Profile

Character name: Mukahi Gakuto
Character journal: tbm
Age: 17, turning 18 in the fall
School year (include school section eg HS/JHS): HS, 3rd year
House (and rationale): Sakura - Gakuto’s no samurai but in spirit, he practically fits the house ideals perfectly. He is very much an in-the-moment kind of person who lives his life right now. He gets frustrated when things don’t go his way and tends to get annoyed. Despair isn’t really his thing. He’d rather just make everyone else around him miserable since misery loves company.
Familiar: A sugar glider named Apple
Wand: Dogwood, unicorn hair
History: (how/why is he/she here? When did he/she arrive?)

Magic was never something Gakuto thought about. He was a normal kid from a normal non-magic family. As far as he knew, magic was just a thing that for anime, movies, and games. So it was a bit of a shock when, on a dare, Gakuto found himself floating in the air. He’d been dared to jump as high as he could, measured against a tree branch. Gakuto did that. And then couldn’t get down. He wondered if he was going to be stuck there forever. The other kid, the one who’d dared him, had run off and no one was coming to get Gakuto down. It was an honest relief to feel himself slowly getting lowered to the ground. But then he had to look around, seeing just who or what had gotten him down. Seeing his crazy neighbor, the one old guy that lived in the house at the end of the street that all the parents told the kids to stay away from, was a surprise. The guy started talking about magic and spouting some crazy nonsense. Gakuto did the only sane thing. He ran off, heading home.

When he ran into the kid who’d dared him the next day at school, the two didn’t speak about what had happened. The other kid just gave Gakuto this weird look, like Gakuto was going to end up stuck in mid-air again. It didn’t happen but Gakuto couldn’t get the idea out of his head. He’d gotten stuck and that had sucked but it would be really cool to fly. Then he could be all awesome and special and it wouldn’t matter if he was the shortest kid in his class (seriously, it sucked. Even the girls were taller which felt like life was punishing him in a cruel and unusual way.) because if he could fly, he could look down on them and it wouldn’t matter.

There was only one person he could think of that might know how to make Gakuto fly. Or, even better, maybe know of a way to make the nine-year-old boy taller. Like, super tall. That would work too. His crazy neighbor, the one who had been talking about all that magic crap. So that’s what Gakuto did.

Stepping into the crazy guy’s house had been eye-opening. For one, it was huge on the inside. Far bigger than it should have been. There were pictures on the walls that moved. Like, not tv or digital picture frame moved but that guy was waving and the girl kept trying to slink off to the edges and the woman in it was dragging her back kind of moving. So Gakuto demanded to know what was going on.

Magic, apparently, was real. And he showed signs of being a wizard. The crazy neighbor (who really only just seemed even crazier after all this) suggested Gakuto look into attending Tohoku for junior high school. Gakuto wondered if it was some sort of joke, that there was a school for teaching students magic but he applied when it came time to apply for junior high. Getting the acceptance letter and seeing that the place wasn’t enough to completely convince Gakuto that it wasn’t a joke. Actually, it took getting the supplies for school for him to accept that magic was real and that he apparently had some sort of ability in it.

He’s been at the school ever since. Even though it’s been several years, he still gets tripped up on a parts of the magical world culture. He’s more likely to reference Muggle movies and video games than he is to know the general history of the magical world. What he knows about magic and the whole world comes from what he’s learned in school and what people have told him.

Journal sample:
Summer was too short. I mean, it’s always short but come on. We should have at least another month or two. I was just about to beat the boss in my game but now I gotta leave that until the next break. Not fair, school, not fair. Shouldn’t charging game systems be allowed under muggles studies or something? I’m studying the culture by participating in it.

Does anyone else understand the stuff on page 84 of the history homework? I’ve been trying to read it but it all keeps coming off as a bunch of nonsense. Seriously, it feels like I’m reading a bunch of stuff that should be in a book, not school-work.

Tag sample:
Gakuto leaned out of the window, trying to get as far out of it as he possibly could without falling out. “Come on,” he murmured, speaking to his cell phone. He’d learned that if he hung out of his window, he could sometimes get one tiny little bar of reception. Usually it wasn’t much but it was better than nothing. Nothing happened on the screen’s display and he scowled. Powering down the good for nothing phone, he was tempted to throw it at the door. His parents freak-out at it breaking was the only thing that stopped him.

Seeing that the phone was offering no distraction, Gakuto let himself fall back into the dorm and look at the pile of homework sitting on his bed. “Why can’t there be a spell to just make it all magically be done?” He asked the little marsupial sitting on top of his head. Her only response was to stop and stare for a minute before dropping a piece of apple down. It smacked Gakuto on the nose.

Anything else: Gakuto sucks at flying (and barely understands Quidditch). That being said, his real goal in learning magic is to figure out how to give himself wings, either via charm or potion as he completely fails at anything Transfiguration-wise. So far, he’s had no permanent luck.

Also, he’s a Muggle-born and loves his technology. He’s got a cell phone and a handheld game system at school and will charge them whenever he can get a chance from the Muggle Studies generator. He refuses to give up on the hope of using his phone at the school even though he rarely has any luck of catching any sort of signal.