Nobuyuki Oyama

**Nobuyuki Oyama** was a participant in the Fourth Nonary Game.

## Appearance

Nobuyuki has long, deep brown hair that he generally ties back into a ponytail. Before bed, he takes his hair down, and it usually remains wavy afterwards. His eyes are dark and almost entirely closed, although it may be difficult to initially tell he is unable to see. He does not wear glasses or anything of the sort, nor does he attempt to hide his condition. His skin is naturally tanned, however, due to the amount of time he spends inside, he appears a bit peaked. He is gaunt and tall, about 6’1” in height and slim, but the muscles in his upper arms are relatively strong. He has long, delicate fingers that have benefited him as an acupuncturist. When he was kidnapped, he was wearing a grey-striped yukata with a red sash, worn brown slippers on his feet. Typically, the only additional item he carries with him is a white cane.

## Personality

Initially, Nobuyuki appears to be articulate, polite, and professional. He attempts to give off an air of knowledge, acting as if he’s more educated and experienced than he actually is. However, this facade is underlaid by his controlling, manipulative, and bossy nature. He is by definition a control freak, and when something does not go his way he can become frustrated, for he has a bit of a temper. He would never go the path of outright violence, but he is not above yelling to get what he wants, for truly he is immature and unable to properly handle his emotions. Additionally, he is an adrenaline seeker, and is willing to take risks when others aren’t; sometimes, it may seem that what he does is illogical, for his decisions follow his own personal philosophies rather than being informed by the worldviews of others. He is not above threatening or guilting the other participants into allying or betraying, and although he will not outright betray, particularly in the beginning of the game, if there is something another individual does that sets him off, he will not hesitate to teach them a lesson through his vote.

Nobuyuki believes that we have control over our own fates, and our destinies are not predetermined. He believes the course of one’s life can change at any point due to even the smallest of events, so it is important to make every choice one’s own. He also believes that one cannot allow life to pass them by, and instead should take every opportunity that is presented before them, even if said opportunity presents risks. He is a bit of a hypocrite in that sense, as he himself has stagnated as he has aged, the hope he held after initially graduating high school fading over time. Still, he holds others to this ideal, not always being entirely honest if it means he can get across a point to another person. Although he wouldn’t say this and isn’t fully aware of it, he believes he is always right and that others should listen to his decisions due to his life experience, even when said experiences don’t validate what he is saying. In that sense, he is blindly following failed ideals and encouraging others to blindly follow that same path.

Nobuyuki does what he does because he is searching for what will bring meaning to his life. His goals are primarily selfish, and he wishes to fulfill his childhood dream of being someone who takes control of their own fate. In reality, he sees himself as a failure, and he wishes to take actions to prevent himself from dying before he can ever accomplish anything he would find notable or actually fulfilling.

## Backstory

For the first twelve years of his life, there was nothing that stood out about Nobuyuki Oyama. In fact, Nobuyuki was much of a background character in his own life. Living in an average apartment in the larger city area of Osaka, he found himself easily blending in with the many others who lived around him. He only spoke when spoken to, did only enough work to remain out of his teachers’ lines of sight. He was not competitive, nor was he particularly skilled in any one specific thing over another. Of course, he had the average hobbies of other children his age, hunting bugs, playing baseball, running around; yet, he mostly participated in these things in order to at least be able to interact with others at a socially acceptable level. Nobuyuki merely floated through life, living for the sake of living.

On December 8, 1993, Nobuyuki’s daily routine of boarding a train to go to his middle school was disrupted. The train he had boarded was slightly off schedule, behind. In order to compensate for this, the train went at a faster speed than usual, ultimately taking a curve a bit too quickly and derailing. Dozens died, and Nobuyuki was among the hundreds injured. Initially appearing to only be suffering from a moderate concussion and several broken bones, Nobuyuki was one of the victims whose prospects seemed good, great even. However, as his vision began to fade, it would become apparent that Nobuyuki suffered from post-traumatic visual loss as a result of the head trauma he endured. His vision progressively getting worse over a period of several months despite medical intervention, eventually, Nobuyuki would be removed from his middle school and become a student of the Osaka Kita School for students with Visual Needs.

Almost completely blind by the time of his graduation from high school, the state of his vision was not the only thing that changed about Nobuyuki, and it certainly was never something that defined him. Instead, Nobuyuki became the opposite of what many had expected him to. The once awkward, timid child became someone who was boisterous and competitive. He was always the person who had to be in first place, and always the person getting into trouble by arguing with the teacher regarding a lesson. Being at the top of everything he did became almost like an obsession, and his desire to be in control often pushed others away more than it drew them to him. In fact, many thought him odd. He did not develop a fear of trains, and instead began to take them more often. He refused to have a guide, even when first learning to use a cane. It was as if he’d do anything he could to feel some sort of adrenaline, to feel as though he were the one dictating every single thing that happened in his life. His philosophy transformed into the line of thought that if he was cognizant of each decision he made in a day, no matter how small, he would be in control of whether or not something horrible happened to him. He would no longer live passively in his own life; every choice he made had to be his own, and every decision he made needed to be worthwhile in some way. Ultimately, this ideology was completely self serving, despite his desire to control others as much as he controlled himself.

Nobuyuki was guided towards massage and acupuncture, as these were seen as the traditional jobs of the blind by his parents. Although he found the idea of each of these careers unappealing, his career path was one of the first things he would concede after his loss of vision. His parents refused to pay for schooling otherwise, and to cope with this difficulty he found himself promising that he would eventually obtain the funds for a degree in something that actually mattered to him. He had hopes to be a doctor, and found acupuncture to be something at least vaguely reminiscent of his actual desires.

Attending an acupuncture school exclusively for blind students, Nobuyuki would eventually take an apprenticeship under an elderly, blind and talented acupuncturist in the town of Nishyoshino in the Nara prefecture. After the death of his mentor, Nobuyuki would go on to purchase his house and inherit his business. Working to be the best acupuncturist possible, Nobuyuki would build up a sizable clientele over the next fifteen years. Each needle he placed was a conscious choice, and having this sort of control over a patient's body and wellbeing gave him at least a taste of the control that he sought. However, given the size of the area, Nobuyuki never found himself without the excess funds he hoped for to further fund his education. Living a simple life, he found himself wishing for more, wishing to once again feel the adrenaline and the control he had found in his earlier life.

When kidnapped for the AB game, he found that spark and desire to compete reignited, with his desire to become something more than the ‘average’ person coming back to light.