HEY, i think i just saw HOSHINO RIKA walking down the strip. stop by to catch up and you’ll learn the TWENTY-SEVEN YEAR OLD is working as an ARCHIVIST AT THE DEADLY POSSESSIONS HAUNTED MUSEUM and lives in SOLSTICE APARTMENTS. given they are CURIOUS but EVASIVE, it’s unlikely that they ARE NOT a vampire. on the flipside, rumor has it that SHE USED TO RUN A SCAMMY FORTUNE-TELLING BUSINESS WITH A FRIEND IN TOKYO AND WAS FORCED TO FLEE THE COUNTRY BY HERSELF AFTER THEY CROSSED THE WRONG PERSON and it keeps them looking over their shoulder. i bet you can find them tearing up the dance floor to IIN JA NAI by SUZUKI AIRI and you’ll know why they’re called THE CLOSE ENCOUNTER. ( cis woman + she/her. lesbian + pisces. )
the names above are written according to their native japanese format (surname, first name). to clarify, this character's given name is rika!
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BASICS
The Kanji for her full name is 星野梨華 and I deliberately incorporated 星 into her name as it means star! Usually surnames don't need to have a meaning so i'm only pointing this out bc it was a creative choice. (btw i know there's a popular anime rn where the protags have the same surname, with the same kanji, but that's a coincidence; i haven't watched the show and i made rika before the manga was even published.)
She may or may not possess some sort of psychic ability. She has experienced visions almost her entire life and has a pretty good knack for predicting the future, even if it’s usually fuzzy and not always accurate. Although she’s quick to dismiss this herself, assuming that she’s just very good at making educated guesses and sensing when trouble is on the horizon, it has gifted her with a lifelong interest in the occult and magic and all similar things.
She grew up in a small city called Minamisatsuma, located in the southernmost region of mainland Japan (Kagoshima), and was always surrounded by the ocean. Alaska's proximity to the coast puts her at ease for this reason, even if the difference in climate has been a big change.
She has a pet cat; a little black cat with with big round eyes and she's called Charmy. She's kind of silly and a bit of a menace. Because Rika doesn't feel safe letting her roam but knows that her apartment isn't quite big enough to expend Charmy's excess energy, she has been known to take her cat on walks with a harness.
She's a bit of a bookworm. A total bookworm, actually. She spent most of her childhood with her nose in a book, mostly stories and fiction but she has been known to spend hours researching topics that interest her. She's got a quick mind and loves to learn. All this extra information has proven quite useful in her cold readings.
Ever the overthinker, Rika has some concerns about the general ethics of her work, especially when it comes to the matter of lying to people (she tries to keep to vague embellishments as best as she can) but it helps to think of herself as a performer. It's all an act and people are encouraged to take from it what they will.
Rika loves horror and all things spooky. Because of her reserved nature, people might expect her to be quite squeamish but she's braver than she looks! That said, she likes cute-spooky best of all. Halloween is easily her favourite time of year and she's been known to go all out when buying decorations; for Rika, it's one of the biggest positives about moving to the States.
In the kitchen space of her apartment, you'll find a corkboard covered with notes and photos and mementos. You'll also find a photograph of a young man (he's Sho, you'll learn about him later!) whose face has been drawn on. Devil horns, angry eyebrows, stink lines. The works. If you ask Rika about it, she'll just tell you it's 'some useless asshole'. Do not assume that's her ex.
MINAMISATSUMA, KAGOSHIMA
Rika had always considered her childhood to be a fairly ordinary one; she had two parents and three siblings (one older sister and two younger brothers, a pair of twins), and rode her bike to school every day like any other kid. Everything was always normal, simple, uneventful and maybe even a little boring. But, as the years went on, Rika started to find that she was more spiritually inclined than other children her age and her intuition was so sharp that it sometimes frightened her. (Those around her had started to joke that she could predict the weather better than the official forecast.) Never one to rock the boat, she tried not to bring it up too often and nobody ever seemed to mind but, in her own time, she grew to harbour an interest in the mysterious and unusual.
When she was thirteen, her dad was given a promotion that saw the whole family packing up and moving to Tokyo. The shift was staggering, it seemed to Rika like an entirely different world. Suddenly, she wasn't normal anymore. Overnight, she'd become the quiet new girl with weird interests. She was eventually able to make friends but only after months of sideways glances and whispers. Junior High had not been gentle on Rika.
By the time she got to high school though, things had changed. People had gotten used to Rika's sharp instincts and even started to take interest. Girls would hover outside her classroom, peering through the windows as they waited for her to come out and let them test her. Cold readings based on gut instinct, answers to questions like 'what number am I thinking of?', so on and so forth. She didn't get it right every time but it was enough for people to be impressed. After months of students begging her insight on to their entrance exam performance, Rika was worn out. Graduation was a blessing.
