HEY, i think i just saw TSUKIDATE SHO walking down the strip. stop by to catch up and you’ll learn the THIRTY-ONE YEAR OLD is working as an INDEPENDENT PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR and lives in SOLSTICE APARTMENTS. given they are SPONTANEOUS but TEMPERAMENTAL, it’s likely that they ARE NOT a vampire. on the flipside, rumor has it that HE'S ON THE RUN AFTER A HE GOT TOO INTO A CASE GONE WRONG WHILE LOOKING FOR HIS MISISNG FRIEND and it keeps them looking over their shoulder. i bet you can find them tearing up the dance floor to THUNDERBIRD by T.M.REVOLUTION and you’ll know why they’re called THE OCCULT DETECTIVE.
the names above are written according to their native japanese format (surname, first name). to clarify, this character’s given name is sho!
TO START OFF REAL QUICK,if you've been keeping up and reading intros, you may recall that SHO is actually a character i've previously brought up & who is mentioned pretty extensively in rika's intro. i'm probably not going to waste too much time talking about his connection to rika, just because i've covered it before, so you can go check that out for more context! but the tldr is that they were running a slightly scammy fortune telling business until rika begins to feel drawn to las vegas and they both agreed to move to nevada, with sho arriving with later as there was a case that needed closing. but it had been a lie and he'd never had any intention of following rika anywhere; in fact, he'd been sending her off alone for her own good and to keep her away from this case. also, this is very long, sorry. obviously, i'd prefer if you read the backstory (and at the very least, the basics section is very important) but a tldr for his backstory is that he was inspired to become a private detective by the mysterious disappearance of his best friend when they were both 15, an event for which sho was present but of which he has no memory. he's very invested in weird mysteries, esp where missing people are concerned, and has moved to anchorage for that reason. he used to work with rika. she kinda hates him for lying to her. finally, please note that the stuff about sho's family & fortune telling isn't super heavily based in anything...real?? in sho's original plotline, he was a witch so i'm honestly trying to create some satisfactory parallels.
BASICS.
his full name is sho tsukidate ( 月館祥 ) and he doesn’t go by any nicknames since sho is already short and easy enough on its own. he was born in kawagoe and was officially living in shibuya, tokyo until recently.
sho comes from a fortune-telling family; that is to say that they have long, long historical roots in the world of divination and even curses and the like. maybe a long, long time ago, they worked as onmyouji. nowadays, they're based in kawagoe, a town saitama prefecture known for its preservation of its edo-period architecture from when it used to be a castle town. a sort of old-timey business like this fits in well there.
he's fluent in japanese and english, having learned the latter to help with his work. he also speaks very basic tagalog but he's not especially confident. sho is of filipino descent on his mother's side, while his father is japanese. due to the historical fortune-telling family thing, he was mostly immersed in the customs and culture of his father's family but he does feel a certain connection to his maternal roots.
he works as a private detective. it's of not that sho has little faith in the judicial system and he doesn’t like the police. to be honest, he’s not even that interested in serving justice. although he calls himself a detective, his work is mostly based around helping people solve mysteries or find things. essentially, he loves a good mystery and he’s a nosy bastard. BUT he also has the skills to justify sticking his nose in other people’s business. that said, he doesn't usually go out of his way to help people unless they're paying him OR he's genuinely intrigued. (and, whenever there's an exception to this rule and his heart just genuinely starts to bleed...well, we don't need to talk about it after it's happened, okay? don't cramp his style.)
he’s a huge flirt. he doesn’t really hit on people so to speak, mostly because he’s not actually hoping the flirting will get him anywhere, but he likes attention so…y’know. winks more often than any normal person should. it's less...that he actively flirts with people and more that he's just kind of Like That. unless he's working a case or trying to get information out of someone-- in that case, it's always deliberate and he IS trying to butter them up. he’s not a perv bc that’s just not…funny or interesting to me.
that said, outside of this Charming Guy act, sho's actually...pretty irritable and very impatient. he has something of a sarcastic streak and can be pretty sardonic if he wants to. he's not a cruel or mean-spirited person but he has a little teeeeeeny bit of a temper and gets a little snippy if he's in the wrong mood <3 but he usually moves right past it and pretends it didn't happen, to everyone else's frustration.
