Another Character Idea

I’m about halfway through the outline of the short story, here’s the character data for the second girl in the harem who’d be in the 2nd installment.

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Shizuka Hasegawa

22, Oct 23rd

Long black hair, brown eyes, glasses

Part-time librarian

Walks or takes public transport, no car

Shizuka is a bright, exceedingly off-kilter(read; 2000% on the spectrum) Japanese girl who Nate was friends with in high school. They didn’t share many classes but their school library had tons of manga and they often read there at the same time. Nate developed a little crush on her at the time but when he actually talked to her and found out how weird she was, it almost put him off, until he decided ‘no never mind I like this’. He hung out with her a lot after school after deciding to pursue her, but she was completely oblivious to his intentions and just saw him as a friend she could spout off random anime and manga trivia to.

When they were seniors, he confessed to her and Shizuka started avoiding him. He took this badly at the time but when he confessed it was an ‘oh shit’ moment for her where she realized she liked him and the spent the rest of the school year researching countless shoujo manga to come up with the best plan of action to accept his confession. She focused in on the trope where girls confess on their graduation day, but when they graduated, she couldn’t find him and her plan fell flat. It should be noted that she didn’t have a phone back then and they didn’t have each other’s numbers.

Shizuka was very depressed about this, but we’ll circle back to that after we go over some basics about her.

Shizuka has an older sister who, being a prodigy, got all the love and attention in her strict Asian household, but rather than it fucking her up, Shizuka was incredibly grateful no one cared as she basically got to do whatever since it’s not like she would live up to her sister, anyway. She’d spend her days and nights at the library not far from her house under the pretense of studying but she mostly just used the computers to access manga sites.

Shizuka’s brain is a vacuum where content is absorbed and stored. Whether it be anime, manga, or light novel, she has absolutely no standards when it comes to her entertainment and is able to enjoy anything. Whether it’s Sword Art Online, My Smartphone in Another World, or Isekai Sex Slave harem #394, it is literally all the same to her. “I liked it.”

Shizuka is not a gamer as she has abysmal hand eye coordination, but is the adorable type of girl who likes to watch by your side.

After high school, Shizuka had no direction and not much interest in college. She confided in the librarian, who has known her since she was young, and got offered a job. Shizuka’s parents were like sure why not, as long as she was doing something with her life. She still lives at home and walks to her job.

Eventually, Shizuka got a phone and it ruined her already lacking social skills. Now she’s dependent on the thing, hides behind it, and is always reading or watching something on it.

Nicki became friends with her after she came back to town. Now that she was exploring her hobbies, she started going to the library to read manga there and recognized Shizuka. Nicki is the type who can be friends with anyone, so Shizuka ended up taking her in and unloading her autism on this poor girl, constantly recommending she read and watch this and that. Genuine as she is, Nicki did check out everything she brought up, and Nicki became her second friend ever.

One day, Nicki was hanging out in the library reading one of Nate’s new short stories on her phone. Shizuka read some of it over her shoulder and was curious, leading to Nicki explaining it’s something a classmate of theirs wrote. Nicki remembers Nate and her were friends, and Shizuka is embarrassed like wait Nate wrote this? She snatches the phone from Nicki’s hand and scrolls through the whole thing in one go.

Nicki gets Shizuka to explain the reaction, learning their history. She introduces Shizuka to his pen name and his old fanfiction, which she devours. Unlike Nicki, she is hesitant to meet with him again because of how it ended for them, but Nicki eventually ropes her into her plan.

Nate needs experience if he’s gonna be a better writer. Don’t you want to help him? Shizuka realizes she very much does and is cool with Nicki setting the two of them up, but knows Nicki likes him too so she’s initially worried but she reminds him what nearly all of his stories are about- one dude with lots of girls. It’s not like he’d care.

Shizuka is simple enough to accept this at face value and with Nicki’s help she’d eventually offer herself to Nate for his experience, but things would be a bit aloof between them after they fuck as their history is kind of vague. Will be a good source of intrigue to know what exactly happened.