Name: Ren'ai Masayoshi

Alias: no nicknames yet, though generally she goes by "Masayoshi-kun"

Age: 17

Height: 5'6 1/2"

Weight: Not too heavy, not too light; Masayoshi has a very willowy, almost athletic build.

Blood Type: B negative. (Type B people are vibrant, energetic, and throw themselves into activities, but have a core of deep shyness--in other words, their constant activity is a cover for their insecurity.)

Likes: Dance games, reading, drawing, writing poetry, cooking, flower arranging, origami.

Masayoshi loves her PS2 almost like a pet, though she never plays anything except dance games on it. Her favourite dance game is Para Para Paradise, closely followed by Dance Dance Revolution--she loves to get lost in the music, to forget her mind and just let her body act of its own accord. She's become quite a good dancer this way, and although she doesn't like the dance club or rhythmic gymnastics at her school, she can often be found dancing to almost anything at home--and singing along at the top of her lungs.

Most of the time, though, she turns her energy towards quieter pursuits--she's a voracious reader who will devour anything from manga to mystery novels (though she won't touch romances), and her class notes are always covered with doodles. She's a bit of an escapist, and books and drawing are a way of losing herself--she loves to entangle herself in complicated stories and elaborate otherworlds.

Flower arranging, cooking, and origami are the only "traditional" things she really pursues--they're fairly precise and take quite a bit of concentration. Cooking is just something she does because it's a habit; since her mother's death, she's had to make her own lunch every day. Preparing the next day's bento every morning has become an elaborate ritual for her--she's been known to make incredibly large and complicated lunches, just to keep her hands busy while she clears her mind. However, she's a little embarrassed by the fact that she's become good at something so "girly", and always tells her friends that her father is the one responsible for her huge lunches.

Dislikes: Aphrodite (and the dreams she has concerning the goddess), team sports, being forced to act "ladylike", anything remotely resembling a love story, hamsters.

Masayoshi is deeply disturbed by what little she knows of being Aphrodite's vessel--it frightens her to think that her fate is out of her own hands, and the dreams she has of becoming or speaking to the goddess always terrify her. What she has learned about Aphrodite from these dreams has a definite influence on her behaviour--she rebels very strenuously against giving in to anything that seems to be connected to the creature she sees in her visions. Consequently, love stories--or references to dating--make her uneasy and irritable; likewise, anyone bothering her about "acting more like a girl" will find themselves in for quite a shouting match.

She has a deep dislike of team sports, particularly ones which involve a ball--she doesn't like how competitive they get, especially since she thinks that anything you apply yourself to should be fun rather than driven by the idea of achieving some ultimate goal or breaking a record. As for hamsters, her dislike of them has become something of a running joke among her friends--the two hamsters she owned in middle school made her life miserable for a few months until she finally begged her father to give them away.

Greek God/Goddess: Aphrodite, goddess of Love

Appearance: Masayoshi is slightly tomboyish, but still quite feminine. With dark-blue, chin-length hair and blue-green eyes, she tends to look a bit pale in most types of light. Still, she's far from sickly-looking--she fairly glows with energy, even when at rest. When she's in a good mood, her walk becomes a kind of quick improvised dance; most of the time, however, she carries herself with casual confidence.
She doesn't pay too much attention to her personal appearance--her hair is the best example of this somewhat careless attitude, as it's usually tousled, her bangs forever spilling messily over her right eye. Her willowy, slender figure allows her to look good in almost anything, but generally she prefers slacks and buttondown shirts--and confuses her classmates and teachers alike at school by wearing a boys' uniform.

Personality: /Masayoshi/
Reserved but good-natured, Masayoshi is initially very quiet but can be quite friendly once she's "warmed up" to a person or situation. While she comes across as quite a tomboy, with her boy's uniform and short, tousled hair, she isn't all that masculine--she considers herself neither truly male nor truly female, just Masayoshi.
Her visions of being the goddess Aphrodite, as well as the discovery of her talents, scare her quite badly; this is what inspired her to cut her hair and start dressing in boys' clothes. She doesn't want to surrender any part of herself to Aphrodite, so she rebels against being feminine or traditional--and this includes never accepting a date or love-letter. Since her sixteenth birthday, she has tried to squelch any attraction she's felt beyond friendship for anyone, although occasionally she will admit to being curious as to what love and dating are like.
She feels as if she's never alone but always lonely--something is missing in her life, and she isn't sure what. In many ways, she feels as if she'll always be caught between two extremes--she wants to be neither a goddess nor an ordinary girl, and can't figure out how to strike a happy medium. Losing herself in any of her hobbies is a way for her to temporarily drown out this emotional neediness.

/Aphrodite/
Aphrodite is a capricious goddess, but is steadfast in her decisions once they've been made; she is deeply perceptive of the emotions of others and often oblivious to logic. She has absolutely no interest in the power struggle which goes on between the gods, instead much preferring to look at the world through Masayoshi's eyes--and to meddle in the emotional lives of her classmates.

Talent/Skill: Masayoshi can sense the connections between certain people--if two people are meant to be together, the bond will "appear" in her senses, usually as an aura, a symbol, or simply a soft coloured glow over each person's heart. Sometimes this also serves to show her whether two people are meant to hate each other.
A talent she is less aware of is her innate ability to turn the atmosphere in a room more friendly just by being there--being the vessel for the Goddess of Love, she tends to inspire love (albeit not on a very intense level) whenever she's in a large group.

Weapon: None. Aphrodite's only weapon is her power to inspire love and/or hate.
Masayoshi hates fighting, but her hand-to-hand skills are good enough that she isn't afraid to start a fight if she's been highly provoked.

Family: Masayoshi's family consists solely of Ren'ai Suoh, her father. Suoh supervises production of a children's television show, and thus is always bringing promotional materials home to show off; he tends to be very affectionate towards Masayoshi, as she is his only child. The two of them are quite close, although Suoh wishes his "little girl" would be less of a tomboy; once a year or so, the two of them get into a spectacular fight about Masayoshi's short hair and boyish clothing.

History: Masayoshi's early childhood was very happy--she was outgoing and bright, always surrounded by friends and cherished by her parents. However, when she was twelve, her mother became pregnant a second time--and, after a very difficult pregnancy, died in childbirth. The baby only survived his mother by a few hours.

Masayoshi and Suoh were both devastated--in fact, Suoh's deep and persistent grief over his wife's death left Masayoshi wondering whether love were truly worth the effort if it brought so much pain. After a year's worth of grieving, father and daughter finally made the joint decision to leave their old house and start over--Suoh arranged for a job transfer to a different local branch of the television station he had been working for, and Masayoshi, despite being a year behind most of her classmates, entered the school she currently attends.

At the beginning of the summer holidays after her sixteenth birthday, Masayoshi had a frightening dream: she saw herself transformed into some sort of resplendent being, watching over an intense battle and laughing. At first she thought it was a nightmare--until she had a waking vision exactly identical to it. After that, she began to be able to see bonds of love or hate between people; she vaguely understood that some force greater than herself was at work, and immediately decided she didn't want any part of it.

That summer, she gave herself a complete makeover--while she had never considered herself feminine by any standards, she decided to try exaggerating the more tomboyish aspects of her attitude in order to widen the gap between herself and the beautiful, terrifying creature in her dreams. She cut her hair short, packed away every skirt she owned, and swore off romantic love unconditionally; when she returned to school in the fall, most of her classmates barely recognized her.