βΈ»Β β€ πππππππππππ β¨ the details β©
Name: Tomiko Sakurai
Nicknames: Tomi, Miko
Pronouns:Β she/her
Age:Β 32
Neighborhood:Β Carriage Falls
Occupation: owner of Bookish Bliss & Wiccan Ways
Orientation: lesbian
Status: single
Residency: local, left at 18, returned 9 years ago
βΈ»Β β€ πππππππππ β¨ the past β©
trigger warnings: i don't think there are any but i apologize if i missed something
Throughout the course of her life there had really only been one thing Tomiko Sakurai had been passionate about: art. In any form it came in, she loved it and always tripped in awe of it when she found herself in the presence of it. She was born and raised as a middle child to a pair of Wilmingtonβs elite somewhere among the mansions of Carriage Falls. Most of her youth was dedicated to ballet, her mother's choice and insistence, and she was quite good at it. The performances she was a part of caught the important eyes of some top trainers and directors all the way up in New York and as far reaching as London and Paris.
At her father's urging, Tomiko was also quite the impressive scholar, having read all the classics by the time she'd entered high school. She was a part of a literature society and had her own book club as a teenager. If she ever brought home a grade less than an A, Tomiko would be punished. Through all of that, whenever she found some peace and alone time, Tomiko escaped into the world of paints and brushes to canvas. She experimented with colors, textures, mediums, even the styles in which she painted. Everything she felt and endured was put onto canvas as a way of purging. When she couldn't paint she would sketch and draw in a notebook, finding little reprieves throughout the day when needed.
Aside from growing up with her family's wealth and prominence she'd always known that she was different. Not because of ballet or high achieving scholastics, but something further than that, something deeper and not well accepted in the south when she was growing up. Not within her Japanese culture either. When all of her friends were becoming boy crazy and chasing them around the playground, she was sneaking peeks at girls. This of course was kept a secret and something she kept buried within herself for years, only coming out when she was caught red handed by her father with one of her friends in a compromising situation.
That incident had her sent off to Paris where she attended university and worked to be a part of the ballet. Eventually Tomiko made it in, never a Prima Ballerina, but a principal dancer. It wasn't good enough for her parents who pushed for more yet still found it brag worthy. The biggest blessing being so far away from home meant that Tomiko had the room to be herself, find herself, and enjoy herself. It took some time for the strict regimen to ween off but she found herself with friends all over the city and beyond going to restaurants, cafΓ©s, art shows, concerts, etc. There was even time for her to paint freely, whenever she wanted, and never any shame in someone seeing what made it onto her canvases.
In Paris Tomiko was also free to date whom she wanted out in the open. Without the shame of her parents or their friends seeing. Without schoolmates judging. She was a new person in France, she was Tomiko Sakurai. Her first girlfriend was an art major at the university and after seeing Tomiko's paintings she introduced her to a curator. One thing led to another and all of her paintings sold out after a show. It hadn't meant that her art career began. Still she was under her parents thumb in many ways, afraid to rebel too much as she had been conditioned her entire life to please them. Tomiko continued to create and sell her work on the side of university and ballet. It wasn't until she received a phone call one day from one of her siblings that their father had been arrested on tax fraud charges. With that news something broke free within her and Tomiko said fuck ballet and left Paris with another girlfriend upon graduation.
They traveled around Europe for a while, spent extra time in Rome, but Tomiko eventually came home after her father was sent to prison. Some glimpses of his trial she'd caught on the news, she felt betrayed by him. The man's harsh rules and judgements had her living in fear for so long, away and outside of her true self, when all along he'd been the one that was wrong.
When Tomiko and her girlfriend settled in Wilmington, she used the money she'd made from selling her artwork to buy Bookish Bliss. Literature was still a passion of hers and she wanted to reclaim that from the years her father had dictated her enjoyment of the written word. Her witchy, spiritual girlfriend had convinced her to also buy Wiccan Ways, a witchy shop, so that she had something to do and something to run. And running was what she had ended up doing just over a year into Tomiko's hometown. The small town America life hadn't been for her she'd said in a note she'd left behind. So, Tomiko lives making art and running her shops. She doesn't know why she's kept Wiccan Ways other than it would always be a nice reminder of someone special at a special time in her life.