that said, he does NOT like to shut up. he likes the sound of his own voice. if you thought some of my current muses were chronic yappers, sho probably has them all beat, purely because he KNOWS he's talking a lot instead of just getting carried away; he just doesn't care that you're sick of him. in fact, he even has a clause in his contract for when people hire him that says that, if you find him annoying, you’re just going to have to get over it.
he gets REALLY into the cases he’s solving if they’re interesting enough so, uhhhhh, be prepared for him to dump everything he hunts on you. he’s actually GOOD at his job and solving cases but he also tends to get carried away with his imagination so it might be a while before he reels himself in and gets focused on the actual point :/ he sort of falls into the whole eccentric detective category, i guess, but it's just not quite as obvious at first glance.
he keeps pet mice. this doesn't really fit in with the rest, it's just important to me.
KAWAGOE.
Taking over the family business, keeping tradition alive, doing whatever everyone else did generation after generation after generation...that was never really Sho's style. Not like he got much of a say in it, having been trained and tutored in everything he needed to know from a young age. Of course the other kids at school were going to think he was weird. Elementary school was an...experience. He was too overconfident for anyone to pick on him and he had no problem making friends.
By junior high, he powered through it; sure, he was weird but he smart and good at sports and wouldn't have looked out of place in some teeny-bopper boyband. In other words, he was pretty popular. But he wasn't stupid, he came to realise that, although the adults around him were fond of him and treated him kindly, they had always kept him at arm’s length, watching with a careful eye in case something happened. They had always been suspicious of him. They had been afraid of him.. Sure, he was admired but was he genuinely liked? Or was everyone just a little suspicious? After all, it turned out his family weren't just known for their quirky little fortune telling business. Instead, they'd been followed by years of bad will, a strange mistrust that went back further than any living descendant could recall. How petty. How pointless. Surely, that had nothing to do with Sho. He didn't even want to be involved.
Sho made up one quarter of a close friend friendship, consisting of four boys his age; two kids from his own school and Hayato Kamo, the son of a wealthy friend of his parents (who officially lived over in Tokyo but had no issue hanging out in Kawagoe with the others when they all had free time). The group had no hierarchy or leaders, they were all in equal standing, but Sho and one other friend, Yuuki, were particularly close; best friends attached at the hip, almost like brothers and rarely was one seen without the other. A team to the end.
Except the end came way sooner than it was supposed to, didn't it? They were fifteen years old when Yuuki suddenly went missing. Sho, who was never far from Yuuki's side had been there that day too. He'd witnessed the whole thing, in fact. Only, he didn't remember a single moment of it. No matter how hard he tried, Sho could not remember what had happened that day and the absence of it filled his mind like a great black puddle of ink, swallowing up whatever had been written beneath. There was so much about that day he remembered, the biting chill of the Autumn wind against his face and the crisp scent of browning leaves in the air, the stupid conversation they’d been having moments before it all happened and the blunt throbbing ache in his skull when he came to, but it was as though anything that mattered had been wiped away. The two boys had been together one moment and the very next, Sho was lying face down in the dirt with nobody else around to help him put the pieces together. And his best friend was gone.
Of course, the suspicion fell on the kid with the family nobody trusted. Big fucking surprise. That wasn't the issue, Sho could handle that. The problem was when his own peers, kids his own age, started to look at him sideways too, when he started to hear whispers about what Sho wasn't telling them (there was nothing he wasn't telling! if he could tell, he would! if he knew ANYTHING--) He was left alone save for his two remaining friends and even those days were numbered. Although Hayato, had taken Sho’s side from the start and stayed there, the other had grown to resent Sho and he was not secretive about it. Having been through quite too much already for one handful of weeks, it only took a few barbed insults for Sho to snap. Sho had never meant to break his nose. He didn’t think he’d even hit him all that hard. Of course, it's the way you punch a person and the speed at which you do it that makes a world of difference, even if you’re a scrawny, rage-blind teenager, but Sho hadn't known that then.
