Hiroshi Yamada - Finished

[Shokkou]

Name: Hiroshi Yamada

Age: 25

Gender: Male

Love Interest: N/A

Organization: Unaffiliated

Kagune: Bikaku. Red with barbs along its length that are reminiscent of some types of razor wire, and as is usual for a bikaku is a good all rounder.

Primary Stats: Health, Attack, Speed

Physical Description: 5ft 9, lanky build, brown eyes, dark brown hair cropped short, narrow-ish face, fairly good-looking. Has a jackal mask.

Personality: Comes across as fairly cheerful and affable most of the time. When he gets upset about something he tends to close himself off emotionally unless he gets overwhelmed. Loyal and protective towards those he cares about, which mostly means his best friend. Worries about said friend falling afoul of the Doves or other ghouls as much as he worries about doing so himself. Is also the better adjusted of the the two and knows it. His feelings regarding humans other than Ando are somewhat ambivalent; on one hand he doesn't bear any real ill will towards the human species as a whole but on the other hand he is all too aware of the nature of their relationship with his own kind.

History: For a ghoul, Hiroshi had a fairly good start in life. His family was poor, they had to move around every so often and he couldn’t go to school but his parents loved him and each other, he was well cared for and his parents did what they could to make the best of things. His family were peaceful scavengers who kept their heads down and tried to live quietly.

Then when he was almost twelve his father was killed in a fight with another ghoul and he and his mother had to move. They’d been living in their new apartment for about a month when Hiroshi met one of the neighbors; a boy named Hiroshi Ando who looked far lonelier and more miserable than Hiroshi had ever felt. Hiroshi didn’t mean to make friends with him; he was human after all and getting too close to humans is dangerous, but somehow friendship managed to creep up on him and he found that when he was around Ando he felt more human and less like a monster. His mother didn’t really approve of the friendship but seeing that it was making him happy she didn’t interfere beyond repeatedly reminding him to be careful. He was, and as far as he knew Ando was unaware as to what he was friends with.

Then three years after he met Ando, his mother went to work and never came back. Early the next morning he was woken up by a frantic phone call from his supposedly clueless best friend warning him that the CCG were in the building. Thanks to the warning he escaped by the skin of his teeth. When he confronted Ando about what he knew later on, he was stunned to discover that his friend had suspected the truth for years but hadn’t said anything for fear of ruining his friendship and frankly couldn’t care less about what he was so long as he was his friend. A moment later all the recent emotional upheaval caught up with him and he ended up breaking down and crying on his best friend.

Allowing a human who knew his secret, even one as loyal as Ando, to live was probably a foolish decision. Continuing to spend time with him definitely was. But after he lost his mother Hiroshi kind of felt like he was in danger of drowning and the only lifeline available was his weird and possibly crazy human best friend so he grabbed hold and held on tight. He spent a few years alternating between staying with people who’d known his parents and could be persuaded to put him up for a few nights, sleeping in manga cafes, and, once it was safe to do so, staying with Ando whose mother remained completely unaware of her son’s frequent guest. Fortunately the minimum age of employment in Japan is fifteen so he was able to get a succession of part and full time jobs to support himself, although with his lack of education they were all unskilled and poorly paid.  Through it all he continued to spend as much time with Ando as he could and did his best to protect him from the more dangerous members of his species, although attempts to keep him separate from ghoul stuff soon proved to be futile, a fact that was driven home one winter’s night when they managed to stumble across a homeless guy who’d died from the cold and necessity resulted in Ando playing look out while he scavenged the corpse. To his surprise Ando was far less bothered by it then he expected.

A bigger surprise occurred a few years later when Ando got a job as a hospital porter and came home to their apartment one night announcing that he’d brought take-out before producing a surgically removed foot and lower calf from his back-pack. Since then his diet has largely consisted of what Ando can steal from work, with the occasional suicide when things are slow, although since Ando moved on from being a porter to operating the incinerator there’s occasionally more than he needs to eat, resulting in him selling the surplus to other ghouls and splitting the profits with Ando to supplement their incomes.

By ghoul standards he has an extremely low body count, of which about half were technically self-defense or in defense of Ando, with the other half being assorted low-lives who made a critical failure in the victim selection process.

In his free time he reads manga, does stuff with Ando including going to cafes and watching horror films for the unintentional comedy value, and consumes an excessive quantity of coffee.

Residence: Shares a 1K (ie, one room with a bathroom and tiny kitchen area) apartment in the Karasuyama district of the 12th Ward with Ando as neither could afford even a tiny apartment on their own. As living arrangements go it is cramped and somewhat risky for a variety of reasons, but it's still better than the alternatives.

Other: Changes jobs on a semi-regular basis, either to avoid his boss and/or co-workers having time to get suspicious, because something with better pay and/or hours comes along, or just because they don't last for long. Is perpetually underemployed and broke, hence the side-business.

[Live To Serve]

Also very well done. Approved.