Hana Ashizawa [芦沢花]

Mostly for my own reference. Will add to as I go along.

- Hana really digs tattoos. Like REALLY digs them. You have a tat and you automatically get cool points. The more elaborate, expansive, or detailed the design is, the more cool points you get. Bonus points for them being of creepy things like monsters, eldritch horrors, demons, wicked looking dragons, etc.

- Apparently, she has a secret hard on for bad boys, bad men, and guns.

- It seems that while she has the mind of a twenty-something, it's the mind of a twenty-something that makes terrible life decisions out of self-destructive impulse.

- Her parents make her wear kimono and yukata. Until junior high, she didn't really own much in the way of normal clothing. It took her a while to get used to it. If given a choice, she strongly prefers modest, feminine clothing though during summer she shows off substantially more skin. She's all parading about in a bikini where the chance of her parents finding out about it is extremely slim. She tends to show a lot of leg, lots of short-shorts. Her tops are considerably more modest, particularly as far as necklines go. When the weather's hot, she either wears her hair in a ponytail or coiled up in a bun.

- She wears light, natural looking makeup when she's not in school. When she puts the effort in, she can pass for her twenties.

- The fiance her parents are forcing on her is named Taiki. He's twenty-three, an apprentice at his father's company. He's also a business/economics major. He's very conventional and also a closet otaku. Taiki regularly does "dinner with waifu" and has a virtual girlfriend app. Hana does not know this yet and when she does, she will be furious.

- She wants to be a psychologist but doesn't quite know what just yet. Word of mun says that she's very likely to wind up a prison psychologist and/or working with rehabilitating inmates into society.

- May eventually get married but it'll probably be after she's firmly established her career first. Probably late twenties to early thirties. Having her own kids is going to take convincing; she's more likely to go against social convention and adopt her children from orphanages. Also, highly likely to grow up to be a carnivore ala Katherine McBride from Catherine.

- Very good at cooking and cleaning. Mostly knows traditional Japanese dishes and not much else. One of those people who arranges food to look aesthetically pleasing to the eye rather than slap it on a plate.

[ OOC ]

Backtagging: I'm totally down with this. Just make sure you date it accordingly, otherwise I start twitching.

Threadhopping: Pretty much any thread that isn't marked closed or private is open to all. If the other players don't mind, it's highly likely that I won't either. If you're not sure, just ask.

Fourthwalling: Since she's an OC, it'd be kind of silly for her to be fourthwalled, I think.

Offensive subjects: Pedophilia, necrophilia, sexual assault, cannibalism, and animal cruelty can be upsetting subjects. I'm fine with mentions of them as long you place a content warning in the subject line. If you would like play out something graphic involving of these subjects, please contact me beforehand.

[ IC ]

Hugging this character: Go for it. Hana's more physically affectionate with people she feels close to. Random hugs from strangers or acquaintances might make her awkwardly withdraw from them emotionally. She's usually too polite to speak up but she may stiffen or passively resist.

Kissing this character: See above. Keep in mind, she was raised by very traditionally Japanese parents so any sort of intimate, romantic contact is likely going to take time to develop. However, once she gets to that point, they'll probably get a very enthusiastic response.

Flirting with this character: Flirting's fine. Hana was raised traditionally so she's rather conservatively Japanese. Here's a helpful page on Japanese dating culture for those who need it. This explains Hana's perspective on dating and what she's likely to expect. Of course, your character can flirt with her while completely in the dark and that's perfectly fine with me because cultural misunderstandings can produce interesting CR. While I'm ship-friendly in general, I'd prefer to discuss it with players first.

Fighting this character: Yes, but please discuss it with me first so we can plot out the logistics since it will likely be very one-sided given that Hana is a normal human with limited fighting ability.

Injuring this character: Minor injuries such as cuts, scrapes, bruises, bumps, and so forth are fine with me. If it's going to be a serious injury that could take her out of commission for a while, please discuss it with me first.

Killing this character: It's inevitable that she's going to get killed at some point but I'd like to keep her alive as much as possible to ensure her deaths remain meaningful to her story and CR. However, if the odds are so stacked against her that living another day just seems stupid and implausible, I'm game for killing her. Just discuss this with me beforehand.

Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: Hana is an extremely private, intellectual young woman who is likely to react very poorly to having her mind read without her permission. At best, she will view it as an invasion of her privacy and at worst, a violating assault. Since this will have a significant impact on her character and CR, please discuss it with me first.

