✱ STRAIGHT FROM INTERCEPT: NIE XIGUANG !
— as written by lo ( he / him )
NAME : nie xiguang | GOES BY : xigua | GENDER & PRONOUNS : cis woman ( she / her ) | D.O.B. : november 18th ( 30 ) | FACECLAIM : ju jingyi
known to be TENACIOUS, GENUINE, and ENDEARING, but also ROMANTICALLY INEPT, DRAMATIC, OVERCONFIDENT and INSENSITIVE, they have been in intercept ALL THEIR LIFE, currently working as a PHOTOGRAPHER / JOURNALIST for the interceptor.
Digging Deeper.
Nie Xiguang, known to most as Xigua, has the kind of countenance that makes people decide who she is before she ever opens her mouth. She works as a journalist, and the same sharp, patient mind that serves her in a game of shogi serves her there too, reading a room, a source, or a set of numbers before anyone else in it has finished forming their first impression.
Her resting expression is cool and distant, and people read arrogance into it, or entitlement, and rarely give her the benefit of the doubt because of it. In truth she is introverted, observant, and far more thoughtful than she lets on. What almost nobody sees is the flip side of that same composure: with the handful of people she actually trusts, she can be demanding, particular, even a little dramatic, a private pettiness that would startle anyone who only knows her cool public self. She also speaks with a naive bluntness that initially strikes people as strange and eccentric, but is endearing to those who know her best.
She is relentlessly hardworking and ambitious, excelling at nearly anything she commits to, which earns her quiet resentment more often than admiration. Praise has never come easily to her, and neither has popularity. When a plan of hers goes sideways, and she is certain enough of her own reads that this does happen, she does not panic or abandon it. She adjusts, the same patience that wins her chess games carrying her through the setback, though that same confidence in her own judgment can just as easily lead her to commit hard to a plan built on a wrong assumption, and it takes her a while to notice when it has.
Her private life is quieter and warmer than anyone would guess. She is a devoted foodie with refined taste, and the tea ceremony is one of her few real sanctuaries. She paints, too, using it as a wordless outlet for feelings she otherwise keeps to herself. She adores animals, horses especially, drawn to their strength and sensitivity, and at home she dotes on a pet rabbit with a softness almost nobody else gets to witness.
The image cracks in other ways as well. Her laugh is odd and completely ungraceful, nothing like the dainty picture she otherwise presents, and her humour is dry, strange, and slightly offbeat enough to catch people off guard. Stranger still, for someone who reads others so well, she is genuinely bad at being deliberately charming. The moment she tries to flirt on purpose, the effort shows, and it rarely lands the way she intends, a clumsiness that sits oddly against everything else about her. But underneath the calculation is a real capacity for unguarded feeling, and when she does let someone in, it is not a performance. It can surprise her as much as it surprises them.
