Mayu’s lore contains a lot of me retroactively filling in the gaps and expanding upon previously established traits that I hadn’t thought of explanations for. It honestly was kind of a fun challenge to ask myself “how did she end up like this?” and to write backwards from there, almost like me getting to know her over time.

Please do excuse any confusing parts - I am definitely not someone good at deciding on OC lore and traits straight from the beginning, so even my own characters are a matter of me slowly figuring out who they are as I go, with inspiration striking in moments that feel as if they finally decided to tell me something (how dramatic). Anyways, enjoy!

Part I

• By all means, Mayu was intended as an “average, normal” girl when I created her. So her life pre-NRC was also rather mundane - she did well in school, had friends, etc. The most “unusual” part, if you could even call it that, was that she was raised by a single mother.
  • I’m not sure what happened to her father, but it’s likely he never really was a presence in her life. Regardless, Mama Shiokawa did her best to provide for the two of them.
• Mayu’s current personality has her being full of curiosity and optimism, and being very direct with how she feels. This wasn’t always the case though. She, too, came from a very “stereotypical” Asian family where there’s a palpable gap between parent & child. You know, the culture of just never saying the phrase “I love you” to each other, interactions being cordial yet always with a bit of distance. A politeness, a mutual respect (and awkward bond) in the form of asking about your day but never really prying deeper, and quietly being occupied with your own work under the same roof. It’s just something that’s always been that way, and too awkward for either side to change, and it’s nobody’s fault. While she was still the friendly type, she kept a lot more of her feelings private as well - it just didn’t feel “natural” to be that open.
  • Her mom, being a single parent, juggled multiple jobs to get by, which as you’d expect made the distance between them even wider. Mayu’d often only see her mom occasionally (gone before breakfast, back long after dinner), so she got quite good at taking care of herself.
    • She either made her own meals, or would eat whatever her mom made and left in the fridge. This was tradition at this point - her mom would make food in advance, wrap it up, and leave it either on the dining room table or in the fridge with a note. It was the least she could do to care for her daughter (and make up for her absence to the best of her ability)
  • Sometimes when her mom happened to be home she’d try to connect with Mayu more, like asking her to come learn a recipe or something. But typical teenagers being teenagers, these often were missed or postponed - “Sorry mom, maybe next time! I have to go study/go to club practice today,” etc., stuff she never thought twice about.
• Mama Shiokawa and Mayu were neither close nor on bad terms, but despite the sense of loneliness (it couldn’t be helped), they did love each other in their own awkward ways. A family of two that was nothing out of the ordinary. And so Mayu went on every day, carrying out a regular high school girl’s life.
• And amidst these ordinary days, an unexpected phone call while Mayu was at school would shatter everything. It was the hospital contacting her to let her know that her mother had unexpectedly passed away at work.
  • Everything afterwards was a blur. She remembers frantically running out of class, but little else - she can’t remember how she got to the hospital, can’t remember what this doctor’s name was, or what on earth he was even explaining to her. She could hear words come out of his mouth but her mind was blank - I was just talking to her yesterday…? What is he saying? I.. I can’t understand anything.
  • The doctor notices that she’s likely to not be absorbing any information and expresses his condolences before telling her to go home for the time being. More information will be mailed to her later. It’s okay if she can’t process anything right now.
  • (Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe if I go home she’s still there.)
• Somehow Mayu gets home. She unlocks the door. It’s empty as usual. She doesn’t bother saying “I’m home.” Unable to think about everything that she supposedly needs to (What now? Does she need to handle the entire funeral herself? She has nobody she can ask. Did her mom even leave a will? Can she even keep going to school?) she just barely manages to snap herself out of it and convinces herself to deal with simpler tasks first. Like right now- right now she should probably make dinner then think of what to do next.
  • She opens the fridge, and in it is a familiar sight: a plate of food, wrapped up neatly, with a note on it. From mom.
  • She retrieves it from the fridge and quietly walks to the dining table (it has two chairs). She sets it down with a with a tiny clink and unwraps it, a motion she’s done a million times already.
  • And she takes a bite. And its something she’s also eaten so so many times already. But this’ll be the last time, now. And it finally hits her, and all of a sudden she’s struggling to wipe her tears in between bites. This was real, all of today was real.
    • You think you always have more time, until you don’t. Especially at her age, her mom wasn’t even old yet.
    • I never did learn how to make this from mom. I always thought there’d be a next time.

Part II

• From then on Mayu begins handling all the expected stuff - the funeral/cremation, the finances, etc. all on her own.

  • Disregard the fact that I don’t have a well thought out explanation for it yet, but she has no relatives to take her in. Regardless, she’s not willing to leave the place either. It’s the home she shared with her mom after all. She can’t bring herself to leave.

• Only after her mom passed did Mayu finally know just how much her mom hid from her just to make sure she didn’t worry and could just be a happy girl with a normal life.

