Haruka

Haruka (- はるか) [meaning distant or remote] Maeda is the long-time best friend of the player. Notably, the first person you see in the game.

> **"Open up, player!"**
>
>

"As the girl who has known [REDACTED] the longest, the ever feisty Haruka is very overprotective, assertive, and the most theatrical of the bunch.

She's either running towards her goals, or running away from her problems. She enjoys **Chemistry** the most. Experiments.

*Will she be the one for you?"*

## Personality

Haruka, throughout the game, is seen to be relatively happy, cheerful, and bubbly to the player. She can even sometimes come off as a jokester or quite cocky, stand-offish, competitive, even. Despite this, she is known to also have the potential to be quite crude and aloof towards others. This is mainly due to her jealousy towards many people and her having quite a tendency to get herself in trouble.

Haruka is very kind and dedicated to the player and continuously sides with them no matter what, she is very protective and clingy with them and believes that they are an indubitably smart person. She is seen to be very defensive and protective when it comes to them and would jump to their defense at the slightest of provocation.

She enjoys chemistry and running field and track. If not in class, she is at the track-field, either to run or take refuge.

## History

It is very implied in-game Haruka had an abusive home-situation, showing up to the player's house in bruises when they were kids. It is not yet revealed whether or not it got better, she stopped showing up over to their house over the Summer.

Her dad hates the player as he was convinced they were dating even though they were simply just best friends.

Even though Haruka trains very often in the running sport, some days she didn't really feel like running. As stated by the player, "Her dad didn't let that sit for long, though."

As stated before, her and the player were long-time best friends since they were kids. Haruka back then was as jealous as she is now, making a whole list of girls who flirted with the player - going as far as to harm one of them when she was younger, earning her a suspension.

## Appearance

Haruka has long, aqua-blue hair fading into an almost purple colour that is tied into a ponytail with a red ribbon bow with 2 white lines on its edges. She has long bangs that go along the sides of her face and light green eyes.

Haruka is the second tallest girl in the game, standing at a 5'5 up to Yumi's neck. She is wearing the typical school uniform, which is a white shirt with short sleeves that have red stripes on them, a gold pin holding up the bright red bow on her white collar and a bright red skirt with golden buttons. For accessories, she wears red overall-like straps with it that contain three golden pins: two circular-shaped ones and a star-portrayed one. She also has a black runner's wrist band (on account of her love of running), with a bright blue line going across it.

Finally, she is sporting black socks with blue stripes that are, for the most part, covered up due to her long brown boots.

 Haruka's old design:

## Trivia

* Despite what is shown when Haruka texts online, in real life Haruka actually has a pretty big vocabulary, surprising Kana.
* As can be seen from the first version of the game, Haruka is known to be self-aware.
* She was originally going to have brown hair and braids