Shinko Inari

Shinko keeps her dull grey-brown hair in outward-pointing braided twintails, with two strands falling to frame her face and a blue forehead protector capping the top of her head. Her maroon shirt has short sleeves, a raised collar, and a single white stripe running down its front, cut short to bare her midriff. She rounds out the look with dark grey shorts paired with blue sandals, and wraps her right thigh in white bandages beside a shuriken holster.

Warm-hearted and eager to see her teammates get along, Shinko worked hard to smooth the friction between Itachi and his teammate Tenma Izumo, a boy who resented being outshone by a younger prodigy. Her thoughtfulness extended to gentle reproach as well, and she once scolded Itachi for dismissing someone's dream of becoming a ninja in spite of their evident limits. The anime gives her a soft spot for anything adorable, so that she gushed openly at the sight of a young Itachi in cat ears, and again when a ninneko left her covered in scratches yet marveling at how soft its paws felt.

Shinko and her family settled in Konoha when she was nine, though her accent always marked her as an outsider. After graduating the Academy she was assigned to Team 2 with Itachi and Tenma under Yuki Minazuki, and she served as the group's medic thanks to the medical ninjutsu she had studied, tending wounds, advising on poisons, and unmasking disguised enemies.

A strong first year, largely on Itachi's back, won the team the honor of guarding the Fire Daimyo on his yearly journey, but a masked attacker fell upon the caravan and killed Tenma. Shaken by the brutal realities of shinobi life and certain she could never rival Itachi, Shinko stepped away to live as a civilian and took work at a tea shop, where Itachi once stopped in with Izumi Uchiha. Later, after the Uchiha clan's downfall, she met Himuka Suzukaze, her replacement on Team 2, and did her best to comfort the grieving girl while quietly sensing that far more lay behind Itachi's actions than anyone knew.