Kumi Kawahara

Appearance: Kumi has transparent blue frills growing out of her head, which are not ears (she has normal ears) but sometimes behave like them. Past the obvious standout trait, she has bluish-white hair and green eyes, is fairly tall, curvy, and pale, and usually has an array of cuts, bruises, and burns from accidents. Kumi sometimes uses a wheelchair and sometimes walks; she'll usually have it in public (and sometimes use it as a walker) but uses it less often in her apartment. A dulled mark on the back of her right hand looks like ⚴.

History: World where different power spheres ("elements") that form the world have people who are adept with one. Kumi had very little talent in her natural ability, Stone, and as she was bullied and pushed around, felt her life would improve if she could be useful. When she entered a temple that was traditionally used by Water adepts, though, she had a vision of a being filling her with power. Along with her Stone abilities, she now had very strong Water abilities (and having two elements was practically unheard of, though in practice she was still awful at Stone and only used it to even out terrain for her chair to move on). Instead of the 🜄 that normal Water users had on their hand, a Stone user's 🜃, or the Guardian of Water's ♆, hers was ⚴, one no one had seen before. Kumi enjoyed a newfound status as "some kind of chosen one" and was able to help people out with her powers. Of course, becoming useful didn't make people stop bullying her, which made her feel worse, but they did quiet down a little and she got to make some new friends, so she got the idea that this would make her life better.

But come the age of 14, she went to the academy in Central City that was known for turning out Guardians, powerful leaders in each element. There, the "chosen one" realized she really just had small pond syndrome; weird circumstances or not, everyone here was the best from where they came from. And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep up and had the people around her lamenting her not living up to her potential. Combined with her poor luck in romance and difficulty making friends and always ending up comparing herself to impossible goals, Kumi felt she was a failure. Shouldn't things have been better? Maybe she was a bad person.

Kumi's mental state was noticed by Whitney Leverrier, the Guardian of Water at the time, who preyed on her low self-esteem in a toxic mentor relationship and got her to help with his research as a way to help the people around her and make up for all the inconvenience she caused them by, uh, existing at them. He actually wanted to destroy and remake the world in an image that would give him the power of the elemental spirits so that no one could stand against him. When Kumi was in a depressive spiral, Leverrier got her to set up his plan by sabotaging the runes in the main temples. However, after a coincidental observation exposed his real plan, people who were not "chosen ones" of anything stopped him, everything was great for people not named Kumi Kawahara, and, while she was now free of her emotionally abusive mentor, she still felt unlovable and worthless. This would continue after she graduated, didn't become the head of Stone or Water or have her gifted power amount to anything, and tried to assure the worried friends still with her that she was fine.

Kumi is now 23, apprenticing as a cook, and trying not to fall apart on a regular basis.

Story notes:
Kumi's story takes place after all the backstory above, in and around the school area, where the viewpoint character slowly uncovers what happened and sees that the community is still dealing with the fallout. The three central figures are basically a huge allegory for the millennial condition, which I typed as a joke but then realized was true as soon as I said it. Kumi represents gifted child burnout; Paris, who was drawn into the situation by chance, helped save the world, and became the new Guardian of Water without feeling prepared despite this accomplishment, is impostor syndrome; and Duessa, the MC's coworker who's probably the most competent one there, represents how people starting out with disadvantages have to work the hardest to get half the rewards. But I probably won't actually make this, I have too much I'm already doing.

Setting notes:
Ability elements and their symbols (note that Guardians and those blessed by the spirits like Kumi have their own individual symbols, and the latter have variant colours based on their elements' main colours):
Water (blue): 🜄
Guardian of Water: ♆
Kumi (grey-blue): ⚴
Fire (orange): 🜂
Guardian of Fire: ⚶
Air (white): 🜁
Guardian of Air: ⛢
Storm (red): 🝟
Guardian of Storms: ♃
Stone (grey): 🜃
Guardian of Stone: ♁
Metal (indigo): 🜛
Guardian of Metal: ☽
Plant (green): 🜕
Guardian of Plants: 🜨
Shadow (black): 🝯
Guardian of Shadow: ⚸
Light (pink): 🝰
Guardian of Light: ☉
Life (gold): 🝐
Guardian of Life: ⚷

General symbols tend to be from alchemy, specific ones from astronomy because there's a Lot of overlap.