Kaito Akemi
Akemi was 4 when her parents died in the civil war. She heard the screams when they hid her inside the temple, she saw the blood as it leaked out of her mother's wounds through the crack in the cupboard doors. She saw the shadow of the beast that ate her father, summoned by the other side to give them an edge. Sometimes she has nightmares about it.
Shortly after the civil war, she found herself amongst many young children who had lost their parents. Like many of them, she was shuffled into a new home, under new parents, like a package. She found herself in a strange house, where the parents looked different, but both seemed to be.. male? It was strange. Her name did not change--her family was Kaito, the shrine keepers, and she spent much of her formative years returning to the shrine of her parents, hoping she would find that the last years were a dream.
She was trained at that shrine by her parents' friends, allowed to become a shrine maiden with the blessing of her new parents, whom she slowly started to accept as her family. Her new father told her the most amazing stories. Her new ... mother? Dad? ... made her the prettiest clothes. They were.. weirdly affectionate with one another, though. Akemi had always been raised in a strict and repressed home, and the sudden outpouring of open affection startled her. She resisted it and became very reserved.
She was very talented amongst the young shrine maidens, and experienced her Gempukku a year ahead of the other girls her age. She was given the opportunity to train as an Emerald Magistrate Yoriki, and jumped at the opportunity to work. She liked work. She met Togashi Tetsuo as a fellow Yoriki, and quickly became close with him. She thought of him as a friend, but he felt much more intensely for her. She didn't realize this for a long time, due to her own chosen repression.
When finally circumstances forced him to reveal his feelings for her, she was surprised to find she reciprocated them. They eventually married and had 3 children.
