Kouki's Questionnaire

Kouki lives in a decent, small, single-bedroom apartment in Wilmington Vermont, where she lives alone. Her parents left New York before she was born during the post-9/11 white flight, and she never tried moving back because the income rate compared to the cost of living was better in Vermont. She likes being able to go to the Big Apple for visits, but being far enough away that the residents don't bother her. Her modest single-bedroom apartment hides most of her work until you get into her bedroom closet, in which she has a rather robust collection of paraphernalia. Outside of that, it's a well-appointed New England affair with the occasional splash of Japanese culture thrown in from her mother's influence.

Kouki is an exotic dancer, being young, beautiful, graceful, and an expert dancer she does very well. Unfortunately being young, she also fritters most of it away as fast as she gets it, often partying it away and having nothing to show for it. Still, she makes enough to live in the city on her own and own and upkeep a decent car, which in today's economy is no small feat. Still, if it wasn't for the alcohol and recreational drugs, she'd have a lot more to show for her work. She does have one hobby which she keeps mostly a secret, she's a little bit of a weapons enthusiast.

Have you ever seen Sin City or read the comics? Well, she wants to create Old Town... for the fae... or at least changelings. She wants to create a safe, self-governing society, within another city in America in which changeling sex workers can operate safely and on their own terms. She doesn't think lobbying for sex worker's rights is ever going to change anyone in power's minds enough to ever actually get anything done along those lines, so she's fully prepared to do it by illicit means if necessary. She will kill, but only if she feels it's necessary. She will enter violent and dangerous situations, but not without securing some sort of advantage, or at least an escape plan beforehand. She is fully under the impression that it will have to involve making deals with corrupt and even illegal powers, but as long as innocent lives don't come into play, that's ok.

Probably when her parents found out she could change appearance and even gender on her sixteenth birthday, her mother found a strange boy "dressing in girl's clothes" (their daughter's) in their daughter's bedroom when her mother went to summon Kouki for her birthday party. She screamed, which brought Kouki's father, who punched the strange boy. When their daughter hit the floor instead of the strange boy they realized she was supernatural, and disowned her on the spot, kicking her out of the house. Kouki spent some time on the street, making her way to Wilmington by hitchhiking. It wasn't long before she used her charms to secure false identification and a job in a strip club. Kouki as she was now called (not her birth name), had always been rather graceful and a talented dancer, she learned the particulars of pole dancing quickly and gained quite a following. It used to be mentally taxing keeping up the appearance of "just old enough", but slowly people stopped questioning as she eased off of it and also actually became old enough. Somewhere along the way "she" became "they", but that's hardly news anymore...

Vincenzo "Vinny" Rosetti is Kouki's boss and the club manager where she works. Vinny is a chauvinist pig, but he is just smart enough to know that trying to take too many liberties with "the girls" is a great way to get his livelihood shut down. (Barely...)

Candy Rayne is a fellow stripper and Kouki's best friend, she doesn't know Kouki's true nature, just thinking that she is truly excellent with stage makeup. They both love to party, and Candy is great for steering Kouki into further bad decisions.

Maxine is Kouki's childhood friend from the suburbs and former neighbor. She still knows Kouki as Cammie Li Wright. She doesn't know why "Cammie" was kicked out of her home and believes she is homeless in the city, living in a shelter. She spies on Kouki's parents for her but despises them and the lies they tell to justify their actions.

Cammie's childhood was great until it wasn't. Meaning until their very religious parents found out their "daughter" was a nonbinary changeling, everything was fine. They did well in school, not as well as their parents would have liked, or their Japanese mother did, but well above average. They weren't as popular as their Varsity football father, but were certainly more popular than most students. If it were a teen high school movie she would have been the smartest member in a popular Asian clique. But this isn't a teen movie from the late 90's to 2000's, the truth was Cammie was a minority in a predominantly Caucasian area so she was already being observed. They learned at an early age, right around puberty, what they were capable of and kept it secret, but one slip-up spelled the end of all of that. That's already been gone through though. 

They thought so when they were younger, but it turned out to be hopeless puppy love. He wouldn't have understood their true nature being a narrowminded God-fearing Christian. Ryan McAllister, Kouki's high school sweetheart, was deeply religious and had traditional views, which only amplified Kouki's feelings of isolation. She kept her true nature hidden throughout their relationship, never revealing her supernatural changeling identity or her gender-fluidity. Their relationship was sweet but ultimately strained by Kouki’s constant need to hide such a big part of herself. The emotional distance this caused made it clear to Kouki that it could never last. Ryan remained unaware of why Kouki ended things, but for her, it was a step toward embracing her true identity, albeit a painful one.