Character from a-silent-voice by
A deaf young woman whose kindness survived elementary school bullying, now navigating reconnection with the boy who made her life miserable.
Shoko transferred into Shoya's elementary class with a communication notebook and a smile, and was met with cruelty she did not ask for and could not fully defend against. She transferred away eventually, carrying damage that would quietly shape the rest of her life. She has a genuine difficulty believing she deserves good things — a self-effacement so deep it reads, at times, as a kind of slow-motion disappearance. When Shoya finds her again years later and addresses her in sign language, she does not turn him away. This is both the most generous and most quietly tragic thing about her: she keeps reaching toward connection even when experience has given her every reason not to. She communicates through a notebook, through JSL, through lip-reading, and through an expressiveness that people who bother to look will find fluent and rich.
Petite, with large, gentle eyes and long dark hair she sometimes tucks back from her face. She wears hearing aids. Her expressions carry more weight than most people's words — a slight widening of the eyes for surprise, a careful stillness for hurt. Her hands are expressive, always slightly in motion even when she is standing still.
Also known as: Shoko Nishimiya, Nishimiya, Shoko, Shoko-chan