YUKIMURA, mai

Appearance: Mai is a small girl. She stands at only five feet and a quarter inch, though someone might just pin that blame on her ethnicity. She is also quite thin, weighing in around ninety pounds, give or take a couple pounds. She has to watch what she eats due to allergies, and her meals tend to be lacking in... everything because of them. It has provided some concerns for her health status, and she has to take vitamin supplements to make up for what her body would otherwise reject. Her skin is as pale as snow due to a variety of reasons. The first reason is her albinism, which also gives her white hair and red eyes. The second reason stems from the albinism: lack of sunlight. Once more, she has to take a supplement pill, this time for vitamin D rather than just food.

Mai's hair falls down past her waist, and she normally doesn't do much with it. Brush through a couple of times and go, that's her usual course of action. When it comes to be out of uniform, Mai tends to just wear whatever she can throw on. Sometimes she somehow manages to dress up, other times she can be found running around in sweats and a t-shirt. It's one of those whatever I grab first out of the closet sort of things with her. Whenever she does venture outside, she always carries around an umbrella to protect herself from sunlight. She even carries the umbrella around campus, even on cloudy days.

Personality: Mai could easily be identified as a wallflower. She may not easily blend into the crowd, but her personality reflects a wallflower in several ways. She is quiet, keeping to herself and rarely speaking out. She doesn't even defend herself if she ever gets picked on. She learned not to when it came to her family, and it carried over to her school life as well. Mai is very insecure with the world. She fidgets when she is placed in uncomfortable situations, and she is more likely to take flight than to flight. She runs from her problems rather than confronting them, having little courage to do so in the first place. She also has a tendency to let people walk all over her, rarely ever finding the willpower to tell them no.

Despite her insecurities about almost everything, Mai is a sweet girl. She tries to keep a smile on her face and tries to hide away the negative emotions and experiences that have been building up since she was young. While she may not be very useful, she is a loyal soul who would do anything she possibly can for someone she trusts. She hates disappointing people, even if she grew up disappointing those she cared for most. To keep from doing such a thing, she works hard to keep up her grades and to fulfill whatever tasks are thrown at her.

Those negative emotions--that of sorrow, anger, and fear--grow too much for a small girl to handle at times. Mai has been known to excuse herself from class at times in order to hide away in the bathroom, locking herself in one of the stalls as she allows herself to cry. Crying in front of someone else is not acceptable to her, though that might just be because her parents never liked to see her tears.

Magic: Mai specializes in transformation magic, much to the horror of her family which strictly specializes in healing. She does know a little about healing magic, due to her parents trying to force it into her, but it's really just the knowledge of it. She cannot actually perform any sort of healing magic, though she can easily help someone study for a lower level healing class if she was asked. With transformation magic, so far it only goes as far as altering the world around her and the short period transformations. She tries not to do anything outside of what she has learned in classes. With transformations involving her body, whatever form she takes tend to keep her albinism trait, and they tend to be smaller than average as well. She also tends to favor feline and hare transformations when it comes to animals.

History: Mai is the youngest child out of seven. Born into a family that was entirely made up of doctors and nurses and ran their own clinic in their small town, it was a wonder how she was ever given any attention. Her parents were away from home until late at night, and her siblings were off at school through a majority of the day. Her only companion were the koi fish in the pond out back and her grandparents who stayed home due to retirement. Being albino, she was already shunned a little by her family. She was nothing more than a blemish on their 'perfect health' reputation. Her grandfather disapproved of her the most, and he would also find something wrong with everything she did at home so he could scold her. It was her grandmother who would come to her rescue, being the only one who seemed to pity her.

Due to her albinism, she was never allowed to go to the local elementary school. Instead, her grandmother tutored her at home. Lessons were short as her grandmother lost energy quickly and would go to take an hour or so long nap before she could do anything again. Not even the family's medical magic, which flowed strongly between the generations of her family, could help her with her old age and its consequences. When Mai was only six, her grandmother was on her death bed. Mai was the only one who bothered to stay beside her as she laid dying. Not even her grandfather stayed with her, simply grunting before walking off. Her grandmother was her only shelter against her family. With her gone, there was no one for her to turn to during her times of need.

Not long after her grandmother's death did her own magical powers begin to show themselves. It wasn't much, being too early to truly present themselves as something she could manipulate on her own. However, it was enough for her grandfather to notice that it was not the healing magic that the Yukimura family was known for since long before their time. The signs were small, random. Nothing she ever noticed as she played happily by herself around the koi pond. Stones would change shape, fish would gain a new spot of color, and a blade of grass would turn into a twig. Her grandfather was not pleased.

Soon, the entire family knew of this. Their attitude towards the girl turned harsh. Her parents, when home, would resort to forcing her to read countless medical textbooks that had language only a college student or older would be able to understand. She took to just looking at pictures, if they had any other than charts and diagrams. If she ever spoke out, she would be struck. If she ever threw a tantrum, she would go without meals (other than her supplementary pills). If she shed tears, she would be confined to her room. They would not even allow her to spend an hour or so outside with only the fish to talk to like she normally did, whether the fish could actually understand her or not.

As the years slowly passed her by, Mai molded into the shy, insecure teenager she is today. As she reached thirteen, her family did not let the opportunity to rid themselves of the girl to pass them by. She was enrolled in Serenus Academy of Magic, and she was shipped off to the island as soon as she was accepted.