Kahori Hanamura
People often stereotype toy collectors as immature, lazy, socially awkward, bad with money, and neglectful of even the most basic of hygiene skills. But if they ever met Kahori Hanamura (花村 かほり, Hanamura Kahori) on one of her infrequent visits out of her apartment, they'd... well... okay, they'd come away from the encounter with every single one of their prejudices completely affirmed. Whether she's blowing her paycheques on expensive foreign imports, clogging her living room with action figures, stinking up the joint from forgetting to bathe for days at a time, holding delusional conversations with her toys, or just sitting on her keister playing when she should be working, Kahori's Transformers obsession overshadows her nominal career as a romance author—an obsession that alternately frustrates and bemuses her long-suffering cousin, roommate, editor, and caretaker Satoko.
Fiction
Dialect Girls x Transformers
The daughter of author Satoshi Naoki and a famous essayist, Kahori grew up in the rural countryside before her sent her to Tokyo to live with her cousin. There, she published the hit novel Easy Lovin'; before long, however, her Transformers obsession threatened to undercut her livelihood at every turn. One evening, after Kahori blew her money on an extravagant shelf display from Amazom, Satoko came home to find that her roommate had just played with her toys all day and hadn't even done the laundry. Kahori blew off her Satoko's concerns to go check on the status of her latest online auction. As Kahori hadn't bathed or had a haircut in weeks, ostensibly as a cost-cutting measure to afford more Transformers toys, Sakoto dragged her to the shower, as her cousin hadn't bathed in days while lambasting her horrible lifestyle. Finally, Kahori snapped that she wouldn't take care of her cousin forever, and that Kahorid would have to face life's problems on her own.
That night, Kahori sulked in her room, consulting "Optimus Prime" for guidance but finding no solace in his words, even considering moving back to the country. Finally, however, a call from one of her online auctions informed her that the price of the foreign Transformers toy had risen to 52,000 yen, a price that she couldn't afford. Finally realizing that she couldn't buy the toys she wanted if she didn't work, Kahori buckled down, cranked out an entire manuscript that night, and submitted it by morning. The next day, Satoko went into her cousin's room to find the completed manuscript, a note asking for an advance... and Kahori, asleep amidst a pile of her toys. My Toys Part 1
Notes
- Befitting her country girl origins, Kahori speaks in a mixture of the standard Kantō dialect and Kansai, a less-urban accent that's generally synonymous with "rural" characters.
