Ayuki Mari

Ayuki Mari (摩利 あゆきMari Ayuki? )  is a student at Kashima high school and is a classmate of Hazumu's in their second year.

Childhood
As a child, Ayuki used to love watching caterpillars leave their chrysalises and turn into butterflies. However, she never once thought that she herself would want to be in a similar position—changing into something else—so she merely just enjoyed watching the transformation before her. That by itself is enough for her, she recounts to Hazumu. As Ayuki grew up, she would always take in interest in many things, but always from a distance, never becoming personally involved with the things that she liked to observe and discover.

Appearance
Ayuki is a bit tall, but not towering over others. She has an average body build for a tall, somewhat thin teenage girl. She has a round face with anime girl eyes in a medium lavender-purple color. Ayuki always wears glasses. Her hair is dark purple with lavender highlights, and she wears it in a loose mop cut, with slender bangs partially covering her forehead. Side bangs cover her ears. Her skin tone is beige with a hint of pinkness, and a creamy texture all over. She has an average bust size, but it is not very noticeable, possibly because she may only wear a training bra under her school uniform. Other times she wears a regular bra.

Ayuki wears the same female school uniform that all the other girls wear. For casual wear, she prefers a plain shirt and women's capris, or a T-shirt and a short pencil skirt. Ayuki's fashion style is more utilitarian and skewed toward comfort and durability, making her clothes a plain, bland style at best.

Personality
Explaining this as a metaphor, Ayuki tries to get through to Hazumu that watching her loved one from afar is its own variety of love, though Ayuki never explicitly states just who she admires from a distance. Ayuki is on good terms with Tomari, and Ayuki will often give her, and others, advice and help in regards to relationships. Keeping with her stance on watching from afar, Ayuki continuously observes the ongoing development of the love triangle between Hazumu, Yasuna, and Tomari. She views them equally as friends, but does not get close enough to be affected by the constant flux of love and shipping that seems to flow and ebb between the three.

Ayuki is an independent observer and thinker, one may even say that she is a born skeptic and a sometimes disbeliever. She always observes with a cool, confident aura, and rarely speaks, except to offer sober opinion and commentary. Except for Asuta, boys keep their distance from Ayuki, as she can probably out think and outperform them at any mental exercise that is brought forth. Ayuki is interested in the sciences, though most specifically, biological sciences. During Hitoshi Sora's first biology lesson at school, Ayuki commented that he leads a most intriguing class, referring to the genetically modified sunflowers he engineered, which also turned out to be rather harmful when it tried to choke Asuta. <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19px;">

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19px;">When Hitoshi tells Hazumu and the friends that Hazumu only has one month left to live, Ayuki reveals that she knew he was the space alien this entire time, due to his vast knowledge of science. <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19px;"> Unlike her usual self which is calm and generally quiet, Ayuki gets very upset by this news, and pleads Hitoshi to do something to keep Hazumu alive. So unlike her often emotionless stance, she implores him to do something, since he once before brought her back from the dead, this eventually leading Ayuki to start to cry. Hitoshi corrects her, explaining that his species is not omnipotent<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19px;"> and while his people may be more advanced technologically, they are still inferior as an emotionally competent race compared to humans on Earth. <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19px;">After Ayuki learns that Hitoshi will remain on Earth for the next one-hundred years, she expresses interest in becoming a human collaborator in his observations of the effects of love. Although Sora can never fully feel or express human love, given his bland emotional nature, nevertheless, this implies that Sora may have a notable pseudo but compatible love interest in the person of Ayuki, even to the point of occasionally dating her.

Trivia

 * Ayuki resembles Yuki Nagato from the hit Haruhi Suzumiya series.
 * Ayuki can recall many Words of Wisdom and Proverbs, from many different sources, and for just about any occasion.