So Momo started writing out his headcannon for Sui a while ago, and I remembered that there was That One Character that confuses (?) most of my readers and friends and I thought, well, I might as well start with him for my character essays.

Shinohara Kouta (篠原　幸太)
Birthday: Oct 31
Horoscope: Scorpio
Bloodtype: B
MBTI: ESTP (Se-Ti-Fe-Ni)

Shinohara Kouta isn’t as multilayered as he wants people to think he is. His motivation is very simple: to be free of emotional weakness and baggage. This is because his goal is to be able to move as freely and as spontaneously as he can to react to any situation, any opportunity, and any risk.

Kouta lives off the spirit of YOLO, and he does it for the rush of adrenaline of Reactions. If he does this, how will the environment (and by nature Other Humans) respond to him? The bigger the reaction the better, of course. Kouta thrives on attention. In every AU, Kouta grows up thirsting for attention. His parents fail to give it to him regardless of world or story. They aren’t bad parents, they just Didn’t Care Enough for him (to his standards). Naturally Kouta then turned to the rest of his world for the attention he craved. The young him didn’t bother to differentiate between positive and negative attention, and he soon realises that it’s a lot easier to get negative feedback compared to positive affirmation.

In other words, Kouta simply doesn’t care what the reaction is, so long as in that moment, his ‘audience’ is focused entirely on him. Anger, fear, sadness, jealousy… it doesn’t matter as long as they look at him.

In order for him to go and get this attention then, it is very important that he sees himself as free, strong, and of independent will. Caring for a specific person? Personal commitments? Guilt? Fear? All these are things that get in the way of his pursuit of his very exciting goal, and his entire ego is grounded by the fact that A Strong Person Doesn’t Care. A strong person isn’t affected by what others think of them. A strong person isn’t wavered by the opinions and wishes of others. A strong person doesn’t care for others more than they care for them. Bare minimal emotional attachment is a necessity if he wants to move without constraint.

Kouta does everything in his power to convince himself of this philosophy. That’s why he sleeps around, flirts relentlessly, and makes sure that he is never Weak. He calculates risk vs reward, and only involves himself with people when he sees some form of gain out of the relationship. He manipulates and lies to get his way, and doesn’t really uphold any fixed morals or principles. As he grows older he is fully aware that he’s not a good person at all, and takes pride in it.

Good people are Weak, after all.

Untrue to popular belief, Kouta’s “manipulation” is not very well thought out. This is because compared to Karu and Sui, he is surprisingly unaware of the emotional needs of others. Kouta reacts more to immediate sensory cues, and treats the emotional state of the other person as a problem; a puzzle to be solved. His lack of a need to appear like a Good Person helps him with this, which is why he tends to be provocative mostly in his interactions with others when he’s trying to gain a read — start by saying something, see how the muscles on the other person’s face contorts, change what he’s saying mid-sentence if necessary. It’s merely trial and error, but armed with his extremely keen and sharp senses. Naturally with experience he is able to trial and error with a higher chance of success, but by no means is he able to read minds or intuitively guess the emotional state of others. Most of the time he makes the other person tell him what they’re thinking. He doesn’t guess by himself. In fact, Kouta is extremely creeped out when people can join those dots and intuitively understand his behavior. (This explains his slight fear of people like Nobuaki and Maka, who are the types that have that kind of uncanny intuition.)

Other than people who are able to do those kinds of reads on him, Kouta is pretty much unreadable. He has a Very Well Developed poker face, and is also a master of misdirection. Simply put, he is willing to give up some Unimportant Truths if it will distract people from the More Important Truth that he’s trying to hide from them. These More Important Truths tend to be only one kind of thing: Vulnerability.

Kouta aims to be free of emotional baggage. “Aims” is the keyword here. His entire self and ego is built on the fact that he is free of emotional baggage, but in the end Shinohara Kouta is but human, and as much as he wants to fool everyone (including himself) that he Doesn’t Have All Those Fancy Weakling Emotions, he has them. He has fears, he has guilt, and once in a while when he makes that One Fatal Mistake, he ends up caring. And nothing scares Kouta more than the notion of Other People Knowing. This is because he can probably lie to himself, but the moment it becomes a truth to the people around him, he can no longer try to look away from it.

And so when Kouta is vulnerable, he will do everything in his power to hide it. If it means admitting that he’s lying, or giving up an otherwise important piece of information, he will do it. Kouta is first and foremost a liar, but the moment you have to be the most wary is when he voluntarily becomes honest. He’s most likely only doing that so that you don’t ask him about the more important questions.

(He is also extremely honest when he is sick and drunk, but those are things out of his control, unfortunately, which is why he makes a very concerted effort to not fall sick, and never get drunk.)

Kouta wants, deep down, for someone to accept him for who he is, as he is. Stripped of all the deep meanings and implications of society, of judgements on motivations and wishes. Of people who will try to tell him deep shit like how attention doesn’t matter, that having a strong sense of self is more important than all these on the surface things he desires. He is also extremely aware that he’s not deserving of that kind of care and understanding, and so he has given up on that. Kouta knows that he’s a rotten person inside. He acts to make other people believe that he is trustworthy/good/nice, and in the process of that, convinces himself that he isn’t.

This is why he is extremely comfortable around people like Karu, who don’t seem to care for that kind of Meaning, doesn’t judge his intentions, simply goes along with the flow of Fun and Exciting and adds on to the ride.

This is also why he is extremely weak to people like Kakeru, who slaps away all his bullshit, listens to the things that matters, and shrugs it off whilst accepting him, moving on and taking action for the things that are necessary. Kouta doesn’t need people to coddle him and tell him nice things, the acceptance he needs is surprisingly rational, and Kakeru’s flavour of care apparently works wonders for him without making him want to throw up. Rucchan therapy is guilt free after all.

… anyway I think that’s about it for Kouta. He’s very fun to write, and I admit that I enjoy the slightly perplexed looks people give him sometimes. I’ll probably do something similar for the rest of my characters, but I think? the rest of the crew are a lot more easy to understand compared to Kouta so it might not be as exciting as this particular essay. Either way I like talking about my OCs so I’ll probably write them anyway.

Outside/r chapter 10 is about 10% in process. It’s Doujima weekend though, so I estimate the next update to be next weekend instead. TvT;; Thanks for being patient with me!