Kazuko Hayashi

## Appearance

Kazuko has long, straight light blue hair and blue eyes. All her hair is dissolved.

Kazuko wears the traditional school uniform just like the other characters for the majority of the game, which is a warm gray blazer and underneath it is a brown sweater vest over a white collared shirt topped off with a red ribbon and also a dark blue skirt, white knee socks and white Uwabaki slippers with a sky blue tip.

She is the shortest character in the Literature Club, a feature that results in people commonly mistaking her for a first-year student along with Natsuki.

## Personality

Kazuko is a brash, blunt, cranky, seemingly arrogant girl with a cute, softer interior as a result of insecurity, convincing Naomi enough to class Kazuko as the embodiment of a tsundere. While she is impulsive and can speak without thinking, Kazuko truly cares about her friends and, even when she has obvious anger issues, doesn't enjoy fights or arguments with people. Over the course of the game, we see that she worries about Akemi and on one occasion, gives the protagonist a note asking him to help Akemi, fearing that if she spoke out then it would cause more arguments. Kazuko is very stubborn and has a hard time expressing how she feels and what she wants. When repeatedly challenged, she often becomes awkward and tongue-tied, then aggressive, and then simply bursts into tears.

Her cute interior also involves a love of manga and anime, particularly those in the slice-of-life genre, and drawing. She has been known to store her manga collection in the Literature Club out of embarrassment, another reason is (hinted at) her older sister would be angry while the rest of the club obviously knows about her interest, she is still hesitant to talk about it. Kazuko also likes cute things, like cupcakes with cat faces. She also likes poems with cuter, happier words, though her own poems are still about sad things, such as being persecuted for your hobbies. Kazuko believes that it's important to be able to express something deep with few words. Her simplistic writing style puts her at odds with Akemi, who has a more extravagant style.

Kazuko dislikes being called "cute," even when she acts as such or does cute things, and will deny any claims from others relating to this; nevertheless, she is much more comfortable exposing her sweet side once she knows people aren't going to tease her about it. Kazuko hates it if she isn't taken seriously, whether it's her writing, her hobbies, or just her overall demeanor. It is likely Kazuko learned to be ashamed of herself and her hobbies, because her classmates judge her and her implied abusive older sister, making her abrasive nature a coping mechanism. This is also implied in a secret poem, "Things I Like About Sis", which is most likely written by her.

It is shown that she is a very lonely person who desperately craves affection. One example is during the third poetry-sharing session. If Kazuko has liked all your poems to date, she outright asks the protagonist if he thinks her poems are the best, which swiftly shifts to her begging him to say they are, even if he hates them.

## Preferred Words

**Act 1**

* Blanket, Boop, Bouncy, Bubbles, Bunny
* Candy, Cheeks, Chocolate, Clouds, Cute
* Doki-Doki
* Email
* Fantasy, Fluffy
* Games, Giggle
* Hair, Headphones, Heartbeat, Hop
* Jump, Jumpy
* Kawaii, Kiss, Kitty
* Marshmallow, Melody, Milk, Mouse
* Nibble, Nightgown
* Papa, Parfait, Peace, Pink, Playground, Poof, Pout, Puppy, Pure
* Ribbon
* Shiny, Shopping, Skipping, Skirt, Socks, Spinning, Sticky, Strawberry, Sugar, Summer, Swimsuit
* Twirl
* Valentine, Vanilla
* Waterfall, Whisper, Whistle

* Adventure, Amazing, Awesome
* Beauty, Bed, Bliss
* Charm, Cheer, Childhood, Clumsy, Color, Comfort
* Dance, Dazzle
* Excitement, Extraordinary
* Family, Feather, Fireflies, Fireworks, Flower, Flying, Friends, Fun
* Happiness, Heart, Holiday
* Laugh, Lazy, Loud, Love, Luckyerful

**Act 2 Secret Words**

* Authority, afford, ax
* Break
* Crush
* Die
* Experiment

## Trivia

* Kazuko lives with her elder sister.
* Kazuko in act 2 does not die, Monika delete her.
* Her poems are usually the shortest and most "childish" of the group, with playful and simple music, contrasting with the messages of her poems, which are usually more hard-hitting and serious.
* In the manga *School Friends*, Kazuko's favorite character is a girl named Mamoka, who she claims to be particularly unlucky.
* Kazuko is the only one out of the four girls that do not commit suicide, though she is deleted by Monika after she runs out of the classroom upon seeing Yuri's dead body.
	+ Nevertheless, if you wrote her poems during the second act, an anomaly occurs in which Kazuko's eyes disappear and she begins to say something with an incomprehensible mouth, but then the action continues as if nothing had happened.