full name : Tsuihana Shiyuri gender : Female birthdate : November 13 1855 weight : 88lbs height : 5"1'
appearance : A casual observer would say that Shiyuri was small sized for her age, and her pale skin belies a weak constitution. Perhaps he would have noticed that her face was commonly pleasant, her hair was long and decidedly black. But most people stop there. Hardly anyone notices that Shiyuri has decidedly small feet and hands, or that her eyes were uncommonly large. And purple in colour. Her eyes were the most expressive of her features, but most of the time they were glazed with sadness, even when Shiyuri smiled. Few people have heard her laughter.
Shiyuri was the kind of person that would be able to slip unnoticed into and out of a crowd. She was someone you would pass by without any faint sense of recognition. Showing a liking for simple kasuri kimonos in mostly dark blue or purple, she likes to play with her waist-long hair, often putting it up in braids or buns. Sometimes she would wear a white kimono and black hakama, a mark of an archer, and strap her long kyudo bow to her back.
But when she goes on missions which doesn't require her to blend in, Shiyuri almost always dons an old white hakama and white kimono, carrying her large kyudo bow with a lithe grace. With her long black hair loose and flowing down her back, her white attire and her pale skin, she was a sight to behold at night, and this has earned her the nickname of the White Lily of the Kagetai.
history : Shiyuri had a relatively normal childhood as Tsuta Shi, the fourth and last daughter of a poor family. There was talk of past glory in service to a once-powerful daimyo, but none of that glory had survived by the time she was conceived. When she was six, her family ran into acute financial problems, and she was sold off to a teahouse.
Although initially a rather lively and talkative girl, Shi was slowly trained, usually by beatings and scoldings, to be a silent and serving person. But the process was a long and hard one, and she finally ran away from the teahouse after six years, when the owner's son attempted to rape her.
Wandering around the streets, the frail looking girl got into trouble with some street gangsters. They had wanted the small bundle she was carrying, the money she had stolen from the teahouse in escaping. Just when all seemed to be lost, her saviour came in the form of an old man, who, with a twig picked from the floor, dispatched the gangsters without much effort.
The old man, after listening to Shi's story, took pity on her, and took her under his wing. She was to take care of the old man's secluded house in the woods, whilst the old man was out in the city teaching kyujutsu. In return, she was allowed to stay in the house and was protected by the old man, who turned out to be an established kyujutsu master, and well-versed in other disciplines of fighting.
Every day, after she brought lunch to the old man at his dojo, Shi would stay for a while to spy on his classes, hoping to learn something. She knew that she was only a young girl in a chaotic world, and that she needed to be stronger. One of those days the old man stumbled onto her, and, feeling her desire to be stronger, decided to teach her too. Although Shi was quite a weak girl, her will to succeed helped her defeat all odds, and she became one of the old man's most promising student.
In time, when Shi was 16, the old man adopted her as his daughter, and she took his surname, Tsuihana. She also changed her name to Shiyuri, a symbol that her life has entered into another stage. By this time she had become her foster father's best student, surpassing him in pure kyujutsu, and the old man turned over the dojo to her. But he had grown old and frail, and Shiyuri frequently left her students to take care of him. That was why she was not at the dojo when the day the Ishin Shishi came.
When she went back to the dojo, after seeing her foster father pass away, she only saw blood and carnage. The Ishin Shishi had come to challenge the skills of the dojo, and after defeating the best student, decided that the dojo should be shut down. Then they started to kill the protesting students, some stabbing the students with the very arrows they practised with. Taking up the old man's bow and arrows, the eighteen year old Shiyuri barely had the strength to finish off the Ishin Shishi. But it was too late. Her loyal students were all dead.
Surrounded by a sea of blood and bodies, sitting at the tokonama, crying and clutching onto a long graceful bow. That was how the Shinsengumi found her, when they arrived onto the scene. Shiyuri was but a young girl, and although she saved the name of her dojo, it was at the expense of all her students. Coupled with the death of her foster father, whom she loved so much, it was almost more than what the eighteen-year old could take. The Shinsengumi were rather amazed by the sight they saw: some of the best Ishin Shishi dead, some with arrows stuck perfectly into their hearts. That kind of technique was rare, and Sanbatai Taichou Saitou Hajime went forward as if to interrogate the girl.
What happened in those two hours after remains a secret, but when the Shinsengumi left the dojo, Tsuihana Shiyuri had found a new lease on life: Kagetai.
personality : Well known for her quiet nature, Shiyuri carries her sad thoughts deep into her own heart, and tries to be cheerful. This trait is brought forward to regarding her friends, whom she would try to cheer up no matter what, even if she herself was sad. Extremely loyal, almost to a fault, she regards her friends dearly, and always tries to be a "nice" person. She likes to make new friends, though there would be times when she feels shy.
A very calm and settled person, Shiyuri is extremely slow to anger, and almost always have thought through both sides of the story before giving judgement. Often described as polite and responsible, Shiyuri still retains a bit of the naiveté that comes from her young age, and thus is sometimes quite stubborn, especially if it concerns issues close to her heart. She has three principles: Tolerance, Forgiveness, and Tact, that she believes wholly in, and makes up a big part of her personality.
Although she is usually sad and silent, there are times when she is with close friends that she would start to open up and really cheer up. But it truly takes someone close to her heart to make her laugh.
techniques : Having studied under an established kyujutsu master, her main strength is in arrows, but she has also learnt some basics of kenjutsu and ninjutsu. Fares the best in long-distances, and so is mostly used to take out enemies from afar (kind of like a sniper). Her shooting is accurate, fast, and silent, just like her. Extremely fast on her feet, and possessing a quick mind, Shiyuri usually ends up improvising with whatever skills she has when faced with short distance attacks. At hand-to-hand combat, Shiyuri would most likely... need help.
likes : Purple, blue, rain, friends, flowers, pretty kimono, playing with people's hair, cheering people up, toys, o-cha, mochi, new clothes, dancing, festivals. dislikes : Anger (including her own), hypocrites, anything or anyone that goes against her three principles.
enemies : None per se. As said, she is slow to anger, and doesn't like to hold grudges.
current sketch : Still lives in her sensei's house in the woods, and runs her sensei's dojo. Has an adopted daughter named Tsuta. Still works secretly for the Kagetai and keeps in contact with it.
chiiyo's comments :
Shiyuri was created for Kagetai (pop-up), a, I quote, "fiction-writing group...We resemble a RPG group in a manner, for each of us has a character. The difference comes from the fact that we do not roleplay on our mailing list, but write fiction about our characters." Technically, the Shinsengumi Kagetai is a shadow group of the Shinsengumi, and is a secret group under the control of Saitou Hajime in the Meiji Era to do the Shinsengumi's dirty business like spying and assassinations. Although my relationship with the mailing list itself has been shaky, from the time I actually quit the mailing list because of disputes, and then now that I've rejoined, but am considered a lurker, the relationship with the character I created for the Kagetai itself has been quite stable. Over the years that I've been a part of Kagetai, Shiyuri has changed and adapted to become what she is today. I've tried my best to be historically correct and plausible in my portrayal of her and her history as far as possible, and this version of Shiyuri is the result. I quite like to write Shiyuri, because her character is not very hard to handle, and the way her personality is allows me to indulge in occasional descriptive passages, but more so than not, it is usually the subject matter of her stories that gives me trouble, because I want to be as historically correct as possible, which leads to a lot of research beforehand and a lot of date-matching.