But that been the final nail in the coffin. Nobody was gonna trust him now. Sho wasn't popular anymore. A problem child, a dangerous spitfire liable to attack at any moment. The kids at school wouldn't look at him. If they did acknowledge him, it was never for any good reason. Finally, it was decided he'd transfer schools and off he went to live with Hayato's family in Tokyo; as a kind gesture, the Kamo parents agreed to pay for Sho's schooling at the fancy school Hayato attended. Sho still didn't fit in, refusing to politely rub shoulders with the rich kids, but being a delinquent among the wealthy was better than being a pariah.
Sho is one of the only people who even believes Yuuki still alive. He’s not sure why he believes so strongly that this is the case but there’s a gut feeling. Something he can’t place.
SHINJUKU, TOKYO.
Sho and Hayato managed to graduate high school without any further issues, besides the dark cloud of grief hanging over their heads, even if Sho still hasn't agree to let go of his convictions. Hayato goes to University but Sho decides to hold back and wait until he knows for sure what he wants to do. All the same, the pair also land jobs at a bookstore owned by Hayato's aunt, the nephew working part-time while Sho takes on a full-time cashier role. It's an odd little shop, specialising in the occult, and it fits Sho just fine. Not quite ambitious or fulfilling enough for his tastes but he figures it probably makes sense he'd wind up somewhere like this.
He stays at the shop for about four years before quitting at the age of twenty-two. In that time, he'd been working on setting up a personal project; it had started as him picking the brains of troubled looking customers and taking it upon himself to try and solve their problems. With time, he realised he was good at figuring this stuff out. Really good. And he learns pretty quick that there’s something cathartic about helping people find the answers they need when you can’t find your own. He knows what it’s like to have nobody to turn to and, if he can help others find closure, that’s better than nothing. Eases the survivor’s guilt a little bit. So, up and off he went one day, leaving the bookshop behind to set up business as a private detective, occasionally specialising in the unusual and slightly occult.
At least, that had been the dream. Very quickly, he find himself taking on more boring old adultery cases. There are only so many times you can catch middle-aged dudes cheating on their wives before the work starts to get monotonous. He'd still been hanging out at the bookstore from time to time, mostly just to bother Hayato at work, and it was there that he'd run into an intriguing young woman. She'd been his immediate replacement after he quit and she claimed to have a talent for predictions; well, no, that's not how she'd put it and, if anything, she'd really played the whole thing down but Sho was nonetheless intrigued by Rika Hoshino and her weird gift. He makes a deal with her, they'll start a pseudo-fortune telling business together, using her gifts and his knowledge of the field combined with his detective skills. It works out pretty well. (and everything from this point is in rika's intro so i'm too lazy to repeat myself. go read it pls. flutters my eyelashes at you.)
He's in the middle of a case when he sends Rika off to Las Vegas alone, swearing that he'll catch up with her when he's done. That day doesn't come. Of course it doesn't. It was never supposed to. Just as he'd expected, the case goes south, Sho gets into a lot of messy trouble, gets his ass beat by gangsters. It's a whole thing. And it's enough to throw a spanner in the works, that's for sure. And, then, around the same time, he thinks he's found a lead on the Yuuki case. He knows he can't let this chance bypass him so he drops Rika an email, apologises for not being able to show his face. Comes cleans, admits to being a liar. Have fun in Vegas, girl!
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA.
Or, so he thought. Look, we don't need to get into all the details of what happened with that other case. What matters is that stuff got to a point where he really needed to just RUN. Get OUTTA there! And he had to admit, he'd always been curious about these dreams Rika had been having. Sure, he's got some apologies to make where Rika is concerned but that's not the point. You can imagine his immediate excitement upon landing in the city, learning it's got its own whole share of bizarre stories and mysteries. Seems like Sho's exactly where he needs to be.
Already, he's back at work as a private detective. Maybe he'll get another job, depending on how this works out for him in a brand new city like this, but the most important thing is that he doesn't let slip why he's really sticking around here; that the mystery in which he's most invested is just the city itself. He may make a living off snooping around in other people's business but even he knows that nosiness gets a person killed.
