Keiichi Maebara ❅ Application ❅ demeleier
Player Name: Tora
Player LJ: flowingstars
Contact: torastellar (AIM) // Serilia (Plurk)
Character Number: 1
Character: Keiichi Maebara
Fandom:Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
Personality: Keiichi is just your average teenager boy, there's nothing in him that would stand up for attention at first. It takes someone to get to know him to actually "see" what Keiichi really is, it's not that he's a reserved boy or that he hides himself. It's a simple matter of him being exactly what he seems, normal, average, until the situation actually requires him to show what he's truly made off.
Known as the "Magician of Words", Keiichi has a special talent when speaking, not only can he be elaborate when he so desires, but he has the skill to transmit exactly what he feels to others. He can bring over his sadness or his will to fight, to even the hardest listeners and those with a closed heart. A natural leader that only takes that position when he sees it's needed for him to, Keiichi is a charismatic being capable of drawing close to him other people and to break through old senseless resentments. He's full of energy and live, always ready to share a smile with his friends and have fun playing games. Not a man to back off from a challenge, Keiichi always moves head on towards anything that presents itself against him, be it a mere game or a friend being in problems. He values his friends greatly and would do anything for them and to protect them, including from themselves.
Keiichi is like any other healthy teenager boy, which means that he often has "perverted" thoughts about his friends, specially when it's about deciding the punishment of losing a game. He never acts upon most of those thoughts, contenting himself with just imagining or watching his friends in whatever clothes they ended in, much like they do with him when he's the one losing a game. Keiichi has a great respect for women, though, normally using his most perverted ideas to merely tease his friends (who in Hinamizawa are all females in fact). He dislikes anyone who takes advantage of girls in any given way, even when he's at a place where girls are dressed as sexy maids, he doesn't hesitate to jump in their defense if any man tries crosses the line he mentally has drawn over that theme. In his eyes people who take advantage of girls in any way are nothing but low scum against whom he has no problems going to defend his friends or any girl he sees mistreated. Keiichi is a protector, honorable and trustworthy. He values friendship and the bonds between people over anything else and deems stupid and pointless any traditions or old rules that make people suffer, specially if those rules are assumed and bot written. He's an intelligent young man with an hyperactive imagination who loves to have fun with his friends and play tons of games.
This is the Keiichi Maebara he has always wanted to be. A Keiichi, he only got to know after moving to Hinamizawa. However, that Keiichi isn't the complete one, and is nothing like the old one.
Before his arrival to Hinamizawa, Keiichi was very different. He wasn't just an average teenager boy, he was, in fact, a mediocre teenager boy. With mediocre athletic skills, mediocre artistic skills and mediocre grades, Keiichi was the kind of guy who ended alone because he lacked anything that would attract people to him. His classmates ignored him, so did his professors and his family life was almost non-existent with his father going his own way, same as his mother, and all Keiichi was left with was a mediocre self. Until it was discovered that he had a gift for studying and that he was more intelligent than what he seemed, however he rarely showed it because he didn't find studies interesting and actually hated to study. Upon the discovery Keiichi was convinced to keep studying, thinking that his wishes of having friends and stop being mediocre would be fulfilled that way, he didn't wish to be at the top or be extremely popular, he just wanted a few friends and his parents' attention.
Keiichi's intelligence did indeed attract people's attention and praises, which made his ego grew as he fooled himself into thinking that everything was perfect. But as time went on Keiichi realized that despite all his efforts no one knew him, no one cared yet to know the real him, they had been content with just his grades and intelligence, failing to see the Keiichi beyond that which is what he truly wanted. As he realized this and the praises and attention stopped flowing in, Keiichi grew more desperate than ever, drowning in stress until hew blew up. Soon enough, he ended finding release and enjoyment in acts of cruelty towards little kids, mostly shooting at them with his model weapons. The children' suffering, their fear, all of it turned to be a better incentive than praises and the arrogance he earned from those grew up even more at the idea that he wouldn't be caught, seeing people confused and trying to protect their children but unable to even get close to the idea of who was the responsible. Keiichi got swallowed into a spiral created by his own hands, trying to get the attention he starved for through something he didn't like and that ended not being as rewarding as he expected, becoming a worse person with each passing day and each child he assaulted. Until the spiral reached its climax, and Keiichi shot a small girl in the eye. It was then, for the first time in a long time, that Keiichi regained his senses. He realized what he was doing exactly and how it was wrong in too many ways to enumerate, he became aware of how he was and how that person wasn't the one he had wanted to be, how far he had drifted from the path he wanted to follow.
There's no way to measure in words the amount of guilt that Keiichi feels for those events, ever since it was discovered that he had a talent for studies, it's a guilt that can't be erased and that he himself doesn't wish to erase, preferring to have it haunting him to keep himself from becoming that person again. There's a lot of shame and self-hate that Keiichi posses from that time and it's that what fuels the way he's now, trying to do things right and to really become the person he always wished to be: a Keiichi with friends and bonds, a Keiichi that protected and helped his friends and was important for them even if he wasn't the center of the universe, a Keiichi that wasn't on top of others but besides them. There's not a day in which Keiichi is haunted by what he did, even when the law's and his parents' punishments passed, he himself hasn't forgiven himself and would, without a doubt, beat himself senseless if he could go back to the beginning of everything. It's his strong will and his wish to note give up what keeps him going on instead of allowing guilt to devour him and all his energy is now used in becoming the best friend and person he can be, trying to amend his errors even if he knows that there's no forgiveness.
History: Here's a link.
Keiichi is the only son of the famous artist Ichirou Maebara and his wife Aiko, his place of birth is unknown though it's assumed that they have moved a few times ever since before taking a more definite settlement in a big city. Ever since he was little, Keiichi was what many would consider an average kid, there was nothing in him that made him stand out, his grades were just enough to pass the tests and he never had a great presence in class. He was simply "there", another kid in the class with many others and who could serve to round the numbers of a team during a game at breaks but nothing else. He had no friends, he was so average that no one ever found him interesting to try to know him better or anything. This made him be pretty close to his parents, but with his father's work as an artist sometimes the relationship didn't work at all, specially given his father's usual moods whenever he got an artist block, more often than not Keiichi would find himself outside of his house, having to spend alone several hours before his mother allowed him in again to avoid bothering his father even more during those blockades.
