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yogen app.
Name: Rina
Preferred pronoun(s): she/her
Contact:
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CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Kageyuki Shiraishi
Canon: Collar x Malice
Canon point: 12/7 (common route end, before any individual split)
Age: 29
History:
GAME OVERVIEW (spoiler-free)
Collar x Malice is set during the final month of the year 20XX (unspecified), in a near-future in which the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo has been quarantined under special law due to a series of monthly crimes claimed by a terrorist organization under the name of Adonis. Each month's incident counts down by one towards something referred to as "X-Day" which will supposedly purge corruption from Shinjuku and begin to reform the country. The heroine of the game is a police officer working at Shinjuku station, but she becomes a target of the December countdown when she is unexpectedly kidnapped and finds herself with a collar around her neck which is capable of poisoning her. The leader of Adonis can monitor and speak to her through this collar, and expresses a wish to "test" her by allowing her to investigate the X-Day incidents, but only so long as she does not reveal the collar to the authorities and only works with a small team of former police officers led by Aiji Yanagi, whom they've also alerted (and challenged) via anonymous letter.
CHARACTER OVERVIEW (massive spoiler warning)
Shiraishi is one of the four members of the aforementioned group, although still actively employed in the police force, as a profiler who has done substantial work on a previous Adonis-related incident from two years ago, and the current Director of the temporary Field Operations Support department in the X-Day investigation. But as he is still a member of Yanagi's team and supplies them with information from inside the station, Adonis seems to allow him to know about the collar as an exception, and their letter to the group had been planted among his belongings at work, which leads them to believe there is likely an Adonis spy in the police. Which is in fact true because... in actuality, the Adonis spy is Shiraishi himself.
During his own route, it's revealed that "Kageyuki Shiraishi" is only a fake name, an identity granted to him ten years ago for the purpose of mingling into society and being employed in the police, while his real designation is "No. 14", one out of many orphans raised in something called a "sandbox", a training facility run by Adonis in order to produce loyal and efficient agents for the organization. Like all other low-ranking members, he is presumably implanted with a chip and unable to resist the voice of "Zero", the organization's leader, whose commands he is conditioned to obey. He was raised to have no other purpose or goal beside serving Adonis, and is presumably able to brush off or discard any other attachments for the sake of that duty, having accepted his own status as disposable. Or has he... the route, but anyway, at the canon point being used, his situation pretty much stops at his job in the current case -- which was to plant the letters and facilitate the heroine meeting the team for the purpose of Zero's test.
Personality:
( also SPOILERS... i'm sorry)
Shiraishi is... a difficult person, to say the least. Not the cold and unapproachable kind, but the opposite in fact -- the always smiling, irritating kind. This is partly enabled, in a bizarre sort of way, by the context of his upbringing as outlined above, through the fact that forming attachments or having meaningful personal relationships with others just isn't on his agenda, meaning being liked isn't either... which means, he effectively lives his life on his own eccentric wavelength and at his own pace only, often without regard for the common sense or even comfort of others. His main driving force appears to be curiosity and his own amusement, as he likes watching people and testing them for reactions (often with pranks or with things said on purpose to get specific types of responses), and everything to him is about figuring things out and casually passing time. Which is why... intelligent and analytical on top of it, he's extremely skilled at his profiler job on the other hand, every bit as good at that as he's awful to have interpersonal contact with.
Yeah, people can't stand him, he knows it and doesn't care. Or rather, that's also kind of fun to him. There's something called the "Shiraishi Bashing Coalition" at his workplace, which in practical terms is two ladies who hate his guts (one of which is his own personal assistant) getting together to drink and talk crap about him because he's annoying. It's implied in canon that lots of other people around the office agree with the sentiment, though. Either way, he knows about this and loves it -- he also knows which bar they go to and sometimes drops by in person to listen to what they say abut him for laughs. Stuff like this is his favorite, he just goes along with it for extra annoying points. The only person who can somewhat handle him by default is Yanagi, and that has its context too.
Also, the most important character trait of all: he likes cats a lot, especially stray cats. He enjoys observing them possibly even more than people, as he's fond of the free and simple way they live their lives, unconstrained by anything or anyone. Something... that stands out to him due to the secret desire for his own freedom that he doesn't even fully realize he harbors because... there are a lot of things wrong with this man. Anyway, his lifestyle is too busy to actually own a cat at home, and as he can't afford to care for one properly, he instead opted for wearing fake cat ears 24/7 himself, as well as a cat pin on his tie and some other things here and there. This is apparently, according to him, already him cutting down on it so that he wouldn't look too weird -- so no, he sees nothing wrong with being a 29-year-old man wearing cat ear hairpins to work in the police, and you know what, he's right.
