Difference between revisions of "Kazue Nagashima"

In 1987, during the early years of the technology boom across the world, a German engineer by the name of Helmut Brandt was asked by the R&D firm he worked for to transfer to Japan and begin working for the firm's holding company in Port Island: Kirijo Group. He agreed, and on his Alien Registration Card, adopted the alias ('tsusho') of Nagashima.

Helmut was not the only transplant. Three years later, in 1990, a biotechnology researcher named Ilse Bar made the same transfer, and began to work for the Kirijo Group's biotech division. Sharing a common language in a foreign land, the two German expatriates inevitably bonded. In three more years' time, with Helmut having successfully negotiated the mire of Japanese naturalization (and taken Nagashima as his legal name), they married.

Kazue was born on Port Island in December of 1994. Her full name is Kazue Felicie Nagashima, and -- despite her immigrant parentage -- she is 100% Japanese, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

That's what she says, anyway. With a wild head of hair and skin that just will not, no matter how hard she tries, take a tan (she burns, peels, and freckles), she'll always stick out like a sore thumb, and she faces all of the challenges that foreign students can face, while not really fitting in with them, either. The opening of Gekkoukan Private School ten years ago came as a relief. There she was able to better blend in with students whose parents also worked for Kirijo Group's different holdings, whose citizenships were also sometimes in flux. It isn't a perfect fit, but it's better.

Being caught between two identities is a common theme for Kazue. There's absolutely no question as to where she inherited her intelligence from: the girl is gifted when it comes to all things hard science. Whether it's engineering or computer science, chemistry or biology, she's nothing shy of a prodigy. With both of her parents working for Kirijo Group -- and one of them even having been involved in some top-secret project a few years ago -- it seems pretty clear to everyone involved that Kazue is destined for a distinguished enrollment at Fra Mauro University and eventual employment with the Kirijo Group, herself. This is especially clear to her parents.

Unfortunately, that isn't where her interests lie.

Kazue loves to dance.

She loves all different kinds of dance, but particularly ballet. And she's good at dancing.

That's the trouble, though: she's only 'good.' She isn't 'great.'

For one thing, she's inherited her mother's petite stature. While being 5'3" helps her to blend in with her classmates a /little/ bit, it certainly isn't what one imagines when thinking about long-limbed ballet dancers.

For another, the same things that make her so good at science -- analytical thinking, attention to detail, precision -- tend to get in the way of dance as an expression. She's distractable, technical, and has a peculiar habit of focusing her laser-like attention too heavily on one thing, rather than the whole picture.

In daily life, this makes her a little bit clumsy; she's the girl who walks into things because she's too focused on whatever she's thinking about or doing with her hands.

In dance, this makes her an occasional disaster.

There's also no getting around the fact that she just looks different. On a stage with ten or twelve other girls, all of whom are Japanese, she breaks the symmetry of the visual performance. Maybe that shouldn't count against her, but it certainly does.

She tries VERY hard, but she's never front and center stage, always relegated to the second row or the end of the line. Her hardest work lets her keep up, but does not catapult her forward. No matter how many meals she skips, no matter how many extra hours of practice, no matter how many more blisters on her feet, she just isn't -- and probably never will be -- a great dancer.

She wants nothing so much as to go to Sumaru University and study dance, rather than Fra Mauro, for a lifetime of doing calculations... and so she now finds herself in the peculiar position of wanting to be a good daughter and good student, but knowing that if she's too good at either of those things, she'll wind up being made to do something she thinks she doesn't want to do.

It's extremely stressful.

Gekkoukan is also a high-pressure school, with rigorous academic standards.

Neither of those things by themselves would have been enough to drive her toward the brink of a nervous breakdown, but in 2006 her father was recruited by Kirijo Group to be part of a top-secret branch of the company. The risk involved -- and the inability to share that part of his life with his previously close-knit family -- placed strain on his marriage to Ilse, and created a home environment that only added to his daughters stress. Four years later, that stress has not improved. Though Helmut and Ilse adore their daughter and have done what they can to hide from her the extent of the damage done to their relationship by Helmut's new position, Kazue is a sensitive girl, and there was never really any hope that they could conceal it completely.

Compounding this strain is the fact that Kazue auditioned for a production over the winter (The Nutcracker) and was not cast in either her first-choice OR her second-choice role. It was a crushing disappointment from which she has not recovered.

This is how her current story begins: reeling from her failure, struggling to please her parents and avoid aggravating familial issues with poor performance, but perfectly aware that every academic success she has is one more paving stone along the route to Fra Mauro, and a future that she isn't sure she wants.