Still it wasn't a bad existence even if Keiichi often longed for something else, for something more. He wanted recognition, not be the first one or unique, but he wanted to be special enough so that someone would notice him, so that someone would miss him even a little if he wasn't there. He envied those who excelled at sports or were popular due their charming personality, wishing he had at least even a bit of what they had so he could have friends too. So he could feel like he belonged somewhere and wasn't just "there". Studies never interested him much, it was instinct but they were boring for him, which caused him to ignore many questions in his tests which were left unanswered even if he could have known the answer. Everything changed, though, when at his school there was an intelligence test that everyone in his grade had to perform. They weren't notified what kind of test it was or even that it was a test to be graded, it was presented as mostly a quiz and even if he still ignored many questions that seemed boring or didn't make much sense for him, Keiichi still got one of the higher grades. It was then revealed that the reason why he found school boring was most probable because it was too easy for him, and that he had a talent for studying even without doing a great effort. This revolutionized his life completely, he was transfered to another school, one more challenging and focused on grades and studying. This change, coupled with the praises and the attention that he got from his parents, teachers and other classmates, all due having high grades, made Keiichi focus more on studying and getting even higher grades, happy to have found something in which he was good, something that granted him what he had always wanted.
Or so he thought.
Keiichi's life should have been perfect, he wasn't a genius but he was smart, his teachers and parents were proud of him and granted him raises in his allowance or other prizes for being a good student, his classmates looked up at him for help with their own studies. It should have been what he always wanted. But it wasn't. In a school where grades were everything and every student competed with the others to get a high grade, Keiichi wasn't admired even a bit, instead he was disliked due having such an easy time in getting grades that others had trouble with. His classmates began to bully him, from throwing his stuff to a fountain, to putting a dead frog in his desk, he was noticed in the new school but he still had no friends or anyone around him. Still he refused to give in, he still had the praises of his teachers and his parents, his parents were always so proud, it even changed how he was treated when his father got an artist blockade as he was allowed back home easily even if it was just so he could study at his room. As long as he had that, it didn't matter to him that his classmates hated him, he still was promised a great life, sooner or later he would reach a place in which everyone would like him for his grades and intelligence, so it didn't matter. Instead he began to dislike his classmates, considering them inferior to himself and seeing the bullying as further proof of how lower they were compared to him, of how pitiful they were as they struggled in tests to get a passing grade and he breezed by them.
His life was soon reduced to school in several and all kinds of forms, from his normal school to cram school right after that ended, then he had to do homework for both schools and study before going to bed to go to school the next day. Rinse and repeat. It was pure routine, but he was fine with it. Until his high grades began to be something usual, normal, something expected, his parents and teachers stopped praising him, instead they began to simply ask for more, for him to keep the high grades, for him to become not just the first of his class or grade but the first of the school, of the city, of the prefecture, the first of the whole country. They asked more and more from him while the rewards vanished, because it was normal for him to get good grades, they were expected and it was easy for him so there was no need to praise him, but he still could do better, he could always do better. By the time Keiichi realized that the small relief he had in his life was gone, that of his parents and teachers paying him attention and giving him praise, he was trapped in a spiral of studying. School, cram school, homework, exams, mock exams, grades, rankings, it was all his life was about while enduring being bullied at school and, once more in his opinion, ignored at home. He had found his own talent, something that would make people look his way even a little, but it was a talent that soon made them ignore him even more than before, and it was a talent he hated because he never really liked studying like that, he had a talent for it and he wasn't stupid but he was never interested in all the subjects or ever wanted to be at the top of anything, he just pursued it because it seemed to give him what he really wanted. But it didn't.
As Keiichi's life became a trap full of studies and schools, he began to accumulate stress and hate, unable to understand why people went from praising him to ignoring or bullying him in a matter of days. He began to try to boycott his parents, sleeping until late so he couldn't eat the breakfast his mother always worked hard to prepare, staying at cram school until late so dinner was also missed or he at least didn't have to eat it with his parents. With the stress building up and trapped in a routine he hated, Keiichi searched for a way out of that, for something challenging, something that would free him from there, something that could earn him back the praises and attention he thought he deserved. It was mere chance that had him take notice of a model rifle at a store, pulled apart in parts and looking like a challenging puzzle. He was bored, he wanted a challenge, he had money and no one to waste it with, so he bought it. His interest in model weapons started innocently enough, a creative puzzle to soothe the mind, but it served for little as the stress kept building up. The exams never stopped, the bullying never decreased, soon he began to use his model weapons to shoot at cans and inanimate objects to release stress, but it still wasn't enough. Together with the stress there was rage and shooting at objects didn't comfort that. His interest shifted and he began to study about snipping, finding the whole thing a new and passionate challenge. Before long he found himself shooting at little children that were on their way to school or playing on the park or doing errands for their mothers or just being around.
The neighborhood fell in chaos as with the passing days the realization that someone was snipping at children settled in, there were no serious wounds but it terrified the children and hurt them while their parents became confused and scared that one day there would be a serious injury. No one was able to catch Keiichi, no one even suspected of him, not even his parents as he began to eat dinner with them again and listen to them wonder about the snipper and what kind of horrible parents they had to have for them being people capable of shooting at children. Fear grew in the neighborhood as parents were advised to not let their kids alone in the streets, and the innocent children's lives became similar to Keiichi's when they weren't allowed to play outside or be anywhere else but home and the school. He didn't get praises but the reactions he caused felt equally good, the sadness in the kids' faces felt even better and soothed his stress and rage. He convinced himself that he was happy and that he was better than everyone else because of how no one ever came close to catching him. He continued playing, he would stop snipping for several weeks and when people began to relax he would start again, finding satisfaction in the fact that he had the whole place dancing at the rhythm he imposed.
Everything has to end sooner or later, and the end of this twisted life and nightmare came when one day, Keiichi spotted a little girl alone in the streets despite the warnings and the paranoia. He didn't think twice about shooting at her, convincing himself that it was her fault for not listening to the adults and being so careless. The problem started when, upon shooting her once, the girl didn't notice it and remained where she was, he shoot again, but it still took a bit for him to be noticed and with each ignored shoot his rage increased until he was shooting without stop. It was then when the girl noticed she was being shoot, but instead of running away she turned around, Keiichi wasn't able to stop himself from shooting again and the surprise on seeing her turn made him miss his aim -until then he had always shoot at their legs and diaper covered butts-. The following events are nothing but a mixed mass in Keiichi's mind, he remembers a piercing scream from the girl and the sight of her reaching for her eyes in pain. He had missed his aim and he had hit her in the eye, it was the first time he really hurt one of the kids, something he had never intended but about which he had never cared enough to think about. Despite his want to help her he was sure that she had seen him and he was too terrified and shocked to risk that, so he ran away, trying to leave behind that girl, that piercing scream that would haunt him forever. That night he wasn't able to eat, he threw up and had a high fever, despite trying to convince himself that she would be alright by trying to study about eye injuries he knew better, he couldn't convince himself of that lie and his own body punished him for his sin.
