Kaoruko Jinnouchi

**Kaoruko Jinnouchi** (陣之内薫子, *Jinnouchi Kaoruko*?) is a member of the Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit and a former marriage candidate of Kiyoka Kudou. She temporarily served as Miyo Saimori's bodyguard.

## Appearance

Kaoruko is a gorgeous, dashing woman of 20 years old. She is tall for a woman and has handsomely dignified features. She has a cheerful, clear voice. She wears a ponytail and is dressed in a shapely military uniform at work. Despite the uniform being boorishly masculine, she wears it without losing any of her feminine beauty, as if she was an actor in a theater troupe. She has a femininely small hand that it is also hard and calloused from gripping a sword.

## Personality

Kaoruko is someone who radiates cheerfulness, as she always wears a friendly and warm smile. She is courteous towards others and her speech is much more eloquent and casual than one would expect based on her appearance. When she engages in conversation, her jovial laughter is infectious, and her witty remarks have a way of making people around her chuckle and feel amused. Miyo later realizes that Kaoruko's cheerful disposition is a brave front that she puts up to pretend not to feel anything when she experiences painful, cruel things, to fool even herself to protect her heart.

Kaoruko's personality is straightforward and direct. This is evident when she immediately proposes to Miyo to become friends, explaining that they'll be spending a lot of time together, and she believes they could get along well, making their interactions more relaxed and enjoyable.

Despite her gallant outward appearance, being called by people "masculine", Kaoruko actually prefers feminine and endearing things. That's why she dislikes being addressed by her last name, Jinnouchi, as she finds it somewhat stiff and pompous.  Working in a men environment and facing misogynic remarks every day caused Kaoruko to sometimes wish she hadn’t been born a woman. She feels like she is stuck in the middle. She's not feminine, but obviously she can’t be a man, either.

## History

Kaoruko is born in the Jinnouchi family. Her family runs a long-standing and prestigious dojo. Her father is the master there. and is Giftless. She spends a lot of time in the dojo ever since she was little, so it’s where she feels the most relaxed. In addition to running the dojo, her father is appreciated by the military for his swordsmanship. For decades, he had maintained a cooperative relationship with the old capital's Second Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit. The military sometimes asks him to assist in carrying out missions. If he accepts such a request, Kaoruko's father may lose contact for a long time. Her mother has come from a Gift-user family. While her mother herself is Giftless, due to what was called atavism, Kaoruko possesses a Gift of her own. In addition to her talents with a sword that she has inherited from her father, she is seen as quite an outstanding warrior.

She started her career at the Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit working as an assistant early on, when she was about fourteen or fifteen. Besides Kaoruko, there aren't many student assistants or female soldiers. She was stationed at the unit in the Imperial Capital, under commander Kiyoka Kudou. Seeing how Kiyoka was hard on both himself and others, yet strong and deeply caring toward his comrades, she admired him and was attracted to him. But she also knew from the very start that these feelings of hers would never ever come to fruition and she had given up on them back when she was a teenager. Kiyoka saw her as just another person he worked with, no more than any one of the many potential marriage partners he’d had over the years. She was arranged to marry him by Kiyoka's father Tadakiyo Kudou, but he had flatly refused the proposal and she cried for days on end afterward, being too depressed to eat. However, she persuaded herself that Kiyoka had turned down all the marriage offers that had come his way, so if she could at least stay by his side as a comrade-in-arms, she could remain special to him.

Around four or five years ago, Kaoruko had been re-stationed to the Second Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit in the old capital, where she is known as a remarkable military woman. She has been training herself every day, whether she wants to or not. Despite her far outclassing many soldiers on a technical level, she still didn't rise right up the ranks, because she is a woman.

Kaoruko is still unmarried at the age of twenty, an age when girls from good households would usually already have married.

## Plot

After Yoshito Godou has been injured by an explosion at one of the Gifted Communion's site, Kaoruko has been called by Kiyoka Kudou to return to the unit in the imperial capital to fill the hole Yoshito left behind. He chose her because it's best for someone familiar with the imperial capital to lend their aid and singled her out to serve here. Kiyoka decides that Kaoruko also serves as his fiancée Miyo's bodyguard. Kaoruko accepts the job, understanding the danger that any emergency will involve going up against the Gift-users of the Gifted Communion or Naoshi Usui himself and her life will be at risk.