Warnings: Suicidal ideation, mental illness, self-destructive behavior, etc. Hana's emotional responses can be very unpredictable. I'll go ahead and give a permanent 'mature/dark themes' warning for her, however. If anything specific comes up in a thread, I'll try to include warnings as needed. It'll be a bridge I'll cross I get to it.

Player Information
Player name: Alice
Contact: mimarinrin[at]gmail.com; AIM: RindRinna
Are you over 18: Yes.
Characters in The Box Already: None.

Character Information
Character Name: Hana Ashizawa [芦沢花]
Canon: Original
Canon Point: The night after her 18th birthday party. Abducted from her bed while she was sleeping sometime very early in the morning at October 24, 2011.
History: Hana is the only child of Mamoru and Shizuka Ashizawa, a highly traditional, conservative couple from Kyoto, Japan. The Ashizawa family is very old-fashioned and respected; it traces its roots back to a textile house that served the Emperor ages past. In modern times, the family business has grown from a small textile shop run from home into a small, struggling textiles company. The family has not adapted well to changing times, insisting on sticking to rigid, traditional values, business products, and outdated wares. While far from being impoverished, the Ashizawa family has fallen to being staunchly middle class after enjoying much luxury in previous generations.

By the time the ancestral family home had fallen in to the hands of Hana's parents, it was considerably more rundown than it had been in the past as well as in dire need of restoration and modernization. Mamoru inherited the family's debts in addition to their failing company. Fortunately, a higher education from one of Kyoto's best universities and natural talent for business administration helped the Ashizawas achieve financial stability even if their debts continued to hang over their heads.

This was the environment that Hana was born into - one of palpable tension and anxiety with parents who were frequently preoccupied with finances, family honor, and social prestige. Mamoru spent the vast majority of his time managing his company and schmoozing up to potential investors to keep the company afloat and occasionally, turn over a profit. As a result, he was frequently absent from home, only spending time with his wife and child for a few hours on Sunday. Shizuka was left to take care of all the domestic duties - cooking, cleaning, child care, ensuring the bills, maintaining positive relations with their neighbors, and so forth.

Hana was raised to be a proper yamato nadeshiko - properly feminine, modest, skilled in the domestic and diplomatic arts. Even though she was their only child, the idea of Hana as a successor to the family company along with its fortune never occurred to the Ashizawas as a feasible option for their troubles. Instead, Shizuka poured her efforts into educating Hana to be a proper wife and mother once she reached a marriageable age. She ignored Hana's genuine interests and talents, in particular turning a blind eye to her daughter's intellectual gifts. Once Hana began displaying considerable artistic and musical talent, Shizuka compromised by enrolling her daughter in classes for the traditional arts - wood block printing, ikebana, shamisen lessons, and so forth. If Hana expressed interest in anything that fell outside the boundaries Shizuka set for her, she was firmly discouraged from pursuing it and redirected toward avenues they felt were more appropriate for her eventual destination.

For most of her childhood, Hana complied with her mother's wishes and stayed on the path that her mother had mapped out for her. As a child, Hana was outwardly obedient, quiet, shy, and extremely well-mannered, though a dark seed of discontent was slowly but steadily growing within her. Underneath it all, she was deeply unhappy, depressed, and had little self-esteem or confidence. In a desperate attempt to find some sort of happiness and fulfillment in her life, Hana became an extreme perfectionist in the hobbies she was permitted to have and her school work. She also began to pursue her own interests in private, reading books that were esoteric, considerably advanced, and occasionally very dark for her age group. Hana kept her independent studies a very closely guarded secret from her mother out of fear that Shizuka would ruin it for her as well as a growing insistence on privacy that bordered on paranoia at times.

Though Hana did extremely well academically, she struggled socially at school. Due to her intelligence and the Japanese custom of grouping students together according to age instead of individual ability, most of Hana's days were spent in close company with peers that she couldn't relate to or develop any real connections with but was expected to help for the sake of group harmony, nonetheless. As she did at home with demands she felt were unfair and unreasonable, Hana cooperated with this and accepted her responsibility to the group while boiling with unexpressed anger and frustration at how restrictive her life was. Her feelings of isolation continued to grow, compounded by jaded, narcissistic world view that grew a little more with each passing year. She had distant acquaintances she couldn't truly relate to and no meaningful friendships.

