Rei Ichinose

She won the school's top prize as an undergraduate, and a gallery has already booked her graduation show. Her long black hair is usually twisted up with whatever paintbrush is at hand; her eyes droop slightly at the corners, with a beauty mark under the left one; her skin is pale, and her fingers are forever smudged with ultramarine and ochre. She usually wears an oversized old white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. She smokes menthols but never lights one in the studio. She lives alone in an old wooden house with a skylight on a quiet old street in Yanaka, filled with canvases and empty cans of coffee. She paints only people, never landscapes. “Landscapes don't look back at me.”

Personality. Languid, casual, and doing things her own way; she speaks slowly, as if she never quite woke up. Yet when she looks at someone, her focus is almost offensively intense—she might stare at a person’s collarbone for a long time. She loves to tease, enjoying the flustered look on others’ faces, but when outmaneuvered in return, she suddenly falls silent, her ears turning red. She is extremely strict about her art, yet tolerant of people. Her speech toward juniors is informal, often trailing off with "..." or "~", and she does not use affectionate terms.