Aoi Mishima

Name: Aoi Mishima

Gender: Male

Age: 18

Grade: 12th

School: George Hunter High School

Hobbies and Interests: School, Reddit, violin and classical music, chess

Appearance: Aoi Mishima cuts a slight figure at 5’ 6” and 122 pounds. His bones are noticeably visible under his skin, and he has little in the way of either fat or muscle. His hair is jet-black, cut short with long bangs that frequently hang over his eyes. Aoi keeps his hair neatly brushed, though he rarely attempts to stylize it to any greater extent. His face is oval-shaped, fairly round with little jawline, but a sharp chin. His eyes are an extremely dark brown, verging on black, and fairly large, though his near-sightedness causes him to squint often even when he is wearing glasses. His skin is fairly clear, but there is some mild scarring on his left cheek due to a history of acne, which he now treats with cream. Aoi’s pinky fingers are noticeably shorter than his other fingers, which are long and slender, and have been since birth. As a consequence of his disdain for outdoor activities, he is fairly pale. Aoi’s personal style alternates between a professional one and a casually apathetic one, depending on circumstance and mood. On the day of the kidnapping, he was wearing black slacks, a button-down white dress shirt, sneakers, and black, plastic-frame glasses.

Biography: Aoi Mishima was born the last of three children to Osako and Mariko Mishima in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Aoi’s grandparents had been placed in internment camps when they were still young adults, and the experience would go on to affect not only Aoi’s parents but also Aoi himself. The lessons they learned, and taught their children, was that one must prove one’s worth in order to be treated with respect, and as such, Aoi’s parents, who grew up working-class, would constantly over-compensate in order to prove their worth—studying hard, taking respectable jobs, and becoming upstanding members of the local community. Aoi’s parents, both mid-level executives at the industrial chemical company Seltzer-Krudd, met through work, and after a quick, chaste romance, married in Chattanooga.

Aoi’s parents took a keen interest in his education, pushing him hard to do well in school; Aoi acquiesced easily enough. From a young age, Aoi was shy and socially challenged; to make up for his social ostracization, he put all of his energy into schoolwork, both as a way to occupy himself and as a way to maintain some semblance of self-esteem. His interactions with his older brothers did little to change this view, especially given their respective relationships with their parents; his eldest brother, Shinji, 7 years his senior, was a model student, and frequently the subject of public praise by his parents, whereas the middle brother, Hiroki, 5 years Aoi’s senior, was more often the subject of derision. It also helped that Aoi was a naturally curious person, and that discovering interesting new things was one of the few ways in which he knew how to enjoy himself.

During his early years, Aoi’s parents would introduce him to whichever activities felt appropriate and praiseworthy for a boy his age. Only a handful of these stuck, however; for example, Aoi’s hatred for physical activity meant that he quit Boy Scouts fairly early on, as watching him sulk during meetings became more of an embarrassment than a point of pride for his parents. One activity that stuck was music. Aoi’s parents introduced him to a variety of instruments; upon seeing that the only one he took a serious interest in was the violin, they enrolled him in violin lessons. As a youth, Aoi showed a moderate degree of talent, and thus, while his parents pushed him to be a performer worth listening to, they rarely pushed him to be anything more. Aoi’s interest in the violin would wax and wane throughout the years; while he enjoyed the music that he played, he often found the rote practice aspects to be repetitive and dull. Nevertheless, his hatred for quitting would cause him to keep playing even when his interest level was low. Aoi likes to make a show about how much he enjoys classical music, but in truth his appreciation of it is quite superficial, as much of his actual knowledge of music revolves around performance.

An activity which held his interest more naturally throughout the years was chess club. Aoi loved strategy games growing up, as they were one of the few ways of having fun which seemed acceptable to him. Because chess was the one with the most developed school-based competitive scene, and thus the one that he wound up most involved in. In addition, chess club was one of the few semi-social activities in which he did not have to actually socialize much, and in which he did not feel like an ostracized outsider with little social standing, as his skill mandated that the other members of the club at least treat him with respect. As time passed, Aoi came to enjoy competitive chess less and less, finding it exhausting when his brain was already thinly stretched from excessive studying. However, he still enjoys it greatly as a leisure activity, and as such remains engaged competitively, using competition as a way to justify the time he spends on leisure chess.

As Aoi progressed into middle school, his studies progressed from being a way to compensate for low self-esteem to being the entire basis of his self-esteem. Despite his professed disdain for friendship, he couldn’t help but feel good whenever he received praise or admiration for his intelligence from teachers and peers; thus, his sense of being of value and worth to anyone also became tied to his notion of himself as smart, and he was able to gain some measure of social acceptance by helping his peers with their homework. Aoi was, however, extremely careful not to let them do anything he considered cheating; Aoi hated people who, in his opinion, were unwilling to work for their success, or were uninterested in their own learning. However, his peers had little use for him besides his book smarts, and the fact that his intelligence and diligence were the only traits of his that were ever deemed worthy of admiration caused him to become increasingly aware of the fact that most of his identity was tied to his studies. Similarly, most of his sense of community and solidarity rested in his identity as an Asian-American, which caused him to uncritically take pride in being a part of the “model minority,” basing his identity on the thought that he could succeed through honest hard work in the absence of social advantage. Thus, he increasingly bought into the idea that grades and success was the source of all his value as a person, and began taking a perverse pride in his lack of social skills, seeing his studies and his social life as a zero-sum game.

