I still have this terrible habit of putting my all into my applications, which burns me out and leaves me fairly bitter about being useless. I sit and spend weeks on something that other people can knock out in a matter of days, and it infuriates me. After investing all this time into putting these guys and girls together, more than half of them never make it to the forums that inspired them. It's not all misery and pessimism, however! I'm always grateful for the practice (at some point in the process, at least).
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It is an undeniable fact that there is a lot of Enmadaiou Ojirowashi for people to take in. Standing at six feet and three inches in height, Washi is a man who appears difficult to break; more than tall enough to make the majority of folks feel safe in his presence, and with one-hundred-and-ninety-one pounds built onto his frame, engineered in such a way that he could effortlessly body slam most people to the ground, were he the sort of man to relish violence. His uniform, practically rectangular torso may not be as pleasing to the eye to some as those with gym-built triangular chests, but the fact that his core’s muscles were built up over the years to protect his spinal cord and vital organs makes him legitimately stronger than the likes of those who spend all their free time haunting gymnasiums. It is clear that Washi eats well, exercises regularly, and has no intention of changing his ways.
The musculature he has received from carrying such a heavy torso around day in, day out has defined both his thighs and calves over the past decade. The skin that dresses what was once a pair of unmarred shins is now the home to a fistful of cosmetic divots, bumps, scrapes and bruises, products of every clumsy stumble into various pieces of furniture which remain visible through the fine hair that swathes his limbs, most visibly from knee to ankle and wrist to his elbow. His large feet, approximately a size thirteen, keep him anchored to the floor without fail, but with little in the way of grace.
By no means structurally comparable to a sack of walnuts, the definition of each key muscle in his arms is enough to indicate that heavy lifting plays a vital part in his day-to-day life, often in the form of various errands and favours for his tutors. The hands that attach to his broad wrists are, quite rightfully, larger than most of his classmates’. A single chocolate-coloured freckle can be found on the heel of his right hand, the only real curiosity to be found on both appendages. Long, but by no means elegant, fingers are his most valuable assets, their warm touch attributed to the man’s stellar circulation system. He can often be caught in the middle of dragging his fingertips across walls and shutters almost whimsically, or attempting to follow the brushstrokes in the varnish of his desk. To the uneducated outsider, the man simply cannot keep his hands, or his eyes, to himself.
His aversion to eye contact and the habitual wringing of his nodachi between his hands are often hand waved by many as symptoms of anxiety, a reasonable assumption to make, but one that is completely wrong. With so much musculature to see before one’s eyes climb their way up to his face, it is possible for acquaintances to remain unaware, for a long while, of the fact that Enmadaiou is completely blind.
With several years of first-hand experience behind him, Washi has reached the conclusion that no matter what he does with his eyes – whether he holds them shut or moves them around, for he has tried both - people will be unsettled. He makes no effort to hide the problem, nor does he go to any great lengths to draw attention to his plight. His unseeing eyes sit bare at all times, their blue-green irises surprisingly vivid and expressive, in some people’s opinions, for a blind man. Considering the cause of this defect was no more than an unlucky accident, it is understandable that eye movement remains as a part of his body’s repertoire that he has not yet shirked.
The face his faulty optics call home is a curiosity all on its own. Surprisingly boyish at times for a man well into his late twenties, a quality that is no doubt amplified by an occasional mop of deep brown hair and bright, but ultimately oblivious, oval-shaped eyes, but one that is never intentional on his part; not to mention a betrayal of the personality that controls every muscle. A broad forehead cloaked by a tousled fringe (depending on the month) slopes down to introduce his slightly angled, subtly shaped and dark brows. The helixes of his ears tend to hide beneath his lightly waved, short hair, although even without their cover they are, thankfully, not particularly outstanding and lay relatively flat on either side of his face.
