Oneiropedia Logo

Ichika Sasaki

Ichika Sasaki

profile image

Profile

Species: Human
Age: 19
Pronouns: she/her
Height: 169cm
172cm (with insoles)
Birthday: August 7th

Professional Status

Affiliation: Alcyon Corporation
Type: Diver (Natural)
Division: Offense
Rank: Twilight

Ichika Sasaki (佐々木 一花, Sasaki Ichika) is one of the supporting protagonists of the Oneirosea series. She is a young twilight-rank diver who joined Alcyon Corporation in order to obtain their help in managing her natural mare. She works with Hiro Nimura and Clover, as the self-proclaimed leader of their small team.

Table of Contents
  1. Appearance
  2. Personality
  3. History
  4. Powers & Abilities
    1. Mare
      1. Mantle
  5. Relationships
    1. Hiro Nimura
    2. Clover
    3. Ryo Misaki
  6. Gallery
  7. Trivia

Appearance

Ichika is a tall young woman with a medium tan skintone and dark eyes. Her hair is mostly black with white underlayer highlights, and tied back in a small high ponytail. She is described by several characters as being handsome or pretty, though these admirers are often too intimidated by her perpetually angry expression to approach her. Due to the effects of her mare, her nose, cheeks, and ears are often reddish from cold, resembling a blush. In close-up shots, her fingertips are covered in purplish frostbite scars.

She wears the standard Alcyon Corporation uniform, consisting of a white dress shirt, black tie, black slacks, and orange Offense Division armband. Over it, she also wears a dark grey winter coat with lighter grey shoulder patches. Her shoes are custom made as well, being short grey boots.

Personality

Ichika is quiet, serious, and practical. She wants to excel at everything she does, and believes it's always possible to achieve one's dreams if one puts in enough hard work. Conversely, she tends to blame herself when things go wrong, thinking that she should have been able to do better, even if the real cause was a completely unavoidable accident. She holds the people around her to the same harsh standards as herself: when confronted with people she believes aren't trying hard enough, she is often dismissive, critical, or even outright rude. If these people manage to do better than her, she becomes even more bitter, though it does motivate her to work harder herself.

In front of others, she tries to maintain a detached and "cool" image. She rarely talks about herself, considering personal details such as her hobbies and hometown to be none of her coworkers' business. She claims that she is not a nice person, and shoots down others' attempts to befriend her. However, it's clear through her actions that she cares about her teammates' safety and wants to see them improve: she often picks up on their problems without having to be told, and buys them gifts or gives them advice in an effort to solve them. She becomes uncomfortable when this image is challenged, making excuses and claiming her actions were purely practical, then escalating to insults if the person persists.

This behavior stems from a desire to be recognized for her hard work, rather than her personality. In her mind, her actions are simply what any decent person would do, and she finds it insulting to be praised for something that is easy and matter-of-course. She would prefer people to acknowledge her for the effort she puts into improving her skills.

Ichika is extremely dedicated to her training and work at Alcyon Corporation, and often dismisses the rest of her team's downtime activities as "pointless" or "irrelevant". Despite this, she has a more realistic view of the company than Hiro does, and is willing to break protocol in order to do the right thing. She later admits that she strives to become the best partly as a way to give herself a purpose, since she cannot bear the idea that her natural mare and its side effects are simply the result of random happenstance.

History

Ichika's hometown is never explicitly named, though it is stated to be somewhere in Japan north of Semikawa. At a young age, she became interested in the legal system and criminal justice, and resolved to become a lawyer. She describes her parents as "the cheerful and easygoing type"; they often assured her that they would be proud of her regardless of her choices. Unfortunately, she took this to mean that they didn't believe she would succeed, and argued with them over it. However, she remains on good terms with them aside from this conflict.

In school, Ichika consistently scored the top grades in her class. However, her research and perfectionistic tendencies made her worry that it was because her school was mediocre, rather than because she herself was exceptional. She began having recurring stress dreams about things in her life melting out of control. Concerned, her parents consulted a doctor, who said it was nothing to be worried about but advised her to take more time off for herself. Ichika refused, stating that her upcoming university entrance examinations would determine her entire life path, and she needed to work hard while she could.

In the middle of the entrance exams, her mare manifested and encased her desk in a block of ice. She was forcibly escorted out of the building before the ice could harm any of the other students, and to an Alcyon Corporation medical facility, where the issue was diagnosed.

Alcyon Corporation extended her a job offer at headquarters, for easy access while they develop ways to stabilize her condition. She agreed and moved to Semikawa. At the beginning of the story, she has been with the company for one year. In that time, she has risen to twilight rank with record-breaking speed, and caught the attention of several higher-ups for her dedication to her work.