  • The bills come rolling in. Rent is a thing she has to personally deal with now. She has to pay her own tuition and every expense. Her mom’s loans fall onto her shoulders as the next of kin. Mayu has to figure out how to budget everything, including whatever money her mom left her, and no, it’s not going to last forever.
  • So she takes up part time jobs, whatever someone like her could get her hands on. Stretch things out, whatever she can make last longer will have to last longer.
    • Waitressing, convenience stores, bakeries… anywhere that’d take her. She can’t afford to be picky.
    • There’s no time to hang out with her friends anymore after school, she has to work. She quits the archery club because that’s also impossible to keep up with now. She politely turns down the help her friends offer out of concern, because some part of her is convinced she has to do this herself or she can’t forgive herself. (She’s the one who didn’t properly value the time she had, after all)
    • In terms of manga panelling, think repetition, like in Fujimoto’s Look Back:
      • Fresh ingredients in the fridge that gradually becomes emptier with time, replaced by piles of convenient store food wrappers that fill the trash bin
      • Message notifications on her phone going from 10, to 50, to 99+, and then 99+, 99+, 99+… (there’s no time)
      • Disorganized bills strewn across the table that just keep getting messier. Any attempts to keep things organized gradually become frustrated tosses onto the growing pile. Can these damned collectors not give her a break at all?
    • Her life is a cycle of work, school (Whenever she can. She’s aware she’s accumulating more absences as she loses the energy to go. Can she even still go to college? She’s not sure she wants to think about that. Too much to deal with right now, can’t think that far.), go home, deal with tasks, rinse and repeat. Whatever life she had before, this was her new “normal” now.
      • She’s tired. She’s so tired. But she doesn’t have a choice. She has to keep going. She has to or she’ll lose everything that’s left.

  Part III

  • A few months go by.
  • At this point Mayu can hardly remember interacting with anyone outside of work & obligations. It feels like the last time she saw her friends was ages ago. (They’re awkward teenagers too, and even though they’ve expressed concern, they don’t know how to help.)
    • Gradually people stopped bothering her because she’d never respond. Though the guilt gnaws at her (she misses them too), she can only bring herself to respond to absolutely mandatory things these days.
    • She looks awful too - picture her eyes with barely any light in them, dark bags, just generally looking like a 180 from before.
  • It’s late at night after her shift one day as she walks home with an umbrella in the light snow, and she’s wondering if this is how her life is going to be - how long does she have to keep this up? Given how abysmal her academics look currently, it feels like going to college is little more than a pipe dream. Evidently, a “normal” trajectory of life was out of reach now, so naturally she has to start thinking of a backup plan… she’s so exhausted but doesn’t know what else to do other than to just press on. Continue, continue, you’ve done this before and you can do it again, just… just take it one day at a time. Even if it feels so pointless-
  • A quiet, weak “meow” from the darkness abruptly interrupts her train of thought. She looks around, and her gaze settles upon a tiny kitten by her feet, its little figure barely illuminated by the dim street light. It looked frail and sickly, its gray & white fur matted and dirty. It looks up at her with its big blue eyes as it meows again.
    • (At this point you might have figured out what I’m going for www)
    • Whether it was feral or abandoned, it looked like it had been surviving on its own for a while. Yet despite how sick it looked, it kept meowing at Mayu, as if pleading.
    • Mayu… doesn’t know what to do. She wants to pick it up, but there’s no way she can take care of a cat right now. She doesn’t have the money, she doesn’t have the time, her apartment doesn’t allow pets either. After what seems like forever, she breaks eye contact (with much difficulty) and walks away, leaving the cat watching her as she leaves.
      • It waits, and it waits, and nothing happens… until its ears perk up at the thump thump thump of running footsteps approaching, the soft crunch of snow accompanying each step.
      • Mayu’s back, in her hands a plastic bag full of pet supplies from the nearest convenience store. She catches her breath and looks to the spot where she last saw the kitten and thank god, it’s still here. In the end, she couldn’t resist helping after all.
  • But the kitten really wasn’t doing well. Mayu takes it to the vet (she’ll cut back a few more meals this month somehow), and it’s not good news.
    • Either it was simply outside for too long and too sick for any hope of a cure, or just…. Mayu straight up can’t afford whatever treatment it needed.
    • She takes in the information and brings the kitten home anyway. If she can’t save it, then at least she wants its last days on earth to be inside a warm home instead of on the cold streets.
  • For Mayu herself, though, for some time, her home… wasn’t empty anymore. Even she thinks it’s silly, but just the fact that there was someone at home waiting for her to return seemed to reignite something in her. It didn’t matter how hard her days were, she had the kitten to come back to at the end. She worked, she came home, she chatted with the kitten about her day. She fed it the best food she could get (that it could keep down), she played with it using household items, it slept in a makeshift bed of cardboard and a towel, its food dish was just a regular plate… but for a while, just a small while, Mayu didn’t feel so alone again.
  • And despite how weak the kitten was, it still gave her whatever love it could - purring against her touch, meowing for her attention while she was working, napping beside her… until one day, it closed its eyes in its little cardboard bed and never woke up again.
  • Mayu knew this was going to happen eventually. So she accepts this ending, and she wraps it up in a towel, and takes it somewhere that she could bury it. Somewhere that’ll get a lot of sun when the season changes, so it won’t be so cold again.
    • (Although she knew about pet cremation services, she couldn’t afford it.)
  • In terms of manga panelling… in one panel the kitten is curled up in its cardboard bed, in the next one it lies there in the shallow grave she dug, curled up as if it were merely asleep just like before.
    • Mayu takes out a black and white stripped ribbon from her pocket, and gently places it on the kitten. It would be buried with it, because knowing it had little time left made Mayu too scared to actually tie it around its neck after purchasing it on a whim. Indeed, she never even gave the kitten a name, fearing it would make the parting too unbearable when the time came.
  • In reality, the kitten was only around for just a few weeks, but Mayu felt her whole world change when the kitten entered her life. Her world that was shattered into pieces started to feel like it was mending again for the first time. She’d spent so long alone that she’d forgotten how it felt to not be alone. She’d spent so long with nothing to love that she thought she didn’t have it in her anymore, until the kitten proved that she still had love left in her heart. Life hadn’t managed to rip that out of her after all, no matter how beaten down she was.
    • So she sets the ribbon with the kitten, and tells it she’s so sorry that it only got to spend such a short time on earth. She never had a chance to feed it more yummy treats, never got to buy nicer toys for it, and she’s sorry because maybe if it weren’t her it’d have had a better fighting chance.
      • So please, go somewhere where you’ll be healthy and free and happy and get to eat whatever you want. Go somewhere where you’ll be very very loved and never have to be cold or hungry again.
        • As she tells the kitten these words and tears roll down her face, there’s light in her eyes again.
        • As short as their time together may have been, the little kitten taught her something precious. Remembering how to love made her remember herself again. So she decides she’ll pull herself together again, it’s still hard but she’ll find a way. For herself, for mom, for the little kitten that she hopes understood how much she loved it.
        • But it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that it was just her. Perhaps, if some miracle existed and the kitten could have another chance at life again, and if they could meet again under different circumstances, she’d like to give it a better life this time.
          • I never did pick a name for it, after all…
  • Her vision goes dark as she closes her eyes, and when she opens them again she’s greeted by an unfamiliar sight.
    • She pushes open the coffin (where even is she? How did she end up here?), and amidst the commotion she sees a gray & white cat with blue eyes, darting around stirring up trouble - lively, energetic, and loudly proclaiming that his name was “The Great Mage Grim!”
      • Grim… Grim. Ah, so your name is Grim!
    • Insert the entire Twisted Wonderland prologue here, essentially. You know the rest.

