Uendo Toneido

"Uendo Toneido"

- Even if my performance isn't worth watching, I will certainly watch my words. I wouldn't want to say anything thoughtless and get arrested. After all, that'd be... a "raku-no-no"! Hee hee! Uendo Toneido is a rakugo performer was a witness in one of Athena Cykes' cases. He has disssociative identity disorder, with four total personalities: Uendo, the rakugo performer, Patches, the jester, Kisegawa, the female courtesan, and Owen, the child.

History
Uendo was the second apprentice of Taifu Toneido, having been friends with both him and his first apprentice, Geiru Toneido, when he was young. However, Uendo demonstrated great capabilities in rakugo, as his multiple personalities allowed him to put on convincing performances when switching between characters. This level of skill earned him the right to the name "Uendo", which had previously been the name assumed by Geiru's late father, a renowned rakugo performer himself. In order to avoid attracting unwanted attention to the troupe, Uendo's multiple personalities were kept a secret from the public.

In particular, the personality "Owen" was concealed further, as unlike Uendo's other personalities, he did not share their memories and would only surface if the other personalities had been rendered unconscious. According to Geiru, she and Taifu would often play with Owen when Uendo switched to this personality. Uendo professed a weakness to alcohol, which he consistently avoided consuming.

Uendo was eventually scheduled to inherit the name in a formal ceremony and performance. This was the final straw for Geiru, who secretly resented Taifu for not passing on the name "Uendo" to her, despite her being the senior apprentice, and she sought to take her revenge.

Witness to murder

 * Main article: Turnabout Storyteller

On the day of the ceremonial performance, Uendo visited Taifu's room in the afternoon. Although he refused an offering of sake, Uendo passed out after consuming a manju bun, not realizing it shared the same brand as the sake and was actually alcoholic. This caused Owen to surface, who witnessed Geiru suffocating Taifu and his master retaliating against his attacker. Horrified at what he witnessed, Owen passed out from shock; although he didn't see the face of the culprit, he vaguely recognized the familiar scent of Geiru's perfume.

By the time Uendo regained consicousness, he had switched back to his three regular personalities, and Taifu was dead. Observing the crime scene, they noticed that the victim's karuta cards spelled "OWEN 4TH", implicating Owen for the murder. Due to their lack of a shared memory with Owen, they began to panic at the possibility of Owen being the culprit and, on a split second decision, they decided to rearrange them to "WHET NO4" and implicate Bucky Whet instead.

Following that, they proceeded to throw off the time of death by tampering with the crime scene. Uendo hauled Taifu's television to the door, which was capable of broadcasting ongoing performances from the neighboring stage. He went on to put on an atrocious performance of "Time Soba", instead of "Soba Glutton", like he was scheduled to, which was played back by the television. To Geiru and Simon Blackquill listening outside, it sounded as though Taifu was alive and practicing his routine. The horrible performance Uendo gave helped to make the ruse more convincing as there would not be any laughter from the audience.

The next day, he appeared in court to testify against Whet. During the trial, he initially tried to conceal his multiple personalities, but Athena Cykes realized that he was displaying emotional overload that switched between emotions in the same testimony on the Mood Matrix. Cykes diagnosed that this would only make sense if it was detecting multiple people with wildly divergent attitudes arguing with each other. Admitting the truth, Patches and Kisegawa introduced themselves. Uendo admitted to tampering with the crime scene, although all three personalities insisted that they had not murdered Taifu, continuing to hide Owen's existence out of fear that Owen would be implicated. Eventually, Cykes proved that Owen existed and that he came out when the other personalities were otherwise unavailable, only to discover he was a shy, easily frightened five-year old. However, he was a critical witness, and that the presence of perfume Owen detected actually implicated Geiru.

Personality
Uendo has dissociative identity disorder, with four different personalities, three main ones (Uendo proper, Patches, and Kisegawa) and one that comes out only when the other three cannot, usually when drunk or otherwise passed out (Owen). Uendo's main personality is relatively calm and always ready to perform; Patches is a jokester and is relatively happy, Kisegawa is stern and sarcastic; and Owen is fearful and child-like.

Uendo's personalities are identified by the position of his ponytail. Uendo keeps his down behind his head, Patches's stands straight up, Kisegawa's slants to the side and Owen's hangs over his face. The three main personas share memories and switch control among themselves depending on the situation, based on which personality they feel is the most suitable. Due to Owen not sharing the same memories with them (since Owen only appears when the other three are unconscious), the other personalities aren't entirely sure what he's like. Cykes was eventually able to help Owen be more open, and the four learn to work together on a more regular basis.

Name

 * "Bifū" (微風) means "breeze," fitting with his and Geiru Toneido's wind themed names.
 * " Senpū"  (旋風) means "hurricane" and "Tei" is often part of a rakugo performer's title.
 * "Ippachi" (一八) and "Sadakichi" (定吉) are characters that appear in many rakugo stories while "Kisegawa" (喜瀬川) comes from " Omitate"  (お見立て).
 * "Uendo" and "Toneido" come from "wind" and "tornado", respectively.
 * Owen (4th) is an anagram of "Whet NO4".