Shizuru Imawano

Shizuru Imawano (忌野 静流, Imawano Shizuru) is a mysterious girl who first encounters Kensuke Nimura at school where she then corners him in the bathroom. She demonstrates knowledge of the sesshōseki and threatens him with a gun, but then flirts with him. She reveals she has a sesshōseki of her own on a necklace and fights with her spiritual beast, Kuroford. She is a lively and flirtatious girl but is emotionally closed-off, and gets angry with herself when she gets closer to Kagura Tsuchimiya and Kensuke as she is afraid of becoming too involved. She has been forced to kill from a young age, and feels that there is no way out of the path set for her as heir to a criminal organization, explicitly shown after her elder sister, Setsuna Imawano, kills their father. This is something Kagura sympathizes with and is a key factor why she wants to help Shizuru.

There is a competition between her and Kagura to obtain the most sesshōseki with Kensuke as the prize, but after the Kyuubi arc it is shown that Shizuru accepts the close bond Kagura and Kensuke share, and bows out. She left Tokyo with Noriyuki Izuna to look for her own path and to find her sister, who disappeared from the hospital after the battle, but it is still unknown if they managed to locate her. She reappears with Izuna to rescue Kagura from the daidarabochi.

Shizuru is very competent with a gun, and is shown to have excellent markmanship from when she silenced Kensuke by intentionally shooting at his forehead in an instant with her arms chained together, and only causing a presumably shallow wound on the side of his head. Shizuru's hand-to-hand combat ability is equal to Kagura as the two passed out simultaneously after defeating each other.

Etymology

 * The name Shizuru means "quiet" (静) (shizu) and "flow, style, manner, method" (流) (ru), which literally means "static flow" altogether.
 * Shizuru's surname Imawano means "abomination, mourning, abhor, detestable, death anniversary" (忌) (imawa) and "field, wilderness" (野) (no).

Trivia

 * Shizuru's design is likely used for Rinka Urushiba in Hajime Segawa's latter work, Tokyo ESP.
 * Shizuru is shown to be ambidextrous (a person who is able to use the right and left hands equally well), alternating a gun and her knife between her left and right hands respectively.