| Full name: | Imani Koniq |
| Most commonly used alias/nickname: | Koto (Kumi for 'cute', and a pun on his name) |
| Player: | Kari |
| Age: | 17 |
| Gender: | Male (technically!) |
| Physical Appearence Desc.: | Koniq is a very pretty teenage boy, who might quite easily be misconstrued as a girl, a combination of the delicacy of his features, his hairstyle (which is a light brown, fluffy bob), and his clothes – he wears a lot of skirts. His skin is very fair, not deathly pale but just the light colour of a person who has spent his entire life in a land that gets very little sun. He’s small, only 5’2”, and thin even beyond his naturally petite figure. His eyes are light lavender, with vertically slit pupils like a cat’s. |
| Date of Birth: | September 2nd |
| Siblings, Etc., in the Lounge: | Najiru Jaikene (crush/best friend) |
| Backstory: | Imani Koniq was the only child of Imani Kadise, a wealthy diplomat, and his wife, Italia Scarleaf, an Eterien-born artist who had moved to Akumia for her health (she had some kind of rare disease, and the humid Eterien climate was very bad for it; Akumia's cold, dry crispness was better). Kadise and Italia met on the subway, when their train broke down for five hours. At the end of this trying ordeal, they agreed to meet again over coffee the next day - and thus their relationship was begun. 16 months after their wedding, Koniq was born. Kadise allowed Italia to name their son, and she, in Eterien fashion, made up a nice-sounding nonsense word for him. In Kumi, the name became 'Koniko', and this is what Koniq went by through much of his childhood, but when Italia finally died of the disease, when Koniko was only 9 years old. Kadise mourned, of course, but decided that his young son needed a mother, and about a year after Italia's death, he married Joimo Ruvina, a widow whose first husband had been a soldier, and perished in a minour skirmish with Mugenia. Ruvina had a daughter by this soldier, a girl named Geni who was 4 at the time of her father's death and 6 when Ruvina & Kadise married. Geni and Koniko got along quite well, the little girl hero-worshipping her stepbrother, but Ruvina and her stepson never hit it off. Whenever Kadise had to be away, which grew oftener as relations between Akumia and Jikenika began to weaken, Ruvina would treat Koniko like a Cinderella. Koniko complained to his father, but Kadise simply admonished him for exaggerating about his stepmother's treatment of him. Koniko was 13 when he discovered a rather important fact about himself - he was gay. This discovery was made quite simply when he started crushing on a boy in his school. Of course, in the very oppressive and religious dictatorship that was Akumia, homosexuality was a terrible sin, so Koniko kept this a secret, but the 11-year-old Geni sneaked a look at his diary (best friends they might be, but she was still his little sister), and found out the truth. Being a clueless little kid who didn't even know homosexuality was possible, she asked her mother whether a boy could love another boy. Ruvina interrogated her daughter further, and found out everything. When Koniko got home from school that day, she began bawling him out, talking about a disgrace to the family, a shameful wicked Satan-worshipper, and so on. Koniko ran away in the middle of it. He fell asleep on a bench in the park that night, and the next morning he made a few decisions - one, he was gay and he was proud of it, dammit, but he would never again let anyone know or commit it to writing or anything. Two, he was going to go by the name Koniq from now on. And three, he would never go home. Over the next year, Koniq tried to survive as a homeless urchin, and did an okay job of it. He had been basically anorexic for a couple of years anyway (not that his family noticed), and so he didn’t need too much money for food. He was a good dancer, and could do this on street corners to earn a few beu. He also found that if he put on girl’s clothes, people wouldn’t look at him twice – though he was a small and pretty boy, he was just a normal girl, especially hidden in the veils that Kumi women were required to wear, so he started doing this more and more often. When he was 14, he happened to be walking down an alley, and had decided to change from girl to boy behind some trash cans. But he was caught mid-change by a bunch of gangsters, who thought that prettyboys in dresses needed destroying. While they were beating him up, Najiru Jaikene (17 at the time) waded into the mess and saved Koniq’s butt. They ran away, hid in another alley, and Jai, who had also thought that Koniq was a girl, learned that he wasn’t. Koniq and Jaikene introduced themselves, and gave false histories to each other. Jai, being a nice sort, offered Koniq a temporary home, and this eventually became a permanent one. Somehow, they both ended up learning one another’s real pasts. Koniq never joined I Tiyi Vonu (Jai’s gang), and in fact never got along with Jai’s adopted family, but the Ghosts left him alone, out of respect for Jai, despite their general homophobia. Niqi admitted to Jai that he was gay, but Jai was cool widdat. They were never lovers – except one time, when Jaikene was a little bit drunk, and Koniq was a lot bit homesick, right after he found out about his family’s execution (see below). Jai tried to comfort his friend, and one thing led to another… but they both tacitly ignored that night, and kept on as before. The execution of the Imani family was a big deal – Rino Imani Kadise had been well-known in political circles, and when his “treachery” (in fact, he was framed by a rival for the position of governor of that region of Akumia) was discovered, he, his wife Ruvina, and their daughter Geni were all lined up against a wall and shot. It made a big splash on the news, and Koniq found out. He was very angsty about this, and that’s when Jai… comforted… him. When war broke out between Akumia and Jikenika, street-kids (of which South City had a surplus) were rounded up and enlisted in the navy. To avoid this, Jaikene and Koniq sold all their belongings, including the flat, and used the money to hire the captain of I Viluni (the Waterbird, a sea-faring ship) to take them to Jikenika. I Viluni was transporting soldiers to Jikenika, and the captain agreed to smuggle Jai & Koniq over there. The ship was barely out of the harbour before a riot broke out on deck. Koniq wanted to go topside and see what was up – Jai, being the sensible one, wouldn’t let him. Koniq kept at him, though, and finally Jaikene agreed to go up himself. He went up, and got knifed in the chest by a pissed-off and very drunk street-kid-turned-soldier. His body was thrown overboard, and Koniq spent the rest of the trip alone. When he finally got to Jikenika, he wandered around being lost, forlorn, and unable to speak the language, until some kind person who happened to speak Kumi took pity on him and directed him to a refugee shelter. He stayed here for a while, and it was here that he met Russell Moore, a Jikenikan boy (one of the Shipfolk, but that’s another story) who volunteered at the shelter just to be nice. Russell started teaching Koniq English, and… yeah. ;) |
| Personality Desc.: | |
| Ard: | Rocavi |
| Likes & dislikes: | |
| Vocal range: | |
| Theme song: | |
| Anything else: | Anorexic, gay, likes drag. |