>>96582901
>Concept
Chê Ngiêm is a second-generation Vietnam immigrant and PhD Candidate in Nuclear Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Born and raised in Kageoka during his childhood, he gradated from Higan Academy nearly ten years ago and is now returning as part of his academic work, splitting his time between serious research, teacher's assistant and his own personal investigations into the paranormal.
Burdened with the twin social obstacles of family poverty and the stigma of being a foreigner in Japan ensured that Chê's head was buried in papers and studies for his time there. Like most students, he did not Awaken, and was largely unaware of the scope of supernatural influence on the town, trying to dismiss any strange ongoings as unnecessary distractions - despite this, the general weirdness of the town stuck with him, despite his tutors' insistence that the supernatural was nothing more than fiction.
Through clever bidding, begging and social maneuvering, Chê had managed to convince his professors to allow him to return to Higan while he completed his dissertation. Insisting the reasoning was his connections with the teachers, his true calling was the malignant, whispering dread of what he had seen out the corner of his eye during childhood. Whenever he's not helping grade papers or ignoring his final thesis, the engineer sneaks out school laboratory equipment to try and catch glimpses of the unexplained forbidden zones with Geiger counters, spectrometers, UV/IV cameras and other familiar tools of the trade.
Unsurprisingly, Chê's rational attempts to understand the Idea World are misguided, and he routinely stumbles at mental roadblocks that Awakened simply intuit. So far he has managed to hide his work from the students and other faculty, though some have caught glimpses of a strange figure in full hazmat suit, tuning advanced equipment around Zones before disappearing. He is equally unaware of the students' supernatural doings.