It was just one night, but he couldn't endure it or get over it, he didn't even want to get over it. He had opened his eyes and realized that what had brought him satisfaction for weeks was wrong, that it was the kind of thing he hated. He didn't want to be like that, he didn't want to become that person again. He confessed to his parents, wanting to be punished because there was no way he could be forgiven, predictably his parents were shocked, his mother cried and his father punched him, but in the end they apologized to him, for not noticing how much he was suffering, for not realizing how abandoned he felt or how his life had twisted. They considered it their fault as well and decided to take the burden of the sin as a family, united, even if ultimately the one performing the sin was Keiichi, his parents considered that not noticing what he was doing was a sin itself. Together they went to the police where Keiichi confessed once more, because it was his first fault and he was a minor nothing serious happened to him and his parents just had to pay his bail to return home with him. Inwardly, Keiichi wished that things had been different and that he had received a serious punishment, he never learned what happened to the child he had hurt, it's debatable if he even mentioned her to his parents when he confessed as he could have just confessed about shooting children and avoid explaining the most recent incident, but even if he had he probably had not enough courage to try to find out what happened to her, instead of searching for her he vowed to himself to never let a girl cry or suffer again, due himself or someone else, as an attempt to make up for the sin he had committed.
Searching for a new start, his father traveled all around Japan until he eventually found a remote village, a total opposite of the city where they lived, named Hinamizawa. Despite having doubts about if Keiichi would be able to adapt, and despite Keiichi's own doubts that moving would help to change anything, the Maebara family moved to Hinamizawa, starting over as a real family. It worked as a charm, though Keiichi remained wary of the village upon arrival as soon as he observed the place with his own eyes and went to see the school he changed his mind, he fell in love with the village, finding it perfect for him. A complete opposite of the world he had lived in until then and with little chance of becoming that kind of world again, he choose on purpose to study at the small school of the village rather than going to the more prepared one at the nearest city, wanting to run away as much as possible from study stress. He didn't want high grades or a brilliant professional future, he would be happy with just having a simple life with friends and a simple job.
Keiichi found himself quickly welcomed in the village and before he knew it he was going to school every day accompanied by two of his classmates, Mion and Rena, who soon became his best friends.He was invited to form part of a games club along with them and another two girls, Rika and Satoko, who were much younger than him and for whom he quickly felt protective of. His relationship with his parents returned to what it had been back when he was little, being a close and united family, something that even his father noted once, commenting on how before even at their best they seemed to be going each with their own agendas. With all this, he felt as if he could finally stop being who he had been and start working to be the kind of person he wanted to be, even if it was someone who would never leave that small and remote village, it was big enough for him.
However, Hinamizawa wasn't as peaceful as it looked, it hid many secrets each darker than the previous one and even if he had wanted to ignore them, his fate was settled in that he couldn't turn around from them ever since he set foot in Hinamizawa for the first time. It all started when Hanyuu, Rika's distant cousin, transferred as well, a few weeks after he did. This event itself had little impact in their lives, other than the ensuing chaos due Hanyuu being adorable and cute and Rena constantly wanting to kidnap her and take her home with her, not long after, Rika approached them with a strange story for a manga she wanted to make, asking their opinions to help with the plot. But that was a lie, it wasn't for a manga, it was never a fiction from the girl's imagination, it was real and it was happening in the peaceful Hinamizawa. There was a disease affecting everyone in Hinamizawa, even Keiichi despite being still relatively new, and there was an organization founding the village's clinic to research that disease and find a cure for it, but it wasn't that simple, within the organization there was a factional dispute and one of the factions was trying to use the disease for their own advantage. Miyo Takano, a nurse at the clinic and someone totally devoted to the research of the disease, had a simple mission: kill Rika and active an emergency plan that would eliminate all the villagers based on the idea that Rika was the stabilizing key of the disease and that with her dead the villagers would have a serious outbreak which would lead to hundred of deaths.
Together with several adults who had became Rika's allies, the group created a plan of action to protect Rika and stop Takano and the faction that guided her. Keiichi was sternly set on protecting Rika at all costs, not wanting to see his friend and the village he had come to love so much destroyed, even if the news about being infected by such a dangerous disease were shocking. He vowed to protect her and not fail her or the others and to defeat Takano and the fate she was trying to impose on them. It wasn't just friendship what pushed Keiichi to be so determined, it wasn't even the vow he had made of not letting little girls suffer again either, deep inside of him he had the feeling that this was a long battle that he had been fighting for a long, long time and that he had always lost. He hadn't said a word but ever since he arrived to Hinamizawa, at times in the night, nightmares would assault him, horrible dreams about him hurting his friends, killing them or killing for them only to ultimately fail to protect them every time. They were vague and senseless, but they scared him, it terrified him that those dreams could be some sort of message from his subconscious that wished to do those things to his friends, that they were proof that he still was the horrible Keiichi that was happy with tormenting children. He rejected that side of him, hated it and wanted to erase it from himself, given that he couldn't erase it from his past, so when Rika's situation was presented to him, despite being terrified, Keiichi jumped on it with determination. He wanted to protect her and the others and prove to himself that he wasn't a monster, than that Keiichi from the past wasn't the real Keiichi.
Despite having many things against them, given that the enemy had had years of planning and had military trained soldiers, and despite getting at some points in which there didn't seem to be a way out... At the end of everything, Keiichi and his friends defeated the fate imposed to them. Their allies answered to them properly and Takano and her men were defeated, the evildoings of the faction using Takano were exposed and the "curse" that seemed to have settled in the village -caused by Takano's actions since four years ago- was broken and lifted. And the whole group was allowed to enjoy an annual festival celebrated in the village, that had the tradition of setting cotton drift afloat down a stream, symbolizing the sins and impurities of the villagers being washed away. It was truly a miracle that basically just a bunch of kids were capable of stopping a force like the one Takano had, but of course they weren't alone and it was precisely thanks to their bonds that at the end everything turned out all right.
Life in Hinamizawa became peaceful once more and everyone moved on in their lives, it was almost like waking up from a long dream, though most of them blamed it on how surreal everything had almost been during the day of the fight against Takano. The truth was very different, but only Rika and Hanyuu were aware of it, and Keiichi still didn't talk about his dreams. Life went on, with Mion planning to go to college and Keiichi being recommended as the class representative as well as the new leader of the games club they had, though he refused the last position preferring to think of it as "Mion's club" and not accepting anyone else but her as the leader of it. Everything was peaceful and perfect again, without shadows or curses chasing them.
(NOTE: Keiichi will be brought in after the time spent in luceti which amounts to one year and almost five months)
One day, Keiichi woke up in the middle of a forest, snow covering the area and dressed in a plain sundress. Despite the fact that it had been July when he went to sleep, he found himself in the middle of a winter, cold bitting his body and aching all over him and with a strange book with his name on the cover near him. Soon he learned that the book was some kind of communication device and that he wasn't in Hinamizawa anymore, he wasn't even on Earth. He was in a place named Luceti, trapped in an area secluded by an unbreakable barrier together with many others, all of them taken away from their worlds. He wasn't alone though, Rena, Rika and Hanyuu were all there, apparently having been there for years despite the fact that he had seen them just hours before back at Hinamizawa, with this he learned that time stopped back at their worlds when they were taken and that they would be returned to the exact same moment they were taken from, but that served of little comfort. The idea that his friends had been trapped there, subjected to crazy experiments by some scientists known as the Malnosso, while he could do nothing to help them settled down firmly on Keiichi. It made him feel useless even if logically speaking there was no way that he could have done something about it, that it was beyond his power, those thoughts only sounded as excuses to him as he convinced himself that he had to do something to solve the problem, that he had to save them and take them back home.
