Makoto Tsukauchi

A mole sits at the lower left corner of Makoto's mouth. Her jet black hair reaches somewhere between mid and lower back and parts toward the right, and the dark eyes underneath are ordinarily hidden behind bright green contacts. She is tall, slim, and treated by the story as a striking young woman.

Her job keeps her fashionably turned out, and gold hoops are a permanent fixture in her ears.

Sharp, self-directed, and serious about her studies, Makoto pursues what she wants and generally gets there. She is pleasant company and genuinely likable, popular and sociable enough to get on with nearly anyone she meets, and on the surface she passes for a perfectly ordinary Japanese university student. That surface hides a comfort with slightly underhanded shortcuts. Shoko Haimawari, Koichi's mother, has decided she is the perfect daughter-in-law and far beyond what her son deserves.

Put her in charge of a group and things happen. She is unusually good at making people pull in the same direction, and although the methods can be manipulative, the outcome usually leaves everyone better off than they started. Captain Celebrity's PR operation runs on her in all but title, and she handled the event where Pop☆Step made her stage debut.

There is a streak of defiance in her too. Rules and the people who enforce them invite pushback from her, though she stops short of anything actually illegal. Naomasa says this is nothing new, that she has broken rules and promises whenever it suited her since childhood and then talked her way clear of the consequences, and the habit has put some distance between the siblings.

Detective Skills: Her brother's talent for digging information out of people runs in her too, and she is good at it.

Polygraph: Touching someone lets Makoto read their physiological signals and work out whether they are lying to her. It has two blind spots. A person who is genuinely relaxed slips past it, and so does anyone who believes what they are saying is true. It also demands precision in the asking. When she tried to corner Koichi over being the Crawler, the question came out as whether he was the Cruller, and the slip handed him a clean escape from the accusation.