Mai Oshinari
From Survival Of The Fittest
Name: Mai "Sayuri" Oshinari
Gender: Female
Age: Born March 10th 1990, 16 years old.
Grade: 10th
Extra Curricular Activity: Cross-country, Theatre, Dance, has job at local Cafe.
School: Hobbsborough
Appearance: Her hair is a traditional black, a layered medium length that hangs down and frames her heart-shaped face. Dark brown eyes are framed with full lashes, giving the asian girl a doe-eyed appearance. She's fairly tall, barely reaching 5'9", and weighs only 140, which is due to her devotion to dance studies. In her pack, carried around to various activities she participates in, are three outfits and two pairs of shoes. Most are lightweight and flexible, for the same reasons her frame is lean. Her school clothes are various zipper jackets that show the productions she's been in, and her pants are either light colored jeans or pleated skirts.
Description: Mai was born as an illegimate daughter of Sayuri Oshinari, who in turn was a daughter of a prisoner of the Japanese relocation camps during the second world war. To say that her grandmother and her mother were polar opposites was an understatement, though the justification seemed to lie in the fact that Sayuri was just a strong-willed person, determined to be her own person in lieu of succumbing to her mother's pressure. And she was, without a doubt, as loving and caring to her daughter as her mother was callous and forbidding to her. Even without a father, Mai seemed to adjust well to the lifestyle they had, despite it never being much. She was the spitting image of her mother, the pudge added to her childish figure by her father. Sayuri was every bit nurturing to the young child, but when Kismet had different plans, she had to improvise for the welfare of her daughter.
At the age of eight, Mai had been to the hospital more times than any normal child should have. All because her mother was diagnosed with Leukemia at the worst stage. It was terminal with a capital T, and with little Mai still unknowledgable to the concept of loss, her mother tried to live out the rest of her year tying up loose ends. Among these, making amends with her estranged mother in an attempt to keep Mai with her family was top priority. Yoko wasn't made completely out of stone, and took her daughters gestures at face value, making a vow to raise Mai out of her intense belief in family pride, whether the child was born out of wedlock or not. It seemed cliche at the time, tragedy bringing upon such a lifetime script to fruition as a mother and daughter reunite, but Yoko may have been a turn for the worst when Mai was brought along to visit her mother as often as her grandmother went.
The moment Yoko went to the bathroom and left Mai alone in the hospital room was fate's cruetly in spades. A frail Sayuri was passed out in her hospital bed when the roly-poly daughter dragged a hospital chair to her bedside. With her mother a sullen cheeked, bone-thin shard of the person she once was, Mai kissed her cheek and help up her hands, covered in the mittens her mother had knit for her before she was diagnosed. Sayuri opened her eyes for a moment, and let her cracked lips curve into a genuine smile, before the pulse monitor went into its ominous monotone bleep.
Mai was not even nine when she moved to a different part of New Jersey to live with Grandmother Yoko. Even more life changing was the parenting style of her guardian, especially in comparison to the kindness her mother had bestowed upon her. Yoko was a stubborn, very petite woman driven by discipline through the means of violent abuse. Before Mai had entered middle school, she was a timid scholarly girl who focused on her homework and obedience training she received from her retired grandmother. Unfortunately for Mai, she had not inherited the resilience her mother had had, and it seemed she would be condemned to become nothing more than a well-mannered, intelligent bore.
Whatever happened to her in middle school changed her life, for better or worse it still isn't known. In an attempt to comfort a classmate who was going through the motions of a terrible prank and its aftermath, Mai made a new friend that she grew very attached to. That friend, Jack Russell, was a good-natured, albeit sarcastic son of a well-to-do father with a fairly good life. Mai wanted that, and in a way felt inferior to him in many ways as they grew closer. For a long time, he was her shoulder to cry on whenever she had a problem at home. Which happened oft' times when her grandmother relived the anniversary of her deceased husband's deportation back to Hiroshima.
