Author's Note: I know this is a lot of drama for my faithful readers. For all those who are new, welcome. I have been having some problems with anxiety and depression because of past trauma and have been behaving erratically because of that. I apologize for that. It's all part of the problem, I'm afraid. I have taken a break, relaxed and calmed down, done some therapeutic trauma writing, and I feel much stabler. I can't promise to always be steady but I will try to keep my head with this one.

Of course, typical Eilwynn, I started again with an experiment. I realize the format of this story is unusual. Give it a chance. If you like it, great. If you don't, that's fine and you don't need to tell me the format is a little strange. Basically, the first part of this series is a character study in a "series of personal essays" format. So treat it like it is. The second part of this series will be fem Ichigo's canon life told through long, essay-like entries in a journal.

With that said, let's begin. What happens when you take too many university level classes in personal nonfiction and creative writing, read over thirteen dense texts and watch countless movies and read countless articles all concerning Japanese culture, have a series of Japanese penpals, and put so much thought into what a fem Ichigo would be like that she becomes her own original character for you?

You get this fucking fic. Good God, I need a life.

Full Summary:

Part One: A female Kurosaki Ichigo writes a series of essays detailing her time before becoming a Shinigami. A character study. (This book is the first part of that section. A sequel to this book is to come detailing the second part of that section.)

Part Two: A female Kurosaki Ichigo keeps a series of long, extensive, real-time journal entries detailing her time as a Shinigami.

The fem Ichigo story done a little differently. Major focus on pre-canon before manga-based canon is gotten to. ByaIchi, IchiHitsu love triangle eventually to come.

Warning: Author can update so often that stats are not always indicative.

My name is Kurosaki Oniyuri. That's the Japanese way, with the surname first. The Western way is Oniyuri Kurosaki. Literally translated into English from Japanese, it means "Tiger Lily Black Blade," which is pretty cool if I do say so myself. "Oniyuri" is "Tiger Lily." It comes from the roots "Demon" (Oni) and "Lily" (yuri). Literally, "The Demon Lily."

More amusingly, "yuri" can also mean "lesbian sex," so my name could also mean "Demonic Lesbian Sex," something that I personally find hilarious and that I am often teased about by my friends. My father might have done it on purpose. It sounds like a weird thing to do, but my father has a bizarre sense of humor. Still, I prefer "Demon Lily." Hence, these will be "The Demon Lily Journals."

I was named after a tiger lily because my parents were determined to name all of their daughters after fruits and blossoms. I was born with a full head of unique, wavy, biologically inborn orange hair, a turn on the more traditional Japanese wavy reddish-brown. To name me after an orange blossom of some kind just seemed obvious, and a tiger lily seemed fierce and majestic enough to fit the bill.

Some things about me. I am a teenage girl born and raised in twenty-first century Tokyo, Japan. I am a big sister to two little twin sisters. I am the daughter to a homemaker mother who passed away when I was nine and a father who is a doctor and a mortician, or as we call them in Japan, a nokansha. My father runs a small hospital in which he can do everything except major surgery, all the way through to hospice care, which is taking care of a dying person and prolonging their lifespan. Then, when the patient dies, he has a second part of the hospital where he is a nokansha.

Morticians in Japan have to slowly, respectfully, silently, and ritualistically prepare a body for burial in front of their collected family and closest friends. They do it from underneath a blanket, never showing the full body but only preparing it in parts from underneath the cloth. Nokansha do things like undress the person and put them in a white robe, clean the person with damp cloths, and put pieces of cotton in each orifice of the person's body. They do the person's makeup, lay their hands just so. It is a very silent, holy, and painstaking process, though sometimes treated with disgust by parts of the population, as dealing with dead bodies is considered by some to be fundamentally unclean.

I am also a good friend to many people of all kinds and all walks of life in my high school in Japan. I rescue cats from shelters and from lives as strays, and I love cutesy cat pendants and keychains. I can see ghosts, in the Japanese Buddhist manner. I am a Japanese feminist who speaks in a lower voice with more masculine wordage and who wants a career, in computer science and engineering. I read and write poetry from various cultures and languages. I love Japanese punk rock music and horror movies. I was a part-time nurse, hospice worker, and mortician for my father growing up; I also took over around the home from my mother after she passed away.

I love spicy Japanese food and chocolate - especially chocolate mochi, a kind of glutinous pasty little rice cake, very cute and sometimes very messy. I chew on mints a lot in my spare time instead of gum. I have taken several classes in Japanese tea ceremony, so I also love green tea.

I read manga (Japanese comics) and I have a black belt in karate. I blend and fuse avant-garde grunge fashion and traditional Japanese fashion to form my own distinct look; I love flame red lipstick and I always have some in my bag or my purse.

I am just doing a quick overview right now, because all of these topics will be explored in detail in future essays, along with a few other topics on top of that. Don't worry - you'll get the entire lowdown. So how will the first part of this journal, this series of essays showing my life as it has been so far, be constructed?

To show you what my past and present look like, before I get into part two (regular long current-time journal entries on important subjects), I will separate this series of essays about what shaped my younger life into two sections. Each section will consist of eleven essays.

The first section will be about my loves and interests, and my big life roles and childhood environment. The second section will chronologically cover the events that personally shaped my life. So: interests and life roles and environment first, mostly things about me personally and my fashion sense to give you a good indicator of what I am like, then the events that have actually happened to me.

There will be an especial emphasis on how Japanese culture has influenced my life, as I feel that is a unique thing I have to bring to the table.

So without further ado, next essay we'll dive right into part one, section one - things about and important to me personally at fifteen years old.