[ INFO. ]
MAYFIELD.
Mayfield Name: Masumi Harvent.
Arrival: April 2011.
Address: 771 Bunker Street.
Family: isaaaaaaaaaaaac [ Mother ], princeofjunes [ Sibling ]
Gains: ☐ nope / ☑ got it / doesn't really care about it
☑ Winter coat -- June 6, census event regain.
☐ Scar across his nose.
☐ Jeans (ripped at knees).
☐ Ragged old shirt.
☐ Black shoulder-bag.
☐ Old-ass sneakers.
Seki seriously needs some more meaningful possessions.
APPLICATION.
Name: Miru.
Personal LJ: databomb
Contact Info: miruvix[@]gmail.com | dash chromatique @ AIM
Other Characters Played: None.
Preferred Housing: Random, please!
Character Name: Masumi Seki.
Character Series: Oyasumi Punpun / Goodnight Punpun.
Character Age: 16.
Background: Hope point format is okay!
〆 There's no wiki page on the series, but here is its page on Mangafox and here is its TvTropes page. The following is a summary of Seki's background.
〆 Seki's family runs a small shop that sells bentos -- packed lunches. His early childhood is happy and without problem. Most likely an only child.
〆 The thing about the bento shop was that it was associated with a nearby miso factory. The miso factory went bust and closed down, and this also badly damages the bento shop's finances. The shop begins to earn less and less money. Seki's father slowly turns to alcohol to drown out his problems.
〆 By the time Seki is in his late elementary school years, Seki's father is a complete alcoholic and has closed the shop entirely. His mother seems to have vanished from the picture. His father refuses to hold any sort of steady job. Seki briefly mentions considering beating his father with a baseball bat.
〆 He sticks with his small group of friends. Shimizu is one of them. Shimizu is a weird, spacey kid who tells fibs about being able to do the kamehameha and being able to see a God of Poop. Seki is skeptical about him, but still tolerates him.
〆 Still in elementary school, Seki has already started smoking.
〆 One afternoon, some of the kids in the group find a porn tape -- recorded over with some man babbling about having killed his family and buried the bodies at the old miso factory along with a large sum of money. Naturally, the kids are curious and want to go explore the factory. Seki decides to go along, mostly to prove that there's no dead bodies and that life's not so easy. Seki hates liars.
〆 Of course, they find no bodies and no money.
〆 But they do see a shadowy figures on the roof. All of the kids panic and flee, dragging Seki along. But just as they're about to make it out, Shimizu says that two of their numbers are missing, and that he's going back to look for them. The gate they were about to all escape out of closes. Shimizu and the two are stuck inside, and the two others that have gotten out run away in search of an exorcist. Seki can't open the gate to get back inside, nor does he believe an exorcist will be any use. He's stuck and useless.
〆 Just as Seki is about to leave, Shimizu called from inside the factory. He shouts, "There's a fire!" (Seki's cigarette must have lit the place up without them noticing.) The fire blows up part of the factory -- amidst the rain of glass and debris, an enormous shard of glass pierces neatly through the brim of Seki's baseball cap, very narrowly missing killing him. Seki, petrified, can only watch the factory smoulder and stammer to no one in particular, "Help ... Anyone ..."
〆 Suddenly, a downpour extinguishes the fire.
〆 It turns out that Shimizu and the two kids who had gone missing first are all safe. Everything's okay in the end. Despite everything that happened, they all manage to escape unharmed.
〆 (Except Seki. He develops a crippling fear of fire. He stops smoking, as a result.)
〆 Middle school. Seki's family's financial situation is growing worse. He grows into a loner, as his small group of friends begins to drift apart. Seki attends fewer and fewer of his studies, thinking it pointless. On the other hand, Shimizu is being bullied, having his money taken away by cruel classmates. Seki tries to defend him ("Money is something to earned with hard work,") but his fear of fire is exploited and he's beaten up. He doesn't really care. What he does care about:
Shimizu: "Seki, aren't you lonely being by yourself all the time?"
