Post by ‡§åkørü‡ on Jan 24, 2011 15:32:53 GMT -8
Name: Mizuko
Age: 20 years (spring)
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Bisexual, strong female preference
Rank: Baker
Location: Sayaie
Personality:
Mizuko is, in a word, odd. Everyone associated with her knows it, and she takes no shame in the fact. To be quite honest, the baker seems to take a certain pride in being the way she is. For example, the fact that she wears bread in her shirt says something about her. True, she wraps it in paper so that it's still edible, but the fact remains that Mizuko wears bread. In her shirt. She says it keeps it warm before the shop opens, and few people question her because, well, that's the way she is. Besides keeping bread in her shirt, the baker has a few other peculiar traits. One of these is the fact that, when angry, she will hit people with baguettes. Usually she prepares a special baguette for the purpose and uses it until it falls apart, at which point she will take a new breadstick with which to abuse those who annoy her. Mizuko, you see, is easily annoyed, but she never descends into real violence - bread is the only weapon she'll use, because she insists that it doesn't hurt people. Depending on the hardness of the breadstick, this may or may not be true.
Despite this tendency to baked-goods-related violence, Mizuko really isn't a mean person. Although she'll gladly hit someone with a baguette whenever she feels peeved with them, she's also generous and warm-hearted. The baker loves few things more than to offer people a sample of bread, or cookies, or bagels, or whatever she's made that day - even if it's out of her shirt. Most people who frequent her shop have learned not to question her strange ways, and accept the bread without comment, knowing that it's made with the greatest love and devotion. For love and devotion it most certainly is; Mizuko loves her trade and she glories in baking. Although the food she sells is a slightly higher price than most, it's because she refuses to use any sub-par ingredients, and she has been known to chase traders away down the street, brandishing a baguette, when they have tried to sell her low quality goods.
Mizuko is a very social person, as is to be expected of a baker running her own store. She loves to meet people (usually by offering them a treat), and has many friends, all of whom know about her somewhat weird habits. Every new arrival into the shop is greeted personally, and their faces are never forgotten. Neither are their names - the baker has an excellent memory and she puts it to very good use. She is also quite cheerful, although she's usually fairly calm, and is entirely capable of talking to people for hours on end while she scuttles about doing her bakerly business. Though she's a busy person, she always finds time to meet with her friends outside of her business, and it has been surmised that she must stay up late preparing for the next day because she invariably has a wide selection of baked goods available when the store opens at six every morning.
The baker is an early riser. She never, ever gets up later than three-thirty in the morning, mostly because she formed the habit so that she could get lots of baking done before her shop ever opened. Because her store is her pride and joy, Mizu keeps it spotlessly clean (she also keeps everything else spotlessly clean, but mostly the store) and never fails to sweep and mop up after closing time. Dirt is one thing she can't abide, and she keeps a rigorous bathing schedule: once a day before she bakes and opens the shop, to ensure that she's clean when she stuffs the wrapped bread down her shirt. It's a weird habit, but that's the way she presents herself to the public: with bread in her shirt.
One other thing Mizuko can't stand is lying. She absolutely refuses to tolerate dishonesty, and it can mean the loss of a friendship if someone lies to her. In turn, she never lies to anyone else: her opinions might be blunt, but they're always honest. Do you deserve a whack upside the head? She will tell you. She'll also tell you that yes, you do look fat in that dress so find another or stop complaining. Lies are punishable by baguette fury, or the cold shoulder, or verbal snapping. Sometimes she likes to combine all three tactics if she's extra, extra mad at someone. But this is only for lying; being dirty warrants similar punishments but not for so long. Dirty people are also pushed out of the store, not beaten with the sanitary punishment-baguette.
Appearance:
Mizuko could certainly be labelled as 'pretty.' She's petite of stature, standing at just 5'2" and weighing little more than 100 pounds. Although she's small, the baker is also fairly strong from having to smack loaves into shape every day of her life, although she doesn't look like she has much muscle. She also isn't fat, although her body is soft from not having to do really heavy labour except for throwing sacks of flour around. Mizu's face is more of a focal point than her body: it's of an oval shape, with a small, straight nose, wide constantly smiling lips, and thin brows set over angled dark brown eyes. Her hair is cut fairly short, and being dark brown is typical of her Asian descent.
Clothing doesn't matter a great deal to Mizu, considering that she spends ninety-nine percent of her time in her shop. She wears fairly loose, comfortable clothes, always with a white apron overtop, and always with enough room in the neck to hold breadsticks in her shirt. Although she will dress up and wear something nice (eg. a dress) on her days off (when she takes them), Mizuko really doesn't care what she's wearing. However, she absolutely refuses to wear anything that's truly unflattering - she does have her pride, after all.
