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community ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) zaikagakure
character
[name] Yamanaka Ino.
[age] 18
[pb] Gemma Ward
[played by] ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ficklevalentine
history In the middle of two small, family-owned restaurants was the Yamanaka Flower Shop. This is where Ino grew up.
The shop is small, with two floor-to-ceiling glass windows in the front and a steel door with a bell that jingles whenever someone opens it. Inside, all the flowers are kept watered and fresh. Some are in cases and others are out in the open. It's hard work taking care of so many fragile things; making sure it is the perfect temperature and they are watered enough. It's hard work and sometimes there are not enough hours in the day to tend to each and every single flower or enough time to make sure the shop is neat and tidy. She has other things to do; she arranges bouquets and wreaths and other things, too. Ino is talented with her hands, just as her father was before her.
(Her father was an honorable man, and after her mother died when she was ten, Ino and the shop were all her father had. He was hardworking and he taught her everything he could, from the language of the flowers to the language of men. How to tell when a man meant well and how to tell when a flower was past its prime. She loved her father and he is the only man she has ever truly loved, since then.)
Ino lives in the second floor of the shop, in an apartment-like home with two bedrooms, a kitchen, one bathroom and a half, and a living room. Her place is homey with flowers everywhere and family pictures on the wall. She has pictures of her friends gathered in messy collages, artistic and cluttered, and she has flour stains on her couch from when she tried to bake a cake. (She's a great cook, surprisingly, but like it's been said, she's great with her hands.)
Despite this, she spends most of the time downstairs in the shop. The shop belonged to her father, and it is (beside Ino) what he loved the most in life. He took care of this place and she vowed to her very last breath to keep this place alive. Because this place was important to him. And it was important to her.
That's how it started.
It was a Sunday evening. (Ino always took Sundays off. Sometimes she went shopping like the girl she is, and other times she went to the spa, like the girly-girl she could be. But then she'd return home, like the good girl she really was.) She was returning from a lunch date with a friend, when she saw them standing in front of her shop. They were wearing some shady attire, with the color purple in common. She could feel the hairs on her arms rising and the inquietude filling her chest.
"Excuse me--" she began, before they noticed her. The one on the far left pulled out a gun and her breath got caught in her throat. Oh shit. She heard gunfire a few blocks away and they reacted instantaneously, backing away and shooting into the distance, completely ignoring her. She stood, frozen still except for her knees, shaking violently. She fell to the floor and crawled into the alley, in tears, when the shooting started getting closer. Someone found her and helped her up, hours or minutes later.
She was in Shibuya, they explained, and they would take care of those Oto, no problem.
They led her inside her shop and she swore not to say anything. When the sun rose, she saw her glass windows shattered completely. She didn't have enough money to pay for the windows, so she sought them out. (They were hanging around her area a lot.) She demanded they help her.
"This is your fault. Those idiots who broke my window were after your little group!"
She got herself into it.
She hadn't meant to, really (no one ever did), but before she knew it she could no longer get out. The yakuza world had swallowed her whole and once she had enough for her windows, the only way to stay afloat was her flower shop in all its normalcy. (Soon, they began stashing 'merchandise' in her back room/mini-greenhouse until she protested irately to it and told them to go shove that shit up their asses. Now, her shop is used as a front to deliver 'merchandise' in bouquets of flowers. They come and Ino supplies it. Although she's sure to leave her back room spotless and clean every single night.)
Sometimes she experiments in her back room. At least when she's creating the powder, she's not there watching it all happen (she can lie better to herself this way). She's not there watching them get high, and so in a way, she can pretend it wasn't happening and she wasn't causing it. (She thinks druggies are disgusting, personally.)
Plus, the only thing she's created that had a real affect was this white powder with a lavender tint that she called "Shintenshin". It made some people develop schizo, and it wasn't particularly addicting unless you were a long-time user. Regardless, it really tripped the mind up and made people feel like they were just floating consciousness
kicked out of their own body. |
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