[attr="class","starrBodyScroll"]


Height: 5'5" / 168cm
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There are two things that stand out about Kasumi the moment one lays eyes upon her. The first thing most notice is the mane of unruly, long, blonde hair atop her head. Flowing all the way to her mid back, it's a wonder she manages to keep it all relatively in order. Only shortly after that do people's eyes stray to the tattoos peeking out of every corner of her clothing. It's obvious that she is an enthusiast at best (if one gives her the benefit of the doubt), or part of the criminal underbelly at worst. Of course, it becomes drastically obvious that the tattoos are actually representative of the people she answers to as less clothes cover her body. Ink is spilled everywhere, from shoulder to feet, there's barely a blank space upon her body. A true painted canvas.
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Although less glaring than the hair and bodywork, the longer one stands around Kasumi, the more obvious the details of her physique become. It's no question that the girl is strong - years of endless training have left her with a less 'ladylike' look than society has grown accustom to. Able to easily deadlift more than her own weight has some perks, and her calloused knuckles give away how much damage a punch from her can do. Still, she wears the musculature well. Despite not being a dainty, picturesque wife, her curvier body is desirable to some, although she rarely dresses to impress anyone.
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Kasumi is a young woman of many facets and staggering contradictions. Some days she will appear thoughtful, vibrant, generous, and passionate, while other days she is downright impulsive, melancholy, selfish, and apathetic. It's fair to say that she acts differently towards different types of people, preferring to keep her work persona and play separate.
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Still, her inner most values shine through a significant amount of the time. She takes great strides to lead her life by authenticity, compassion, harmony, and justice. Sadly, Kasumi is also just as easily discouraged by the actions of others working against her, leading to feelings of isolation. Despite it all, Kasumi makes it a priority to understand the emotions of other people and is capable of profound empathy, feeling other people’s suffering as if it were her own. This strengthens her motivation to be of service to others (even when they don't always deserve it), and in doing so, she will often find ways to communicate in ways that are sensitive to an individual.
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However, Kasumi will discard her need to uphold peace in situations where her internal value system is threatened, and will act out in violence if the situation calls for it. At the very least, Kasumi will maintain her personal values with great conviction and probably won’t fake an agreement or allow herself to be associated with something she strongly disagrees with, unless it is to reach an end goal that outweighs the means.
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Due to a multitude of traumatic experiences, Kasumi has become guarded towards opening up around certain topics, leaving her with profound dissatisfaction in her life. Without a deeper sense of purpose beyond a personal vendetta in her life, Kasumi has found herself stuck in a cycle of analyzing and re-analyzing who she is, often leading to directionless outbursts of anger or frustration. "Who am I when this is all over?" is a question she finds herself stuck on often. Her sense of self is always teetering on the edge, although her reason to go on living stays tied into righteous and deadly anger.
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Although Kasumi knows the world will never be perfect, she still cares about making it better however she can. Her quiet belief in doing the right thing despite her turmoil persists, even on her darkest days. Unfortunately, Kasumi has recently become so focused on retribution that she has a somewhat skewed sense of morality.
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Kasumi's sense of humor is decidedly morbid and sarcastic, but she will sometimes indulge in a well-timed reference to popular culture. In looking for potential friends, Kasumi usually finds herself drawn to people who remind her of herself in some way - either through shared experiences or interests. While she can find common ground with pretty much anyone, she is a notoriously bad judge of character, often making 'friends' with questionable people due to her overwhelming empathy. She tends to view people through a distorted lens once she has found ground with which to relate to them on, perceiving them as how she would like them to be, instead of how they actually are. This is true, at least until her picture of them is shattered, at which time, she will do anything to 'fix' the image of them she had so carefully crafted in her head, (or in very severe cases, become so furious that she will discard the person all-together from her life).
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Since coming into adulthood, Kasumi has struggled with intimacy and romance. Despite sex becoming a mostly impersonal source of pleasure for her, repeated flings or friend with benefit situations often leave the young woman confused about what she is feeling. However, her impulsive nature leads her to repeat these mistakes despite knowing better intellectually. Her fragile sense of self coupled with her preoccupation with abandonment and previous failed relationships make Kasumi doubt if she has ever even been in love before. Despite all her grief over it, however, the concept of true love resonates deeply with her (though she would never admit it to anyone). She would not be happy in a relationship that is founded on anything less. Still, her inner cynic and realist chases away any thoughts of kindred spirits, soulmates, or love at first site (she's gagging) - but she will be hopelessly devoted to a partner should she overcome her insecurities on the matter.
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(TW: Suicide, violence, murder, prostitution. Read at your own risk.)
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Kasumi's earliest memories are the happiest ones she can recall. Most of her formative years were positive, surrounded by her mother and father. Back then, Kasumi knew nothing of tragedy or of strife. She knew nothing of the grief which would eventually pervade her life in so many ways in the future. At that time, Kasumi could have conquered the world; her only real worry was making sure she caught the newest episode of the shows she followed on the weekend (perish the thought of oversleeping back then - nowadays she wishes she could sleep forever).
