TouKen: is a combination of Touka and Ken's names; instead of surnames, they're usually other ships.
AkirAmon: is a combination of Akira's first name and Amon's last name; if they were first names, they would be KoutAkira.
AyaHina:It's a combination of the names Ayato and Hinami.
NishiKimi: is a combination of Nishiki's first name and Kimi's last name; besides being a play on words with their first names, their last names also sound the same: Nishio and Nishino.
AriEto: is a combination of Arima's last name and Eto's first name. There's no word sequence in their first and last names.
MutsUrie: is a combination of Tooru's and Kuki's last names; if we combine their first names, we get Tooki, which sounds like Touken.
UiHai: This is a combination of Hairu's first name and Koori's last name; if combined, it sounds like Kooru.
Yoriomi: This is a combination of Yoriko's and Takeomi's first names. However, the first letter doesn't form part of the ship name.
NakiMiza: This is a combination of Naki's and Miza's names, both having two syllables with similar vowels.
FuruRize: This is a combination of Furuta's and Rize's names.
you may!! and, i apologize for being so late to this. thank you so much for the ask. hairu is not a character i'm 100% confident in my analysis of & ability to create in-character headcanons for, so i will try my very best. feel free to disagree with anything i may list!!
hairu really likes melon bread. this is something we know about her. that being said, i think that she once attempted to make her own. a strong, sort of related, headcanon i have is that a lot of the sunlit garden kids are not..... the best at cooking. i don't think they were ever taught how to do it because they had distinct and clear purposes based off of species, that did not include knowing how to cook. i think hairu's kitchenette looked like a warzone post-melon-bread-making. the bread came out both burnt in some places and raw in others. she found the end result very discouraging and had to take an hour or two to sulk before she could muster up the will to start cleaning up her mess. she definitely sent ui pictures of the poorly cooked bread, and the mess of her kitchen.
i view her and saiko as being friends. not super close friends, but friends. there's some sort of social barrier between the two of them that prevents them from ever having deep conversations. hairu is too used to being around older people and the hyper-maturity required by the CCG when addressing serious topics, as well as her feelings about her upbringing having to be stifled. saiko is too used to shielding herself from feeling her negative feelings about her life and the world around her with humor. that's not to say their friendship holds no depth, though. most of their conversations take place over text, and are usually started by one sending a photo or video. the photos and videos are frequently something like a meme, or an unflattering photo of a colleague, or a video of something humorous happening around the chateau or CCG building. but, sometimes, it's a something one of the girls sent to each other with the caption "this reminded me of you." these are the moments when the depths of their friendship are displayed. these can be anything from a stuffed animal, or a flower, or some food, or an animal, etc. for saiko they are usually blue and for hairu they are usually pink.
hairu is canonically the only woman investigator who wears pants. i think that she explicitly despises skirts and dresses. she doesn't even wear them for formal events, she wears a pantsuit. i think it's in part a personal comfort thing, and also a protest against the expectations put on her. skirts aren't required, but as an investigator who is a woman, you get a lot of dirty looks for not following something that "isn't required." the looks have never bothered her because she's certain of who she is and what power she holds, she's honestly sort of cocky. she likes how her cockiness and confidence in her abilities makes men in their field uncomfortable. her personal style is still pretty feminine, just she only wears pants and shorts as bottoms.
she has a tendency to bite her nails when deep in focus. like, when she's typing up a report or reading through a file. hairu also kind of sits weird at her desk when focusing too, she sort of slouches and has her left leg bent up with her heel resting on the edge of her chair. when reading, her left arm hugs her bent knee, but when she's typing, it's outstretched. to combat the nail-biting, she puts clear polish on them. the slouchy posture makes her back hurt sometimes, so to combat that she wears a compression(?) garment to give more posture support when she's in for any length of time at her desk/computer.
this one is super random, but i think that if she weren't born into the sunlit garden and never had to become an investigator (or if this was an AU with no ghouls at all), she would be a surgeon. i'm not too sure of what field she'd use her skills for, but i can definitely see surgery as something she'd want to do. i kinda feel like hairu is someone who has a great appreciation for human anatomy and the way bodily systems function. going back to just her canon positioning in the story, i headcanon that anatomy and physiology is something she was very interested in when she was younger. perhaps i am saying she is autistic and it's a special interest she's had since childhood. no one really knows of this part of her, she usually packs it away very deeply. the only real time it's displayed is when someone says something that sort of makes her ears perk up and triggers an, often times morbid, tangent about the human or ghoul body. most find it off-putting, but there's a real sparkle in her eye when she's explaining these things that's undeniable.