Despite his very whimsical nature though, Shiraishi is extremely sharp and perceptive, and is shown to take the actual work parts of his job quite seriously (the only reason his assistant hasn't murdered him yet tbh). He's efficient when needed, able to cut past filler and get to the heart of almost any matter -- albeit this too seems to be more out of personal motivation and not so much from a sense of duty. The downside is that he's not very concerned with the feelings of others, and often ends up employing words that might be hurtful in order to coerce the truth out, if he judges that to be the most effective method. He sees no issues with this, and also in general only really follows rules that make sense to him. He's a police officer, but seemingly has no qualms with paying for "unofficial" information from sources that may not be legal, and as he himself stated, morality isn't exactly his main concern. He also doesn't bother to remember things he doesn't deem relevant, such as people's names if he doesn't think he needs to because either they haven't done anything to impress him or there's no reason to continue to have contact past a temporary shared goal.
And yet, somehow in spite of all these layered traits that are difficult to get past, especially since Shiraishi offers no reason why others should want to, he's... not a bad person. Everything about him is haunted in a subtle way by his upbringing at the facility, and the duty that is supposedly his sole purpose for existing and past which he means "nothing" -- a fact he thinks he's resigned to, but in actuality might resent or even fear despite not quite realizing as much. He believes himself skilled at discarding unneeded feelings, but in reality this isn't something that comes so easily to anyone, and that's also... a learning curve for him. In fact, if his layers were somehow bypassed, attachment is such a new thing to him that he ends up overthinking the small things and worrying about it quite a lot, and he's shown to actually be quite willing to change himself and try to learn. At his core, he does want to be kind to the people he likes and to make them happy.
On his own route, realizing he's capable of experiencing a need for external validation and being liked after all actually leads to a mini nervous breakdown he doesn't even know how to handle or understand by himself. He's also consistently very surprised (and happy) every time the heroine expresses any positive feeling towards him despite that, in theory, being his Zero-mandated goal, and he ends up having fun learning small things he never cared to experience about the world. (He didn't know what capsule machines are or do and he got excited about using a shopping cart to buy groceries... he also didn't 100% realize Santa isn't real, help this man.) All of these are things that... ultimately, end up conflicting with what he believed about himself and showcasing that there's actually a need, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he could never quite erase -- a wish for freedom and for being able to live for himself.
Powers/abilities:
Nothing supernatural, but he was raised in the Adonis facility and he's also currently an active-duty police officer, which means he's trained to use firearms and other weapons, as well as proficient in combat, strategy and crisis management to some degree. It's also shown in canon he's familiar with explosives, to the extent he was able to plant some in a building with the precision of not destroying it entirely and only taking out specific portions. Besides that, he has experience with crime scene examinations, he's observant and analytical, and makes an extremely skilled profiler.
Questions:
✽ What does your character consider to be their top three strengths?
"Top three? That's a pretty narrow-minded way to look at a person, but... (sigh) Okay okay, I get it. Number one: my analytical skills. Two: I'm rational and efficient. And three: I'm not emotionally vulnerable, so nothing really gets to me. Are you happy now? The requirements for your little box have been met."
✽ What do others consider to be your character's greatest weakness?
"Ahaha. I don't know about a weakness, but why don't you ask around? I'm sure you'd get a looooot of complaints about me in no time. Like how I have no social awareness, or... what was it? How I say and do things that aggravate other people, and someone else has to deal with the follow-up? Yup, most of it would boil down to that."
✽ What are your character's three greatest fears?
"Oh? Let's see... if you're asking me this, it must mean I did something to annoy you and you came looking for revenge. Unfortunately for you, I don't have anything that can bother me in that way. I can deal with all sorts of things."
(He's stupid and doesn't KNOW this himself, but in order: Zero's voice, his own feelings he doesn't realize he can have, and his existence being meaningless.)
✽ What would your character choose for a last meal?
"A last meal, huh? If I can have anything, should I choose something expensive and extravagant just to give the people in charge a big headache having to get everything together? Haha, just kidding. I don't care about things like that, so hm... maybe I'd ask for some cat food so I could play with the cats one last time."
✽ Has your character ever killed? If so, how did that affect them? If not, how would it affect them?
"That's an interesting question. What do you think then, do I look like I've killed someone? Could I be in the police without the resolve to pull the trigger if I had to? ...Hm? Why can't I just give a straight answer? Because to me, it's a lot more interesting to hear what you think. How would you analyze me? Where would the fun be in just telling you? And besides, being able to assess things like these seems like it'd be useful in this place."
✽ If your character was given one selfish wish (eg. must be applied to themselves and not affect others), what would it be?
"Wishes? Yup, that's right. Even I have a suuuuper important one that I won't give up no matter what. But I'm only telling you, so listen carefully, alright? I wish...
(...)
...that I could be a stray cat. ...Ahaha! Sorry, sorry! I just really wanted to see what kind of face you'd make if I led up by looking totally serious, then said that."
Sample:
✽ nya