Seki: "If ... If you'll believe in me, I swear I'll protect you!"
Seki: "So don't ... leave me alone anymore ..."
Shimizu: "... OK!"
〆 Middle school nears its end. Seki skips almost all of his classes and has no intention of continuing his education into high school, saying, "Even if someone like me studies, I'll only learn how to be crafty." But he tells Shimizu to study hard and go to a good high school. He gets into frequent fights, and rumor goes that he knocked up one of the prettiest girls in the school. He skips school for over a month.
〆 Middle school ends. True to his word, Seki doesn't go to high school.
〆 Seki's dad has gone completely missing. His family's situation is dire -- Seki dresses in ragged clothes, wearing the same coat he wore back in middle school. "In fact, if we can't bring in the money this time, we might even be forced to give up our home. And then we'll all be homeless, haha."
〆 Wandering around with Shimizu one afternoon, bored, Seki spots a poster that someone has put up advertising that they'll "do anything." Seki scratches out the phone number and instead puts down Shimizu's phone number -- he doesn't have a phone. Soon afterward, Shimizu's phone rings.
〆 It turns out to be a pretty lady. She's been dumped and scorned by her boyfriend. She wants Seki to kill him. Seki, desperate for the money and apathetic about what might happen to him, agrees, and stalks down the man in question. Follows him to a subway station, and stands right behind him near the rails. No one is watching. He prepares to push the man in front of the incoming train.
〆 In the end, he doesn't. The weather was too nice. He couldn't do it.
〆 He meets the woman to return the money. She also says she's glad he didn't do it. For a moment, it looks like they might have a meaningful conversation, but of course, that's dumb. When he tries to console her, he gets a cup of water dumped on his face. To a certain extent, he agrees to what she did.
〆 He meets up with Shimizu in the park afterward. They go grab something to eat for dinner with the pity money that the lady left to Seki. Life goes on.
Personality:
First impressions of Seki are generally that he's one of those unsociable loner-type high-school kids. He keeps mostly to himself, associating with very few people and asking nothing of anyone. Back when he still went to school, his classmates sometimes called him a 'creep' and a 'loner-poser,' and even after quitting school, he spends a lot of time sitting alone on a park bench, thinking over what to do. He doesn't hang out with anyone except Shimizu, it seems, and doesn't have any intentions of making friends. Probably doesn't see the need for it.
Not to mention, he seems to have had some violent tendencies from a younger age. Nothing that notable, but just the regular rough schoolboy antics -- punching his classmates when they're being stupid, grabbing Shimizu in headlocks. Even to people he can vaguely call friends, he's terrible at showing any sort of affection. Seki always speaks in a slow, apathetic, near-deadpan drawl; he rarely smiles, and even then, it's more of a crooked smirk than a show of happiness. If he likes you enough to grab you in a headlock and drag you around like that, keeping you close by his side, that's probably the closest he'll get to showing that he enjoys having your company around.
Judging by the number of bruises and scrapes he gathered throughout the time he spent in middle school, he got into quite a lot of fights as well. Not necessarily because he picked them -- he's too quiet and apathetic for that, and he's not motivated enough to waste his energy trying to be the alpha male -- but because Seki doesn't back down from them when he finds reason for them. When he finds some bully taking Shimizu's money, he doesn't hesitate to confront the boy and throw the first punch when the bully refuses to return the money. Comes close to beating up the bully's companion-slash-girlfriend, too, saying "it doesn't matter if you're a girl." Not that he fights back with passion when he gets hit back, either. He doesn't seem to care much when he gets beaten down with a steel baton -- quietly limping back home without a whimper.
(A noteworthy item, however: Seki is scared of fire. The incident at the miso factory traumatized him somewhat, and Seki developed a rather crippling fear of open flames. Even something as small as the flame of a lighter will make him freeze up like a deer, and bringing the flame closer to him will make him back off like a frightened animal. It seems to affect him strongly enough to nail him down, rendering him unable to do anything -- turn away and run, push the source away, fight back, anything.)
