, and literature girl! I’m here to help Megurine-sama in the library, so if you have any questions at all or need help finding a book, you can come to me!
Oh, I had a question... I suppose this would go to staff and students... is there any sort of literature club set up here? If not I would looooove to start one!
Third-person sample:
It was a dark enough corner. Secluded enough. Ignored, it seemed. Or so she thought. Toko was certain no one ever came back to that little spot in the library, and she’d been using it for a few days by that point to have her lunch break and not get caught nibbling on the corners of the books she brought from home. They were getting old, though, corners missing on both ends and bigger chunks being taken out of the front most pages.
She really needed some new ones...
But they were still good to eat, and eat she did, nibbling little bits of paper and savoring the familiar but still savory flavors. She didn’t even know why she still hid it - everyone there had something weird with them, didn’t they? It was just habit anymore. Plus she was pretty sure that she was the only one who actually ate paper.
Ohwell. It didn’t matter that much, did it?
It wasn’t until she had been sitting there a few minutes that she realized... she was being stared at. Slowly she turned, piece of paper hanging from her lips loosely as her eyes went wide, staring at a poor, confused young student that was looking at her with just as much confusion and shock.
Letting out a surprised squeal, she scrambled, gathering up her books and other things and rambling rapidly as she did so.
“S-sorryifyouneedhelppleaseaskthefrontdesk, I’M ON BREAK. SORRY! BYE!” She was practically shouting by the end, probably terrifying the poor child and scaring them for life, but she didn’t stop to ask, bolting past her in a flurry of hair, papers, and long skirt. Maybe if they were lucky, she wouldn’t recognize Toko later...
NAME: JeniOctavia
AGE: 26
PRONOUN OF CHOICE: She
EMAIL ADDRESS: jenioctavia@gmaillcom
AIM SCREENNAME & MAIN PERSONAL LJ ACCOUNT: jenioctavia/
jenioctavia OTHER CHARACTERS: Gakupo Kamui
zerosamurai , Ami Mizuno/Sailor Mercury suseiaquaria suiseiaquaria , and Haku Yowane drunkkaraoke drunkkareoke RESERVED? No
- CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Toko Amano
ALIAS: Literature Girl
SERIES/SOURCE: Bungaku Shojo//Literature Girl
AGE: 17 in canon, aged up to 19
GENDER: Female
OCCUPATION: Library Assistant
BACKGROUND:
One day, a strange girl was born in to the world. She looked like any other baby girl, with bright eyes and dark hair. A normal child, or so it seemed. But this girl grew up with an odd secret. She was unable to eat real food, because the taste was always so strange. Bitter dark chocolate would taste sweet, sweet chocolate covered cherries would taste salty, and so on. Her parents had a feeling she was going to be odd, though, and taught her how to deal with her bizarre appetite. Her father would always gently tell her “You mustn’t eat in front of everyone. Eat in front of some one you treasure” while patting her on the head. She didn’t quite understand, especially when he said “Someday there will be some one you can show yourself to as you are. Your writer.”, but Toko was a smart girl and accepted that her father was just looking out for her well being. Oddities like her just weren’t that easily accepted in the world, but some day she would find some one who understood her and wouldn’t be afraid.
She learned to hide her strangeness and grew up just like any other young Japanese girl would, reading book after book after book, taking in all the information she could ever get her tiny hands.
But her life took an unfortunate turn when she was barely eight years old. Her parents died in an auto accident, and this would have left little Toko completely alone. Their will stated she was to live with her mother’s sister, an emotionally closed off single mother with a young son about a year younger than Toko. She was sad, naturally, but learned to accept that this was her life and she could do nothing more than move on. Even that young her father had taught her well and left her with many friends, including ones at the publishing company he worked at. This coupled with her getting becoming fairly close to her cousin meant that she was far from alone.
He learned her secret, of course, while trying to help his mother take care of her, but seeing as he wasn’t a writer by any means Toko knew he wasn’t the one she was looking for. So she waited. Attending school, reading books, making friends, all the while waiting and wondering if she would ever actually meet her writer.
Then it happened. By chance she stumbled across a discarded transcript in a pile of rejects for a writing contest at the publishing company her father had worked for. Tilted Just Like the Sky by a writer named Inoue Miu, it had been put aside like so many others submitted to the contest. While waiting for her father’s friend to get on his break one day, she dug through the disqualified entries, finding most of them bad, but soon enough she saw Just Like the Sky sitting there amongst them and started reading.
