Kaede Marikouji

**Height:** 158cm (5'2") Calm and composed, and raised in a wealthy family, she speaks with extreme politeness. Her family estate is vast—the distance from the front gate to the main entrance alone takes about twenty minutes to walk—and she was accustomed to carrying checks rather than loose change. The Madenokoji family founded Madenokoji Heavy Industries, amassing a fortune in shipbuilding and trade across the Tokai region during the transition from the Edo to the Meiji period. They remain responsible for constructing the majority of residential floating structures in the Tokai region today and even own private floating vessels. She is always seen wearing a shawl. Aboard the Harekaze, she is renowned for having one of the most beautiful heads of long black hair, which retains its luster even when water shortages force the crew to bathe in saltwater. She is musically gifted; she has mastered a wide range of string and keyboard instruments—playing the violin at a professional level—and possesses an extraordinary ear for pitch. Curiously, however, she struggles with wind instruments. Despite this weakness, she serves as the Harekaze's bugler, using a trumpet to signal the time and convey other messages. She is also an avid music listener and is a devoted user of vacuum-tube amplifiers. She leverages her keen sense of pitch to handle sonar operations, though the lack of a relief crew member makes the role demanding; during a late-night battle against a submarine, she found herself fighting off drowsiness as much as the enemy. Her family is the head of the Madenokoji school of naginata (halberd) martial arts, and she is a highly skilled practitioner who has attained full mastery of the discipline.