Nobume Nishioka

Illust: Sassyboi

Nobume Nishioka is a fanmade character for Love Letter: My True Feelings. She is a Chemistry teacher with a notoriously bad reputation among students, due to her fierce and blunt personality.

## Appearance

Nobume has short dark green hair and sharp amber eyes. Usually she sports a black and white striped shirt, a short red coat jacket and dark olive green jeans. She also has a beauty mark underneath her left eye.

## Personality

Nobume is your definition of a tsundere- someone who is outwardly tough but has a soft side. She can be ruthlessly hard on her students, such as when they try to mess with dangerous chemicals in the science lab, or run into the school hallways in their black shoes trekking mud, but she does not hand out punishments to those who do not deserve them. Most of the time she wears a constant grumpy frown and narrowed eyes that seem like they are glowing like a lion's eyes (hence the nickname).

Unexpectedly, Nobume enjoys being with her students (even though she does not show it), constantly worries over them and gets overjoyed to tears when she hears her students thank her sincerely, or when she hears a club wins a regional competition or if a student jumps a grade.

However, she does have a sadistic streak, which can be seen by her surprising her students with random (ungraded) pop quizzes and obsessively stalking around the school hallways hoping to shock a misbehaving student. That behavior is somewhat motivated by her strong drive and (sometimes misplaced/over)confidence in her students' ability.

## Backstory

When Nobume was younger, her mother was a gambling addict and her father juggled multiple jobs to meet his wife's demands. Because of this, her family was always in debt and she never received much love from her parents- she had a poor relationship with her mother due to her bad habits and she virtually has no relationship with her father who always worked late into the night.

In middle school, she was a common and easy target for bullies due to her messy uniform, smell and small figure. After being ostracized by most of the student body and finding no help from her family, she rebelled, hung out with the 'bad' crowd and even became the feared delinquent leader of school.

When she barely made into high school, Nobume continued being a rebellious student, messing with teachers, skipping class to hang out with friends at an arcade and failing many classes. This continued until on one fateful day at the start of her third year, when her new homeroom teacher caught her fighting with a classmate near a stairway.

Rather than the scolding and detention that she expected, the teacher decided to hear her out. That was when several years of stress bottled up within her just rushed out all at once, and she sobbed and told her patient teacher about everything that was going on in her life, and when she expected an apathetic response or a 'so what?', the teacher was completely silent.

Right after that, the teacher took Nobume's hand and brought her to the school store, where he bought her a fresh set of uniform out of his pocket, and then left her standing stunned at the school's hallway. From then on, this tiny event that was barely 15 minutes worth of time was forever etched in her mind. With new rigor, she studied for her finals like the world depended on it, found out that her chemistry lessons were actually more interesting than she gave them credit for, and graduated high school with not the best, but decent results.

In college, she got a scholarship which helped her deal with costs, and after a while, she was very busy. During that time, she cut ties with her parents because they argued against her decision to go to college as they wanted her to find work immediately to 'help the family'. She took up a few part time jobs to scrape by, along with school activities and keeping her grades afloat. It was only during her second year when a message in her highschool friends chat group was posted, telling her that her homeroom teacher had just died after being in critical condition the night before. She attended his funeral (after asking around her peers and former teachers), she vowed to follow in his footsteps and at least be half of what he was as a great educator.

## Relationships

Nobume does not have a relationship with her immediate family, but maintains a good relationship with some members in her maternal side of her family, and she is close to her cousin.

In school, she has a good working relationship with the rest of the staff, who appreciates her for her hardworking and helpful nature even when she is tired and grumpy.

Most of the students generally dislike her for her cold and strict nature. The students developed very elaborate rumors about her which passes on from year to year, rumors such as her wrestling a bear in a forest once, being half-lioness and having the psychic ability to read students' minds. Nobume is both mildly annoyed and slightly amused by her image in school.

A few students (some having graduated), which are certain students who do not get scared by her outward facade, do maintain a good relationship with her, however.

## Gameplay

((Note that this is just my ideas on how she could be implemented in the game, and not actual Love Letter gameplay))

Nobume Nishioka can usually be found in the science labs, staff room, or walking along the school hallways outside of teaching.
As an NPC, she has higher than average self defense skill, has a faster reaction time and movement speed, and good eyesight.

**Lessons:**
Most of the time when the player can see/interact with her is during Chemistry lessons.
Half of the lessons are in class as tutorials, while the other half of the lessons are practical lessons in the school's science labs.

