”That. Sounds. AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Name: Arata Hisakawa
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Personality: Optimistic to a fault, Hisakawa tends to walk a fine line between brightening people’s days, and driving them to near homicidal levels of irritation. In general, he can be a pretty annoying individual, his boundless energy, fascination with
everything, and thirst for new experiences mean that talking to him can make for an outright exhausting encounter. He isn’t
just a bundle of cheer though, once you get past the initial onslaught of “EVERYTHING IS FANTASTIC LET’S GO RUN A MARATHON!”, he can prove to be a loyal and trustworthy friend, who’s generally willing to listen regardless of whether he fully understands the situation or not.
He tends to veer towards a more spontaneous approach to solving problems, as opposed to thought out methodical approaches as he doesn’t have much patience. He can’t stand being alone, and he hates sitting still for long periods of time (unless he’s working on a complex maths problem, but more on that later), and he’s never finished an entire novel that wasn’t compulsory reading for school.
If he’s having a bad day, he can become very shy and finds it difficult to talk to people. It scares him when this happens (for reasons which will
also be explained later), but he’s very determined, and will generally come back the next day ready to tackle whatever problem had him down head on. He lives his life by the motto-
”Sure, you can knock me down, but there’s nothing you can do to stop me from getting right back up again” Although he’s determined when it comes to random disasters, he can be a bit of a pushover when it comes to actual human beings. His eagerness to try and make sure that everyone around him feels just as awesome as he does leads to him being easily manipulated by people with more domineering personalities, not that he really minds of course, as long as they’re happy, he’s at least partially happy.
History: As a child, Hisakawa was completely different to the person he is today. He was shy and introverted, and really struggled to make friends. His predisposition towards both panic attacks and bouts of depression meant that his parents worried about him constantly, to the point where they decided to pull him out of the public education system and home-school him.
As he got older, his problems worsened, and by the time he was thirteen he had severe social anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, and almost daily panic attacks. Life was unbearable, not just for Hisakawa, but for his parents too. If his aunt hadn’t intervened, the outcome probably would’ve been a lot worse, but luckily, she did. She only visited the family once every couple of years due to the fact that she lived in New Zealand, but when she saw her nephew hiding in a corner, unable to speak to anyone or leave his room, she demanded his mother take him to the doctor’s at once.
After that, it was an uphill battle, but at least he wasn’t going down anymore. Over the course of three years, five different psychiatrists, a dozen different medications, and a total of six months spent on a psychiatric ward (not all at once), he slowly but surely started to leave his anxieties behind him.
Filled with a renewed vigour, Hisakawa feels like he has a lot of living to do if he wants to make up for all the years he lost crippled by anxiety. It was difficult to convince his parents to let him go back into public education, but he did it, and so far has loved every second spent at Yurei High, even though he’s only been there a few weeks. He’s looking forward to joining the occult club, and the art club, and the tea ceremony club, and the advanced quantum physics club, and the…..
Skills: Smiling!- Yes, he sees smiling as a skill, and he practices it every day, which can be uplifting, annoying, fairly disconcerting, or anywhere in between depending on the individual and the situation.
Colouring in- He takes great pride in his ability to colour inside the lines, and has improved this ability since the last time he was in a class full of other students. He is a touch confused about why this vitally important skill is no longer taught in lessons.
Advanced Mathematics, especially when applied in areas like mechanics - His abilities in maths and physics have baffled his parents since his second birthday, when he first asked his parents ‘what happens when you divide by zero?’. They can’t quite figure out where he got this ability from, seeing as they’re both florists, but they do know it comes in quite handy when they’re working out things like budgets.
Other: -He still sees a psychiatrist every two weeks, and takes a very low dose of an antidepressant called Nardil, which means he can’t eat smoked or aged meat (he stays away from meat altogether), cheese, large amounts of chocolate or caffeine, and a variety of other things. He also has a list of medications he can’t have, which he keeps in his pocket in case of an emergency. His dosage is currently being reduced under medical supervision, and he eagerly awaits the day he can eat ridiculous amounts of chocolate again.
-His parents own a flower shop, and the whole family lives in a two story flat above the shop.
- Very few people in Yurei High knew him before he started there, and those who do only remember him vaguely because he was home-schooled. He’ll happily explain why he didn’t go to school with anyone else if asked seriously, but he does not take kindly to being called ‘crazy’ or any variant of the word.
