Kaede Inoue

3 August 1986

Shinbutsu Shūgō

Kaede is Maureen’s boyfriend, a fellow student at Harvard, and her own student in an English tutoring program.

Kaede is studying to become a paediatric surgeon with a general specialisation in newborns — though his exact speciality he has not yet decided. His dream is to be one of those saving the lives of newborns whose hearts are malformed, or not working properly — or lungs, livers, etc.

He and Maureen met when she was working to tutor him in English, a language he is functional in, but purely academically — he felt he needed work in conversational English. She asked him to coffee, he asked her to dinner, and the romance grew from there.

He is a shy, quite man. Timid, and exceedingly urban — he was born and raised in Tokyo — he is fascinated by his girlfriend’s more rural and domestic skills, especially those that relate to Granny’s farm.

When he isn’t trying to become a first rate doctor, or working to be a first rate boyfriend, he can be found reading comic books and building model planes, or studying ancient Arabian swords and artwork.