By the time, she was a first year in high school, Hana's rigid grip on her negative emotions began to loosen and slip with increasing frequency, which caused some of the students at school to give her a wide berth. The few superficial friendships she'd maintained began to break down but most were too intimidated by her intelligence and family connections to bully her. Hana's home situation came to a head after she returned home after taking a career aptitude test at school her second year. While talking to her mother while preparing dinner that evening, Hana told her about aptitude test, mentioning that the school guidance counselor had commented that she had tested as multi-talented and that with her academic ability, he could see her accomplishing much in her lifetime. Shizuka's reaction was not the positive one Hana had hoped for. Instead, her mother reacted very anxiously to her daughter's excited talk about college and career after high school.

On that day, Hana learned a very painful truth. Her parents had no intention of letting her go to college. Instead, they had made arrangements for Hana to begin dating and potentially marry a young man several years older than her after she graduated. Hana also learned that day that the family company was failing again and her father projected that without securing a strong partnership with another major investor, they would be completely bankrupt within the next few years and he didn't feel confident he could ward off financial disaster this time. Their family's continued status and fortune depended on Hana marrying a rich husband. In their eyes, times were desperate and called for desperate measures. At this point, Hana marrying well was their last chance to save their family.

Naturally, this left Hana trapped between a rock and a hard place. She had her own dreams and ambitions - she wanted to go to Kyoto University and study psychology, even if she wasn't sure exactly what kind of career she wanted in the field yet. However, she'd been raised in a society that emphasized self-definition through bonds with others. As unhappy as Hana was with her life and angry at her parents' for continuing to treat her as an object to barter with instead of an human being with desires of her own, they were her only family and she loved them. She was painfully aware of how old her family was and that they had once been one of the greatest textile houses in Kyoto. If she chose her own path and ignored her familial duty, she'd be the one to end that history. If she resigned herself to her fate, she'd go on being miserable and never really learning who she was or find her own place in the world.

After her conversation with her mother about her future, Hana's life remained mostly unchanged. She participated in her private school's ikebana and kyudo clubs, tutored her classmates at her teachers' requests, and continue to study. As he'd always done, Mamoru continued to leave Hana's care and education in the hands of her mother while he concentrated on work. Hana and Shizuka managed to negotiate something of a compromise. Shizuka would allow Hana to study and prepare for university on the condition that she begin dating her intended fiance and that she follow through with the marriage if he found her to his liking. Though she would have preferred not to have marriage looming over her head at all, Hana reluctantly agreed to the condition simply because she could study without fear of parental interference and figured that it was her best option at the time.

Currently, Hana's in her third and final year of high school. She's dropped her clubs and most social activities in favor of independent study of academic subjects she's interested in and preparing for Kyoto University's entrance exam. Publically, her mother encourages Hana's pursuits but wrings her hands in private over the possibility Hana will break her end of the deal and doom their family's interests. Truthfully, Hana enjoys her mother's worry and takes perverse satisfaction in knowing that she has leverage over the mother who has placed so many restrictions on her individual growth and future, if only for the time being. She's only had a couple of dates with her future fiance and has yet to form an opinion on the man other than 'he might not be a complete idiot'.

Personality: Hana comes across as modest, reserved, and intensely private. She's very soft-spoken, polite, and well-mannered. There's a quiet elegance and calm to her that many adults find appealing and easy to get along with. This same quality has been known to invoke both admiration and intimidation in people her own age. Whether people find her approachable or standoffish, one thing that people of all ages tend to agree on is that Hana is highly intelligent and mature for her age. In many ways, her personality seems much more fitting for an adult than a teenager.

There's a very good reason for that - Hana is intellectually gifted. Though she has not had an official IQ test, if one were to administrate one to her, they would discover that her IQ falls right on the border between gifted and genius. Her mind functions at the same capacity as one belonging to a woman in her early twenties. The physical structure of her brain also reflects this; if it were to be examined, they'd find a stronger resemblance to a grown woman's than an adolescent girl's.

Due to her traditional upbringing, Hana is very perceptive when it comes to the needs and desires of others. She was raised to be empathetic, cooperative, and accommodating of others, particularly her elders and the opposite sex. True to this, Hana avoids open conflict with other people. To maintain her privacy, independence, and preserve harmony with others, Hana's capable of some impressive evasive maneuvering and subtle manipulation without most ever realizing how they were derailed or who did it.