Family:
Mother: Asane, 39, baker in Sayaie, deceased (winter, year 58)
Father: Kaemon, 43, baker in Sayaie, deceased (winter, year 58)
Siblings: none.
Pets:
None.
History:
Asane and Kaemon had been married for three years when they had their first and only daughter, Mizuko. Asane was twenty; Kaemon was twenty-four. Both were ecstatic at the safe delivery of their girl, and neither cared that she was a girl, not a boy. Of course, being bakers, their lives were busy and young Mizu was frequently given to caretakers while the shop was open. Come closing time, however, and family time was crammed almost suffocatingly tightly into the remaining hours before the little girl's bedtime. Although it was sometimes a lonely existence, it was a happy one: the young girl loved her parents dearly, and they loved her, and though they hardly saw each other during the day in her early years, that soon changed.
Mizuko had always caught glimpses of the bakery when she scurried in to meet her parents after closing time. She had never been allowed to make the food, however, and she wanted to try her hand at it. When she turned seven, she was allowed to make small things - cookies and muffins - while her parents supervised her. With the first batch, Mizu was in love with her parents' trade. She begged to be allowed to help in the shop, and pestered Asane and Kaemon until at last they gave in and let her participate too. They issued only the admonishment that she was to always be careful, and she wasn't to leave their sight except to bring things out of the storeroom in the back.
Happy to follow the rules as long as she was allowed to help out, the young girl took to her new job with pure joy. Even though she mostly acted as a go-fer for her parents, it made her exquisitely happy just to be in the bakery, around the delicious things Asane and Kaemon made. Years passed, and slowly Mizuko was allowed to do more of the actual baking and less of the fetching. She loved it dearly, and rarely made mistakes, and as her parents realized that her love of baking was never going to fade, they began to teach her how to make more complicated recipes. Mizu loved the instruction and took to it like a fish to water, until at last she turned fifteen and was, for the very first time, allowed to do all of the baking for the shop, for just one day.
She did fairly well in her role, except for a minor catastrophe where she dropped all of the croissants she'd made on the ground and then managed to drop the tray on top of them. And then she stepped on one. Needless to say, that particular batch of baked goods was not given to customers, but despite the incident, Mizuko's parents decided she was trustworthy, and simply told her to pay a bit of attention when she was carrying things. The teenager was glad to comply, and slowly she took over running the business.
At eighteen, she decided that she wanted to have her own bakery and let her parents do as they desired: in other words, get their shop back. She informed them one day, after closing time, that she was going to find a place of her own and open a shop there. Although Asane and Kaemon cautioned her against it, Mizuko had set her heart on opening her own bakery. She found a small, two-level building for sale for just a few diasks, and she used the money she'd saved up from her work in her parents' bakery to purchase it.
Renovations began, and Mizuko tidied up the little place, transported her personal belongings to the tiny flat upstairs, and opened for business. It was a rocky start, but she persevered, refusing to close the bakery even in bad times. After six months, however, her shop was thriving, and Mizu was gloriously happy. She made diasks, and used them to buy more and more baking supplies, as well as a few of her own belongings. People had seen her wearing bread in her shirt from day one; they were less shocked than they might have been if they hadn't known about her peculiar habit before she opened her shop.
Mizuko's was a happy existence: she tended her shop, visited her parents, and baked her days away. Although koxi attacks were relatively frequent, the young entrepreneur had the extreme good fortune never to have them decimate her shop. People she knew weren't so lucky: she lost friends and customers, but more always came to take their places, if not truly replace them. Knowing the danger of xymokoxi attacks, Mizu accepted their deaths with sorrow but without rage, and moved on with her life. Her shop became a raging success; people heard about her skills as a baker and her bakery thrived. For the second year, she was practically swamped with customers, and yet somehow she managed to run the bakery alone. Probably the only reason she was able to do so was because of the minute size of the shop, but despite her busy life, Mizuko was happier than in that year.
However, her life took a turn for the worse when a young greyrider, imitating a bluerider, walked into her shop one day. I'dou was her name, and Mizu took an immediately liking to her, leading her upstairs with the intent to kiss her - and maybe more. This was when a simourv's voice burst into her head and, after some rather dramatic events, the young baker ultimately drove I'dou out of her shop, and a great deal of her affection with her.
Scarcely a month later, disaster struck. Someone had dropped a torch by her tiny shop, setting it alight, and her parents and three of her friends died of smoke inhalation. I'dou returned several days after the fire, however, and found Mizu crouching in the ruins of her shop, crying and mourning the people and things she had lost.
