Name: Ryuu Michiru
Age: 16
Bloodline: Nanjirou
Clan: Ryuu
Additional Approvals: Moon Country as background.
Age: 16
Bloodline: Nanjirou
Clan: Ryuu
Additional Approvals: Moon Country as background.
Michiru carries herself with a composed elegance born not from vanity, but from discipline and restraint. Her presence is gentle at first glance, yet undeniably resolute. She has a stillness that suggests endurance rather than fragility. She stands with a poised, almost meditative posture with relaxed shoulders that are aligned, signaling that every breath is measured and intentional. Her movements are fluid and echo the training of both The Shrine and careful swordsmanship.
Her hair falls long and is loose down her back in flowing waves of deep black. The wind often threads through those strands, catching light that glimmer in faint hints of silver. Her face is shaped by subtle, delicate lines that hold the shadow of sorrow and the faintest echo of strength. Her eyes are calm, watchful, and reflective.
She dresses in layered robes that blend shrine-born purity with the traveling attire of a swordswoman. A pale Haori drapes softly over darker inner garments, tied at the waist by a disciplined sash that anchors her form. The fabric moves with her like quiet water, never loud or excessive, and at her hip rests two swords with dark and elegant scabbards.
Michiru finally gives off the impression of being comfortable in her own skin.
Her hair falls long and is loose down her back in flowing waves of deep black. The wind often threads through those strands, catching light that glimmer in faint hints of silver. Her face is shaped by subtle, delicate lines that hold the shadow of sorrow and the faintest echo of strength. Her eyes are calm, watchful, and reflective.
She dresses in layered robes that blend shrine-born purity with the traveling attire of a swordswoman. A pale Haori drapes softly over darker inner garments, tied at the waist by a disciplined sash that anchors her form. The fabric moves with her like quiet water, never loud or excessive, and at her hip rests two swords with dark and elegant scabbards.
Michiru finally gives off the impression of being comfortable in her own skin.
Michiru’s inner world is defined by quiet resilience shaped through years of restraint, self-suppression, and unresolved longing. She has lived much of her life in silence. Not the peaceful kind, but the muted stillness of one who learned in her youth that expression carried with it great risk. This has given her a contemplative nature, turning her thoughts inward rather than outward, and shaping a mind that notices small details others overlook. Things like the shift of breath, the weight of pause, and the way intention exists beneath movement.
She approaches the world with measured reflection rather than impulse. Conflict does not ignite her. Rather, it settles into her like waves meeting stone, a thing to be absorbed rather than resisted. Much of her emotional strength lies in endurance and the ability to continue, to remain, or to exist without collapsing even when grief presses heavily across her spirit. Beneath that composure, however, lives an ache. A lingering echo of a childhood spent divided from herself, constantly navigating who she was allowed to be versus who she truly was. This quiet sorrow does not weaken her, instead, it lends empathy for those unseen and unspoken at the edges of the world.
Her identity is a journey rather than a declaration. Transformation, to her, is not loud or triumphant. Instead, it is patient and unfolding. Accepting the name Michiru marks the first moment she allows herself to truly exist, but she does not imagine it as an ending. Instead, it is the beginning of a slow reconciliation between the hidden truth she carried for years and the life she now permits herself to shape. This gives her a profound sensitivity toward becoming, toward people in flux, and toward lives suspended in transition.
Though gentle, Michiru is not fragile. Her restraint is a deliberate thing and her calmness a discipline. She possesses a quiet moral gravity that is earnest, introspective, and deeply unwilling to disappear again for the sake of others’ comfort. The presence she carries inside is powerful and patient.
She is someone walking toward wholeness. Not with haste, but with unwavering resolve.
She approaches the world with measured reflection rather than impulse. Conflict does not ignite her. Rather, it settles into her like waves meeting stone, a thing to be absorbed rather than resisted. Much of her emotional strength lies in endurance and the ability to continue, to remain, or to exist without collapsing even when grief presses heavily across her spirit. Beneath that composure, however, lives an ache. A lingering echo of a childhood spent divided from herself, constantly navigating who she was allowed to be versus who she truly was. This quiet sorrow does not weaken her, instead, it lends empathy for those unseen and unspoken at the edges of the world.
Her identity is a journey rather than a declaration. Transformation, to her, is not loud or triumphant. Instead, it is patient and unfolding. Accepting the name Michiru marks the first moment she allows herself to truly exist, but she does not imagine it as an ending. Instead, it is the beginning of a slow reconciliation between the hidden truth she carried for years and the life she now permits herself to shape. This gives her a profound sensitivity toward becoming, toward people in flux, and toward lives suspended in transition.
Though gentle, Michiru is not fragile. Her restraint is a deliberate thing and her calmness a discipline. She possesses a quiet moral gravity that is earnest, introspective, and deeply unwilling to disappear again for the sake of others’ comfort. The presence she carries inside is powerful and patient.
She is someone walking toward wholeness. Not with haste, but with unwavering resolve.
