Player: LWP
Age: 32
Invited by: Me!
Contact: LoneWolfPrincess
Current Characters: N/A

Character: Kotori Iida
Canon: Sweetness & Lightning, Chapter 13: Summer Vacation, Cats, and Aji
Age: 16

Background Information:
Scant wiki page.
Kotori is a normal high school girl in modern Japan, and the daughter of a fairly prominent chef and restaurateur. Unfortunately, despite her passion for food and voracious appetite, Kotori starts the series unable to cook much herself; an accident cutting her finger when she was in third grade left her with a strong phobia of kitchen knives. At the start of the series, Kotori’s mother Megumi has started doing appearances on TV to repay a favor to a friend, leaving the restaurant closed and Kotori alone most of the time.

One day at Flower Viewing, she runs into her recently widowed teacher Kouhei Inuzuka and his preschool daughter Tsumugi. After explaining that her mother stood her up due to her TV work, she gives them a business card for the restaurant. They come in a few nights later when the restaurant is closed, and Kotori awkwardly but successfully makes them clay pot rice. She then asks Sensei and Tsumugi if they’d like to come to the restaurant for dinner more often; the place is empty nowadays, and she can help teach them to cook with her theoretical knowledge (since the two had been living on frozen dinners since Kouhei’s wife died) and he can handle the cutting. Over the next few years, the three of them cook lots of delicious food, improve their skills, and Kotori even manages to overcome her phobia and begins aspiring to take over the restaurant.


Personality:
1) Tell us about who your character is and what someone’s first impression would be upon meeting them.
First impression: quiet. This can be mistaken for aloofness at first glance, since she tends to be reserved with her words to start, but in reality she is a. just awkward about interacting with people, and b. almost constantly daydreaming about food.

Start a conversation about food, though, and she’ll immediately light up and start talking a mile a minute, only barely stopping herself. It's clear food is a BIG part of who she is: she’s nigh-constantly snacking during school, always wanting to investigate new ingredients, and once she gains enough confidence extremely excited at the prospect of tackling a new recipe. She’s also kind and extremely earnest (to the point of bluntness or being a ridiculously transparent liar at times), quickly taking Tsumugi under her wing as a little sister. She can also be very easy to fluster, though, sometimes to the point of comically serious dramatics. But during more serious moments, she can have a simple, gentle wisdom that rarely steers people wrong, often more valuable than she gives herself credit for.

2) What is a driving force your character has? What goals do they have, what motivates them, etc?
Food!!! … And more seriously, bonds. The two are deeply intertwined for her. Food is her main love language, cooking together with someone is her favorite bonding activity, and a lot of her knowledge of recipes is tied to strong memories and vice versa. At the start of the series, she feels starved of both good food thanks to her phobia and the bonds she usually has: her mom and the restaurant’s ambience missing due to the TV work favor, and her main friend Shinobu having been sorted into a different classroom in high school and usually busy helping with her three younger siblings at home, and her dad being a VERY infrequent presence in her life since her parents divorced. It’s only after realizing she and the Inuzukas can help each other with their similar problems by cooking together- Kotori with the above, Kouhei and Tsumugi not having a proper family dinner in months since Kouhei’s late wife did all the cooking- that she starts to feel more connected again. She grows to love the Inuzukas like her own family, heals the bonds she has with her mom, Shinobu, and even her dad. She comes into her own as she learns to cook for herself and others, and she slowly becomes more proactive in nurturing her connections with the people around her.

3) What are their flaws as a character? What is something they've messed up, or have done that they regret?
Her main weakness is being a bit stuck in her own head a lot of the time, especially when it comes to her anxieties. She's often a bit lost in her daydreams about food, of course, and sometimes can let her anxiousness get the best of her, like panicking over small details, or mistaking Yagi for someone kidnapping Tsumugi and tailing them to a park instead of... just asking. But more than that, she can have a hard time processing her negative emotions, and it takes a lot of effort for her to voice them instead of bottling them up until they explode. Surprisingly, she also has a bit of an impulsive protective streak as well, such as the the incident with Yagi, which leads to her jumping out of the bushes to stop him from handing Tsumugi a "cigarette" (really a paper-wrapped stick of chocolate)... when she has no idea how dangerous this guy is AND her phone is dead so she had no way to call for help.

For regrets… her parents’ divorce. Even if it wasn't really her fault. The marriage was already on the rocks before, especially when Megumi took over her late parents’ restaurant and Muneo quit his job as a police officer to take care of Kotori, both without their spouse’s input. But she still carries that feeling of being “the last straw” with her knife accident- since she was trying to surprise them with her dad's favorite dinner of shougayaki to make them happy- even with her parents’ reassurance otherwise, which directly impacts her knife phobia. Not only does she not want to remember the physical pain, but the memory of her parents divorcing make the aversion so strong that it takes years for her to conquer it, despite knowing it'd be a big benefit for herself and her mom if she did. It's not until Kouhei cuts his finger in a later chapter and Tsumugi develops her own fear that Kotori manages to come to terms with her own scar to help the little girl out.

4) Optional: What is something unique and interesting about them, or what is a fun little tidbit that sets them apart from the crowd?
Her raw talent for cooking. Not only is she able to make AMAZING rice on her first try despite mostly flying by the seat of her pants, she also knows quite a few recipes and tricks just by watching her mom and through memory despite not cooking herself. She can also to diagnose the root of a person’s cooking mistakes easily (like when Kouhei kept overcooking foods because he was wary of undercooking and giving his daughter an upset stomach).

Abilities & Inventory:
Kotori is a completely ordinary human teenager, so no abilities to note (unless you count her cooking skills). For items, just the clothes on her back and her glasses.

Paladins! Kotori a bit too much of a cinnamon roll to be comfortable with the wilder parts of the Corsair style. Plus being able to preserve islands for future use and researching different parts of an ecosystem for uses in cooking or potion making to help others would really appeal to her.

Test Drive Sample: Top-Level

Questions: Nope, I'm good!