It wasn't meant to be.
Rika and then Hanyuu vanished both from Luceti only a few months after his arrival. What should have been both a worry and a relief, as they would be home and safe, soon became a haunting guilt when, Haruki Suzumiya, a friend that Rika and the others had made and had come to trust even more than Keiichi and anyone else from their world, revealed him the nature of his world. Keiichi learned about Rika's real condition, she had been trapped in some sort of time loop that happened every time she died, thanks to Hanyuu's powers who was actually the feared Oyashiro-sama, and with each repetition, she died once more and tragedy settled in Hinamizawa. It didn't took more than that for Keiichi to realize that those "dreams" that had been haunting him were kind of like memories of those previous worlds, too vague to be of any use other than to haunt him, but still there. It was a crushing feeling to realize that everything he had thought that he had achieved in Hinamizawa amounted for nothing because of how many times he had failed in previous worlds, he saw the world he was from as a miracle, an exception, and the fear that he still was the same scum he was before Hinamizawa returned to haunt him. He tried to not let it drown him, but it haunted him, the knowledge that the girls could have been from another world, from a different loop than his, which would mean that when they returned to their worlds they had just returned to a world of tragedy and death.
But Luceti wasn't a peaceful world, there was a war going on beyond the barrier where Keiichi and everyone else were locked in, and from time to time they were forced to go out to fight no matter if they were combatants or not. His experience when confronting Takano and her men and his wish to become stronger to protect Rena, the only one left in Luceti besides him from Hinamizawa, and to not give her reasons to worry and trigger the illness that affected them both, made Keiichi seek out ways to fight. He considered returning to the use of guns and rifles, not model ones but real ones, however he didn't need to as he made friends of Maes Hughes who offered to teach and train him in fighting with push-knives. Keiichi soon fell on a routine of training hard daily and building a tree house for Rena in the forest to replace her favorite place from Hinamizawa, unfortunately Rena eventually left as well, before Keiichi was capable of finishing the tree house though he continued working on it just in case she ever returned.
Keiichi's time in Luceti was relatively peaceful as he met people and formed bonds even stronger than the ones he had with the girls from Hinamizawa. He suffered a lot due his haunting guilt regarding the other worlds in which he failed and the lingering resentment he felt towards Rika for not trusting in her friends earlier, feeling that maybe she could have been saved from so much suffering long before if she had told them from the start. Keiichi also met Bernkastel, a witch who looked a lot like Rika but was nothing like her, her relation with Rika is unknown by Keiichi yet, but he has the idea that they are related and knowing about what Bernkastel is -a witch that travels through worlds- and how much she knows about him and his world makes him think that she may be a result of Rika's time being trapped in the time loop. Ever since then Keiichi has often regretted learning so much due how it all piles in guilt against him and makes him even more unstable, fortunately he found great allies in Minato Arisato -who was a friend Rena made in Luceti but soon became Keiichi's best friend- and Haruki Suzumiya -though later on he was sent to his world and returned as a girl, Haruhi-, who both looked out for him and made sure he never got to the critical stages of the illness he had which would have been lethal for him.
Ever since he arrived to Luceti, Keiichi has gone through several problems, and has had to face many situations, among them the intermittent return and vanishing of Rika and the others, with him apparently being the only "permanent" resident in Luceti from Hinamizawa. His attachment to that world grew as his sense of responsibility and his desire to protect others expanded beyond the people from Hinamizawa, helped by the fact that some people like Minato or Hughes were only allowed to have a life in Luceti as they were dead in their original worlds, this all made Keiichi wish to never leave Luceti, even when everyone else would leave as he considered that there was no guarantee that more people wouldn't be trapped in Luceti again in the future. He wishes to remain in Luceti until he grows old, only accepting to return to Hinamizawa and forget all about Luceti then, when there's nothing else he can do for that world and for the people that may be trapped there.
Timeline: End of Matsuribayashi-hen, several days into the month of June (around a week or so). And after being over one year stuck in Luceti.
Abilities: Keiichi has no special abilities or super powers to use, he's an average human boy in most aspects and the few talents and skills he has, be it naturally or by having learned them during his life, are ones he rarely shows. He really doesn't aim to stand out so he prefers to not do things that would make him stand out unless it's really needed.
Keiichi is pretty intelligent and has a talent for studying being able to quickly memorize things he has read with little effort. He has a special talent with words and a way with them that often makes him say the right things at the right moments and makes his feelings and emotions reach out to others with his speeches, he can be pretty persuasive and has been noted to be able to soothe others' worries even despite being complete strangers. He's a person who feeds his strengths with his weaknesses, refusing to let those drag him down easily, it's his guilty feeling what leads him through life and has him aiming for the best. Keiichi has strong convictions and a clear sense of what's good and bad, thanks to his own experiences. His strong and firm will and determination are what allow him to go on with his life and do his best to not fail his friends. Keiichi shows a great mental strength in normal conditions, being able to cope with the immense feeling of guilt inside of him and not letting it devour him.
Physically, back in Hinamizawa Keiichi was very average in terms of athletic skills, though he still showed great strength at some given moments. Capable of breaking free from being restrained by his friends in the first arc of Higurashi, Keiichi can become highly dangerous with a blunt weapon, generally being a baseball bat that belonged to Satoko's brother. In the first arc of Higurashi, Keiichi is capable of beating to death both Rena and Mion, leaving their corpses in little more than a recognizable state. In the third arc, he beats to death an adult man with relative ease, and in the second to last arc of Higurashi Kai he's seen taking down a trained adult man with his bat (though in this attack the surprise factor played an important role, the fact the adult was knocked unconscious serves to determine the strength Keiichi used). However, during his time in Luceti those traits have been improved as Keiichi has spent more than a year training his body daily and learning to fight properly with push-knives both at ranged, middle and close combat. He's obviously stronger than he was in Hinamizawa and is more adapted to combat now than before, he's also faster and more agile.
There's only one "special ability" that Keiichi has, and that is the "capacity" to remember previous worlds that happened during Rika's quest for a way to avoid her fate of dying. This isn't a complete capacity or a great ability per say, Keiichi is unable to remember the worlds completely, the memories often come to him as vague flashbacks, deja vùs or dreams and it wasn't until Luceti that he realized that they were actually memories. The knowledge that they were memories caused them to come to him more often a a bit clearer, but they are still too vague and are mostly useless for anyone and anything except for himself and to feed his guilt.