The night Arai Ren was born the moon dimmed behind drifting shadow as if uncertain it wished to witness what had entered the world. Fog draped the islands of Moon Country in pale veils that softened the lines of shrine towers and marble corridors until the village seemed to hover above the sea. Candles wavered against white stone walls inside the birthing chamber where thin flames struggled against still air as attendants wrapped the child in silver-stitched cloth. The silence felt heavy, as if something unseen paused to observe. Beneath the infant’s ribs, a faint warmth stirred before falling quiet again, unnoticed by those who had already decided who he was meant to be.
Moon Country lived in elegance and restraint with bridges spanning over misted canals and markets flowing beneath silk awnings. All of this under the quiet dominion of the Shrine. Faith and commerce were inseparable there. Which meant things like discipline and obedience were bound tighter than prayer. Ren grew within that order, learning that attention was dangerous and softness unacceptable. His steps were too light, his gestures too fluid, and his presence too gentle for what a boy was meant to be. The Shrine framed difference as defect, and his father reinforced discipline like a shield made of fear.
Ren learned to divide himself from this world and escape to the other hidden wordless place within his mind. Only at night could he move as he truly was beneath the pale sky, when fog swallowed the courtyards and the bells faded into distant echoes. This is when he allowed his movements to soften into shapes that belonged to him alone. On some nights the air seemed to acknowledge him, and the quiet warmth beneath his ribs answered like a witness he did not understand. He grew older performing obedience which allowed him to survive inside the narrow space. It required endurance, that is, until the day a stranger stepped across the bridge and shifted the rhythm of his world.
Musashi Kenshirou arrived with the fog that morning, a man who was calm, grounded, and unassuming. The Shrine welcomed him as a ceremonial guardian, a swordsman invited only because his presence was part of observed ritual. Yet when he entered the courtyard, the nature of training changed. Movements aligned with breath instead of force, discipline emerged from stillness rather than harsh correction, and strength found shape through balance instead of punishment.
The others resisted the change, but Ren moved into it as if it had always waited for him. The body the Shrine had scolded for softness found belonging in flowing motion. What had once been condemned revealed itself as grace. For the first time, Ren moved without splitting himself in two and his posture steadied. The presence beneath his ribs stirred not from pain, but from recognition.
Evenings became further sanctuary when the courtyard emptied. The world beyond this place stayed rigid and silent, but within that boundary he discovered life that did not require self-betrayal. Kenshirou did not reshape him, he simply revealed the possibility that Ren had always carried but had never been allowed to inhabit. It was fragile, fleeting, and subtly irreversible thing. A thing the world around him was never built to sustain it.
The Shrine tolerated Kenshirou only so long as his presence appeared useful. Softness in any form would unsettle authority, and suspicion slowly accumulated. His departure came quietly one morning when the fog lay heavy, and the space he once filled belonged again to rigid voices. His absence was absorbed without acknowledgment, as though it would erase the evidence of what he had awakened.
Training returned to noise and force. The solace Ren had found fractured under this all too familiar pressure. Grief did not break him loudly, rather, it hollowed him quietly. Even the presence beneath his ribs lingered with heavy stillness. Realization was not a sudden thing but something within Ren ceased to bend. The life he had been pressed into could no longer contain him without destroying what remained.
The break came during a ritual framed as purification. Beneath lanterns his motion faltered from exhaustion born of years lived against his true self. The correction that followed was not guidance but erasure. Pain flowed through him but he came to the realization it was something he could no longer endure. When the ritual ended, silence deepened through the corridors, and a certainty settled inside him like a final breath drawn without permission.
Night spread across the land as Ren walked its familiar paths one last time. The silence reflected all he had lost and all he could no longer deny. Beneath the moon, the presence inside him answered with gentle steadiness affirming that there was still a self within him that refused to vanish.
The road along the cliffs fractured the moonlight into silver shards across the sea, and for the first time his movement belonged wholly to him.
The journey carried him across distant coasts and treacherous passes until the land rose into mountains crowned with towering clouds. High above the bustle of Kumogakure, where the wind swept across ridges and the peaks is where she encountered an old man. A man who kept a small temple-like home carved from stone and cedar. Not quite at the heights of the Monastery of Raiden that she had been hoping to reach… but close enough that the world below felt distant.
The man welcomed Ren without ceremony, his presence was calm, weathered, and deeply still. The man spoke of himself as one of the Ryuu Clan, though his eyes carried a knowledge that felt older than the mountain air. He neither questioned Ren’s past nor named him by any title the world had given him. Instead, he regarded the traveler with gentle gravity and asked only one thing:
“What do you wish to be called?”
The question rested between them like a doorway. For far too long of a long moment, the mountain wind traced across Ren’s face, and the life he had endured came back to him, in full. The silence, the division, and the quiet grief all began to loosen their hold. The presence within his ribs warmed as affirmation.
