Character

Akemi was born the child of an American businessman who encountered her Japanese mother during a business trip, holding a long-distance relationship with frequent visits before they got married in Japan and Akemi's mother returned with her father to the United States. It didn't take long after before Akemi was born, healthy as anything but due to a genetic mutation possessing a green eye and a blue eye, officially named heterochromia. While not a threat to her health her unusual eyes did result in some bullying when she was little, which resulted in her turning away from most people her age. As she grew up she studied hard and got exceptional grades, partially because her father insisted that she should try to aim high, but also because she didn't have a lot of friends to play with.

Her high grades and good working ethic allowed her to enroll in a high-class university and get herself a degree in business, after which she gained a job in her father's firm, showing herself competent and focused, earning the respect of her father's colleagues as she proved that any claims of nepotism were unfounded. Akemi herself, however, found herself wishing that she had spent more time having fun with others instead of spending most of her youth preparing for a job. It wasn't that she was unhappy with the job or her current life, but she still remembered that before the bullying drove her away from other children she enjoyed playing with them. She wasn't going to change her current life, but the thoughts still lingered in her head until one day she suddenly received an email from the mysterious Terrasphere which she knew the government was trying to learn more about. Under normal circumstances she would immediately have reported it, but... In the end, she decided to keep it to herself, because for her it was possibly her last chance to experience a different life. In Terrasphere nobody would know it was her if she did something silly...

During the creation of her character, the most difficult part was choosing the eyes of her character, since she still remembered how they had influenced her fate when she was little. She had overcome her dislike of her own eyes because when she grew up people had become less and less demeaning about them: in fact, these days it seemed like it made people intrigued more than anything else. Eventually, she decided to give her character heterochromatic eyes as well, to show that she wasn't doing this to escape from her own life, but to experience another. Changing her eyes to be monochromatic would have felt like a sign of cowardice or betrayal to her.

After having experienced many things which would have been unthinkable in the real world, the abrupt disappearance of Terrasphere left Akemi with a need for adventure and excitement which she had a hard time meeting. She tried other VRMMORPGs, but the government's restrictions meant they lacked the immersion: it didn't feel real, they didn't make her heart pound as Terrasphere had done. Of course, the news that people had died from playing the game also left her disturbed, and she developed an interest in programming in an attempt to better understand this game, this alternate reality, which had enraptured her so but which also managed to present a real danger to her real self.

She never stopped trying to see if she could enter Terrasphere once more, even as her life went on, but when finally the door opened once again she was torn. Was it worth risking her life and well-being to feel the thrill of the hunt again? Wouldn't it be better to accept Terrasphere as the miraculous experience it had been and move on? Her family and friends would have told her to leave well enough alone, had she talked to them about it. She knew what they would say. But she couldn't deny that she still longed for it, to be Ueno Mizuki once again.

Whether she made the right choice, or if she even had a choice, is something only time will tell.