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Her childhood is mostly what one might unremarkable. Her mother and father nurture her curious mind and Kasumi finds that she is a child of many passions. She makes plenty of friends and her grades are about average. Nothing to write home about, but good enough to keep her parents off her back. At ten, her little sister is born, and Kasumi takes to her new duties as a big sister like a fish to water. Her sister, her responsibility. The two were inseparable.
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But nothing lasts forever, a lesson Kasumi learns hard at the age of thirteen. To this day, she dreams about the very moment the floor was pulled from beneath her: the day she learned that everything that she would ever come to know and love will one day die. Kasumi and her sister are the ones who find their mother, and in that moment Kasumi can feel all the vigor life had to offer leave her body. Her mom was not the only one who died that day. Along with her own life, she mercilessly took a part of Kasumi's.
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There was no way to rationalize it. As a result, she began to slowly begin to lose sight of herself. Her friends began to abandon her one by one. It was a wonder with how she was acting out that she wasn't expelled from school - though she did come close with that one time she gave a boy who looked at her funny a bloody nose. Her father felt helpless as he attempted to keep her in check. Together, the small family of three uprooted their life in Tokyo and moved to the country.
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The announcement that she'd be spending the rest of high school away from her home city neither felt like a blessing or curse. At the time, she didn't care either way. However, the quiet and humble countryside proved to be just what she needed to begin to move on. Between her classes, she would work the fields - and on the weekends, she would spend time with her family. At first, having her home devoid of her mother had been scary - but she finally felt as though things were looking up. Funny, how quickly time could overwrite grief. One either moves with it, or simply loses their way.
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But that peaceful respite would not last.
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Kasumi awoke one night to the grinding terror of her father screaming.
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She lay stiff and silent in her bed for an instant, an ominous silence settling around the house.
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'Maybe I imagined it,' she decides. 'Maybe it was a nightmare.' She didn’t routinely get them, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
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She turned in her bed and pulled the covers closer to her chest, trying to shake away the anxious feeling pressing against the bottom of her stomach like cold stone. For a breath, the quiet continued and Kasumi even entertained the idea of going back to sleep, but jolted awake again when she heard a muffled dragging sound, as if someone were pulling a weighted sack across the floor.
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Kasumi crept from her bed, heart roaring in her ears as she quietly moved to her closet, blindly reaching inside for the metal baseball bat she had stuffed away with her cluttered mess of possessions.
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There is no flicker of lights outside her door, but nevertheless, she sees two dark feet pass under the thin crack at the bottom and continue silently down the hall. Finally, Kasumi’s hand grips around the neck of the bat, and she whips around, pressing her back against the wall, chest heaving.
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Suddenly, there was another scream, and her door swung open with a bang. Kasumi cried out shrilly, raising the weapon in her hands with shaking limbs until she realized it was only her sister.
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“Big sister!”
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She drops her pathetic defense to the ground with a clang, falling to her knees to envelop her younger sister in a tight hug, “It’s okay. I’m here.”
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“Sis, they hurt dad.”
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“What?”
There’s another shout down the hallway, and Kasumi protectively shoves her sister behind her. A few moments later, their father appears in the doorway, standing over the two of them looking worse for wear. He was half dressed, near-topless with his shirt shredded and barefoot, red splattered across his face and his arm hanging limply at his side, blood gushing freely onto his exposed skin.
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“Dad, what’s going on?” Kasumi asks hastily, fear piercing her bones.
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“You two, you have to get out right now—"
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“What a clever, resourceful man you are.”
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All three turned to look at the source of the voice standing behind Kasumi's father. He was well dressed, and had a mild face that would have looked trustworthy in any other situation. And yet, even as he tried to push past her father and towards the two girls, the injured man blocked his path.
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“You don’t have to make this difficult, Kuroda-san. We’ve just come to collect our debt.”
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“Don’t you dare come any closer,” he warns lowly.
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“Dad, who is he?” her little sister asks, her voice wavering through tears.
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“Now’s not a good time sweetie,” he responds hastily, turning his head but never taking his eyes off the strange man in the doorway.
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Despite willing it to, Kasumi can't calm her heartbeat, reaching blindly along the floor for her bat in desperation before finally securing it.
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“No, the child’s right. I’m so rude to come into your home without introducing myself.” Bowing low, Kasumi caught the hollow light of the man’s eyes.
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Blue.
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“I’m here on behalf of--"
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But before he can say his name, Kasumi jumps to her feet, tossing the bat towards her father, “Dad!”
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It couldn’t have been more perfect if they choreographed it. In a swift motion, her father catches the weapon with his good arm and swings wildly in the direction of their assailant, bashing him in the side of the head with a clang that resonated through the hallway. The man stumbles backwards with a pained cry, but doesn’t go down. How that was even remotely fair is beyond Kasumi, but she uses the opportunity to grab her younger sister by the wrist and run out the door.
