Misora Hayashi

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## Personality

With a constant frown and a penchant for curt replies, Mimi doesn’t give off the friendliest first impression. A part of it is that it’s just her personality, but due to recent circumstances, she would just prefer to be a hard worker who takes her job seriously and competently. And she expects her coworkers to be the same. If they aren’t during working hours, expect some kind of scolding. Still, when on break or after work, she can relax a little more, mostly listening to other talkative people - but not afraid to share her opinion when something sounds risky or stupid.  When it comes to meeting people, she feels a bit more comfortable being around younger colleagues - mainly because their energy and curiosity bring some life into her, and she often feels compelled to take care of them like she does her own kids. She tries not to make it obvious, but one can catch her cooking meals and fixing their clothes for them pretty often.

But she can extend her hospitality toward anyone she considers a friend, which - surprisingly to some - is pretty easy. Once she’s around people (like a crew) for a good amount of time and they’ve talked and they seem to have some sort of common sense, that’s good enough in her book. She’s very grateful for any friends she makes, as much of the good things in her life have been through the connections she’s made over the years. She’s still easily bothered and prone to a sarcastic comment when she feels the situation merits one, but she will try to loosen up around people she’s comfortable with and smile a little more. Her usual conversation topics revolve around work, her cooking,  and her kids. She actually loves talking about her kids, and their accomplishments in school, and her worries about them in the future, and other concerns about them - but she often dials back on it when she believes the people around her are bored of it. Honestly, though, if you let her talk more she’ll appreciate you a lot.

However, it’s hard to catch her talking about herself much. She doesn’t feel like she’s quite interesting besides some stuff in her past that she’d rather not talk about. And she doesn’t like being pried apart for that kind of stuff. When she does get that frustrated, she forces herself to think about her faith, cultivating positive experiences and meditating, but sometimes that’s just not enough and she lashes out. Since that kind of behavior ended up costing her last job, she tries to dial back any outbursts, but it can happen. But all of this is just a side effect of dealing with various losses in her life, and while she can manage it most of the time, she misses her mother and her boyfriend a lot. She just feels she can’t express it to most people because that would make her be as weak like her dad was, and she refuses to neglect her children the way he did with her and her sister. Although she wishes things could magically get easier for her and her family, with her string of luck, she feels it better to just work hard and earn enough money to keep surviving in this world. That’s about the only way she believes any stability can be achieved in her life.

## Biography

Hailing from the Concordian city of Norwich, Mimi grew up with her mother, father, and older sister in a market district called Chipping Haven. Her parents owned a local diner called The Waffle Hop (usually just called ‘The Hop’ by customers) that served the working class residents of the area. However, due to her good grades in school, Mimi was encouraged to look beyond Norwich to get a well paying job. She enjoyed more hands on, practical pursuits like fixing broken appliances, mending clothes, or cooking, so her goal growing up was to become an engineer, and hoped that she could go to the top rated colleges in the Eastern Reach to do so.

While she studied hard, money was not easy to come by, even if The Hop was a popular place to eat. When her mother became ill during her teenage years, most of the Hop’s money went to taking care of her. As her older sister Suzy was going to take over the diner, Mimi took care of her mother after school and decided to postpone her college dreams for her. She didn’t mind - she had always been close to her mother anyway - but she couldn’t do much for her as her mother eventually succumbed to her illness. While her mother’s death affected Mimi greatly, her father broke down even more and turned to alcohol to cope. The sisters tried to keep The Hop alive by working while their father loafed around, but their father ended up selling the restaurant to pay off the rest of their mother’s medical bills and to get some extra booze money. At this point, Mimi was sick of her dad’s defeatist attitude. While Suzy tried to convince Mimi to stay and help their family out, Mimi ran away from home. She followed some ads for jobs in the city, originally just finding low paying food industry jobs but was led toward more lucrative - if shady and immoral - careers. Despite never getting caught, and the nice cash influx, Mimi’s self worth plummeted during these years, especially after a violent customer blinded her in one eye after being ‘unsatisfied’ with her work. Eventually she ran away from Norwich to get away from that life and headed to the smaller town of Port Emall.

While in Port Emall, she bumped into her uncle, her mother’s younger brother Max, who she hadn’t seen in years. After hearing about her troubles, Uncle Max invited her to his family’s farmland home in Willowfield, which her mother had lived in before she moved to Concordia as a missionary. Reconnecting with her mother’s childhood, doing the same kind of labor her mother did, being enriched in the New Horizon faith her mom had practiced even after her move - it gave Mimi some peace that she needed in her life. Unfortunately, she didn’t really get along with her uncle’s wife, who saw Mimi as a threat to the purity of her soul due to her unknown and implicitly darker past, and Mimi once again went on the road. She didn’t mind anyway since she wanted to visit the various soul reclamation points in Ordene and didn’t like troubling her uncle for too long after being so kind to take her in.

