Shiki Ryougi

**Shiki Ryougi** (両儀 式, *Ryōgi Shiki*) is a Japanese assassin of supernatural beings, investigator, and member of the Hitman Squad. She is a girl who possesses the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, a supernatural ability that allows the user to see the inherent mortality of everything (both living and non-living) in the form of lines.

### Appearance

Shiki has always mostly worn a wide variety of traditional kimonos ranging from colorful yukatas to high quality furisodes up to the age of sixteen. Despite being seemingly unremarkable, her kimono is a luxury item not apparent to the eye. The quality is revealed in the fine details, the haute couture being that she can perform high kicks while still wearing a kimono. She can’t actually distinguish between different Kimono types, but because she’s been in contact with nothing but high-class goods her entire life she can at least tell the difference between “good” and “bad”. At the kimono fabrics shop, she’ll pick out a material without hesitation and leave, at which point Akitaka will look at the price only to find that it costs as much as he makes in two months.

Though she had received clothing from Akitaka that would suit a girl her age, she never bothered to wear them, and because her school was one without uniforms, she stayed with her kimono. She wished to utilize a long-sleeved kimono, but instead wore a Yukata-like, single-piece kimono for ease of changing during physical education classes. Comments from her high school peers and prodding from Mikiya about her insistence on simply wearing extra clothing on top of her kimono caused her to spontaneously decide to wear something over it. She decided to buy a leather jacket, so she began a strange habit of wearing a leather jacket over a kimono during winter.

Her hair is short, and while she often used to brush her hair, it was usually unkempt after her recovery from her 2-year coma. Shiki has ink-black hair, pale skin color and black eyes described as being of "clear void". While she was known to wear wooden *geta* footwear as part of her casual wear, she commonly wore boots with laces as part of her default attire, especially when embarking on her assignments under the Garan no Dou agency.

While it seems that she is concerned about her attire, she does not actually care. She simply wears what she wishes, but the result ends up consistently being a kimono, laced-up boots or geta, and a red leather jacket. Her favorite outfit is the red leather jacket, but only Mikiya is oblivious to the reason as to why she loves it. She does not favor any particular red leather jacket, and insists that "I will switch to a new one if this one gets worn out".

Pre-coma, the two personalities *Shiki* and *SHIKI* wore the same style of dress with the latter often being depicted as wearing kimonos of various warm colors. Shiki's third personality 「Shiki Ryougi」 was often depicted as having worn a light pink kimono of the furisode variety, all while lacking her signature red leather jacket despite only ever being seen during snowy nights. 「Shiki Ryougi」 was known for displaying a serene and trance-like expression in all of her appearances.

### Personality

Children born into the Ryougi family are generally male and are artificially induced with dual personalities, but Kaname was unable to manifest a second personality of his own. Shiki was confirmed to display the trait instead and was raised as the family head in his place, displaying the personalities of **SHIKI** (織), a male personality customarily called the "yang" personality, and **Shiki** (式), the female personality called the "yin" personality.

It is not the result of Dissociative Identity Disorder even though it is a dual personality, so it is more a matter of whose actions take priority. It is easy to tell which Shiki is speaking at a given time because they both have a distinct style of speaking, most notably that the female Shiki speaks politely and with reserve, referring to herself with the gender-neutral pronoun **watashi** (私), while the male persona has a brash personality and refers to himself with the masculine pronoun **ore** (オレ). The two personalities could not communicate to each other but they can both understand what the other is feeling. When one comes out it is like the other goes to sleep, and at the moment they switch they feel each other’s desires.

#### Shiki

While feminine before the accident, Shiki, no longer able to feel SHIKI after waking from the coma, assumes that he has died and feels a detachment from her memories before the accident. She does not have a realistic sense of living, knowing that she is Shiki while also not feeling that she actually is Shiki. She hopes to regain herself and the "dead" SHIKI, and decides to put on a cold facade that somewhat resembles the male Shiki's, utilizing a coarse male speech pattern and "ore", and tries to act as the female Shiki. Touko understands the sense of detachment Shiki feels, and theorizes that the current Shiki is a third, new personality.

