The following character is open for adoption. The information presented may be altered, but alterations must be submitted for consideration. Empty fields filled in red are open for creativity. Address mail to Shutani Houkiku for application.
Sho is very much a people-person and whines enough for both himself and Houkiku. He has one of those legendary "big-mouths", not in that he is bad at keping secrets, but rather the one who always predicts the doom and it happens. To the outsider, he is very seldom serious. Unlike most Meiji-Dynasty survivors, he bears no grudge to any sect and anyone he meets is automatically a friend unless he ill-treats women.
Chinese beggar clans are also schools of underhanded martial arts specialising in staffs and hand-to-hand. This is where Shoichi learnt his basic skills. after he attained what was equal to a Journeyman status, he went to set up shop in Kyoto, begging. One night, as he staked outside a scruffy inn, a man gave him some money to kill someone else. Shoichi accepted and realised how easily it came to him. Thus his conversion from a full-time beggar to a part-time hitokiri. Calling himself the Tengu and dressing up in black clothes with stylised sleeve fringes resembling feathers was a frill.
One night he met the Arashi-Yasha on the rooftops and the two, finding kindred souls in each other, became partners. He was 25 then. There's nothing that he doesn't know about Shutani Houkiku, a.k.a Arashi-Yasha, and vice-versa. Their relationship is a kinship that both find closer than any romantic love and hold above all else. To Sho, Kiku is both the sister he never had and his "Kihou no Megumi" (contextually translated as "Angel of Salvation"), and there is nothing he wouldn't do for her.
It wasn't very long, though, before the stress of the job got to him and the Tengu retired under the Yasha's encouragement. Shoichi went back to his rural village home, yet untouched by the revolution, and settled down to the potter's life he started out escaping from.
Years passed. The Meiji era came and nothing much changed. Then, one day he found a young man called Eiji by the road and took him in for a week. And because the man in his bloodfeud-rage reminded him so much of Houkiku in her early days, two weeks after Eiji left his home, Shoichi set out after him. It wasn't long before he lost Eiji's trail, so Shoichi changed his course and headed straight to Tokyo, instead, and who should he find but... ...
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