Hana has a strong sense of integrity and loyalty. She's idealistic, even if her ideals tend to reflect a jaded mindset and cold streak of pragmatism that others can find off-putting. In general, she believes that right and wrong are useless, immature concepts to live by when it comes to navigating life in the real world. Hana sees life and people in myriad shades of grey. She doesn't believe in heroism or villainy, just that power and survival have meaning. She also believes that people can do heroic things for horrible reasons and villainous things with good intentions. Overall, Hana's a very morally neutral person who recognizes the necessity of breaking metaphorical eggs in order to make a cake.

That said, Hana does hold a lot of inner darkness within her. She's been bottling up years of unexpressed resentment, frustration, hurt, anger, and depression. The only reason she hasn't had an overt destructive blow-up is mostly because she doesn't know how to. Both in and out of the home, she's been discouraged from expressing her true feelings if they're likely to have a negative reaction on other people. As a result, she lacks assertiveness and can only really express her negative emotions through her art or subconscious passive-aggressive rebellion. Hana's art comes in two varieties. There's the public stuff that's very much the sort of thing that one might expect a mature young lady to create. However, there's also a trove of dark, violent, bleak pieces that she keeps under lock and key. Occasionally, she releases horror comics of this nature into the doujinshi industry under a male pseudonym and has something of a cult following on the internet in her world.

Underneath her cordial, gracious persona, Hana is plagued with deepset feelings of objectification, isolation, and low self-esteem. Meaningful relationships are difficult for her to establish and maintain, partly because she's grown into a somewhat narcissistic world view. Hana doesn't really believe that society's rules apply to her because she feels she's stuck in some kind of social purgatory where she's too mature to relate to her peers and too young and inexperienced to fit in with the adults. She does, however, believe that social order and government are necessary to keep mankind from reverting to primitive monkeys and is unlikely to fully support anarchist goals. She also enjoys freedom and pleasure too much to cast her lot in with dictatorship or martial law. She tends to stay a cynical, moderate libertarian as far as political spectrums go.

On a more personal level, Hana does have positive qualities to balance out some of her darker ones. Her careful attention and care to other people's needs isn't just a result of her upbringing but also genuine kindness and care for the well-being of others. Her judgments, when she makes them, are generally fair. She's independent minded and unlikely to be affected by peer pressure; she takes time making up her mind but once she does, there's very little anyone can do or say to weaken her resolve. She's creative, especially when it comes to dispensing advice or solving problems. Hana's a highly critical thinker and in the end, her unwillingness to blindly take what she'd told at face value is generally an asset. Once a person earns her friendship, they have a loyal supporter and ally who will do everything in her power to protect them and neutralize their enemies. She can be very harsh at times with her observations but more often than not, she can be trusted to have the person's long-term, best interests at heart.

Hana's also a perfectionist, particularly when it comes to her creations. If someone peeks at her work before it's finished, she can be surprisingly easy to fluster or embarrass.

Items on your character at canon point:
- Ivory satin nightgown
- Panties

Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:

Psychological Strengths/Weaknesses

Dissociative - Hana has a strong tendency to detach herself from her body and 'split' herself off from painful emotions or thoughts when under extreme or persistent amounts of stress. While she doesn't yet meet the full criteria for dissociative identity disorder, she does exhibit a number of symptoms such as alternate personality states, disorientation, and amnesia after 'switching'. These are not separate, named personalities with their own unique characteristics but 'modes' of being Hana Ashizawa created in order to survive traumatic events. From an external view, these merely seem to be facets of the same personality and don't really stand out as being particularly unusual but in reality, there's a lack of internal integrated sense of self that goes beyond simply being a teenage girl still figuring out her identity. With enough stressors and traumatic events, Hana is at risk of developing full-blown multiple personalities, each with their own names, occupations, ages, and individual skills.