He chose a name that meant to become whole, to be shaped from everything he had carried and everything he would now allow himself to be…
“Michiru”
From that moment forward, she would walk forward, not transformed, but finally aligned with the path she was ready to claim. The mountains did not celebrate, and the clouds did not part. There was only breath, stillness, and the first true step of her new life forward.
And for the first time, it felt like it would be enough…
Moon Country lived in elegance and restraint with bridges spanning over misted canals and markets flowing beneath silk awnings. All of this under the quiet dominion of the Shrine. Faith and commerce were inseparable there. Which meant things like discipline and obedience were bound tighter than prayer. Ren grew within that order, learning that attention was dangerous and softness unacceptable. His steps were too light, his gestures too fluid, and his presence too gentle for what a boy was meant to be. The Shrine framed difference as defect, and his father reinforced discipline like a shield made of fear.
Ren learned to divide himself from this world and escape to the other hidden wordless place within his mind. Only at night could he move as he truly was beneath the pale sky, when fog swallowed the courtyards and the bells faded into distant echoes. This is when he allowed his movements to soften into shapes that belonged to him alone. On some nights the air seemed to acknowledge him, and the quiet warmth beneath his ribs answered like a witness he did not understand. He grew older performing obedience which allowed him to survive inside the narrow space. It required endurance, that is, until the day a stranger stepped across the bridge and shifted the rhythm of his world.
Musashi Kenshirou arrived with the fog that morning, a man who was calm, grounded, and unassuming. The Shrine welcomed him as a ceremonial guardian, a swordsman invited only because his presence was part of observed ritual. Yet when he entered the courtyard, the nature of training changed. Movements aligned with breath instead of force, discipline emerged from stillness rather than harsh correction, and strength found shape through balance instead of punishment.
The others resisted the change, but Ren moved into it as if it had always waited for him. The body the Shrine had scolded for softness found belonging in flowing motion. What had once been condemned revealed itself as grace. For the first time, Ren moved without splitting himself in two and his posture steadied. The presence beneath his ribs stirred not from pain, but from recognition.
Evenings became further sanctuary when the courtyard emptied. The world beyond this place stayed rigid and silent, but within that boundary he discovered life that did not require self-betrayal. Kenshirou did not reshape him, he simply revealed the possibility that Ren had always carried but had never been allowed to inhabit. It was fragile, fleeting, and subtly irreversible thing. A thing the world around him was never built to sustain it.
The Shrine tolerated Kenshirou only so long as his presence appeared useful. Softness in any form would unsettle authority, and suspicion slowly accumulated. His departure came quietly one morning when the fog lay heavy, and the space he once filled belonged again to rigid voices. His absence was absorbed without acknowledgment, as though it would erase the evidence of what he had awakened.
Training returned to noise and force. The solace Ren had found fractured under this all too familiar pressure. Grief did not break him loudly, rather, it hollowed him quietly. Even the presence beneath his ribs lingered with heavy stillness. Realization was not a sudden thing but something within Ren ceased to bend. The life he had been pressed into could no longer contain him without destroying what remained.
The break came during a ritual framed as purification. Beneath lanterns his motion faltered from exhaustion born of years lived against his true self. The correction that followed was not guidance but erasure. Pain flowed through him but he came to the realization it was something he could no longer endure. When the ritual ended, silence deepened through the corridors, and a certainty settled inside him like a final breath drawn without permission.
Night spread across the land as Ren walked its familiar paths one last time. The silence reflected all he had lost and all he could no longer deny. Beneath the moon, the presence inside him answered with gentle steadiness affirming that there was still a self within him that refused to vanish.
The road along the cliffs fractured the moonlight into silver shards across the sea, and for the first time his movement belonged wholly to him.
The journey carried him across distant coasts and treacherous passes until the land rose into mountains crowned with towering clouds. High above the bustle of Kumogakure, where the wind swept across ridges and the peaks is where she encountered an old man. A man who kept a small temple-like home carved from stone and cedar. Not quite at the heights of the Monastery of Raiden that she had been hoping to reach… but close enough that the world below felt distant.
The man welcomed Ren without ceremony, his presence was calm, weathered, and deeply still. The man spoke of himself as one of the Ryuu Clan, though his eyes carried a knowledge that felt older than the mountain air. He neither questioned Ren’s past nor named him by any title the world had given him. Instead, he regarded the traveler with gentle gravity and asked only one thing:
“What do you wish to be called?”
The question rested between them like a doorway. For far too long of a long moment, the mountain wind traced across Ren’s face, and the life he had endured came back to him, in full. The silence, the division, and the quiet grief all began to loosen their hold. The presence within his ribs warmed as affirmation.
He chose a name that meant to become whole, to be shaped from everything he had carried and everything he would now allow himself to be…
“Michiru”
From that moment forward, she would walk forward, not transformed, but finally aligned with the path she was ready to claim. The mountains did not celebrate, and the clouds did not part. There was only breath, stillness, and the first true step of her new life forward.
And for the first time, it felt like it would be enough…