Link to an image of the character:
Player LJ: flowingstars
Contact: torastellar (AIM) // Serilia (Plurk)
Character Number: 1
Character: Keiichi Maebara
Fandom:Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
Personality: Keiichi is just your average teenager boy, there's nothing in him that would stand up for attention at first. It takes someone to get to know him to actually "see" what Keiichi really is, it's not that he's a reserved boy or that he hides himself. It's a simple matter of him being exactly what he seems, normal, average, until the situation actually requires him to show what he's truly made off.
Known as the "Magician of Words", Keiichi has a special talent when speaking, not only can he be elaborate when he so desires, but he has the skill to transmit exactly what he feels to others. He can bring over his sadness or his will to fight, to even the hardest listeners and those with a closed heart. A natural leader that only takes that position when he sees it's needed for him to, Keiichi is a charismatic being capable of drawing close to him other people and to break through old senseless resentments. He's full of energy and live, always ready to share a smile with his friends and have fun playing games. Not a man to back off from a challenge, Keiichi always moves head on towards anything that presents itself against him, be it a mere game or a friend being in problems. He values his friends greatly and would do anything for them and to protect them, including from themselves.
Keiichi is like any other healthy teenager boy, which means that he often has "perverted" thoughts about his friends, specially when it's about deciding the punishment of losing a game. He never acts upon most of those thoughts, contenting himself with just imagining or watching his friends in whatever clothes they ended in, much like they do with him when he's the one losing a game. Keiichi has a great respect for women, though, normally using his most perverted ideas to merely tease his friends (who in Hinamizawa are all females in fact). He dislikes anyone who takes advantage of girls in any given way, even when he's at a place where girls are dressed as sexy maids, he doesn't hesitate to jump in their defense if any man tries crosses the line he mentally has drawn over that theme. In his eyes people who take advantage of girls in any way are nothing but low scum against whom he has no problems going to defend his friends or any girl he sees mistreated. Keiichi is a protector, honorable and trustworthy. He values friendship and the bonds between people over anything else and deems stupid and pointless any traditions or old rules that make people suffer, specially if those rules are assumed and bot written. He's an intelligent young man with an hyperactive imagination who loves to have fun with his friends and play tons of games.
This is the Keiichi Maebara he has always wanted to be. A Keiichi, he only got to know after moving to Hinamizawa. However, that Keiichi isn't the complete one, and is nothing like the old one.
Before his arrival to Hinamizawa, Keiichi was very different. He wasn't just an average teenager boy, he was, in fact, a mediocre teenager boy. With mediocre athletic skills, mediocre artistic skills and mediocre grades, Keiichi was the kind of guy who ended alone because he lacked anything that would attract people to him. His classmates ignored him, so did his professors and his family life was almost non-existent with his father going his own way, same as his mother, and all Keiichi was left with was a mediocre self. Until it was discovered that he had a gift for studying and that he was more intelligent than what he seemed, however he rarely showed it because he didn't find studies interesting and actually hated to study. Upon the discovery Keiichi was convinced to keep studying, thinking that his wishes of having friends and stop being mediocre would be fulfilled that way, he didn't wish to be at the top or be extremely popular, he just wanted a few friends and his parents' attention.
Keiichi's intelligence did indeed attract people's attention and praises, which made his ego grew as he fooled himself into thinking that everything was perfect. But as time went on Keiichi realized that despite all his efforts no one knew him, no one cared yet to know the real him, they had been content with just his grades and intelligence, failing to see the Keiichi beyond that which is what he truly wanted. As he realized this and the praises and attention stopped flowing in, Keiichi grew more desperate than ever, drowning in stress until hew blew up. Soon enough, he ended finding release and enjoyment in acts of cruelty towards little kids, mostly shooting at them with his model weapons. The children' suffering, their fear, all of it turned to be a better incentive than praises and the arrogance he earned from those grew up even more at the idea that he wouldn't be caught, seeing people confused and trying to protect their children but unable to even get close to the idea of who was the responsible. Keiichi got swallowed into a spiral created by his own hands, trying to get the attention he starved for through something he didn't like and that ended not being as rewarding as he expected, becoming a worse person with each passing day and each child he assaulted. Until the spiral reached its climax, and Keiichi shot a small girl in the eye. It was then, for the first time in a long time, that Keiichi regained his senses. He realized what he was doing exactly and how it was wrong in too many ways to enumerate, he became aware of how he was and how that person wasn't the one he had wanted to be, how far he had drifted from the path he wanted to follow.
There's no way to measure in words the amount of guilt that Keiichi feels for those events, ever since it was discovered that he had a talent for studies, it's a guilt that can't be erased and that he himself doesn't wish to erase, preferring to have it haunting him to keep himself from becoming that person again. There's a lot of shame and self-hate that Keiichi posses from that time and it's that what fuels the way he's now, trying to do things right and to really become the person he always wished to be: a Keiichi with friends and bonds, a Keiichi that protected and helped his friends and was important for them even if he wasn't the center of the universe, a Keiichi that wasn't on top of others but besides them. There's not a day in which Keiichi is haunted by what he did, even when the law's and his parents' punishments passed, he himself hasn't forgiven himself and would, without a doubt, beat himself senseless if he could go back to the beginning of everything. It's his strong will and his wish to note give up what keeps him going on instead of allowing guilt to devour him and all his energy is now used in becoming the best friend and person he can be, trying to amend his errors even if he knows that there's no forgiveness.
History: Here's a link.
Keiichi is the only son of the famous artist Ichirou Maebara and his wife Aiko, his place of birth is unknown though it's assumed that they have moved a few times ever since before taking a more definite settlement in a big city. Ever since he was little, Keiichi was what many would consider an average kid, there was nothing in him that made him stand out, his grades were just enough to pass the tests and he never had a great presence in class. He was simply "there", another kid in the class with many others and who could serve to round the numbers of a team during a game at breaks but nothing else. He had no friends, he was so average that no one ever found him interesting to try to know him better or anything. This made him be pretty close to his parents, but with his father's work as an artist sometimes the relationship didn't work at all, specially given his father's usual moods whenever he got an artist block, more often than not Keiichi would find himself outside of his house, having to spend alone several hours before his mother allowed him in again to avoid bothering his father even more during those blockades.