Shortly after graduation, Rika's family ended up moving back to Kagoshima. However, having already gotten into a good University to study Japanese Literature, Rika stayed behind and got her own tiny apartment in Tokyo.
SHINJUKU, TOKYO
Rika was quick to find work to support herself while she worked on her studies; she got a job as a cashier in a little bookstore that specialised in the occult. Although her experiences growing up kept her from telling anybody about her talents, she had never let go of that interest in all things strange and unexplained. It was a perfect job for her and she continued to work there for the entirety of her academic career. Her coworkers were Hayato, the nephew of the shop's owner and son of a television illusionist, and Sumire, the daughter of a wealthy family whose idea of rebellion was getting into retail work.
About two years into working there, a new regular started showing his face. Rika quickly learned that he was a good friend of Hayato's and had previously worked at the bookshop, having been replaced by Rika almost as soon as he had left. His name was Tsukidate Sho and he was...an interesting character; he'd quit his bookstore job at twenty-two, head filled with haphazard dreams of becoming an unlicensed private detective. (Hayato had ensured her that Sho had a real and valid motive but it too sensitive a subject to share with her, despite Sho's own claims that he wanted to get paid for being nosy.) Regardless, it didn't take Rika very long to get used to his bewildering presence and she even soon befriended him.
Eventually, Rika grew to trust this ragtag team of friends enough to tell them about her apparent gifts. She admitted she wasn't really sure if it was anything special at all, that she was sure it was probably just good judgement. Sumire told her, 'You've either got freaky powers or you're just freaky smart. Either way, it's freaky.' And yet, for the first time, nobody cared all that much. To them, she was still just Rika.
By the time Rika had graduated from University, it seemed like Sho had grown disillusioned with life as a private detective. Week after week, she'd hear him complain that all he ever had to work on were adultery cases. One day, Sho pulled Rika aside and proclaimed he had a plan, a great plan, and he needed her help. Sho's was from Kawagoe, a city in Saitama known for having maintained it's Edo-era architecture and, as it turned, his family had upheld a tradition of fortune telling for generations. The plan was as follows— they'd set up their own fortune telling and psychic reading business, with Rika as the face of it, using her talents wherever possible, while Sho used his skills to hunt out information on the customers. A mix of cold and hot reading at once. He would teach her the skills he'd gained growing up, things like showmanship and similar little flourishes. Rika had her doubts at first, not wanting to scam or fraud anybody, but Sho insisted that most people didn't believe this stuff, that they were selling an experience. She recalled her experiences at school and how much trouble people had caused her just for that same experience. She agreed to his plan.
Setting up shop in Sho's office in Kabukicho, Tokyo's answer to a red light district, the two would work together for a couple of years, with Rika juggling the scheme with her bookstore job, and they made a surprisingly good team. Eventually, they got close enough for Sho to explain himself, why he'd gotten into the business of being a private detective. When he was just a kid, maybe about fourteen years old, his best friend had gone missing. Sho was the last person to see him but there was a big dark gap in his memory between that last sighting and Sho coming to his senses. Despite his best efforts, he'd never been able to find any answers and the only appeasement he'd ever found was looking into the problems of others.
At some point, the pair had gotten into trouble with the wrong people during a job gone a little wrong. The pair decide their best choice is to make a run for it and lay low for just a little while, and Rika opens up to him about a particular vision she's been having that seems to relate to the city of Las Vegas and a feeling that something is beckoning there. With that, their destination is decided and Sho sends her off on her own, explaining he's got work to finish off in Tokyo first and they'll reunite later. they never reunited.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
At first, Rika had feared for the worst. Sho’s job was hardly free of danger. The only way she could contact Sho was by email and it took her a couple of weeks to get decent access to her inbox. When she finally got access to everything, there was nothing. Another month passed before she finally heard from Sho. In his email, he explained that he'd actually stuck his nose far too deep into something he shouldn't have done and he'd never had any plans of fleeing the country with her; he'd lied to her to make sure she got out alone. However, due to his refusal to explain what was actually going on and the fact she'd been stranded in a totally new country, she was pissed. Still, she respects his warnings not to speak a word of this stuff to anyone. (Should she be worried for him, even if he is a liar?)
It would take her a while to settle into life here in Las Vegas but eventually she finds good work as an archivist for the Deadly Possessions Haunted Museum, where she spends her days poring over pages upon pages of stories of the occult.
Needless to say, this spate of mysterious death and the rumours of something more sinister, perhaps even supernatural, being afoot has caught her attention.