hairu has the opposite of a green thumb. she can accidentally kill any plant, no matter how difficult it's supposed to be to do so. though i think she's in complete denial of it. like, deep down she knows this about herself, but she finds herself buying a new plant here and there because "this one will be different." her denial sometimes extends to her even keeping the dead plants around because she thinks she can possibly rejuvenate them. subconsciously, she perhaps projects her own feelings onto the plants. the plants represent her hope to attain a life not laid out by her birth, and her care of the plant is how she does all she can to nurture it, but it just ends up dying anyways, kinda like how her daydreaming of a different life always gets shot down when the reality of her situation sets in. idk.
obligatory sexuality and gender headcanon: i view her as being bi with a preference for men, and also somewhere on the aromantic spectrum. perhaps cupioromantic? orrr bellusromantic? idk i saw this post a while ago and really liked those labels for her. as for her gender, i think she identifies as a cis girl but the TV Might Be Glowing if you know what i mean. she kinda has the mindset of that one tweet that's like "i'm probably nonbinary but i have a job so idrc about that rn." she sort of enjoys the idea of all pronouns being used for herself but she isn't sure of how she can communicate it with others. it feels forbidden to her due to her birthplace & upbringing. i also think she would make an excellent drag king, and she sort of watches videos of drag kings when alone at her apartment Thinking about how she wishes she could do that.
Where's that post that goes "Eat her out like smoking a cigarette: all the way down to the butt".
I've realized it's something that Saiko would say, in one of her moments where she lets the "grew up in a bar" crass comments out to play.
And after some debate over it, I'm going with Hairu as the recipient of the advice (with some modification), because Saiko saying that to Ui just doesn't fit - Saiko's not familiar enough with him to drop her childish act and let her less cutesy underlying personality show.
And the Ui I'm thinking about here actually really gets off on doing sex acts that have a knee-jerk "that's inappropriate/gross/etc" attached to them - he just needs a bit of coaxing out of his (pretty vanilla) comfort zone, a nudge past that stiff mask of his. Thankfully Hairu is very good at "I dare you to..."
'cause you will fall in love
with the most unexpected person
at the most unexpected time
• • •
a world where everyone will have their own unique birthmarks; like a sign, at some point in life, we will meet the right person.
•°. *࿐
a world where people are born to see only black and white, until they touch their soulmate.
•°. *࿐
when you change your hair color, your soulmate's hair also change to that color. touka kirishima, a coffee shop owner, decided to dye her hair blue for a glow-up, and then ken kaneki was confused as to why his hair suddenly turned blue.
•°. *࿐
"hinami, i'll give you ayato kirishima's case."
hinami scrutinizes the information in front of her.
"is there no sign of the soulmate on his wrist?"
"it seems so."
in a world where everyone's soulmate's name appears on their wrist when they turn 18, ayato is an anomaly for the system. but then hinami, the girl from the stars, comes to help him find his soulmate, and that will solve everything... right?
perhaps she was wrong.
•°. *࿐
in the universe where kimi lives, the soulmate's first words will be engraved on your hand in the form of a tattoo, and it will accompany you for the rest of your life.
this is unbearably bad, because kimi will have to live her days with the words: "hey baby, if you're a snot, i'll get you first."
•°. *࿐
in this world, in order to find their other half, every month people here will send an item to the "soulmate post office" - where life partners send gifts to each other.
•°. *࿐
in a world where you get a hoodie on your 25th birthday, and the hoodie lets you feel a hug from your partner, koori hopes it feels like his colleague, hairu ihei.
What if Ui and Hairu got into a relationship how would their dynamic be like? Or what if Hairu didn’t die what path would Ui have taken?
Ui’s arc is centered around his unrequited love for Hairu, however Ui and Hairu are actually written like a pair of foils, love interests. They actually share a lot in common which would have made their dynamic and growing relationship interesting had Hairu lived. If you really want to know what I think would have happened I’ve written fanfic for that, but in a meta sense I can talk about how the two of them are truly suited for one another as a pair. They share so many things between them, including the same flaw, that both of them believe they have to earn love from another person.
