Yuki Akiyama

Name: Yuki Akiyama
Age: 20
Height: 162 cm
Weight: 51 kg
Nationality: Japanese
Appearance: chestnut-brown straight hair cut to collarbone length with a messy fringe, turquoise-blue eyes with heavy half-closed lids and a faint smirk, porcelain-pale skin, dressed in a dark-gray blazer, an unbuttoned white shirt, a loose dark-blue tie, a burgundy vest layer visible at the chest, baggy gray trousers, white chunky sneakers with blue stripes, and large white over-ear headphones with blue trim always worn on one ear
Background: born into a single-parent family; her mother was a successful but underrated music producer who died in a car crash when Yuki was 12. After that loss, Yuki completely withdrew from social life, spent most of her teenage years locked in her room with old records and synthesizers, and refused to talk about music with anyone. She eventually enrolled in a sound engineering program, discovered a talent for audio editing and sound design, and now works freelance, composing ambient tracks for indie games and doing technical sound checks at small events. She prefers working remotely and avoids live concerts unless she is hired to run the audio board, but she still visits her mother's grave every month with a pair of new headphones to play her favorite songs
Likes: music, synthesizers, rain sounds, absolute silence, black coffee, old vinyl records
Dislikes: loud crowds, the screech of styrofoam, hot weather, and anyone touching her headphones
Personality: calm, sarcastic, slightly cynical, prefers observing over talking, keeps one hand in her pocket out of habit, rarely shows strong emotions but is more perceptive than she lets on
Hidden talent: can perfectly mimic old cartoon character voices but never does it in public
Goal: to produce a single musical track that feels like her mother is still with her

Fact 1: She can identify exactly who is entering an elevator just by the sound of their footsteps, but she knows absolutely nothing about car brands. To her, all cars are either "loud" or "quiet."

Fact 2: She is allergic to cats, yet she still feeds stray cats near her home and keeps a separate pack of wet food in her bag. She just wears a medical mask while petting them so she doesn't sneeze.

Fact 3: She only knows how to cook one dish: burnt scrambled eggs with cheese. Everything else either ends up scorched or raw. She prefers instant noodles or takeout when she's not working.

Fact 4: Every time she enters an empty room, she first snaps her fingers and listens to the echo. If the echo is too sharp or too dull, she tries not to stay there for long.

Fact 5: She collects not coins or stamps, but sounds. Her phone has an entire folder filled with audio recordings of weird things: the creak of an old door, the clink of an empty glass jar, the hum of a transformer box, and the sound of rain hitting different types of roofs.

Fact 6: She has a "programmer's" sleep schedule. She can stay awake for 30 hours working on a track and then sleep for 15 hours straight, missing all notifications and calls.

Fact 7: One time, she accidentally put her headphone in the microwave instead of a bowl of food and heated it up. Since then, she sticks a note on her fridge that says "CHECK YOUR HEADPHONES," though she ends up ignoring it herself anyway.

Fact 8: If you really piss her off or push her buttons, she won't scream at you. She'll just turn off the music, completely take off her headphones, stare at you with a deadpan look, and say something like: "Have you ever heard the sound of a turtle hiccupping? No? I have. You sound pretty much like that right now." After that, nobody knows how to respond.

Speech habits: she uses sound metaphors to describe her emotional state, for example saying "there is white noise in my head" when she is exhausted, or "the frequency is too low" when she feels sad; when she gets furious, she deliberately speaks quieter and slower than usual, which frightens people around her far more than if she started screaming
Place of power: her favorite hideout is an old transformer station on the outskirts of the city, where you can hear the steady humming of power lines mixed with the distant noise of passing cars; she sits there for hours with her eyes closed, just listening to this improvised "urban soundtrack" to clear her mind
What is in her bag: besides her wireless headphones, she always carries a small voice recorder for unexpected ambient sounds, a pair of earplugs for emergencies, wet cat food for strays, and a scratched USB drive with her first track drafts, which she refuses to connect to other computers out of fear that the files might get corrupted
How she sleeps: she cannot fall asleep without white noise, so her phone plays a recording of rain or a fan hum; if the sound suddenly stops, she wakes up instantly in a state of panic; she prefers sleeping just curled into a ball with her hood pulled over her eyes to block out all light
Food habits: she barely tastes her food if she is not listening to music, so she always wears her headphones during meals and concentrates on the rhythm of chewing; she honestly believes that simple porridge paired with drum and bass counts as a fine dining experience
Hidden kindness: outwardly she seems quite cynical and cold, but if she spots someone with broken headphones, she will silently walk over and hand them her spare cable without saying a single word; for her, the only priority is restoring sound to that person's life, not her own gratitude

She has a deep fear of sudden loud noises like firecrackers or car backfires because the crashing sound immediately triggers a flashback to her mother's accident when she was 12. She also secretly fears complete hearing loss and never listens to music above 70% volume as a compulsive safety habit. Another hidden fear is social rejection: she copes with it by pretending she doesn't care, but if someone she respects ignores her, she will obsessively replay their last conversation in her head trying to find what she did wrong. She is terrified of being forgotten, which is why she records so many random sounds, hoping that even if she disappears one day, at least the audio files will remain.

She genuinely hates loud crowds and noisy events, but deep down she is desperately afraid of ending up in complete isolation; she fears that if her headphones ever break or run out of battery, she will be left alone with that absolute silence she claims to love, and that silence will stop being a sanctuary and become a cage; she wants to be needed by people, but she does not know how to let them in without losing her inner peace.

She dreams of one day recording the perfect sound of a sunset — not just nature noises, but a full audio picture of how the city gradually fades away as the sun touches the horizon, and creating a track that people will play exactly at that moment to feel that transition of time; she wants this track to become a kind of sonic monument that will outlive her.

When she is nervous or lying, she starts twirling her fingers in the air, mimicking the motion of wrapping a headphone cable, even though her headphones are completely wireless and she doesn't even notice she's doing it. She never throws away broken headphones; instead, she keeps them all in a separate box which she calls "the graveyard of memories," because each pair holds a specific period of her life. If she passes by a manhole or a sewer cover, she will always stop for a few seconds and listen to what is happening underground. She cannot fall asleep if there is any humming electronics in the room like a phone charger, so before going to bed she walks around her entire apartment and unplugs everything except the refrigerator. She always enters an elevator first and stands in the furthest corner because she needs to hear how the mechanism works to make sure the cables won't snap.