Truth be told, Seki can almost seem a bit sociopathic at points, between his tendency to throw punches without batting an eye and his aversion to socializing with people. The truth, however, is that he's mostly just been embittered to the world too quickly.
Growing up with an alcoholic, neglectful father and a near-absent mother was probably a terrible influence on him. Not to mention, growing up burdened by increasingly dire financial problems convinced him that the world is quite an unwelcoming place -- nothing works out easily, and when people can only think of laughing and fooling around every day, it's stupid. They're stupid. People are all stupid. In a way, he acts a bit like one of those stereotypical angsty teenagers, convinced that adults suck and that the world is a rotten place.
He's more thoughtful than that, though.
In most ways, Seki's just a kid who's been forced to mature too quickly. Between his father's rapid decline into being a useless drunk and the knowledge that he could do little to nothing to help the situation, Seki came to evaluate everything surrounding him with a quiet and cynical light. Quite a somber child, Seki doesn't show his emotions easily because that would accomplish nothing -- it would just be a waste of energy. He doesn't show any sort of worry or sadness or panic easily, instead treating everything with the same lukewarm response. It's probably easier for him to deal with everything if he convinces himself that nothing matters much in the end.
And he's also quite aware of how futile all of his own attempts at staying strong ultimately are. The fact that he's bitter about the world does nothing to nullify the futility he feels about his own fate, and he can be a bit self-deprecating at times -- calmly saying that he's not smart, or skilled, or promising in any real way. He probably thinks his time on the planet will just be temporary and small.
But then again, then again. He is just a kid in the end. He just hides it very well. Seki does have some blatant, childish weaknesses deep down inside, it's just that he doesn't want to show them.
One of the most notable ones might be that he seems to need at least one person to rely on. Not so much someone to ask for help, but someone he wants to help. Because Seki's never been able to really look to his family -- asking them for help or being of any help to them -- so he instead needs to validate his own existence by promising to protect someone else. All he asks in return is that they trust him. Just before leaving school, Seki tearfully promises to protect Shimizu -- as long as Shimizu doesn't leave him.
(Despite his pretense at being a loner, you see, Seki's lonely. Perhaps even a little scared. He needs someone so fucking badly but he feels like he can rarely afford to show a weakness like that.)
In the end, Seki is a hypocrite -- a kid trying really hard to be something that he's not. The type to say, deadpan, that the world is a stupid place and people can only rely on themselves and that trusting other people is a foolish thing to do, but behind everyone's backs, quietly wish that he has someone to turn to. He probably rues the fact that he's such a gloomy loner and doesn't really love himself as a result -- knowing that the attitude he has isn't exactly the best way to face the world -- but he doesn't really know what else to do.
Life's been pretty mean to him, so Seki's learned to roll with the punches in his own quiet, somber way. That's all.
Abilities:
Seki doesn't really have any special abilities; he is, for the most part, just your average 16-year-old kid. He's shown to be a bit good with his fists, as he's able to beat down a classmate with little to no effort, but it's nothing that notable. That's about it, really.
Sample Entry:
VOICE.
[ click. recording start. there's just silence at first, because seki's gathering his thoughts. he doesn't like speaking thoughtlessly to most people, and there's certainly no one here that he considers an exception to that 'most.' so, a moment of thought, before he lets out a slow exhale. ]
Why are people here so determined to make us go to school?
[ the rustle of fabric as he slouches a bit further in his chair. ]
I've been going these days because of all the fuss, but it's so pointless. [ the shifting noise as he cants his head back to look up at the ceiling. his voice is a bit muffled because of the weird angle he's leaning his neck back at. ] Not everyone is built for school. Some of us just won't get much out of it.
[ another moment of silence. ]
But I guess it's not like I need to work for money here, either.
[ he sounds kind of -- listless. like he thinks this is all so stupid. a slow exhale before he mutters under his breath, ]
This is so boring.