In Mai's mind, Jack was confident in a way she felt she had to be, and it didn't matter how she achieved this. Her first blow to her aged guardian signified more freedom than she had ever felt in years. And with that came a chain of events that switched the roles in the Oshinari household; Mai belittling Yoko at every turn, like she had done to her for four years.
And all her friend knew was that Mai didn't want him over to see her in her lesser moments. Which he assumed was the grandmother taking out her frustrations on his poor friend. It truly was Mai's darker side that only Yoko seemed to be exhibited to, but with time it grew into an unheathly coping mechanism. With time Mai had turned her grandmother into her personal slave, deciding when she ate, what she ate, when she could even pee. The power was intoxicating to her.
Yoko was not entirely useless, at times Mai would mull around the idea of giving her a break from the torturous lifestyle, taking into consideration that she had brought her one of her favorite pastimes. When she had first moved in, Yoko had the conviction to make Mai graceful by way of dance. Signing her up for elementary jazz after the first month of her guardianship, Mai fell in love with the art of dance, compelled by the improvised beats and basslines. However, when she underwent her transformation into a confident young teen, Mai delved into ballet as well, and with that she fell into the stereotypical physically obsessive dancer. She had grown considerably, another trait her father had bestowed upon her, but still was not lean enough for productions in her company. Bullimia and Anorexia Nervosa was what they'd call it, and Mai knew full well what she was doing, but this type of control of her body and diet boosted her confidence level considerably.
The now calm, collected, confident, and kind Mai was considerably in better spirits than she had ever been to Jack. Their friendship outlasted the times they had throughout middle school, and in high school proved to be just a friendship and nothing more, with neither seemingly interested in a relationship with each other. Mai's outlook on love wasn't the greatest, her belief being that it left you a mess when -and never if, because it was going to happen- they finally left. However, she never revealed to Jack the extent of her belief on the subject, letting him believe that she only meant romantic involvement. Which seemed true enough as Mai never had a boyfriend or any viable crushes besides the obvious attraction to an actor or two.
Jack was an improvisational actor, and the link to Mai's desire to be in theatre. It came naturally for her to love the Broadway musicals, singing the tunes in her attic room while she organized dancing trophies she had won in her competitions. When she was hired for a job in a cafe, Mai used all her money for voice lessons, and paired her voice, acting, and dancing as a classic triple threat. With a resolved plan, she was convinced her life would be all about the arts, complete with an art school scholarship and career performing in the spotlight.
The rub of the situation came in the form of a blonde-haired aryanesque perfection by the name of Kim Jones-Larame. Who, in Mai's opinion, had everything handed to her on a silver platter, including a god-given talent of an alto voice. Though the girls had been acquainted with each other in the first high school production for a soley freshman cast, away from the other actors in the school, they had been nothing but polite to each other ever since. The secret rivalry they shared was all consuming for Mai, but ignored by the oblivious Larame. With their freshman year coming to a close, Mai was fearful of losing her chances to the future she had worked for in the shadow of Kim's abilities.
Thus Mai put into the works a vendetta to ensure her efforts were not wasted, plotting to overpower Kim in some way in order to stand out. This proved simple enough, as Kim attached herself quite nicely, as most superficial rich children would do, spilling all her secrets to Mai in the delusion that she actually cared. And when people saw them in the halls, whenever Mai wasn't with Jack, they thought of how odd a friendship the two had, and how Mai had the short end of the stick. However, the catalyst in the situation was the new musical the school was putting on, one of Mai's personal favorites hands down. When the casting list came out, and the blonde had beaten her to the lead role, it was then or never for Mai to bone up and take initiative in order to secure her future.
More to come.
Clique: Theatre/Drama Geek
Relationships: Jack Russell, An Linh (acq.), Paris (enemy), Kim (rival)
Other: Always, always carries a duffel bag with her clothings and things needed for activities.