Still it wasn't a bad existence even if Keiichi often longed for something else, for something more. He wanted recognition, not be the first one or unique, but he wanted to be special enough so that someone would notice him, so that someone would miss him even a little if he wasn't there. He envied those who excelled at sports or were popular due their charming personality, wishing he had at least even a bit of what they had so he could have friends too. So he could feel like he belonged somewhere and wasn't just "there". Studies never interested him much, it was instinct but they were boring for him, which caused him to ignore many questions in his tests which were left unanswered even if he could have known the answer. Everything changed, though, when at his school there was an intelligence test that everyone in his grade had to perform. They weren't notified what kind of test it was or even that it was a test to be graded, it was presented as mostly a quiz and even if he still ignored many questions that seemed boring or didn't make much sense for him, Keiichi still got one of the higher grades. It was then revealed that the reason why he found school boring was most probable because it was too easy for him, and that he had a talent for studying even without doing a great effort. This revolutionized his life completely, he was transfered to another school, one more challenging and focused on grades and studying. This change, coupled with the praises and the attention that he got from his parents, teachers and other classmates, all due having high grades, made Keiichi focus more on studying and getting even higher grades, happy to have found something in which he was good, something that granted him what he had always wanted.
Or so he thought.
Keiichi's life should have been perfect, he wasn't a genius but he was smart, his teachers and parents were proud of him and granted him raises in his allowance or other prizes for being a good student, his classmates looked up at him for help with their own studies. It should have been what he always wanted. But it wasn't. In a school where grades were everything and every student competed with the others to get a high grade, Keiichi wasn't admired even a bit, instead he was disliked due having such an easy time in getting grades that others had trouble with. His classmates began to bully him, from throwing his stuff to a fountain, to putting a dead frog in his desk, he was noticed in the new school but he still had no friends or anyone around him. Still he refused to give in, he still had the praises of his teachers and his parents, his parents were always so proud, it even changed how he was treated when his father got an artist blockade as he was allowed back home easily even if it was just so he could study at his room. As long as he had that, it didn't matter to him that his classmates hated him, he still was promised a great life, sooner or later he would reach a place in which everyone would like him for his grades and intelligence, so it didn't matter. Instead he began to dislike his classmates, considering them inferior to himself and seeing the bullying as further proof of how lower they were compared to him, of how pitiful they were as they struggled in tests to get a passing grade and he breezed by them.
His life was soon reduced to school in several and all kinds of forms, from his normal school to cram school right after that ended, then he had to do homework for both schools and study before going to bed to go to school the next day. Rinse and repeat. It was pure routine, but he was fine with it. Until his high grades began to be something usual, normal, something expected, his parents and teachers stopped praising him, instead they began to simply ask for more, for him to keep the high grades, for him to become not just the first of his class or grade but the first of the school, of the city, of the prefecture, the first of the whole country. They asked more and more from him while the rewards vanished, because it was normal for him to get good grades, they were expected and it was easy for him so there was no need to praise him, but he still could do better, he could always do better. By the time Keiichi realized that the small relief he had in his life was gone, that of his parents and teachers paying him attention and giving him praise, he was trapped in a spiral of studying. School, cram school, homework, exams, mock exams, grades, rankings, it was all his life was about while enduring being bullied at school and, once more in his opinion, ignored at home. He had found his own talent, something that would make people look his way even a little, but it was a talent that soon made them ignore him even more than before, and it was a talent he hated because he never really liked studying like that, he had a talent for it and he wasn't stupid but he was never interested in all the subjects or ever wanted to be at the top of anything, he just pursued it because it seemed to give him what he really wanted. But it didn't.
As Keiichi's life became a trap full of studies and schools, he began to accumulate stress and hate, unable to understand why people went from praising him to ignoring or bullying him in a matter of days. He began to try to boycott his parents, sleeping until late so he couldn't eat the breakfast his mother always worked hard to prepare, staying at cram school until late so dinner was also missed or he at least didn't have to eat it with his parents. With the stress building up and trapped in a routine he hated, Keiichi searched for a way out of that, for something challenging, something that would free him from there, something that could earn him back the praises and attention he thought he deserved. It was mere chance that had him take notice of a model rifle at a store, pulled apart in parts and looking like a challenging puzzle. He was bored, he wanted a challenge, he had money and no one to waste it with, so he bought it. His interest in model weapons started innocently enough, a creative puzzle to soothe the mind, but it served for little as the stress kept building up. The exams never stopped, the bullying never decreased, soon he began to use his model weapons to shoot at cans and inanimate objects to release stress, but it still wasn't enough. Together with the stress there was rage and shooting at objects didn't comfort that. His interest shifted and he began to study about snipping, finding the whole thing a new and passionate challenge. Before long he found himself shooting at little children that were on their way to school or playing on the park or doing errands for their mothers or just being around.
The neighborhood fell in chaos as with the passing days the realization that someone was snipping at children settled in, there were no serious wounds but it terrified the children and hurt them while their parents became confused and scared that one day there would be a serious injury. No one was able to catch Keiichi, no one even suspected of him, not even his parents as he began to eat dinner with them again and listen to them wonder about the snipper and what kind of horrible parents they had to have for them being people capable of shooting at children. Fear grew in the neighborhood as parents were advised to not let their kids alone in the streets, and the innocent children's lives became similar to Keiichi's when they weren't allowed to play outside or be anywhere else but home and the school. He didn't get praises but the reactions he caused felt equally good, the sadness in the kids' faces felt even better and soothed his stress and rage. He convinced himself that he was happy and that he was better than everyone else because of how no one ever came close to catching him. He continued playing, he would stop snipping for several weeks and when people began to relax he would start again, finding satisfaction in the fact that he had the whole place dancing at the rhythm he imposed.
Everything has to end sooner or later, and the end of this twisted life and nightmare came when one day, Keiichi spotted a little girl alone in the streets despite the warnings and the paranoia. He didn't think twice about shooting at her, convincing himself that it was her fault for not listening to the adults and being so careless. The problem started when, upon shooting her once, the girl didn't notice it and remained where she was, he shoot again, but it still took a bit for him to be noticed and with each ignored shoot his rage increased until he was shooting without stop. It was then when the girl noticed she was being shoot, but instead of running away she turned around, Keiichi wasn't able to stop himself from shooting again and the surprise on seeing her turn made him miss his aim -until then he had always shoot at their legs and diaper covered butts-. The following events are nothing but a mixed mass in Keiichi's mind, he remembers a piercing scream from the girl and the sight of her reaching for her eyes in pain. He had missed his aim and he had hit her in the eye, it was the first time he really hurt one of the kids, something he had never intended but about which he had never cared enough to think about. Despite his want to help her he was sure that she had seen him and he was too terrified and shocked to risk that, so he ran away, trying to leave behind that girl, that piercing scream that would haunt him forever. That night he wasn't able to eat, he threw up and had a high fever, despite trying to convince himself that she would be alright by trying to study about eye injuries he knew better, he couldn't convince himself of that lie and his own body punished him for his sin.
