✽ popdrop: character history
Sep. 25th, 2020 06:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wonderlandgirlわたしを咲かせて《パパッ》
とびきりの《パパッ》かがやき《パパッ》
きみにあげるんだ！《love！ love！ love！ love！》
✽ in the night garden
とびきりの《パパッ》かがやき《パパッ》
きみにあげるんだ！《love！ love！ love！ love！》
✽ in the night garden
flowers didn't ask to be flowers
Aya is a Flower Maiden: a girl born with a petal-like seed on her body, considered by her culture to be cursed. Like her 'sisters', she was raised in seclusion to become a concubine after she came of age, when the seed on her neck started to cyclically bloom. When she is in bloom, branches of cherry blossom grow from the seed and spread across her skin, and she will come into a highly aesthetic heat. This is extremely debilitating to her, and can only be controlled by sleeping with another woman.
Aya's parents obviously knew what she was from birth, but she was fortunate enough to have a 'seed' that was easily hidden even from herself, so they raised her as their own for most of her infancy. As Aya got older her being a Flower Maiden got harder to hide, so they sent her away with a troupe of travelling performers. The theory behind that being that if she was constantly on the move, she wouldn't be in any one place long enough for suspicions to form. They picked the group in question because it was all-female and one of the lead performers, Ayumi, was also a Flower Maiden - in this case a runaway from the Kyoto Garden - and she and her lover would therefore know what needed to be done to keep Aya safe as she grew.
They got away with this until Aya was around 13, when Ayumi was spotted out of costume and recognized by a former patron as the flower maiden Suiren. The woman turned her into the authorities, who had her brought back to the Garden. Though Ayumi tried to convince her captors that she was the only one of her kind in the troupe Aya was spotted as an unbloomed Flower Maiden and taken in too, registered under the name of Ouka.
Ayumi initially acted as Aya's mentor and protector in the Garden, too, but she was several years older, and when she was 14 Ayumi reached Full Bloom and died. While Ayumi was still alive, though, she and Aya would occasionally sneak out of the compound to perform to audiences who were actually there for singing and dance, not for the Flower Maidens' more intimate services. Seriously, is this any way to treat an artist. After Ayumi died, Aya carried on performing alone - feeling that it was the only way to keep Ayumi's memory alive, since being a Flower Maiden is actually terrible! and all records of her had been destroyed on her death, with the rest of the girls in the Garden expected to pretend she had never existed.
Aya does not think of herself as disruptive! But shortly afterward she was 'taken in hand' by Chisato - Flower Maiden name Tsubaki - on the orders of the Mistress. Chisato has been in the Garden for as long as she can remember and is considered the most accomplished girl in their cohort. Stated aim: bring her up to some kind of standard. Though this has been successful enough, and Aya has progressed a long way under Chisato's guidance... Aya has had an influence on Chisato as well. Chisato is an extremely talented shamisen player, and Aya eventually half-persuaded, half-blackmailed her into coming out to accompany her on her evenings out. Eventually, they realized they had fallen for one another and started to meet up in secret after dark, sneaking into the Mistress's gardens so their scent wouldn't give them away.
Inevitably, this couldn't last. Chisato came into first bloom several months before Aya did, and they were separated. Though they still tried to meet, Chisato was often expected to entertain until late at night, and her changed appearance made her very obviously a bloomed Flower Maiden. The one attempt they did make to leave the compound nearly ended disastrously, and after that Chisato was unwilling to try again - spending more and more of her time with Kanon (known in the Garden as Asago) another girl who had already been through First Bloom. This left Aya with nothing to do but anxiously await her own First Bloom, something that the younger girls whispered of anxiously, something widely reputed to be painful and humiliating.
The rumors were right, as it happened. Bound and naked, she was taken by the mistress of the Garden in front of a watching crowd of noblewomen - something deemed the fairest way to decide who gets to claim a Flower Maiden's virginity. And it put an end to any hopes of being able to sneak around outside by herself, as well.
So now she's stuck in the Garden, stuck managing her Bloom cycles, and stuck as a courtesan. Yes, Kanon turned out to really be very nice. But she's still getting more and more desperate to find a way out - she wants to at least die free, if nothing else.
Aya's parents obviously knew what she was from birth, but she was fortunate enough to have a 'seed' that was easily hidden even from herself, so they raised her as their own for most of her infancy. As Aya got older her being a Flower Maiden got harder to hide, so they sent her away with a troupe of travelling performers. The theory behind that being that if she was constantly on the move, she wouldn't be in any one place long enough for suspicions to form. They picked the group in question because it was all-female and one of the lead performers, Ayumi, was also a Flower Maiden - in this case a runaway from the Kyoto Garden - and she and her lover would therefore know what needed to be done to keep Aya safe as she grew.
They got away with this until Aya was around 13, when Ayumi was spotted out of costume and recognized by a former patron as the flower maiden Suiren. The woman turned her into the authorities, who had her brought back to the Garden. Though Ayumi tried to convince her captors that she was the only one of her kind in the troupe Aya was spotted as an unbloomed Flower Maiden and taken in too, registered under the name of Ouka.
Ayumi initially acted as Aya's mentor and protector in the Garden, too, but she was several years older, and when she was 14 Ayumi reached Full Bloom and died. While Ayumi was still alive, though, she and Aya would occasionally sneak out of the compound to perform to audiences who were actually there for singing and dance, not for the Flower Maidens' more intimate services. Seriously, is this any way to treat an artist. After Ayumi died, Aya carried on performing alone - feeling that it was the only way to keep Ayumi's memory alive, since being a Flower Maiden is actually terrible! and all records of her had been destroyed on her death, with the rest of the girls in the Garden expected to pretend she had never existed.
Aya does not think of herself as disruptive! But shortly afterward she was 'taken in hand' by Chisato - Flower Maiden name Tsubaki - on the orders of the Mistress. Chisato has been in the Garden for as long as she can remember and is considered the most accomplished girl in their cohort. Stated aim: bring her up to some kind of standard. Though this has been successful enough, and Aya has progressed a long way under Chisato's guidance... Aya has had an influence on Chisato as well. Chisato is an extremely talented shamisen player, and Aya eventually half-persuaded, half-blackmailed her into coming out to accompany her on her evenings out. Eventually, they realized they had fallen for one another and started to meet up in secret after dark, sneaking into the Mistress's gardens so their scent wouldn't give them away.
Inevitably, this couldn't last. Chisato came into first bloom several months before Aya did, and they were separated. Though they still tried to meet, Chisato was often expected to entertain until late at night, and her changed appearance made her very obviously a bloomed Flower Maiden. The one attempt they did make to leave the compound nearly ended disastrously, and after that Chisato was unwilling to try again - spending more and more of her time with Kanon (known in the Garden as Asago) another girl who had already been through First Bloom. This left Aya with nothing to do but anxiously await her own First Bloom, something that the younger girls whispered of anxiously, something widely reputed to be painful and humiliating.
The rumors were right, as it happened. Bound and naked, she was taken by the mistress of the Garden in front of a watching crowd of noblewomen - something deemed the fairest way to decide who gets to claim a Flower Maiden's virginity. And it put an end to any hopes of being able to sneak around outside by herself, as well.
So now she's stuck in the Garden, stuck managing her Bloom cycles, and stuck as a courtesan. Yes, Kanon turned out to really be very nice. But she's still getting more and more desperate to find a way out - she wants to at least die free, if nothing else.