Extra notes

• Mayu starts her life in Twisted Wonderland feeling like she was given a second chance at life too. She’s so open with her feelings now because she never wants to make the same mistake again. If she loves someone, she’s letting them know, because she never wants to miss the chance to tell them again.
  • Plus it’s ironically a bit easier here since she, well, doesn’t need to deal with work and paying stuff off and all that here. (She’s sorry about all the suddenly empty shifts though…)
• There is an intentional parallel with her mom, who did everything she could to make sure her daughter never had to worry about anything, and could live a relatively peaceful and comfortable life. Whatever hardship there was, she was willing to bear with it because she had her reason to.
  • At the verge of losing her will to go on, Mayu found a reason to as well. It’s small, it’s maybe nothing to an onlooker, but there being someone, or something, she wanted to care for and to come home to again made her pull herself together. “Being needed” and loving someone is such a strong motivator for the Shiokawas, isn’t it? I don’t know how much she realizes she’s just like her mom in this sense.
• As to whether or not Grimmy is that cat, or it’s just a coincidence, or perhaps some other explanation… I’ll leave that for you to decide ww.
• Mayu dislikes eating alone as a result of these events, but doesn’t really express that verbally. She just feels happier when there are people around for meals.
  • She’s more than happy to cook for other people as well. You might notice her putting more energy and effort into it compared to when she’s only preparing food for herself.
• She picked up a lot of little habits to make things just a bit more fun, or more bearable. Stuff like spinning tools in her hand, humming songs while working, etc.
• Her mom’s room has been left untouched ever since her death.
• In terms of what might’ve happened to the apartment after Mayu got isekai’d, she paid an entire year’s worth of rent in advance when she began managing her mom’s leftover funds, and gas/electricity etc. are paid with auto-withdrawal. That still means she only really has 1 year of time before she’s about to start panicking if she’ll be evicted and lose the place. Hopefully there are special terms for if the resident goes missing…? I have no idea.
  • Maybe I can cheat and claim time flows differently between the two worlds or something
• She never really shares any of this with her friends at NRC, since it never quite comes up unless someone asks. But she doesn’t think it’s important to bring up either, she’s far more focused on trying to make the most out of her new life right now.
  • Angst potential for Jamil or any friend realizing they kind of don’t really know much about her, but truthfully, she really isn’t bothered… it’s okay, really.