Tutorial classes-
Normal lessons are carried out just like in other classes, and the player can earn study points over time.
Pop quizzes: Often during tutorials, Nobume suddenly springs pop quizzes to the class. Succeeding in these quizzes gives the player more study points than in a normal lesson, and improves the relationship with her. Failing in these quizzes will grant no study points but no penalty to their relationship.

Practicals-
The other bulk of lessons will be carried out in the labs.
There will be a simple minigame where the player has to bring the correct items to the table, and quick time events in order to carry out experiments correctly.
During lessons, the player can also potentially steal from the chemistry labs, but it will not be easy because Nobume is always out the lookout for suspicious behavior.

Suspicious actions:

* Wandering too far away from the table to another side of the room
* Missing test tubes/beakers or other instruments from the player's table
* Sneaking around by crouching behind tables etc
* Not following the lesson and doing the experiment for XX amount of time

With enough suspicious actions, it would be increasingly harder to escape her vision. Too many suspicious actions will cause the relationship between the player and her to weaken.
If the player gets caught, for example, she finds the player in the middle of keeping a vial in his/her pocket, Nobume will call out the player in the middle of the laboratory, confiscate the stolen item and reprimand the player. The player will get a significant fall in reputation (for students in class will also get suspicious and spread gossip), be prevented from being in the lab for the rest of the lesson, and the relationship with her will weaken significantly.

**Routine**
((This is just an example I came up with for fun))
Nobume goes for a jog in the early morning every school day, and can be seen by the track/indoor sports hall.
Usually after a run, she will stop to buy soda from a vending machine and rest for a few minutes, and then use the washroom.
After the bell rings, she goes to the staff room to prepare for lessons.
Aside from lessons, there are periods of time when she takes a break from work to walk around the school compound (partially in hopes of catching a poor student misbehaving/skipping class), and she often walks around the corridors at the second floor and the third floor. During her lunch, she buys food in the cafeteria and eats there. Frequently, about an hour before the end of school, she might go to the secluded area where the delinquents usually sit to avoid getting caught, and catch them for playing truancy and chase them while yelling at them to get their \*ss back to class.

After the bell rings, she goes up to the science labs to check if all the instruments are in the right place, and then proceed to lock up the science labs. Nobume usually stays in school longer after to do her work, grade assignments and plan lessons ahead in the staff room. Sometimes when she takes a break, she goes around sport club rooms/ locations to watch them to their club activities.

After finishing up in school, she heads to the coffee shop to take a break, before going home.

**Misbehaving on school grounds**
Like most teachers, when she catches the player breaking rules, she would scold and punish the player. Nobume is known to be harsher than the average teacher, though. She could also scold the player in public, and this could lead to a drop in reputation points.

**Relationship with Nobume Nishioka:**
At first, raising relationship points with her is done primarily through sitting in lessons, but eventually, the player gets the option to talk to her outside of class when they get close enough.

Like with other NPCs, the closer the relationship, the more she will be willing to open up to the player and reveal her 'softer' side of her personality. Being closer to her also unlocks perks.

Friendship
Level 1: --

Level 2: Ability to greet her at the start of class to advance relationship faster.

Level 3: If the player can give a reasonable excuse for misbehaving on school grounds, Nobume might let the player off. There are a limited number of excuses and if the player uses the same excuse, she will get suspicious. Unlock ability to give her gifts to advance relationship with her faster.

Level 4: Ability to volunteer at the end of practicals to help her clean up. This gives the player more opportunities to swipe stuff. Conversation topics unlocked, such as asking her what her hobbies are, why she chose to teach Chemistry etc.

Levels 5,6,7,8: ???

## Trivia

* One of the running jokes surrounding her made by the students is that 'whenever Norioka sensei smiles, somewhere in the world, a kitten dies'. This is half due to her scary face (she looks fierce even if she's smiling out of pure happiness), and half because students are too used to seeing a sadistic smirk during a surprise quiz.

* Her hobbies include joining marathons, boxing and rugby (unofficially, compiling pop quizzes in advance)

* Even though Nobume wishes to apply as a teacher supervisor to a club, she is hesitant because she knows the students generally fear her. She is slightly disappointed by the lack of sports related clubs since she is an active person.

* Students seem to forget that she is only 28, yet they call her the 'boomer teacher'. Just because she is not that great with technology and always use outdated references. What do you mean that you don't have a VCR? What is a 'Fort Knight Dance'? You don't know what a Famicom is? Kids these days.