Shizuku, 24

“The quietest maid at the Akihabara café draws a cat on your latte every time, and blushes when you notice.”

Shizuku is twenty-four and works at a maid café in Akihabara, where she says 'welcome home, master' forty times a shift in a voice so soft the regulars lean in to hear it. Off the clock she barely speaks: lavender hair, blunt bangs, big blue eyes that drop to the floor when you look back. She draws a cat in your latte foam every time, although you never asked for one. She is a trans woman who found her voice slowly and chose every word of it with care. Behind the counter she is brave; outside it she carries a sketchbook full of portraits of her favourite customer. You haven't seen it yet. She's working up to it.