Powers & Abilities

Mist-Casting Expert: Ichika's specialty is defensive barrier spells, which she learned in order to prevent enemies from interrupting her mare. She can erect simple barriers without sigils, with sufficient strength and speed to repel attacks from twilight-rank demons. She has memorized the sigils of a number of non-defensive spells as well, but privately admits that she has never cast most of them in practice and is not confident in her technique.

Hand-to-Hand Combatant: Although she prefers using her mare to engage enemies from long distances, she is capable of fending off a couple enemies with punches and kicks until she can gain some distance.

Great Mist Capacity: As a natural mare user, Ichika's reserves of mist are notably greater than average for her rank. She also demonstrates fine control over it, being able to flare and dim it at will. Her aura is blue.

Mare

Hoarfrost is an elemental-type mare that allows the user to create ice. By touching a solid surface, Ichika can generate ice on that surface. From there, she can will the ice to "grow" in any direction, as long as any new growth remains connected to the rest of the ice. Ice walls, spikes, and even complex shapes like human figures can be created. If a chunk of ice is broken off from the rest, or Ichika breaks skin contact with the ice, it dissolves into snow and disappears.

Due to being a natural mare, Hoarfrost does not protect its user against the low temperatures it creates. While Ichika is slightly more resistant to cold than the average person due to strict training, she is at risk of frostbite if she uses it for too long. Additionally, her body temperature is low even when she is not actively using the power, essentially giving her a perpetual case of mild hypothermia.

Mantle

Killing Frost Garden is a domain-type mantle that takes the form of a dome, projected over an area of reality about the size of a small house. From the outside, its contents are obscured by patterns of frost flowers along the walls of the dome, but those inside are able to see out. Inside, a jagged layer of ice spikes and crystals coats the ground and every inanimate object that was within the dome when it was generated.

While she is inside the garden, all the ice within it counts as touching Ichika for the purposes of Hoarfrost. This allows her to send ice projectiles free-flying through the air, and jump and dodge without interrupting her techniques. Even ice and snow that was not generated by her power can be manipulated in this way, which grants her an immense advantage against others with ice-based abilities.

The garden takes a large amount of mist to manifest, but is relatively "cheap" to keep activated, to the point that Ichika can maintain it more or less indefinitely. However, the temperatures within the garden drop steadily as time goes on, making it more and more dangerous to stay within it and fight. If she loses consciousness or willingly dispels the technique, the garden disappears, and she does not currently have the mist reserves to re-summon it immediately. She describes it as a "test of endurance" to see whether she or her enemy collapses first.

Relationships

Hiro Nimura

Hiro is Ichika's teammate in the offense division. During their first few missions together, Hiro makes a bad first impression: she finds him frivolous and childish, and is annoyed that his naturally enormous aura makes him a stronger fighter than her without putting in any effort. She files several requests to be teamed with a different diver instead, but they're all rejected. Though she gets used to his presence over time and eventually agrees to spend time with him off-duty, she remains very critical of him, especially his tendency to simply ignore difficult or uncomfortable topics instead of confronting them.

Despite all this (and her frequent claims that she hates him), Ichika does not actually dislike Hiro, privately recognizing that her frustration is not his fault. She sees him as a rival to compete against and surpass, and wants him to improve along with her; much of her frustration stems from her respect for his abilities. In later arcs, the two are close enough that they can fight together seamlessly with little discussion.

Clover

Clover is Ichika's other teammate. Being the first diel she has ever met, Ichika is apprehensive around Clover at first, and threatens and verbally abuses them in attempts to keep them in line. After a few missions together, however, she recognizes that they're just a regular (if somewhat odd) person, and makes an effort to get along with them from then on.

Ichika is often exasperated at Clover's antics and reckless tendencies, though she generally assumes it's because they're a demon, so she does not hold it against them or criticize them the same way she does with Hiro. As one of her team members, she considers them her responsibility and tries to keep them safe when possible, even going as far as to falsify reports to shield Clover from the Command division's punishment. However, she's not willing to play along with their experiments or hypothetical scenarios.

Ryo Misaki

Misaki is Ichika's senior in the offense division, and her supervisor. Ichika respects and admires her greatly; she is especially impressed at the way Misaki has managed to climb the ranks while managing her mutation, and aspires to do the same with her natural mare. She's visibly annoyed that her teammates don't know who Misaki is, insists they refer to her with the proper honorifics, and even gets a bit jealous when it seems Misaki is paying more attention to Hiro than her.

When Misaki reveals that she is loyal to Alcyon Corporation despite knowing of its unethical dealings behind-the-scenes and proves unwilling to help the team find the mysterious woman, Ichika is disillusioned and bitterly disappointed.

Portrait icon of Ichika surrounded by plum blossom stickers.
By squidknees.[1]
Tiny chibi of Ichika attacking with ice.
By GUYMEATS.[2]
Ichika in an action pose summoning spikes of ice.
By LEN.[3]

Trivia