JUNI ITŌ STERLING

Played by bunny! ૮꒰ ˶• ą¼ ā€¢Ė¶ź’±įƒ ā™”
Last updated on 9/22/2023!


Source: OC
Age: 21 years
Pronouns: He/him
Height: 5'6"
Region: Ho'ohiki (Fanmade)
Occupation: Currently Unemployed

CONTENT WARNING: This profile contains references to drowning, child abandonment and disordered eating, depersonalization, derealization and various other symptoms of depressive disorders.

Appearance

Juni is rather unremarkable from a distance and up close. He's got a sort of frame— and barely stands 5'6" tall— that suggests a few too many nights of trashy food and immediate therapeutic yoga. As he stands, there's a slight slouch and the slight sag of shoulders. His face is somewhat sharp, but retains a slight boyish look. Black, moppy hair sits atop his head, usually falling past his brows and being relatively unkempt with a vaguely greasy look. Just as dark— but oh, so soulful— eyes say more than his reserved, halting words or slight gestures ever will. Are those ghostlights behind them... ?

His clothing is aimed towards comfort instead of fashion, though Juni can be convinced to make an effort; only then he does he gravitate towards classic business casual (read: twink) wear: polos and patterned shirts, chinos, and a nice pair of shoes. Otherwise, he'll be seen in t-shirts, sweatshirts, and jeans.

Personality

When he isn't shaking and stumbling over his words and clawing at the anything near him to ground himself, Juni is quite pleasant company. He's a little shy, a little soft-spoken, somewhat cheeky around those he's close to. His words are somewhat halting and detached, and he tends to miss opportunities to speak for lack of properly interjecting— not that it particularly bothers him.

Despite the nature of his medical history and bouncing between therapists, he's quite optimistic and encouraging (he had to be, since he was all alone, probably fighting off scurvy.) There's no bad idea or concept not worth giving time and thought to. It's gotten Juni this far: it can't possibly end now. He's not afraid of making conversation to pass time, but prefers to be mere passerby rather than an active participant in conversation when it concerns complete strangers.

Though he's a little detached socially, Juni adores Pokemon and is especially fond of his fellow Ghost-types and fish.

Backstory

He's tried every drug on the market, tried every method of coping and mediation. He's been in and out of therapy for the same things over and over— paranoia, anxiety, social detachment, episodic depersonalization and derealization— only to stumble upon the same old, feeble conclusion: he really shouldn't be alive.

Juni lived an idyllic, unremarkable life. It— like many children's— followed a set routine: wake up, go to school, participate in extracurriculars, go home, stay up late and burn the candle at both ends with your fist firmly in the middle of the flame. He never made an attempt to stand out, to become an all-star athlete or to venture across the world in the name of a Pokemon-based adventure.

Until the sea, he never once considered going anywhere but to formal schooling, to college, to a job until the day he died. Until the sea, he never once touched water in such a way— pools were often reserved for the bourgeois, you see— and never once considered what it would be like to be different, to be changed, to have a mental fog so thick and cloying that it upended a routine ten years in the making.

So, yeah, therapy and medication.

His parents detached themselves from their unremarkable, average son— the cost of mental health care was far greater than that of physical, you see, and the insurance just couldn't cover it. Juni was forced to adapt on his own and avoid social services coming to claim the minor who had been skipping school to deal with rip currents and the question of mortality. He left the house at just sixteen (not such a sweet number, after all) under a false name— Juni Sterling— and pulled himself from the world of standardized testing and scores that have little reflection of a student's real value (because, apparently, when you nearly drown and wind up having panic attacks at the mere mention of water, your peers just can't seem to leave you alone.)

Schoolless, homeless, with barely fifty dollars (a parting gift from his late grandmother) and a backpack to his name, Juni set off for greener pastures in the city of Uberrime. He sifted through countless jobs, acquiring quite a resumƩ of short-lived occupations (again, people just can't seem to ignore the trauma-ridden teenager.)

His therapist recommended establishing good associations with former trauma— to cope, y'know— and suggested a job working with fish. Sterling happened to stumble upon a laboratory owned by one Violet Lace. Miss Violet— as he often refers to her as— immediately swept him beneath her wing, though he inevitably wound up couch-surfing with one of her associates and other adopted son, Thomas Joseph White.

A year into therapy, his job as a cameraman (sometimes) for Joey, assistant to Miss Violet, online schooling to receive his diploma, and being surrounded by his found family, and Sterling's beginning to think— among all of the granite and marble headstones and the pumpkin patch where his stalwart gourd was born— a simple, powerful thought: maybe I should be alive.

Not all anchors have to sink. Not even when they're dragged between worlds.

Pokemon Team

Pumpkaboo - Pickup
Energy Ball, Astonish, Confuse Ray, Scary Face