During her travels in Ordene, she would pay her way around by taking any day labor jobs she could take. While she could cook or work on a farm if needed, when she could fix broken equipment using the skills she learned on her uncle’s farm, she could make more money and actually enjoy herself. She decided to get a two year degree in Barrenaulde to become a mechanic, but she felt like the prospects in the Eastern Reach would get her even wealthier and back into the bustling city life that she didn’t quite feel anywhere in Ordene. Even if she risked the possibility of her past being found out and being kicked out, it could mean that she could fulfill her childhood goal of living in the Reach - without the fancy university degree, but still, it was something for her to look forward to.

She found some connections from missionary relatives of people she befriended in Ordene that lead her to Eastfall. While they helped with getting her a place to live, she had to find a job on her own - and, like many things in her life, had a hard time finding a job as a mechanic at first - until she heard about a job on a Fisher boat . She wasn’t really a fan of the dangers of traveling in the Memory Sea, but it did give her some experience fixing equipment in the Reach, which she happily added to her resume. She also added Emile, a Fisher in her first crew, as a friend who hung out with her even after she found a safer job, fixing public transports instead. Their friendship quickly bloomed to romance - and just as quickly turned them into expectant parents. Although it caught Mimi off guard, Emile promised to take care of their twins with her and moved in with her soon after, and Mimi, happier than she ever expected to be in her life, gave birth to her son and daughter, Julian and Nina.

For years after that, life settled into a routine - Mimi working up the ranks as a mechanic and befriending a few prospective clients who might ask her to fix their personal vehicles, Emile working as a Fisher, and their kids growing up and going to school. Although Mimi was grateful for the unexpected stability of her life in her thirties, in the back of her mind, the threat of her past always scared her. She just focused on her faith, cultivated happy experiences with her family, and at one point even tried to connect with her older sister for forgiveness for leaving her to take care of their dad (but not to the point where she forgave her dad). Suzy responded after a long while, and the two started to talk more about their families and their work. In the meanwhile, she found work for a mechanic who serviced wealthy families’ personal transports - though, Emile, kind of joking, kind of seriously, often suggested that Mimi went back to work on the ship if she ever got tired of serving rich folk. She’d roll her eyes, but there were some demanding days when she thought of taking up that offer.

However, when her kids were 12, Emile went on a typical job up in the Memory Sea - and never returned. She found out later that his ship was most likely taken by pirates, so Mimi assumed that the usual thing that happened to Fishers during these raids happened to Emile - he was killed. She was shocked, and saddened, and bitterly understood the kind of pain that her father felt when her mother died. However, Mimi refused to break down the way her dad did, and tried very hard to move on like she had done with other sad things in her life. But her insistence to herself and her family that everything was okay affected her temperament, and she would screw up more at work and lash out more at her kids - which she would regret immediately. She felt like she was in the dark cloud she was in during her time in underbelly of Norwich. Unfortunately, her worsening behavior got her fired in the end. Once again, she was unemployed in Eastfall, but as a single mother and even more desperate for work for her and her children’s sake. At the very least, her firing led her to some well needed therapy, which helped in controlling her outbursts and processing her negative emotions in healthier ways.

After searching for jobs, she finally found work - back at a Fisher boat. Her past job experience - and an old friend of Emile’s - helped her grab the opportunity. But the money she made here didn’t make enough as she wanted. Since she was already working in the Memory Sea, and she kinda knew what Fishers did and the money they could earn, she decided to just become one herself. She’d been good at school, so the exam didn’t really worry her and she had made a few connections to help her out. While it was harder than she expected, she just persisted, like she did with every obstacle in her life, and finally passed the exam after a lot of studying between work and taking care of her kids.

Unfortunately...while her connections helped with the exam, their crews were full. When she looked around for available crews, some asked for money she didn’t have, or tests that she thought would be a waste of her time. But the only offer she received that wasn’t so cumbersome to accept was from a captain with a shady reputation, and more instability in her life was the last thing she needed. But eventually she relented out of need. She’s just hoping her time on the Parable is a temporary one, and is ready to jump ship the second a better crew opens up a spot.

## Trivia

* Likes her children, younger colleagues, meatballs, meditation, clowns; Dislikes alcohol, picky eaters, troublesome people, lazy coworkers, flirts.
* She has a back tattoo of a bird’s wings that she got done after she ran away from home.
* She started wearing flower eyepatches because some kid in her children’s daycare told her that she looked like a pirate with a regular black eyepatch and it scared them. Her daughter, Nina, suggested putting a flower instead to look cuter, and she attached a flower onto one of her eyepatches. Then she became a cool mom after, for some reason.
* She wears a basic eyepatch when she’s up on the Memory Sea, though.
* She’s made a few different flower ones throughout the years, but she likes her sunflower one the most.
* She’s not as concerned as she was when she was younger about people finding out about her past since it’s just been a long time... but the paranoia about being caught is never far from her mind. She doesn’t want to move if she can avoid it so her kid’s schooling isn’t disrupted, and since Nina wants to be an engineer, the Eastern Reach schools are more renowned for that kind of job.
* She doesn’t understand why people don’t like clowns. They’re pretty funny and not scary at all. Her kids don’t agree though.
* She’s a surprisingly good singer and, if she hadn’t been focused on being an engineer as a child, she could’ve made a good musician. She does like to sing around her kids, or when she’s absentmindedly working.
* She's the only one aboard the Parable with the Wicklow Contact skill.