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Kasumi scrambles towards the entrance to their home while the two men fight behind her, the sound of a body dropping to the floor echoing in her mind. She can only pray that it's the strange person who had entered their home and not her father. With the front door in sight, she makes a mad dash towards safety - but before her fingers can reach around the knob, something cold and blunt connects with the back of her head, and her vision goes black.
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When Kasumi finally comes to, pain pierces her to her core, her vision swimming as she struggles for consciousness. Severe aches stemming from the back of her skull make her want to scream or vomit - but her body is too heavy to make either happen. Slowly, ever so slowly, the blurry shapes around her start to focus, but what she awakens to is worse than the nightmare she had been living before.
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Death isn’t kind. Kasumi had already learned that much when she walked in on her mother's suicide. It preyed where it could, taking people who were too young, too good; and it didn’t pretend to care, it didn’t pretend to distinguish. Death was impartial and unfair. She knew that already, so what lesson had this tragedy meant to serve her now?
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She didn't know how long she lay there, staring at her father and sister's limp and cold bodies, but before too long, light poured through the blinds in the windows. She just couldn’t bring herself to move, still laying pressed against the blood-stained floorboards next to her family. Only when the rays finally flashed uncomfortably into her eyes did she finally find it in herself to move, coiling into a ball and retching.
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By the time she was done emptying the contents of her stomach, there was no will to keep burning on, the fire of her spirit reduced to nothing but ashes. She bawled, wishing death would claim her too - and in the white light of morning, a picture in her mind had arisen: an image of the future - one where she would have to visit this now-haunted place year after year to leave a memento for her family at their graves.
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No. She wouldn't accept that. Not yet.
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She furrowed her brows, clenching her hands into fists.
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A spark.
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At first, the need for payback was a small flame pricking at her stomach, relentless, unceasing, easily stopped by holding her breath, cutting off the oxygen, never letting the flame grow. But as the bloodlust in her grew, so to did the desire to breathe into it, fanning the flames of her soul, creating a burning, festering wound on her heart that could only be cured by the cruel sharp steel point of revenge. It quickly grew sceptic, all consuming. Only curable by retribution. Savage. Spiteful. A dish best served hot. Burning. Unforgiving. She would bare a grudge until she died or they did, whichever came first. Brutal. Callous. Satisfying.
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Empty.
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It certainly appealed to her dark sense of humor in a way.
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She opens her eyes at last, calm resolve in her expression. She is greeted by the same horrific sight of her family dead before her. But at least this time, she doesn't plea for death. This time she knows what she has to do.
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She picks herself up on wobbly feet, stumbling her way to her father's study. Why would someone come after them? They were just a quaint little family in the country. The man had spoken of reclaiming a debt. Kasumi had to know what that meant. She pours through the family records and important documents until she comes upon a folded note next to her mother's death certificate. Her letter goodbye. Kasumi had never seen it before - her father had probably hidden it from his children on purpose, them both being too young to see it. She willed herself to read the words, ignoring the way each heartbeat made her head feel as though it were splitting in two.
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The chilling realization that her hunch had been right grips her. It would appear that her mother had once borrowed a large sum of money from an affluent family in Tokyo - and never being able to pay it back, killed herself to escape what would've been a grisly fate. Their move to the country had nothing to do with how Kasumi had been acting out at school after all, she realized, and everything to do with creating as much distance between her family and the mess her mother had left them to clean up.
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But it wasn't enough for those bastards to see that she was dead, was it?
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Fury overtakes her as she crumples the paper in her fists before pocketing the note. She wanted nothing more than to destroy it in a fit of rage, burn it like it was a bad omen, but logic wins over her emotions as an idea starts to form in her head. The responsible thing to do was clear. She had to take her evidence to the Tokyo Police Department. Surly they would give her the justice she craved. With her only flicker of hope paving the way, Kasumi packs a small bag of belongings and takes the first bus out of her small farming town towards the city.
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She comes to the police department, still wounded from her struggle only one night prior, and is put in private room with the head of the forces, Abe Hotaru. After sharing her story and presenting her evidence, she is horrified when he says that there isn't sufficient enough evidence to make a case, and to leave investigating to the local authorities of the rural nowhere town she had just left. Despite her pleas, she is escorted away in an ambulance to treat her concussion.
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She realizes then that the only way she could get what she wanted was if she took the responsibility into her own hands. As she sits in her hospital bed, the beginnings of a plan start to work its way into her head.
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Kasumi first enters the criminal underbelly by finding work in the Red Light District of Tokyo. She quickly found that men had loose lips when their hormones were running wild. And so began a pattern in her life that would last a few years - during the night, she would coerce information from her targets in any which way she could - and then, during the day, she would train her body tirelessly. She brought her tolerance for pain up while losing her humanity to unspeakably rotten humans in the underbelly of the world. All for the chance to get the one up on her enemies.
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Soon enough, her skills were sought out by the very people she had hoped to find. The family who had killed her family, none the wiser to who she was. She the following years learning the way they work, finding their secrets, earning their trust, waiting for the moment to strike.
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They come to her with a proposition. A promotion that gets her closer than ever to the head of the family, and Kasumi can taste the end is in sight.