Hikori Mortem

Mortem was born June 26th 1966 in Cassum (a fictional port town located on the East Coast of Maine). His mom is a music teacher, and his dad works in finance. Both of his parents are religious zealots, leading to a tumultuous childhood fraught with abuse surrounding his sexuality and gender expression. It is implied that his mother is also gay, but she believes it’s something that can be “fixed”, which only furthers the distance between them. His relationships with his peers aren't much better, leaving him with no true safe space at school or at home. While Mortem struggles to interact with other people, he’s excellent at school and achieves valedictorian status. But throughout his school career, he ignores the growing physical discomfort and symptoms in his body that will eventually disable him.

At the beginning of SAB, Mortem moves with his retiring parents to Blackpoint after not applying to college and failing to hold down a job. His body is slowly failing him, and he doesn’t know why.

His father is adamant on him leaving, but his mother wants him to stay, leading to a violent altercation that results in his mother’s gruesome death by strangulation. Even though he’s too late to save her, he does manage to knock out his dad. But he doesn’t attempt to escape after this, and instead lies next to his mother’s corpse until his dad regains consciousness. Too weak to properly defend himself, Mortem convinces his dad that he could lie to the police and claim the attack was an accident. He gets some distance, but not without getting his hands sliced open and his head bashed against the floor during the struggle. This truce doesn’t last long though, and as they both scramble for the knife Mortem snatches it and stabs him 27 times in the chest. With both his parent’s bloody corpses on his kitchen floor, he washes up and flees. Unfamiliar with blackpoint, he runs through random alleys until he bumps into Kat who is fleeing from his own crime of passion. Exhausted and desperate, he begs for Kat’s help before passing out in his arms.

Biography

personality

Despite being a chronic people pleaser, Mortem also has a heightened sense of justice. If he feels safe enough to not get pummeled, then he will step in. If not, he will reluctantly agree, do a little fake laugh and nod, only to silently fume and spiral for hours afterwards. This sense of justice can be distorted if he thinks very highly of the person. Leading him to defend things that he might otherwise find horrendous. Mortem desperately needs validation to determine if he’s doing things “correctly.” Neutrality is massively anxiety inducing for him and he tends to think in black-and-white absolutes. Changing his mind constantly without realizing he’s doing it.

Mortem forms very intense and obsessive relationships with people. He either hates you, or wants to crawl inside your skin. There's not a lot of in-between. Because of this, he tries to abstain from close relationships or admitting he has feelings to avoid the inevitable heartbreak when he gets too clingy and codependent. But if his brain gets attached, there is no unattaching it. Leading them into a multitude of toxic relationships that they can’t bring themselves to leave, clinging as hard as they can to people who don’t give a damn, sacrificing any of their interests or even changing their personality for the sake of the other person.

Mental/ physical health

Mortem has an undiagnosed chronic illness, and while he will discover some coping mechanisms, he won’t ever uncover the underlying cause. As a result, not only do the people around him constantly gaslight him, but he also gaslights himself into believing it is purely psychological. This illness makes him constantly fatigued, which is exacerbated by his depression. Leaving him stuck in endless loops of trying to recondition himself to physical activity only to give up when his body does and spiral into depressive episodes.

He also struggles with food, suffering from a multitude of digestive issues and inconsistent sensitivities that seem to change by the day. They managed to get through high school by ignoring their physical needs because they didn’t have the mental or physical energy to study and go to class while also sleeping and feeding themselves properly. So during the gap after his graduation, he suddenly crashes and becomes very physically ill, and is unable to recover. He goes from being relatively independent to being completely reliant on Kat for even basic things like eating and bathing.

Gender/ appearance

Mortem doesn’t particularly care about gender at all, but is frustrated by the social norms forced upon him to be “masculine.” He dyes his hair a variety of colors but his natural hair color is blond and his current dye choice is blue. They like both masculine and feminine attire, but don’t have any form of dysphoria. However, they are self-conscious about not being perceived as “attractive” if they don’t receive validation. Mortem learns more about gender dysphoria and expression as the story progresses. Being trapped in a bigoted household for his whole life, he was never able to explore these things and didn’t even realize changing his pronouns was an option. He still tends to default to he/him primarily because of the inconvenience of explaining otherwise to people. But they like it when people are confused and have to guess. Mortem mostly just identifies as Mortem. If he’s not violently depressed, then he thinks he’s hot shit. They have a preference for comfortable clothing rather than fashionable, and enjoy stealing Kat’s clothes.

Relationships

Mortem cares deeply about his mom, but is tormented by her backhanded way of thinking and cult-like behavior. She does care about him, but is too brainwashed to realize the harm she’s doing. He still has fond memories of her, but it’s distorted from years of unintentional abuse. However, he doesn’t have any kind of relationship with his dad, and after his death has frequent flashbacks of physical and verbal abuse.

Before moving to Blackpoint, Mortem has two friends (Cynthia and Travis) Cynthia is an artsy goth girl who is dating Travis, a tryhard Jock who plays football. Their friend group falls apart when Cynthia finds out Mortem is sleeping with Travis behind her back. It is implied that Mortem is constantly sleeping around because he feels like it’s the only thing people value about him.

Mortem becomes immediately attached to Kat because as far as they can tell, there don’t seem to be any strings attached to his affection and care. But being trapped in his apartment all day, Mortem gets very clingy and distressed when Kat isn’t around. Even simple grocery trips trigger his fear of abandonment, leading Mortem to spiral into intense hatred and panic when Kat leaves, only to be extremely loving, but also obsessive when he returns. Kat tries to set Mortem up to get along with his friends, but he has no interest and pushes them away while continuing to fixate on Kat. He particularly dislikes Landon and doesn’t like that Kat is still friends with his ex.

Notes

• favorite bands/music: really likes country music, but is ashamed by it
• education: Graduated Cassum High [ valedictorian status ]
• occupation: disabled
• food habits: eats mostly junk, (tv dinners, premade, fast food, or easy prep things like sandwiches) cannot cook to save his life. strong preference for sweets, gets nauseous a lot, goes long periods without eating and then eats himself sick.
• currently taking: lots of Tylenol, ibuprofen and tums
• fun fact: knows how to play piano, but doesn't like it very much

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