While Aoi's parents continued to push him academically, they lightened up somewhat, seeing that he needed little additional encouragement, and that his obsessive studying habits was hindering his ability to form meaningful connections. A spat with Hikori further encouraged this tendency, as they came to realize how they had hurt their middle child, and they began to shift to a more supportive, encouraging approach. At this point, however, Aoi was set in his ways. Despite their urging that he was growing up in a different context from them and thus no longer needed to use success to prove his worth, Aoi was already convinced that his value was tied to his ability to be successful, seeing this connection as a deep truth rather than a reality necessitated by WWII-era racism. This, combined with a feeling of resentment which resulted from Aoi's feeling that his parents had set him down this path in the first place and were encouraging him to re-arrange his values only once it was too late to truly do so, caused Aoi to dig his heels in, and led to a rift with his parents which never truly healed.

Going into high school, Aoi continued to excel in his studies; while his natural interest was in the sciences, the fact that he tied his sense of self-worth to academic success meant that he felt driven to do well in all his studies. These attempts to buoy his self-esteem, however, failed; Aoi’s lack of close friends caused him to eventually see himself as a cold, unfriendly person unworthy of friendship, only tolerated for his ability to help his peers with their schoolwork. He began to wonder whether his classmates were better people than he was. As a result, a series of rationalizations began. To be warm was fake; to be popular was shallow; to enjoy oneself in the short term was immature. His attempts to quash any feelings of arrogance about his own intelligence, combined with his excellent grades, would lead him to rationalize that he wasn’t significantly smarter than any of his classmates; rather, he was, as he saw it, simply a harder worker with a more mature perspective on life. Aoi thought lowly of anyone who compromised their pursuit of success, and would frequently berate himself for failing to reach his full potential. Aoi’s need to see himself as more mature than his classmates would lead to an obsession with topics that he saw as big, or worldly, issues; his perception of himself as a cold individual would also lead him to rationalize that his coldness, his ability to be logical, was what enabled him to make the hard choices and do the right thing in times when other people would be weakened by emotion.

Unwilling to discuss his thoughts with any of his classmates, Aoi would turn to the internet, where his experiences would prove formative; after absorbing his opinions via Reddit, Aoi’s politics would prove to be an interesting mix of progressivism, neoliberalism, and conservatism, as he decried people on the left who he saw as weak, people on the right who he saw as illogical, and anyone who he saw as being unwilling to work hard for their success, a mixture that is largely a result of his need to justify an existence that he has realized is deeply unhappy and unsatisfying. While the arguments that Aoi posts to Reddit tend to be fairly rigorous, they often ignore things which Aoi has convinced himself are trivial or unimportant. As a result, several people have begun challenging Aoi’s worldview. These challenges frighten Aoi to a considerable extent, who has long coped with his unhappiness by believing that it was necessary and virtuous; the possibility that his attitudes do not make him more effective at making a positive difference in the world, that they may even be detrimental, has wreaked considerable damage on his personal identity. Aoi does little else on the internet that isn't school-related, finding it difficult enough to justify the time he spends on Reddit; he only manages to do so by telling himself that swaying other people to his point of view is a worthy cause.

Now in his senior year, Aoi maintains a low profile. While he tends to see the average peer as selfish and shallow, he rarely allows his dislike of anyone to be known. The only notable exceptions to his policy of social isolation are his combative attitude towards bullies and his tendency to attempt to befriend people whom he perceives as outcasts, due to his need to maintain his self-image. However, the latter rarely leads to any lasting connection, as Aoi has a tendency to look down on someone once he finds that their worldview differs significantly from his. At home, Aoi maintains a distant but cordial relationship with his parents. While Osako and Mariko periodically push Aoi to be more social and outgoing, they themselves are somewhat socially awkward and, seeing Aoi's discomfort with socialization, feel reluctant to push him too hard. Due to the age gap, Aoi has difficulty forming any deep connection with either of his brothers, instead feeling dim admiration for Shinji and dim contempt for Hiroki. Aoi has been accepted to the University of California at Berkeley, where he plans to major in chemistry. There, he hopes to make discoveries which will benefit broad swaths of the population, thus validating his view of himself.

Advantages: Despite a tendency to overestimate his abilities, Aoi is smart and well-organized. His tendency to think of himself as a cold, unemotional person means that he feels driven to make well-thought-out, ruthlessly unsentimental decisions.

Disadvantages: Aoi’s anti-social tendencies leave him with few friends and allies. In addition, he is not very fit, and would be unlikely to hold his own in a fight.

Designated Number: Male student No. 084

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Designated Weapon: 15" wooden paddle

Conclusion: Not so tough a warrior without a keyboard in front of you, are ya? Between that, your lack of friends and your 'weapon', I think we spared your father from throwing you into a volcano himself. - Dennis Lourvey

'The above biography is as written by Zetsumodernista. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Zetsumodernista

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Collected Weapons: 15" Wooden Paddle (assigned weapon)

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