And she loved it. To her it was the perfect story, raw as it might have been coming from a young writer, and she demanded of her father’s friend that he re-read it and give it another chance. He found it difficult to say no to her and agreed to resubmit it. Ecstatic and overjoyed she practically leaped home, eager to tell her cousin what had happened. She gushed and gushed about it, but the more she did the more she began to worry that something would go wrong. It was, after all, only being resubmitted to the contest. There was nothing saying that it would be accepted for certain. Still, her cousin teased her about being ‘in love’, and she only huffed and told him he was being silly. She didn’t know anything about the author, even a gender, just that Inoue Miu was a pen name, not their real name.
Months passed, and she continued to check up with her friend until finally he informed her that Inoue’s story was in the running for the contest. Anyone passing by the phone booth would have seen a very happy girl bouncing about. Of course this didn’t mean it had won, but it was closer than it had been when the story was in the discarded piles.
The seasons changed, and Toko changed as well, namely by moving in to high school. Right at the start of the year, Just Like The Sky was awarded the publication award and put in to print. Naturally Toko snatched up a copy as quickly as she could.
Even her cousin read it, claiming that this person Toko knew nothing about (pen name, real name and age aside) could possibly be her writer. Toko thought that would be wonderful, but was reluctant to even try and meet Inoue for fear of bothering the author at a time when their book was causing such a sensation.
Over the next several months Toko watched as the book continued to climb up the charts, quietly amused that she had been the one responsible for getting it there. A movie was made, and she often saw people on the train or out in the city reading it. But she never did more than smile at these things, content to keep her life as it was.
But bad news never seems to be far away, and she was crushed to learn that Inoue Miu was no longer writing. There would be no further novels from the writer. Toko only let herself mope about it for a while (while lying in the park face down and letting leaves cover her - her cousin was amused, to say the least) but quickly got over it, moving on with the thought that maybe Inoue wasn’t her writer after all.
One day, though, something amazing happened. While putting up fliers for the Literature Club (of which she was the only member and president by default) she passed by one of the lower grade class rooms and heard some one giving out the cleaning assignments for the day. One of the names was the very name of the author of Just Like The Sky. Surprised and curious, she ran to the window and looked inside, spotting a male student younger than herself walking towards the board. She stared in a strange sort of happy shock, and though he turned and saw her, she took off before he could find out why, exactly, she was staring.
That day she ran the entire way home, all so she could gush to her cousin that the very writer she was so enamored with actually went to her school. Her cousin pointed out that he was no longer writing, though, but Toko countered with excited determination that she would some how make Inoue write again.
The next day Toko was eating lunch outside as she so often did, nibbling on a good book and enjoying its flavors when she realized... she was being watched. She looked up only to find that the very writer she had been idolizing, the very student she was determined to make write again, was staring at her, confused as to what in the world she was doing.
Some quick thinking had Toko using the situation to her advantage, she demanded to know his name and class, then promptly demanded he join the Literature Club. She wasn’t even giving him a choice in the matter - he had seen her well hidden secret and she, of course, had to make sure he was going to keep it under wraps. He tried to refuse, asking who she was, and she simply responded that she was Amano Toko, a Literature Girl.
From that day on, there was no escaping her for him, and he was basically blackmailed (in the most gentle of ways, really) to write her a “snack” every day after school, all the while forced to listen to her go on and on about stories and their flavor. Even when he was writing a snack for her, Toko would nibble on some other novel and proceed to ramble on and on about its content and what it tasted like. But just like her father said, she was able to be herself in front of Inoue, which was something she had wanted for most of her life.
Even though their relationship was strange, their friendship grew, and Toko unknowingly began to develop feelings for her writer. She ignored them, uncertain to what those feelings even meant and convinced that she was simply falling in love with his stories all over again. She was always Toko-senpai to him, and she was always there to make sure he didn’t stop writing, even if they were just small short stories.
The two of them certainly had their share of adventures together. From setting up the Literature Clubs “Love Letter Box” to finding out about Inoue’s old class mate who attempted to kill herself after the publication of his novel. The only problem with learning this was realizing that she was even more manipulative than when she and Inoue were friends in middle school.