It was just one night, but he couldn't endure it or get over it, he didn't even want to get over it. He had opened his eyes and realized that what had brought him satisfaction for weeks was wrong, that it was the kind of thing he hated. He didn't want to be like that, he didn't want to become that person again. He confessed to his parents, wanting to be punished because there was no way he could be forgiven, predictably his parents were shocked, his mother cried and his father punched him, but in the end they apologized to him, for not noticing how much he was suffering, for not realizing how abandoned he felt or how his life had twisted. They considered it their fault as well and decided to take the burden of the sin as a family, united, even if ultimately the one performing the sin was Keiichi, his parents considered that not noticing what he was doing was a sin itself. Together they went to the police where Keiichi confessed once more, because it was his first fault and he was a minor nothing serious happened to him and his parents just had to pay his bail to return home with him. Inwardly, Keiichi wished that things had been different and that he had received a serious punishment, he never learned what happened to the child he had hurt, it's debatable if he even mentioned her to his parents when he confessed as he could have just confessed about shooting children and avoid explaining the most recent incident, but even if he had he probably had not enough courage to try to find out what happened to her, instead of searching for her he vowed to himself to never let a girl cry or suffer again, due himself or someone else, as an attempt to make up for the sin he had committed.
Searching for a new start, his father traveled all around Japan until he eventually found a remote village, a total opposite of the city where they lived, named Hinamizawa. Despite having doubts about if Keiichi would be able to adapt, and despite Keiichi's own doubts that moving would help to change anything, the Maebara family moved to Hinamizawa, starting over as a real family. It worked as a charm, though Keiichi remained wary of the village upon arrival as soon as he observed the place with his own eyes and went to see the school he changed his mind, he fell in love with the village, finding it perfect for him. A complete opposite of the world he had lived in until then and with little chance of becoming that kind of world again, he choose on purpose to study at the small school of the village rather than going to the more prepared one at the nearest city, wanting to run away as much as possible from study stress. He didn't want high grades or a brilliant professional future, he would be happy with just having a simple life with friends and a simple job.
Keiichi found himself quickly welcomed in the village and before he knew it he was going to school every day accompanied by two of his classmates, Mion and Rena, who soon became his best friends.He was invited to form part of a games club along with them and another two girls, Rika and Satoko, who were much younger than him and for whom he quickly felt protective of. His relationship with his parents returned to what it had been back when he was little, being a close and united family, something that even his father noted once, commenting on how before even at their best they seemed to be going each with their own agendas. With all this, he felt as if he could finally stop being who he had been and start working to be the kind of person he wanted to be, even if it was someone who would never leave that small and remote village, it was big enough for him.
However, Hinamizawa wasn't as peaceful as it looked, it hid many secrets each darker than the previous one and even if he had wanted to ignore them, his fate was settled in that he couldn't turn around from them ever since he set foot in Hinamizawa for the first time. It all started when Hanyuu, Rika's distant cousin, transferred as well, a few weeks after he did. This event itself had little impact in their lives, other than the ensuing chaos due Hanyuu being adorable and cute and Rena constantly wanting to kidnap her and take her home with her, not long after, Rika approached them with a strange story for a manga she wanted to make, asking their opinions to help with the plot. But that was a lie, it wasn't for a manga, it was never a fiction from the girl's imagination, it was real and it was happening in the peaceful Hinamizawa. There was a disease affecting everyone in Hinamizawa, even Keiichi despite being still relatively new, and there was an organization founding the village's clinic to research that disease and find a cure for it, but it wasn't that simple, within the organization there was a factional dispute and one of the factions was trying to use the disease for their own advantage. Miyo Takano, a nurse at the clinic and someone totally devoted to the research of the disease, had a simple mission: kill Rika and active an emergency plan that would eliminate all the villagers based on the idea that Rika was the stabilizing key of the disease and that with her dead the villagers would have a serious outbreak which would lead to hundred of deaths.
Together with several adults who had became Rika's allies, the group created a plan of action to protect Rika and stop Takano and the faction that guided her. Keiichi was sternly set on protecting Rika at all costs, not wanting to see his friend and the village he had come to love so much destroyed, even if the news about being infected by such a dangerous disease were shocking. He vowed to protect her and not fail her or the others and to defeat Takano and the fate she was trying to impose on them. It wasn't just friendship what pushed Keiichi to be so determined, it wasn't even the vow he had made of not letting little girls suffer again either, deep inside of him he had the feeling that this was a long battle that he had been fighting for a long, long time and that he had always lost. He hadn't said a word but ever since he arrived to Hinamizawa, at times in the night, nightmares would assault him, horrible dreams about him hurting his friends, killing them or killing for them only to ultimately fail to protect them every time. They were vague and senseless, but they scared him, it terrified him that those dreams could be some sort of message from his subconscious that wished to do those things to his friends, that they were proof that he still was the horrible Keiichi that was happy with tormenting children. He rejected that side of him, hated it and wanted to erase it from himself, given that he couldn't erase it from his past, so when Rika's situation was presented to him, despite being terrified, Keiichi jumped on it with determination. He wanted to protect her and the others and prove to himself that he wasn't a monster, than that Keiichi from the past wasn't the real Keiichi.
Despite having many things against them, given that the enemy had had years of planning and had military trained soldiers, and despite getting at some points in which there didn't seem to be a way out... At the end of everything, Keiichi and his friends defeated the fate imposed to them. Their allies answered to them properly and Takano and her men were defeated, the evildoings of the faction using Takano were exposed and the "curse" that seemed to have settled in the village -caused by Takano's actions since four years ago- was broken and lifted. And the whole group was allowed to enjoy an annual festival celebrated in the village, that had the tradition of setting cotton drift afloat down a stream, symbolizing the sins and impurities of the villagers being washed away. It was truly a miracle that basically just a bunch of kids were capable of stopping a force like the one Takano had, but of course they weren't alone and it was precisely thanks to their bonds that at the end everything turned out all right.
Life in Hinamizawa became peaceful once more and everyone moved on in their lives, it was almost like waking up from a long dream, though most of them blamed it on how surreal everything had almost been during the day of the fight against Takano. The truth was very different, but only Rika and Hanyuu were aware of it, and Keiichi still didn't talk about his dreams. Life went on, with Mion planning to go to college and Keiichi being recommended as the class representative as well as the new leader of the games club they had, though he refused the last position preferring to think of it as "Mion's club" and not accepting anyone else but her as the leader of it. Everything was peaceful and perfect again, without shadows or curses chasing them.
(NOTE: Keiichi will be brought in after the time spent in luceti which amounts to one year and almost five months)
One day, Keiichi woke up in the middle of a forest, snow covering the area and dressed in a plain sundress. Despite the fact that it had been July when he went to sleep, he found himself in the middle of a winter, cold bitting his body and aching all over him and with a strange book with his name on the cover near him. Soon he learned that the book was some kind of communication device and that he wasn't in Hinamizawa anymore, he wasn't even on Earth. He was in a place named Luceti, trapped in an area secluded by an unbreakable barrier together with many others, all of them taken away from their worlds. He wasn't alone though, Rena, Rika and Hanyuu were all there, apparently having been there for years despite the fact that he had seen them just hours before back at Hinamizawa, with this he learned that time stopped back at their worlds when they were taken and that they would be returned to the exact same moment they were taken from, but that served of little comfort. The idea that his friends had been trapped there, subjected to crazy experiments by some scientists known as the Malnosso, while he could do nothing to help them settled down firmly on Keiichi. It made him feel useless even if logically speaking there was no way that he could have done something about it, that it was beyond his power, those thoughts only sounded as excuses to him as he convinced himself that he had to do something to solve the problem, that he had to save them and take them back home.