Depression - Hana suffers from what is known as 'double depression' among mental health professionals - two separate conditions known as dysthymia and major depressive disorder. What this entails is that Hana is always depressed, to the point that is what she recognizes as normal and doesn't even consciously acknowledge it as depression anymore. Usually, it's low to moderate depression that manifests as a decreased ability to experience pleasure or happiness and profound disinterest in becoming socially engaged with others. There are times when this depression becomes quite severe and significantly impairs daily functioning. During major episodes, she simply stops taking care of herself. Her personal hygiene and appetite plummet as does her interest in pleasurable activities. She's prone to hypersomnia in which all she wants to do is sleep and never wake up. She avoids socializing with others and if she can't avoid it, she's generally irritable and snappish until the person goes away. She's also prone to crying spells though she keeps those to herself and firmly behind locked doors out of stubborn pride. Her survival instincts are so strong that they override any suicidal ideation that might develop. This, however, is very much a double-edged sword because instead of turning her self-hatred inward with intent to destroy herself, she turns it outward to destroy others. At her worst, Hana develops sadistic, homicidal impulses toward others that manifest as abusive behaviors. Usually, these are limited strictly to psychological abuse - mental or emotional - but there are rare occasions where she explodes into violence.

Narcissism - While she's too young to qualify for an official diagnosis, Hana displays a number of characteristics associated with narcissistic personality disorder. Since she grew up in a household where she felt constantly objectified and a school environment felt isolated in, Hana has in turn developed tendencies to objectify others and view them as tools to be used to prolong her own survival. It's difficult for her to genuinely empathize with other human beings, primarily because deep down she feels inhuman herself and lacks any significant human bonding experience to teach her otherwise. She's also prone to narcissistic rages when this image of herself is challenged though she expresses them in a very passive aggressive manner or turns it inward in an emotionally destructive manner. At heart, she does believe herself to be exempt from the same rules that govern the rest of human society though if asked, she's mostly likely to say that she simply feels 'different'. Her feelings of isolation only only compound on the problems.

Asocial - Hana has a pronounced aversion to forming significant emotional bonds with others and can respond to unwanted social overtures with great hostility from time to time. As a result, her social skills are impaired, most notably her ability to be assertive in a constructive, healthy manner. Generally speaking, she's either all-or-nothing when it comes to social bonds with others.

Obsessive - This ties into her asocial behavior just a bit. Hana is an extremely perceptive, analytical, logical person with a fascination with mysteries, both real and imagined, that present themselves to her. She also has a compulsion to sequentially investigate them further and solve them. Secrets tend to have a short life around her; she's persistent and relentless in her pursuit of information. She's very detail oriented so the likelihood of her dismissing any details as insignificant is very poor. The best way to trip her up is to throw out a variety of equally plausible and/or probable possibilities in her path and leave her to struggle with the decision of which path to pursue.


Internalization - Hana has an extremely hard time articulating her thoughts and feelings. On one hand, she rarely verbalizes or blurts out anything she doesn't intend to but on the other, when she does want or need to convey strong emotion to someone, her mind subsconsciously locks down or minimizes the expression of it so the other person usually only gets a fragment of the information she's trying to share. However, what Hana can't express verbally, she usually expresses pretty clearly through body language or it gets converted into some sort of productive activity. In general, she's pretty closed and intensely private to the point of hypervigilance and borderline paranoia. Getting her to talk about anything personal or truly important to her is like pulling teeth for most people.

Inexperience - Hana's biggest weakness is probably her youth and lack of practical life skills. She's lived a very sheltered, controlled life in which she's had very few opportunities to learn how to be independent or develop strong decision making skills. In the realm of her interests, she's very close to being a self-taught expert in those subjects but in anything lying outside it, she's almost painfully ignorant. Due to her high level of intellect, she has a lot of latent talent and potential to learn a wide variety of new skills if she can find a proper teacher but only if she can obtain proper guidance.

Superficial - While Hana has an innate sense of tact and diplomacy and has been educated extensively in what's proper behavior for a young Japanese lady, any charm and grace she displays will likely have a shallow, insincere feel to it as if she's merely going through the motions or pantomiming someone else's behavior. Of course, this depends on perceptive the person with her is.


Skills/Abilities

Memory - Hana has an eidetic memory. She remembers every experience in extremely accurate, vivid detail and can recall those memories with unusual clarity when prompted. This is both a blessing and a curse. While she has phenomenal learning potential and is unlikely to forget any of it, this also applies to any trauma she experiences. Her dissociative tendencies are actually rooted in her memory, literally. In order to cope with heavy psychological pressures placed on her, she's essentially had to fragment herself to manage the sheer amount of information she keeps in her head. It's a very painful condition for her, not counting the times when she recalls unsettling truths other people would rather forget. I also need to point out that because of her dissociative tendencies, her memory functions a little like a compartmentalized hard drive in desperate need of a defrag. The speed of Hana's recall greatly depends on which personality state she was in at the time of the incident and which state she's in presently. Basically, memories obtained in one state are more quickly recalled when she's in that same state and harder to call up when they differ. Another thing to note that her obsessive tendencies reinforce her memories so subjects, people, objects, etc, she's fixated on will have the most vivid, accurate recalls.