She has an enigmatic, grim, cold, mean, heartless, cynical, moody, merciless, and highly brooding personality, appearing to care about nothing, but she occasionally reacts in surprisingly feminine ways. Mikiya decides that if she were to be compared to an animal that it would be something like a rabbit. Due to being aware of her abnormality since childhood, being a killer who could not kill, she hated both herself and other people. Developing her cold personality as a result, she secretly wished to experience the happiness of a normal person. Her fate has changed drastically since encountering the materialization of that dream.

Due to her impulse to kill, she tries to feel a sense of living through killing, but never succeeds due to various accidents and benevolent obstructions. With her uncertain sense of living, she listlessly continues to go to Touko's office on a daily basis. Shiki declines Mystic Eye Killers from Touko, which would allow her to live a normal life free of seeing death if she were to wear them. It could be seen as a sign of how self abusive she is, or it can be called more like an episode that reflects her heart of clear water. While Touko put a large amount of money into constructing them, Shiki simply shoved them back, saying "Why should I do it to please you?" Her reasoning for declining is the same as refusing to wear the uniform of Reien Girls' Academy, in that she thinks it looks ridiculous on herself.

She can be said to occasionally behave like a "Stone-head-like stone head", evidence that she lives by feelings alone. She has an animalistic view towards other people, dividing them into two categories regardless of good or evil. Deciding based upon "those she can be with" and "those she cannot be with", she will stay with someone "she can be with" even if she hates them. Touko is "dislike", Azaka is "like", and Mikiya, in her own words, is "I do not know."

#### SHIKI

SHIKI is the personality that controls the aspect of "Denial/Negativity." He is a lost killer responsible for Shiki Ryougi's destructive impulses. Even though the only emotion that he can feel is "to kill," he despises his own impulses and voluntarily became Shiki's subordinate personality. He has the speech and gestures of a youth. The relationship between them changes upon the entrance of Mikiya, and he decides to act as the substitute at the time of the accident and disappear.

#### 「Shiki Ryougi」

Shiki possesses an actual third personality. 「Shiki Ryougi」 is the will of the body that manifested as a personality of its own, and is directly connected to 「　」, the Root. Because she is connected to the Root, she is considered part of it and one with it. The pronunciation of 「　」 would be **Void** (空, *kara*) if it were to have one. Having always existed in the gap between *Shiki* and *SHIKI*, she hid her existence from both personalities after creating the two. This personality is housed in the body rather than the other personalities housed in the mind.

Shiki Ryougi was fated to be erased by the Counter Force before birth due to having the Origin of 「　」, which would be connected to the Root itself; however, the Ryougi used specific methods to prevent this from happening. After Shiki Ryougi was born, the Ryougi realized that the child was completely empty without a personality of its own. To fix this, they forcefully awakened Shiki's Origin. Upon gaining a personality through the Origin Awakening, 「Shiki Ryougi」 immediately became able to see every event recorded in the Root and, deciding everything to be uninteresting and meaningless, created the perfectly split personalities of Shiki and SHIKI as the Ryougi family wanted of her then hid herself behind the two.

Because she has no interest in anything due to her omniscience, 「Shiki Ryougi」 usually remains dormant within Shiki.

### Early Life (1979-1995)

Shiki's family, the Ryougi, were members of the Demon Hunter Organization. Their special skill involves creating two separate and distinct personalities within themselves. When a child is born, he or she is given a single name written in two different kanji, each one relating to each personality.

Shiki's mother and father are unnamed. While she has an older brother, Kaname Ryougi, he was unable to manifest a second personality within himself, thus making him ineligible to succeed as the head of the family. Due to Shiki's success in manifesting her second persona and her older brother's inability to do so, she was chosen as the next head of the family and began her training in combat.