When she arrives by train on the central station of the Imperial Capital, she is accosted by Naoshi Usui who requests her assistance in a matter. He claims that the Gifted Communion has taken her father hostage and threatens her to cooperate with him. At first, Kaoruko didn't believe Naoshi's statement. Although her father is Giftless, he is still an excellent swordsman. She didn't think he would become a hostage so easily. In order to confirm her father's safety and whether what Naoshi said was true or false, Kaoruko immediately asked the operator of the telecommunications bureau to contact her father. But her father never called her back. Because he couldn't be contacted by phone, she sent a telegram and wrote a letter and mailed it back to her hometown, but there was still no news from her father. If he had to go away from home for a long time, her father would have informed her of it before she set off for the capital. She also contacted the Second Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit and they answered that they have not entrusted her father with any work at the moment. In addition, she also contacted the neighbors near her hometown. According to what they said, not long after she left home, her father seemed to have disappeared. He was not out on a mission, but he was away from home for several days in a row, and he never told her about it. In the end, Kaoruko decides to believe the possibility that her father was indeed taken hostage, and she does not dare to find other people to discuss the matter, as it would only put her father's life in danger.

Seeing how differently Kiyoka treats Miyo, compared to his usual strict demeanor at work,, Kaoruko purposefully acts as if there was a special relationship between her and Kiyoka in the past, attempting to show off that she understands Kiyoka a lot better than Miyo, mentioning stories from the past Miyo likely doesn't know about and tries making the gap between them evident whenever she could, in order to make Miyo jealous.

When Kaoruko hears about the Emperor being kidnapped by the Gifted Communion, she is completely distressed, something that Miyo notices. After Kiyoka leaves to rescue the Emperor, Mukadeyama orders her and his squad to barricade in the dojo and encircle Miyo in a defensive circle. Naoshi breaks the barrier and enters the dojo with ease. When questioned by Mukadeyama how he got inside, Naoshi reveals someone from inside the station aided him by tampering with the barrier. He then thanks Kaoruko for her cooperation. Under pressure from Miyo and the rest of the unit members, Kaoruko confesses crying and asks Naoshi if he kept his promise to spare her family, to which he admits he never harmed them and she just fell for his lie. Hearing this, Kaoruko's legs buckled at the knees and freezes completely. When Naoshi attacks the unit members, Mukadeyama orders Kaoruko to stand up and fight. Gripping her saber, she then wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and stands up, promising Miyo that she will clean up the mess her misconduct’s caused. However, Naoshi turns invisible and slams Kaoruko to the floor, threatening to harm everyone if Miyo doesn't cooperate. Then with his blade pressed on her neck, Miyo has no choice but leave with him, with Kaoruko staggering to her feet calling out to her. Naoshi is then kicked down by Kiyoka, who has arrived in time.

In the aftermath of the battle, Kaoruko is taken to the military headquarters where she is being held, awaiting sentencing. Masashi Ookaito is protecting her from torture. In the military, betrayal earned severe punishment. If someone double-crossed their comrades on the battlefield, the consequences would be immense. To prevent such situations, even execution could be on the table. Her father turns out to be safe and had been entrusted by the military to go out on a mission that was sudden and urgent. The mission was entrusted from other sources, rather than the Second Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit. Because the timing of the mission and the start of the Gifted Communion's operation is too coincidental, it can be surmised that the Gifted Communion has penetrated into the centre of the government.

Ultimately, rather than banishing her, the Imperial Army decided to keep her in the imperial capital where there are more people secretly monitoring her. The reason why she was not executed is because the military judged that she could still provide intelligence about the Gifted Communion. She still stays a member of the Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit, even after Yoshito rejoined the team following his recovery, however her importance is severely reduced and she wouldn't have much chance of talking directly with the commander anymore. She is assigned to perform tasks such as street patrols that require her to go out. She cannot enter the hinterland of the Imperial Palace where Miyo and Prince Takaihito, the two targets of the Gifted Communion, are staying. After getting permission from Masashi Ookaito to personally report to Kiyoka about the activities of the Gifted Communion, she does enter the palace grounds and waited for Kiyoka outside the vanguard. She shares her information about her father's case. She also asks Kiyoka why she turned down the marriage proposal back then and Kiyoka responds that it was to prevent personal affairs from affecting work. When Kaoruko asks him if he would have accepted if she was not a soldier, Kiyoka confirms that, an answer which satisfies her even if she knows that the result she desires will not occur.

## Trivia

* Kaoruko is a point of view character in the prologue and chapter 4 of the fourth volume of the novel.

## References

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11  Novel, Volume 4 Chapter 2
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4  Novel, Volume 4 Chapter 1
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1  Novel, Volume 4 Chapter 3
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4  Novel, Volume 4 Chapter 4
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3  Novel, Volume 4 Chapter 5
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4  Novel, Volume 5 Chapter 2
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1  Novel, Volume 4 Prologue
8. ↑  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 1
9. ↑  Novel, Volume 4 Chapter 6