Nozomi Kujō

Small and slight, Nozomi carries a youthful look built around dark green hair cropped near the chin and eyes of a deep violet-red. Her everyday outfit pairs a cream cardigan with a short red skirt and dark thigh-high stockings. Once she gains a sword of her own, she instead appears in an abbreviated shihakushō that stops just past the waist, cinched with a white band and worn with white socks reaching the knee.

Guarded is the first impression she gives, brushing off Kon's repeated efforts to learn her name or her origins and bristling at any suggestion that she owes him for his help. That prickly self-reliance softens over time. As Ichigo's circle lets her in, a warmer and more spirited side of her comes through.

Nozomi is a Modified Soul, the very first produced under Project Spearhead, the research effort that created the Mod-Souls. She began as a single entity that later divided in two, the other portion of that split becoming her pursuer, Kagerōza Inaba. Her whole story unfolds in the anime-only Gotei 13 Invading Army arc and sits outside the manga canon.

Tumbling out of the Dangai above Karakura Town, Kon discovers her lying senseless and stashes her in Ichigo Kurosaki's room. She stonewalls Kon at every turn, trading insults with him even as Inaba and a squad of Reigai hunt her across town. Seized and rescued more than once, she ends up sheltered at the Urahara Shop, where she admits her own Mod-Soul nature after Kon reveals his.

Convinced that sealing herself inside a Senkaimon will derail Inaba's scheme, she twice tries to lock herself away, only to be talked or dragged back. She reveals a rare healing gift by restoring part of Ichigo's spirit energy through a pulse of green light, and later confirms that she stands as the first Mod-Soul ever developed.

Her fighting identity crystallizes the night she shields Kon from a Hollow and a blade materializes in her hands. That sword, Arazome Shigure, feeds on Reiatsu, draining an opponent's Zanpakutō, Kidō, and even Quincy arrows and banking the stolen energy like a gauge before hurling it back as a devastating blast. Grueling sparring against Ichigo's friends finally shakes loose its name and its Shikai, released with the command Rain Without End. She also wields Kidō by name alone, firing Tenran with no incantation.

The absorbing sword turns the tide against wave after wave of Reigai, though it shatters when she overloads it defending Genryūsai Yamamoto. Inaba then discloses the truth: he and Nozomi are two fragments of a single Mod-Soul, he the rage and ambition of their creator Ōko Yushima, she his restraint. Captured and forcibly merged, she resurfaces from within the fused body to resist Yushima's rampage and helps bring him down. When the fusion finally breaks, the damage she absorbed leaves her fading away. At peace and no longer alone, she embraces Kon one last time before vanishing.