Backstory
Peppin Angert was known to others as a complicated child to be around, the only child to a businessman in Germany. Truthfully, she was born in the lovely coastal town of Anteegraf, although there are no memories she’s since held onto after moving as an infant to the city of Sauzieu, a town surrounded by a ring of mountains. What the sea looks like beyond those hills, outside of a photo, is unfamiliar to her, but a photo itself is a glimpse, her father’s smile even more alien to her as she’s never seen it in any form. Peppin is considered a sheltered child who lived in boarding schools most of her life, vaguely remembering breaks where she’d look forward to seeing her father at home, only to be cared for by a nanny. For as long as she could remember, any glance she could catch of her father was of a weary, disheartened man. As her nanny put it, he lost someone important to him. Peppin wanted to understand those sentiments, knowing it was over her late mother that she’d never met, but if Peppin was all he had left, she felt she didn’t deserve loneliness either.
Their bond continued to be a small, fragile thing over the years, falling at the seams and wearing away as Peppin got older. Sometimes she’d sew it in her mind carefully with the hopes that things could improve one day, but all those stitches left marks of wounds, evidence of the times Peppin felt Joaquin let her down; his presence missing from her graduations, no good mornings or good nights, no meals shared together. Her schoolwork could be signed by the nanny, allowances granted through her when asked for. School life was a distraction, but not much better from a social standpoint. Peppin had trouble with conversations when family was a topic she couldn’t relate to, knowledge of her late mother making others too nervous to continue speaking— Peppin couldn’t tell if her peers were afraid to speak to her, didn’t like her, or was it the suffocating feeling of kindness through pity. It was much more safer to keep to herself and her schoolwork; no one needed to know her troubles, no one needed to be bothered with a lost child.
Over the years Peppin did try to keep her mind busy by indirectly looking towards love, through crushes on boys from bands that fell off with the next trending band, through new hobbies she wanted to love but she couldn’t quite celebrate alone. If she doodled who would she show it to, if she wrote who would she read it to? Young, she wasn’t yet at a maturity level to learn her own self love was just as important, if not the most important, so the lack of love from others did take its toll on her mentally. At one point most of her evenings were spent lying in bed, too exhausted to even scroll online, her festering fears keeping her company. Before she could feel worse, things took a curious turn right at the height of her despair one day. Peppin vaguely recalls sleeping late, but to regain her consciousness somewhere else, that didn’t make any sense. Bruises began to appear without a reason, time flew without her awareness, was she out of it everytime she didn’t have a good feeling? Even a nap while sick resulted in her waking up in a broken fever with everything neat around her; tissues tossed, children’s medicine beside her, her sheets changed messily, but they were changed nonetheless. At one point, there was a child’s handwriting in a journal, a proper apology for the injuries when they “switched places”.
Peppin didn’t understand, didn’t find the logic in anything that was going on, not until she saw the news showcasing glimpses of a magical girl making miracles happen. She looked nothing like her, such a bright and happy person, but conversations through Peppin’s journal in turns confirmed it really was her, Carambola. Naïve and simple minded, Peppin was content with the possession if good things were happening, minus the injuries Carambola sustained remaining on Peppin. In fact, the fact that they could switch on days Peppin felt physically unwell was another bonus, as those ailments wouldn’t carry over to Carambola. Still, why this was going on was a mystery to Peppin, one that Carambola didn’t fully understand, but even her details were a secret. If she had a reason to be around, she didn’t want to tell Peppin why, not yet.