His skin tone lingers towards the paler side of the Caucasian spectrum, though the thin film of flesh beneath his eyes regularly hosts dark, sickly purple circles born of fatigue, a tell-tale symptom of Washi’s unenviable state of excessive daytime sleepiness, almost as fixed to his face as his mouth and the reason behind the man’s penchant for regular naps under the watchful eye of a particular tree found on the academy campus. His cheekbones, though lofty, remain smooth, whilst the inward curve of his nose rounds into a tip and leads the wandering eye down to his full lips, their contours challenged by what some know as his default expression, a minute frown that hides two rows of ivory-coloured teeth. Much like his gaze, his subtle scowl addresses no one in particular – easily knocked out of place with the start of a conversation, anything to take his mind off of his predicament. Should a passing comment strike the right chord and coax a smile out of him, it becomes apparent that his canines are quite prominent in his mouth, set in a slightly odd, but not too unsightly, alignment.
Several fleeting years of vision taught Washi a number of valuable things, but one of the more fickle lessons concerned personal grooming. A mane any longer than his chin, he learnt, looked utterly ridiculous upon him. With this knowledge committed to memory, every four months or so his shaggy, dark chestnut hair is cropped shorter before it can even think of tickling his jaw, often taking his cue when he begins to receive a certain number of comments from his classmates. Simple and easily maintained with a single palm haphazardly run through the unkempt mass every few hours, his hair sees about as much attention as his jaw line. The beginnings of the natural waves sewn into his genetics make it a challenge to truly tame, one that Washi can seldom be bothered to accept. His aforementioned square jaw - and the pale skin above his upper lip, for that matter - is often home to a field of short stubble, for there is not enough patience in Washi to maintain a full-fledged beard, nor a completely smooth chin. He has settled into the routine of swapping between being clean shaven and a shadow of stubble every week.
Many things make a man. His flaws, his experiences; his aspirations and his mistakes, but not, contrary to popular belief, his clothes. Clothes hold no power over Washi in this life. They tell little and they prove even less. The man’s distaste for keepsakes speaks volumes compared to the robes he is forced to don within the academy. Not a single memento can be found on the man’s person, not one ring on any of his fingers, nor a lone pendant around his neck, or a string of beads lashed around one of his thick wrists. It is not a lack of knowledge that renders him bare. He knows the meaning behind such things well, for he is no fool. Mementos; lockets, rings, tattoos, are no more than sentimental tokens, tied to people or monumental memories their owner is desperate to remember. Washi wishes to remember nothing, not one face, or a single name of his second life. In truth, the only item that bares even the slightest resemblance to an accessory is ten times more practical than a bracelet.
Three lengths of silken cord, each one a darker shade of teal than the last, braided together and threaded through a pair of bronze rings sewn to either end of the back sheathe tailor made for his field sword. Strangely enough, the sheathe itself appears to have been sewn from a bolt of two-tone taffeta, a fusion of teal and regal purple lined with an equally lavish burgundy fabric that Washi thinks is silk. A lot of effort went into something that he seldom uses, a lot of emphasis placed on beauty for an owner who cannot properly admire the finished article. The entire affair is worn over one shoulder, but lies empty upon his back more often than not.
Washi will be the first to tell you how he cannot stand the attire found in the afterlife. The rigid, inhumane robes, the brutal straw sandals that scratch relentlessly against one’s skin should they opt for shunning the standard and equally awkward tabi. He may not have been fond of his first life, but Washi is a modern man who has been thrown backwards into an era he never cared for. The hakama he can just about tolerate, the remainder of the period attire, however, not so much. Whilst he jokes about being tempted to commit murder for a simple dress shirt – or even a t-shirt if that were all he could get his hands on – Washi lacks the necessary friends found in higher places whose strings he could pull so that he might find himself in possession of more contemporary, practical fashions direct from the living world.
With only period attire to choose from, Washi regularly chooses to go without when time permits it, shrugging the top half of his uniform or yukata off of his broad shoulders; the feudal equivalent of a businessman sliding the knot in his tie away from his throat. The sensation of the sun warming his skin is often preferred to the feeling that he is being baked inside his robes. If his ivory and iris coloured uniform, embroidered with the ShinÅ Academy’s own crest, is not required of him, Washi’s personal dress sense is best described as dull. He sees no point in paying extra for elaborate patterns he cannot see, opting for block colours, neutral shades, nothing that anyone in their right mind could consider garish. A distinct lack of texture is present in his current wardrobe, one of his few joys now that his vision have parted ways, and one that the modern world could probably remedy with a helping of flocked prints and deconstructed fabrics.