Though Toko did her best to give to give her younger club member the space he seemed to need during that time that he was trying to understand what his old friend wanted, though she helped from time to time, the first being when his friend asked “What was Campanella’s wish?”, referring to the old story Night on the Galactic Railroad. Toko’s incredible knowledge of all things literature pointed Inoue in the right direction, but also made him painfully aware that his friend had been plagiarizing stories for years. Several of the stories she used to ‘make up’ for him were plagiarizing author Kenji Miyazawa.
She was not the person Inoue thought she was, and to make matters worse, she was being nothing but cruel to him. Returning home from studying one day, Toko found him standing stock-still on the other side of a rail road crossing, looking to be near tears. She crossed over quickly and got his attention, touching his cheek and pulling him out of his trance, though it only caused him to actually start crying. She comforted him, deciding not to press on what issue was bothering him so deeply, but walked home with him in hopes that her company would be enough. He didn’t speak of it either, instead focusing on the fact that Toko was getting ready for her final tests for the school year - tests that would determine if she would get in to her first pick of universities. Noticing that she was getting cold out in the winter night air, he put his gloves and scarf on her, claiming she couldn’t afford to get ill when she had her tests to focus on. He gave her his writing pencil, and they shared a tender moment on the sidewalk-stairs going up the hill, both praying that Toko would get in to her university.
She went home, slept, and went to her tests as planned, unaware for the most part that Inoue was having even more problems with his unstable friend. It was only when she went to visit another friend at the hospital that she was told something was very wrong with Inoue, and that she had to go help him. She raced from the hospital to the old elementary school Inoue had attended, finding him and his friend on the roof... on the other side of the railing, preparing to both jump. She just barely stopped Inoue from going over by running to him and calling to him, though his friend very nearly took him with her anyway, refusing to let go. He kept her from going over, catching himself and her at the last second, only to later have her jump in front of a truck and nearly kill herself anyway.
Needless to say, things were not going well for Toko’s beloved writer. And they became worse when it was revealed his friend, while surviving the impact of the truck, seemed to suddenly have memory loss and couldn’t recall anything past fourth year, including her own age. She acted exactly as she did back then, convinced that she’d simply had an accident and that her and Inoue were still attending school together. That compounded with the fact that she was supposedly paralyzed from the waist down meant that she would likely never recover.
This wouldn’t have been so bad if Inoue didn’t take all the blame entirely on his shoulders. He quit attending school, and even worse, resigned from the Literature Club to always be at his friend’s side, helping her. Reluctantly, he told Toko that he could no longer write for her. He had taken his friend’s stories away, and could never write again, and he wanted to stay by her side and fullfil her wish no matter what. She tried to convince him otherwise, that she still wanted to read his stories. He insisted, bowing politely and leaving. She was understandably upset, but let him go, swearing even as he walked out the door that she would wait for him and his stories, no matter how long it took.
It didn’t sit well with her, though. She could feel something was wrong about the situation, wrong about the way Inoue was just giving up everything. It didn’t seem like him, and she knew she had to do something, anything to keep him writing. He was hurting, his friend was hurting him, and Toko realized this. More than that, he had a gift she refused to let go to waste just because some one was being selfish. So she headed to the hospital a few days later, knowing he’d be there with his friend.
She arrived in the middle of an unlikely catfight, the friend that she had visited at the hospital days earlier pinned to the ground by Inoue’s friend who was screaming that if she didn’t keep lying he would leave her. Her injuries were clearly completely over exaggerated, and she had been lying to keep Inoue with her. She was crying while admitting she had apparently seen him with Toko the previous, visiting the very same girl she was pinning to the ground right then, laughing and enjoying themselves together. She convinced herself she would lose her friend forever, and when she leaped in front of the car she took the opportunity to start pretending she was a child again, like back when they were in school together. She was devastated that she had lost her own happiness, and the only way she knew to get it back was to quite literally possess Inoue.
Toko interrupted then, offering to help the girl find happiness. She formally introduced herself as she always did (“As you can see I’m a literature girl”) and offered to help them find Campanella’s true wish.
