(http://cdn.pimpmyspace.org/media/pms/c/un/03/z5/mebigpants.jpg)<br/><br/>Oishi Aika is descended from a cousin of the famous samurai Oishi Yoshio—leader of the 47 Ronin famed in folklore, kabuki, and a 1940s film.  Her name means love song.<br/>Her loving parents lead fairly ordinary lives until her father died of a slow cancer when she was seven.  Aika’s and her mother Tskuchi were taken in by her father’s elder brother, Oishi Ayama.  Ayama was a second rate kendo instructor—accused by some of riding his family name to heights he did not deserve.  He noted that his niece was a natural with the blade and took her as a protégé for the rest of her elementary and middle school education.  He drove the girl very hard, drilling her not only in kendo but in a variety of outdated and semi outdated traditions.  Rather than resent the art for consuming all of her free time, her love focused into an obsession.  The closer she came to defeating her sensei, the harder her uncle drove her, ‘til one day he nearly beat her to death only to unleash a ferocious retaliation that sent him to the hospital, where he would ultimately die of internal bleeding.<br/>Alone with her mother now, Aika accepted her mother’s council to put away the sword for the last year of middle school and focus on the studies, friends, and tea ceremony.  Despite her blossoming body, her friends always found her disturbingly serious.  When she picked up kendo again in high school, most began treating her like a boy.<br/>Aika does have a few friends—in and out of the kendo club—and a number of the younger girls have developed an admiration for her grace, elegance, strength, and beauty, appointing her as their ‘cool senpai.’<br/>She particularly empathizes with Shine Masateru with whom she shares the experience of a traditional  upbringing that leaves them somewhat strange to their peers.<br/><br/>http://sheetgen.dalines.net/sheet/16416?message=true (http://sheetgen.dalines.net/sheet/16416?message=true)