[name_f]Haruhi[/name_f] " [name_u]Haru[/name_u] " Yamanaka (20) is the second eldest Yamanaka sibling, being a whole 30 seconds older than her twin and a year older than [name_m]Keyes[/name_m]. Funnily enough, she’s the shortest sibling, reaching a whopping 5’1", or 155cm. Her twin jokes that Haru’s short stature is karma for constantly waving the fact that she was older of the two over the other’s head. [name_u]Haru[/name_u] pretends it isn’t funny, but fails— every time she tries to protest seriously she ends up in peals of laughter.
[name_u]Haru[/name_u] is the closest to her twin out of her siblings both because of the fact that they’re twins and because [name_u]Haru[/name_u] used to speak for both of them until they were in the second grade. Haru’s twin has selective mutism, and while it has improved drastically over the years, it was extreme when they were in grade school. [name_u]Haru[/name_u] seemed to be the exception, though: she was able to converse with her twin in private pretty fluently. In order to communicate in spaces where they couldn’t speak (examples being theatres and the like) [name_u]Haru[/name_u] and her twin taught themselves ASL and JSL. Thankfully, the Yamanaka parents coaxed Haru’s twin into therapy, and while they can speak without much anxiety, [name_u]Haru[/name_u] and her twin still communicate through sign language— something she’s grateful for, as she’s happy that their conversations can be clandestine wherever they have them. The Yamanaka siblings also know both ASL and JSL, but not to the degree of the twins.
ASL and JSL are her third and fourth languages, respectively. [name_u]Haru[/name_u] picked up [name_f]English[/name_f] and Japanese very quickly in her childhood, and found it very fun. [name_u]Haru[/name_u] is indeed a polyglot: she can speak [name_f]English[/name_f], Japanese, ASL, JSL, Mandarin, and [name_u]French[/name_u]. She’d say she’s fluent in [name_f]English[/name_f], Japanese, ASL, JSL, and Mandarin, but proficient in [name_u]French[/name_u]. She not-so-fondly remembers her junior year of high school where she took both AP Chinese and AP [name_u]French[/name_u]— [name_u]Haru[/name_u] remembers crying over her [name_u]French[/name_u] textbook a little too often. The class’s difficulty laid not in the material itself, but with their teacher, Ms [name_u]Moreau[/name_u]. Ms [name_u]Moreau[/name_u] was, in Haru’s words, “a miserable old woman in the middle of her fifth acrimonious divorce”, and graded exceptionally harsh, taking arbitrary points off any mistake she could see. [name_u]Haru[/name_u] remembers how Ms [name_u]Moreau[/name_u] took points off her essay because she wrote with a black pen instead of a blue one. She finished the year with nearly all A’s— AP [name_u]French[/name_u] was a B-, which she’s annoyed about. To this day, her and her high school friends are full of stories about Ms Moreau’s reign of terror. On a more serious note, [name_u]Haru[/name_u] thinks this may be why she hasn’t studied [name_u]French[/name_u] with as much vigour as she used to.
Oddly enough, Haru’s major isn’t related to languages at all— she’s a fashion design major. [name_m]Art[/name_m] was very important to the Yamanaka family: their father wanted to be an artist but couldn’t due to his own parents, and their mother just wanted their kids to live their lives doing something that they enjoyed. With their father’s passion for art, it was only inevitable that the Yamanaka siblings grew up with a love for it as well. Haru’s designs are very inspired by Japanese culture and fusing them with more Western styles of clothing, a wearable experience of the Japanese-American identity. [name_u]Haru[/name_u] goes to the same university [name_m]Keyes[/name_m] and [name_u]Rory[/name_u] plan on going to as well, and she’s offered the two a helping hand if they need anything.
At university, [name_u]Haru[/name_u] has a close knit group of six friends (including herself) who are all fashion design majors. They’re known in their year as the Sensational Six (which [name_u]Haru[/name_u] thinks is a stupid name), as their work was highly praised in their freshman year and has continued that trend. [name_u]Haru[/name_u] hates that the freshmen see them with rose-coloured glasses, though— at the end of the day they’re still students and still have a long ways ahead of them.