After making a quick call to the grand daughter of the school’s owner to ask for use of the observatory, she led Inoue, his friend and their other two companions inside. It was here, using the light show that the observatory offered, Toko revealed something she had never shown to anyone - her powers of projection. Turning the room in to a beautiful, bright view of the cosmos, she explained the story of Campanella and Giovanni in the Night on the Galactic Railroad, comparing it to Inoue’s story Just Like the Sky, and in turn comparing that the relationship of the two characters in that to Inoue and his friend. It was difficult to convince her that she could still find her own story, and that even though her home life was sad (apparently the root of so many of her mental instabilities) she could still find happiness on her own, but Toko assured her she was still as beautiful on the inside as she ever was and that her story was not lost forever. It was then that Inoue took over talking to her, explaining his own emotions and admitting that he loved her dearly as one of his best friends, and that he wasn’t going to leave her if he could help it.
Toko knew they were going to be alright, and used that moment to leave, her projection remaining in the room until she was a good distance away. Inoue naturally took note of her departure, though, and went running after her, looking in every place they usually walked for the girl.
He very nearly missed her, too, getting to the station just before her train showed up. When he asked why she left the observatory early, she admitted that she passed her tests with flying colors and, of course, got in to the university of her choice. She was leaving, and though she never said it out loud, she knew it was going to be difficult to say goodbye to some one who had become so special to her. It became apparent, though, when he asked for her address and promised to visit, and her response was a sad, quiet shake of her head. This even after he had offered to return to the Literature club and keep it running in her absence. Inoue asked why, and she turned to him with a sad smile, starting a projection once more of a train moving through a seemingly endless ocean, with a starlight night sky reflected while she quoted a line from another of Miyazawa’s stories about what true happiness really was.
Sitting in the train projection as it moved through its endless sea, illuminated by one very large star in the immensely starry sky, Toko admitted that she remembered every one of the stories he wrote for her, and that she wanted nothing more than to have him be her writer forever. She recalled warmly the days they had spent in the club room, how she anticipated his snacks every day, but admitted that she also knew a day would come when she couldn’t accept his snacks anymore. She couldn’t keep the stories for herself - his gift was meant for the world. He was meant to be everyone’s writer, not just hers.
He wanted to continue to be her exclusive writer despite that, but she wouldn’t let him, not with that weighing heavily on her heart. She was a literature girl, who loved all stories, so much that she could eat them up, and to take away another great story, or even many stories, from the world would be even more heartbreaking than having to say goodbye... to some one she loved. She was unaware, at that moment, that Inoue felt the same way about her. They were taking separate paths, and that was that.
The projection ended, putting them back on the platform with Toko about to board the real train, doors still open. Inoue admitted that she was the reason he was able to write, to which she asked him to become a real writer, so she could read his novel some day. She returned his scarf and boarded.
Inoue grabbed her arm and yanked her back, kissing her before she had a chance to leave. She was shocked, and didn’t properly respond, only stepping back inside the train with a slightly dazed expression. The doors closed, just as Toko realized what had happened. She pressed her hands to the window as the train started to move, looking desperately at Inoue as he started to run after the train. It was too late, though, and the train left the station, taking Toko away and out of Inoue’s life.
There wasn’t much she could do about it, though. It hurt terribly to know she had given up the one thing she truly, truly loved, the one person who truly loved her back, but she couldn’t just drop everything and go back home after working so hard to get in to Hokkaido University. So she did what any girl does after a broken heart - buried herself in her work and tried to move on with her life.
Two years later she met some one, another mutant, who was finally able to explain her strange powers, and gave her the option to transfer to a university in America that had connections with a place known as Xaiver Institute. With this transfer came a job in the library at the institute which would offer the the chance to learn more about mutant abilities and how to control them better. She jumped on the chance despite knowing that it would take her further and further from Inoue.
At least, that’s what she thought...
PERSONALITY: Toko is probably the most bubbly, hyper, excitable book girl you’ll ever meet. She loves life, and loves books even more. She lives on books quite literally books and takes constant joy from trying new stories and the flavors therein. She clearly loves life, but it seems she might just love books a little bit more.