Deduction - At times, Hana seems to pull brilliant solutions and eerily accurate descriptions about people and situations seemingly out of thin air. She's a very quick study as well to the point that she can easily come across as psychic. In reality, it's all about her sensitivity, ability to learn and retain information, and quick logical processing.. Mental problems and emotional handicaps aside, Hana's mind functions at an immature adult's capacity.

Hana also has two years of experience with kyudo, has been doing ikebana since she was little and has an expansive knowledge of hanakotoba. For the most part, she's not very athletically talented or inclined but her school required her to be in both a culture and sport club.

She first got into art as a form of expression and relief from the pressures both the school and her parents placed on it. She showed a great deal of talent and has stuck with it ever since. She branched off into manga in middle school after being a fan and last year, started drawing horror in secret in order to cope with her impending doom (or what she claims).

Samples

Network/Action Spam Sample:

[Hana sits very still in front of the camera, almost unnaturally so. After a moment of just staring at the camera in an unnervingly piercing way, she seems to remember that there are people on the other side of the screen and that maybe, just maybe she should be a little more personable.]

Hello. My name is Hana Ashizawa.

[There's a long pause as she look away from the camera, peering off to the side with the same piercing stare. What or who she's looking at, if anything at all, is as good as anyone's guess. After a moment, she looks directly back at the camera.]

This place is strange. It seems that we lack adequate supplies on which to live yet we have internet. Am I the only one who finds this an illogical consistency? Truly, what practical purpose could this possibly serve?

[Another pause, this one a little longer than the first. For someone trying to be personable, her tone is awfully sharp and frosty.]

Unless this is designed to be some sort of confessional like those stupid reality TV shows Americans watch?

[With surprisingly sudden swiftness, Hana darts forward and shuts the feed off without another word. If people had something to say, including the Technicians, they could contact her.]

Prose Log Sample:

So this was Taiki Fuchida, the man her parents were so desperate to dupe into taking her as payment for a partnership with his father's company. Only the slightest edge of a bitter sneer toyed at edges of her lips briefly before she gave her future fiance a gentle, charming smile. She lowered her gaze with practiced modesty, taking the moment to reflect on the facts gathered so far.

Taiki Fuchida, twenty-three years old. Recently graduated from Kyoto University with double degrees in business and economics. Only son and heir of the Fuchida family and working as an apprentice at his father's company. Probably every bit as much of a disappointment as his parents fear he is. If Mom wasn't making me, I wouldn't give this mama's boy so much as a pity fuck.

It was inevitable that someday she would have to. A deal was a deal, as much as the thought of being chained to such a boring, goody-two shoes for the rest of her life made her queasy. Really, her parents couldn't find someone more interesting to barter her off to? Honestly, what kind of man was so incompetent at life that he had to resort to omiai dates with a teenage girl to score a wife from a good family?

Taiki gave her a tense, awkward smile and adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses, oblivious to her not-so-charitable thoughts toward him. The gesture didn't distract her from noticing the teensy flicker of hope behind the meticulously polished lenses, however. All he saw was precisely what she wanted him to see: a shy, pretty girl with a soft voice who made good grades and didn't want to disappoint her parents.

Hana leaned forward, her warm, sweet look tinged just enough shyness to trigger a protective instinct in Taiki and get him to lower his guard a little. Predictably, Taiki started slightly, blinking a little in surprise. Her smile widened as she picked up her drink. It was sparkling white grape juice since she was too young to order booze and Taiki was too straight-laced to order it for her.

Even if she had little hope of getting out of this unwanted engagement once she'd secured the higher education she so desperately craved, there was no reason not to have a little fun at their families' expense. A tiny whisper of conscience told her that maybe, just maybe, ruthlessly toying with someone's emotions like this was petty and unkind but it was quickly devoured by the shadow in her heart that demanded compensation for being forced into this position at all.

After all, misery loved company.