1. The Unloved Children
It’s outright stated in Hairu’s case, and implied in Koori’s that both of them grew up feeling unloved by the family around him. They both come from well to do families that failed to make them feel loved as children, though for different reasons.
It’s just implied that Ui is distant from his parents because he came from a rich family, and wanted to do something by standing on his own two feet rather than following what his family had planned for him. Hairu however, was born as a breeding project between humans and ghouls and unloved and unacknowledged all of her life so much so she hyperfixates on a single moment of affection from Arima.
The same Arima who, for the most part, keeps his distance from her as an adult.
As people they went in the exact opposite directions in life. Ui was born into a normal, but rich family, and became a ghoul investigator instead of his own choice. However, Hairu willingly followed the path her family set out for her. She was born to be a half ghoul and grow up as a model ghoul investigator and that’s exactly what she did. However, taking opposite paths in life, they ended up in the same place.
They were both looking for something, love, or approval in other people and they both ended up with each other. It’s interesting how both of them tend to seek Arima’s approval. They both even compete with Sasaki for Arima’s attention.
However, despite them both focusing on Arima it’s not actually Arima that they’re closest to, it’s to each other. Ironically while they’re close together, both Hairu and Ui are oblivious to their own feelings, they already had an excellent working relationship, a partnership, they suited each other, but they were also too focused on their work to notice what they wanted wasn’t to be praised for their job, but rather they wanted a relationship with someone.
Ui’s most precious memories, his emotional core is the time that he spent together with Hairu, she was what he wanted to protect. He didn’t want to fight ghouls, he wanted to protect someone, love someone, but he only clearly remembers them after her death. It’s only after her death, Ui realizes he should have prioritized Hairu over everything, over the whole world.
What Hairu and Ui needed in life was each other. It’s even what somebody else comments about Ui, he looks like he needs someone to protect. A less tragic version of their arc would be, both of them coming to terms with Arima was never going to give them what they needed, because Arima couldn’t give anyone, anything. And what they wanted they already had in each other.
However, they both share the same flaw that theybelieved they needed to do their jobs, before anything else. An important thing about the Tsukiyama family, is that all of the major people surrendered. If they had just let Tsukiyama Shuu go, it would not have been a fight, but both Hairu and Ui pushed that they had to kill the whole family, because that’s the only way they know to prove themselves to kill ghouls.
Hairu especially, believes the only way she could earn love and praise is by killing ghouls. This is the tragic flaw they both share, they’re both oblivious to each other’s feelings. The person who could love and support them is right next to them, but they don’t realize. It’s because of a tragic miscommunication, but also because both of them feel like they need to earn that love, that nobody could love them as they are.
Even if they both still were alive, they might still be right next to each other but oblivious to each other’s feelings. Something major would have to happen to break the communication gap between them. Ui didn’t realize what he loved until he lost it. I think, if Ui had only almost lost Hairu, if she had gotten injured or worse that might be clarified his feelings, but that’s where the tragedy came in. Even after she was injured, Hairu didn’t retreat, because Hairu didn’t value herself as a person. She didn’t know she was loved. She didn’t know how much it would hurt Ui to lose her. It’s because of that she made the decision to keep fighting until she died.
They could have loved each other, with character development and time, but they’d also have issues with communication and how both of them feel un-needed and unfulfilled when they’re alone. However, they didn’t get time to do that in this lifetime.
I've noticed ihei hairu is a meta blog tg favourite? any reason why?
I’ve written some metas on her, but my short answer would be that she had a lot of potential, and she and Ui Koori, despite being more minor characters at least in comparison to others, were extremely well-written, and integral to each other’s arcs. Ui and Hairu’s every scene up through the last few arcs contributed to their development--which is exceedingly hard to do for a writer. There just wasn’t much fat to cut there, and their characters enveloped the themes of the story. Ui, naive and believing he’s doing the right thing in exterminating ghouls, in love with a girl who also exterminates ghouls but who is also a half-ghoul, and who was desperate for some kind of love in the world. Hairu was also connected to the Sunlit Garden, which had been set up as a major endgame issue for the series.
