Kaoru Miki: Rational Mind
Second Captain, Fencing Club
Student Council Member

Tarot Card: Temperance
Duel Rose: Pale blue
Quote: *stopwatch click*
Name Meaning: The tree trunk's fragrance

Quiet and subtle, this gentle-hearted piano player is perhaps the softest of all the Duellists- he is content with the world, content in books, music, and the friendship of everyday living. Like an untroubled sea, he is placid and unruffled. Yet even the calmest sea may have hidden depths and jagged cliffs inside- it's just that you can't clearly see them for the smooth, glass-like surface...

His Story

Miki is the gentlest of the Ootori Duellists; he is warm-hearted, sweet and mild of temper. Closest to Utena in spirit, he seems to have little real concern for revolutionizing the world as his own personal existence is mostly satisfying.

He is the intellectual; he tutors Himemiya and Utena, (who both have the most rotten grades imaginable, in math particularly) and geniunely likes both girls as friends. His swordfighting is highly competent technically though he lacks Juri or Nanami's viciousness or Touga or Saionji's brute force; he fights the most 'honorably' of all the Duellists, with a single-handed style. His placid nature makes him a very unlikely candidate to possess the power of world revolution. He also doesn't entirely trust the motives of the Ends of the Earth.

He has his own quirks as the rest do, however. A fetishist about time, he carries a stopwatch, eternally timing people's sentences and actions and noting them down in a notebook for reasons only clear to himself. He also has a fetish for a certain piece of piano music, "The Sunny Garden". He can play the piano expertly, but when he hears Himemiya playing the same song, with more skill, he becomes entranced by her, as her playing reminds him of a key moment in his past:

Miki and his sister, Kozue, once used to practice together on the piano that piece of music, and Miki remembers it as the time when he was happiest in his childhood. However he harbors tremendous guilt because at a crucial time when they were to perform together in public at a piano recital, he fell ill and was unable to go. Kozue, who had no real playing ability, had to go alone and had a horrible experience where she was publically humiliated. She had been leaning on Miki's talent all along... though she never told him so. A wedge was driven between the brother and sister from that time; the sunlit garden was infected with weeds.

Miki and his sister share a bedroom and an evening ritual is that Miki prepares warm milk for both of them in special glass cups- one marked M and one K.

When he discovers he and Himemiya both enjoy playing the piano it makes him happy, yet one of his few angry moments comes when she tells him that, if Utena willed her to, she would never play the piano again. He challenges Utena to a duel to free the Rose Bride, so that Anshi can play her music whenever she wishes, but is crushed easily when Himemiya cheers on her Victor; she likes being where she is.

This brief upset doesn't really affect his friendship with the two girls, however, and he remains close to them. Of all the Duellists, it seems he will be the least upset by Revolution's coming... He has little to lose. But one wonders... will he ever try to grow beyond the Duels?