When Shiki was young, her father took her to meet her dying grandfather. He told Shiki that people can only truly kill someone once in their lifetime, elaborating that those whom had killed many times are no longer human, fated to live with their guilt until their death. It is at this moment that Shiki learns to value the notion surrounding the weight and responsibility that comes with murder. Before passing away, he wished Shiki to have a peaceful death.

By the year of 1995 as Shiki reaches the age of 16, the Ryougi family had effectively retired from the task of demon hunting, becoming a family similar to the Tohnos, in that they remained as wealthy landowners. In this case, they own a large Japanese-style mansion with a grove of bamboo beyond the outer wall. Shiki also took lessons in Japanese harp, flower arrangement, calligraphy, swordsmanship, jujutsu, and dance, as well as studying cooking as a hobby.

### 1995: Death of SHIKI and meeting a lover

In the September of 1995, Shiki meets her future husband. Spending time together eating lunch on the rooftop, the two build a casual relationship. After the young man muses about a murder in the city, Shiki begins to question her own involvement in the recent string of murders throughout the town due to her own love for wandering the town late at night. The young man as well begins to suspect her involvement as a result of a button found at the scene of one of these murders, which bears the symbol of their high school, as well as her having an injury consistent with what was described to have happened during the crime. Despite literally seeing her in front of a headless body and basking in the rain of blood, he does not believe that she killed anybody.

    On the day of Winter vacation, the young man is camping out in front of the Ryougi mansion as he tended to do while Shiki ignored him. Shiki then attacks him, and chases him to the street. While pinning him down, another intruder attacks Shiki. Defending herself, she remarks that she is merely fighting to run away, after which the attacker then lets her. Following her, the young man catches her, after which Shiki remarks that she and SHIKI like him, the only thing that SHIKI has felt other than murder. She then jumps in front of an oncoming car to commit suicide, after which SHIKI dies, but Shiki survives and goes into a 2 year coma.

### 1998: Waking up from the coma

Waking up from her coma, Shiki sees lines of death around her, and tries to rip her eyes out, causing doctors to bandage her eyes. Because she feels empty, spirits in the hospital attempt to take control of her body. She is then visited by a mage in the disguise of a speech therapist, who promises to teach her how to use her eyes. The mage explains to her that even if her eyes physical eyes were removed, the effect of the mystic eyes would still be active. Just before being released from the hospital, these spirits take control of dead bodies and attack her physically. Shiki then fights these ghouls with her new eyes and the instruction of the mage, after which she is discharged and begins to work under her, alongside with the young man from her class. As it turns out, she runs a contract-based production company that engages in cases with supernatural or abnormal elements called Garan no Dou.

### The Bridge Incident

Garan no Dou is approached by a prominent family to find and kill the perpetrator of the murder of a group of delinquents. After meeting the perpetrator, Shiki initially brushes her off as there is no intent to kill. However, after witnessing the perpetrator twisting a man to death with mystic eyes of her own, Shiki confronts her. Shiki then becomes disinterested, finding her to be a buzzkill, and walks away. This is due to the perpetrator's circumstances around killing, and Shiki does is willing to wait until an investigation is finished around her background. When a random person dies this time, Shiki becomes upset and then goes after her in a typhoon, commencing a battle on a bridge. After being hit by the twisting ability on her arm, Shiki loses the ability to use her left arm, but also figures out how to see and kill the twist ability. And so in another confrontation, Shiki wins the battle. Realising she is about to lose, the perpetrator gains Clairvoyance and then twists the bridge, collapsing it and escaping. However, her cronic appendicitis leads to her appendix bursting, and she regresses to a childlike state of mind. Seeing her in this state, Shiki then kills the appendicitis, sparing her. Joining back up with Garan Dou, Shiki has a conversation with the young man, where he claims he will take on any sin in her place. After briefly being pissed off, she then smiles a happy smile for the first time.