It wasn't meant to be.
Rika and then Hanyuu vanished both from Luceti only a few months after his arrival. What should have been both a worry and a relief, as they would be home and safe, soon became a haunting guilt when, Haruki Suzumiya, a friend that Rika and the others had made and had come to trust even more than Keiichi and anyone else from their world, revealed him the nature of his world. Keiichi learned about Rika's real condition, she had been trapped in some sort of time loop that happened every time she died, thanks to Hanyuu's powers who was actually the feared Oyashiro-sama, and with each repetition, she died once more and tragedy settled in Hinamizawa. It didn't took more than that for Keiichi to realize that those "dreams" that had been haunting him were kind of like memories of those previous worlds, too vague to be of any use other than to haunt him, but still there. It was a crushing feeling to realize that everything he had thought that he had achieved in Hinamizawa amounted for nothing because of how many times he had failed in previous worlds, he saw the world he was from as a miracle, an exception, and the fear that he still was the same scum he was before Hinamizawa returned to haunt him. He tried to not let it drown him, but it haunted him, the knowledge that the girls could have been from another world, from a different loop than his, which would mean that when they returned to their worlds they had just returned to a world of tragedy and death.
But Luceti wasn't a peaceful world, there was a war going on beyond the barrier where Keiichi and everyone else were locked in, and from time to time they were forced to go out to fight no matter if they were combatants or not. His experience when confronting Takano and her men and his wish to become stronger to protect Rena, the only one left in Luceti besides him from Hinamizawa, and to not give her reasons to worry and trigger the illness that affected them both, made Keiichi seek out ways to fight. He considered returning to the use of guns and rifles, not model ones but real ones, however he didn't need to as he made friends of Maes Hughes who offered to teach and train him in fighting with push-knives. Keiichi soon fell on a routine of training hard daily and building a tree house for Rena in the forest to replace her favorite place from Hinamizawa, unfortunately Rena eventually left as well, before Keiichi was capable of finishing the tree house though he continued working on it just in case she ever returned.
Keiichi's time in Luceti was relatively peaceful as he met people and formed bonds even stronger than the ones he had with the girls from Hinamizawa. He suffered a lot due his haunting guilt regarding the other worlds in which he failed and the lingering resentment he felt towards Rika for not trusting in her friends earlier, feeling that maybe she could have been saved from so much suffering long before if she had told them from the start. Keiichi also met Bernkastel, a witch who looked a lot like Rika but was nothing like her, her relation with Rika is unknown by Keiichi yet, but he has the idea that they are related and knowing about what Bernkastel is -a witch that travels through worlds- and how much she knows about him and his world makes him think that she may be a result of Rika's time being trapped in the time loop. Ever since then Keiichi has often regretted learning so much due how it all piles in guilt against him and makes him even more unstable, fortunately he found great allies in Minato Arisato -who was a friend Rena made in Luceti but soon became Keiichi's best friend- and Haruki Suzumiya -though later on he was sent to his world and returned as a girl, Haruhi-, who both looked out for him and made sure he never got to the critical stages of the illness he had which would have been lethal for him.
Ever since he arrived to Luceti, Keiichi has gone through several problems, and has had to face many situations, among them the intermittent return and vanishing of Rika and the others, with him apparently being the only "permanent" resident in Luceti from Hinamizawa. His attachment to that world grew as his sense of responsibility and his desire to protect others expanded beyond the people from Hinamizawa, helped by the fact that some people like Minato or Hughes were only allowed to have a life in Luceti as they were dead in their original worlds, this all made Keiichi wish to never leave Luceti, even when everyone else would leave as he considered that there was no guarantee that more people wouldn't be trapped in Luceti again in the future. He wishes to remain in Luceti until he grows old, only accepting to return to Hinamizawa and forget all about Luceti then, when there's nothing else he can do for that world and for the people that may be trapped there.
Timeline: End of Matsuribayashi-hen, several days into the month of June (around a week or so). And after being over one year stuck in Luceti.
Abilities: Keiichi has no special abilities or super powers to use, he's an average human boy in most aspects and the few talents and skills he has, be it naturally or by having learned them during his life, are ones he rarely shows. He really doesn't aim to stand out so he prefers to not do things that would make him stand out unless it's really needed.
Keiichi is pretty intelligent and has a talent for studying being able to quickly memorize things he has read with little effort. He has a special talent with words and a way with them that often makes him say the right things at the right moments and makes his feelings and emotions reach out to others with his speeches, he can be pretty persuasive and has been noted to be able to soothe others' worries even despite being complete strangers. He's a person who feeds his strengths with his weaknesses, refusing to let those drag him down easily, it's his guilty feeling what leads him through life and has him aiming for the best. Keiichi has strong convictions and a clear sense of what's good and bad, thanks to his own experiences. His strong and firm will and determination are what allow him to go on with his life and do his best to not fail his friends. Keiichi shows a great mental strength in normal conditions, being able to cope with the immense feeling of guilt inside of him and not letting it devour him.
Physically, back in Hinamizawa Keiichi was very average in terms of athletic skills, though he still showed great strength at some given moments. Capable of breaking free from being restrained by his friends in the first arc of Higurashi, Keiichi can become highly dangerous with a blunt weapon, generally being a baseball bat that belonged to Satoko's brother. In the first arc of Higurashi, Keiichi is capable of beating to death both Rena and Mion, leaving their corpses in little more than a recognizable state. In the third arc, he beats to death an adult man with relative ease, and in the second to last arc of Higurashi Kai he's seen taking down a trained adult man with his bat (though in this attack the surprise factor played an important role, the fact the adult was knocked unconscious serves to determine the strength Keiichi used). However, during his time in Luceti those traits have been improved as Keiichi has spent more than a year training his body daily and learning to fight properly with push-knives both at ranged, middle and close combat. He's obviously stronger than he was in Hinamizawa and is more adapted to combat now than before, he's also faster and more agile.
There's only one "special ability" that Keiichi has, and that is the "capacity" to remember previous worlds that happened during Rika's quest for a way to avoid her fate of dying. This isn't a complete capacity or a great ability per say, Keiichi is unable to remember the worlds completely, the memories often come to him as vague flashbacks, deja vùs or dreams and it wasn't until Luceti that he realized that they were actually memories. The knowledge that they were memories caused them to come to him more often a a bit clearer, but they are still too vague and are mostly useless for anyone and anything except for himself and to feed his guilt.
Link to an image of the character: