Kisa Sohma

A petite, slender girl of delicate beauty, Kisa has fair skin and unusual golden hair cut to about the nape, with two long fringes trailing down either side of her face. Her large eyes glow amber.

Her middle-school uniform, close to what Isuzu and Kagura once wore, pairs a lilac sailor top bearing a single lavender stripe with a pleated lilac skirt, a lemon-yellow ribbon, striped white thigh-highs, and brown loafers, sometimes layered with a black turtleneck in cold weather. Off duty she prefers feminine dresses and skirts, and she often ties her hair with ribbons borrowed from Tohru, whom she holds in pure adoration.

At her first appearance Kisa has locked her voice away, and in her tiger form she lashes out, biting Tohru twice and Haru once, a defense reflex left by the trust that bullying stripped from her. Tohru's warmth gradually coaxes her from that shell until she starts speaking again and sharing what weighs on her, with Yuki, who knows bullying firsthand, resolving alongside her to grow stronger.

Beneath it all she is a gentle, innocent, soft-spoken girl who dislikes conflict and would rather talk things through calmly. She bruises easily and can dissolve into tears, yet she tends to bottle her sadness and offer a smile instead. A certain obliviousness shows through too, as when she misreads Hiro's warning at the school play and fails to notice the boys eyeing her. Like Yuki she carries a heavy self-hatred left by the bullying, so small wins, such as greeting Kyo without leaning on Hiro to speak for her, feel to her like real triumphs.

Kisa and Hiro were inseparable playmates from childhood, and when Hiro's growing love for her led him to confess it to Akito, the family head flew into a rage and beat Kisa so badly she spent two weeks recovering in a hospital, leaving her bewildered by the cruelty. Middle school brought fresh torment as classmates mocked her golden hair and eyes as unnatural, then took to ignoring her while still laughing at anything she said. Hiro, wracked by guilt and terrified Akito would strike her again, pulled away as well, and under the strain Kisa shut her voice off entirely; Hatori observed that the words remained but she had sealed them in her mind.

Her distress eventually drove her to run away, and Haru found her in tiger form and carried her toward Shigure's home. After she bit Tohru, Kisa's exhausted mother arrived demanding to know why she had fled, and Tohru gently voiced what she believed lay behind it: that Kisa had kept the bullying secret out of fear her mother would come to hate her. Moved, Kisa transformed back and clung to Tohru, then trailed after her like a baby duck for days. When a teacher's note urged her to find self-worth, Yuki countered that people learn to love themselves only once someone else accepts them, and Kisa finally spoke in agreement. Buoyed by Tohru, Yuki, and Haru, she resolved to return to school and face her fears, and she reconciled with Hiro, realizing how much his distance had actually cost him.

Over a summer at the Sohma beach house she quarrels with Hiro and quickly makes up, delights to learn that his mother Satsuki is pregnant, and later joins the others for the Cinderella-ish play; when Akito attacks Yuki at the New Year's banquet, Kagura shields her. In the third year she takes pride in greeting Kyo on her own, and after Hiro's curse lifts the two nearly confess their feelings. Kisa's own curse, the seventh to break, moves her to tears, and she is stunned like everyone else when Akito is revealed to be a woman. In the epilogue, overwhelmed by the thought of Tohru moving away with Kyo, she weeps as Hiro comforts her and the memories with Tohru come flooding back.