### Suicide Incidents

In August of 1998, the young man who Shiki likes visits her. During this visit, he gives her strawberry Häagen-Dazs ice cream, to which Shiki remarks that she does not like ice cream. He then is in an unconscious state after investigating the building where the recent suicides have been happening. Shiki then goes and investigates the building for herself. After witnessing a suicide, she looks up and sees eight ghosts floating. After climbing the building, one of the ghosts tries to curse her to death, breaking the prosthetic arm previously made. After returing, Shiki eats one of the cartons of strawberry ice cream after realizing that she can't live without the man she likes. She then receives a new prosthetic arm, which is stronger than the previous one. She then goes back to the building where she kills all of the ghosts. Her love interest then wakes up.

### Appartment Building Paradox

In October of 1998, a young man kills his parents. Fleeing, the young man runs into Shiki, where after telling her that he is a murderer, she lets him stay at her place while he hides from the cops. While he is staying there, he is looking for news about the murder, which never shows up. During this time, Shiki is investigating his claims. After telling him that they are going to check out the appartment, they find some pecularities. For one thing, where the residents actually live is not the same room numbers as what is in the registry. Finding where the young man lives, they find a scene that plays as if the two of them were not there. Then after going and looking into the room that is actually listed as their residence, they find the dead bodies of all three family members, who had seemingly been dead for quite some time. Shiki is then ambushed by a group of zombies, and the mage that had attacked her 2 years prior. She is then kidnapped, after which the young man immediately runs away to hide in her place. Getting Garan no Dou involved, the young man and Shiki's love interest team up to look into the appartment building. After finally realizing that he is a doll, the young man then delivers Shiki's katana to her, where she promptly cuts herself out of a prison, and she fights the mage. The conclusion of the battle sees her jump off the building to stab him.

### The Academy Incident

During winter break at a prestigious all girls school, Shiki is sent to investigate some paranormal suicides. Going alongside her mage employer's apprentice, who happens to be her love interest's little sister and apparent love rival, the two begin to investigate the presence of fairies. Finding out that a particular student seems suspicious, the duo begin to investigate the old school building that had burned down in a fire. Shiki then isolates a teacher that has been using his magecraft to hide the currently missing but alive students in the burned down building, while little sister goes off to confront the student. The fairies then turn on the student, and as such the two of them spare her. The teacher is also defeated during this time.

### 1999 Murder Incidents

A series of murders similar to what happened in 1995 begin to happen in the city. Shiki goes off to investigate, as she believes that she is involved in some way. Her love interest also believes her to be involved, and as such goes off to investigate as well. While hearing about a woman in a kimono brutally killing drug dealers, and realizing that the perpetrator has to do with this hot new drug on the street, he then tries said drug to see its effect. Shiki then finds the perpetrator, who is a male upperclassman from her high school who is dressed exactly like she is. She then confronts him and cuts off his left arm. He runs away, and her love interest goes to ask him questions at his place. Only after he returns to his place does her love interest realize that he is the perpetrator, and he goes back to call Shiki. He then tells Shiki not to kill him, despite the fact that his origin had been activated, and he was essentially turning into a wild killing beast. Shiki then goes to confront the perpetrator once again, this time in his growing facility. Remembering the words from her grandfather about how killing a person does not allow one to die as a human, Shiki gets captured and handcuffed. Her love interest goes after her, and gets fed a stronger version of the drug he took earlier, which almost kills him. He is also stabbed in the leg, and stabbed in the eye. Returning to his prisoner, the perpetrator realizes that during this time, Shiki bit the thumb off her prosthetic arm to escape the handcuffs. She then stands and takes a few shallow slashes while thinking about the supposedly dead love interest. She then just kills him. And then her love interest crawls over while she basks in the afterglow of the moonlight. He then admonishes her for killing, and then they get married after he goes to the hospital.

### Transport to Tuscolo

During a walk at night, Shiki is stopped and captured by Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, who has the ability to travel freely between an infinite number of parallel worlds. He then transports her to Tuscolo. He also transports her through time to the present.

### The Hitman Squad (2022-Present)

After being transported to the world of Tuscolo, Shiki meets others who seem interested in the same line of work. Together, these four people come to be known as the Hitman Squad.