Her obsession with books has naturally given her very high intelligence and an almost encyclopedic knowledge of all things fiction, and a very in depth knowledge of just about everything else. She could rattle off a fact about just about anything in seconds flat, and if you let her she would ramble on for hours about one subject or another, especially on matters of fictional works. This makes her just the tiniest bit oblivious to the real world at times, but powers aside she’s actually a very grounded individual who doesn’t get reality and fantasy mixed up. She may, however, make a lot of analogies about a situation that’s happening and something that happened in a book.
Books come up a lot. That’s just something you have to get used to with Toko.
There is one side to her, however that is almost never seen. Her cheerful personality at times is a shield against the things she doesn’t want to deal with. Sadness in fiction is one thing, but in real life she’s already experienced a lot of pain and doesn’t care to relieve it. And she doesn’t want others around her to hurt either. She hides whatever pain she’s feeling at the moment behind warm smiles, choosing to keep it to herself rather than share. But it doesn’t mean that she’s bottling up her feelings, and she’s far, far from a broken child.
She is a literature girl, one who loves all the stories of the world, so much so that she could eat them all up.
APPEARANCE: Toko has very, very long blue-black hair that she wore in braided pigtails during high school. In the finale of the movie she’s shown returning to the Inoue residence after some absence with her signature pigtails missing, though it’s easy to assume she simply tied her hair up instead. As the style was the same as her late mother’s, she’d be hard pressed to get rid of heir long locks. Her eyes are about the same color as her hair. She’s about average height for a Japanese woman, small in build and stature and while she lacks curves she is still very feminine in body.
POWERS: Illusionist - Toko can project illusions to those around her. They have to be standing relatively close, and the stronger her feelings (either for the person/people involved or for the story she’s reading) the stronger the projection. Sometimes she’ll project from the story she’s reading just for her own amusement.
ANYTHING ELSE?: A side affect of Toko’s mutation that has been in place since she was a child is the fact that she cannot taste normal food properly. Flavors are mixed up to her and she’ll often mistake something sweet for something salty, something savory for something bland. However if she eats a page from a book, it tastes like a world of flavors to her. Depending on what’s going on in the story she will be gifted with flavors right out of gourmet restaurants, and she some how instinctively knows what they are. An example being that a story called First Love was like hot Carmel apples, until the main character learned of his loves betrayal, and the hot Carmel became cold and congealed to her.
On that note, she actually LIVES on books. Because regular food has strange flavors to her, and books contain so much, she is only full if she eats pages. However she takes care to only take the corners of pages.
She’s also resistant to hot weather (it never seems to bother her) but has a problem with cold weather, as she’ll often sneeze and shiver when she hasn’t been out all that long.
This app was written with permission from Taco (mun of Konoha Inoue) to use their combined history together.
- RP SAMPLES
First-person sample:
Hello, Xaiver Institute! I am Amano Toko, University student, library assistant, and literature girl! I’m here to help Megurine-sama in the library, so if you have any questions at all or need help finding a book, you can come to me!
Oh, I had a question... I suppose this would go to staff and students... is there any sort of literature club set up here? If not I would looooove to start one!
Third-person sample:
It was a dark enough corner. Secluded enough. Ignored, it seemed. Or so she thought. Toko was certain no one ever came back to that little spot in the library, and she’d been using it for a few days by that point to have her lunch break and not get caught nibbling on the corners of the books she brought from home. They were getting old, though, corners missing on both ends and bigger chunks being taken out of the front most pages.
She really needed some new ones...
But they were still good to eat, and eat she did, nibbling little bits of paper and savoring the familiar but still savory flavors. She didn’t even know why she still hid it - everyone there had something weird with them, didn’t they? It was just habit anymore. Plus she was pretty sure that she was the only one who actually ate paper.
Ohwell. It didn’t matter that much, did it?
It wasn’t until she had been sitting there a few minutes that she realized... she was being stared at. Slowly she turned, piece of paper hanging from her lips loosely as her eyes went wide, staring at a poor, confused young student that was looking at her with just as much confusion and shock.
Letting out a surprised squeal, she scrambled, gathering up her books and other things and rambling rapidly as she did so.
“S-sorryifyouneedhelppleaseaskthefrontdesk, I’M ON BREAK. SORRY! BYE!” She was practically shouting by the end, probably terrifying the poor child and scaring them for life, but she didn’t stop to ask, bolting past her in a flurry of hair, papers, and long skirt. Maybe if they were lucky, she wouldn’t recognize Toko later...