Ayame Sohma
Ayame Sohma, aged 27–28, is the snake of the Chinese zodiac, and Yuki‘s older brother. Ayame is depicted as vivacious, flamboyant, self-confident, and self-centered, with a knack for annoying Yuki and Kyo (one of the few things they initially agree upon). In an author’s note, Natsuki Takaya described him as a draining person to meet in real life.Despite his age, he refers to himself with the boyish pronoun boku . He has gorgeous eyes (gold in the manga, yellow-green in the anime) and silver hair quite similar to Yuki’s violet eyes and grey hair.He runs a shop, named after himself, that sells custom-made “romantic costumes” with the help of Mine Kuramae, his seamstress and girlfriend. He is best friends with Shigure and Hatori, who are the same age; Ayame and Shigure like to pretend that they are lovers,while Hatori is the only one, according to Shigure and Takaya, who can restrain Ayame’s worst behavior. As the snake, Ayame is especially susceptible to cold.When Ayame was in high school, he was president of the student council,and is proud that Yuki is following him.He sometimes over reacts, or over does things, like explaining to a teacher that he was a super magical being, and could not cut his long silver hair. Ayame fears the “nothingness” of not being acknowledged. Ayame can also be serious at times, such as when he took Tohru out for lunch. He described how he wants to be closer to Yuki and tries to get closer to him. When Ayame was young, he completely ignored Yuki, and even forgot Yuki’s name and in doing this Shigure became mad at him for the first time. After this he became depressed and drank alot until Hatori finally put an end to it. He realized that when he got older, he would be totally alone without his brother, spurring an obsession of gaining Yuki’s love.He does this by doing things such as embroidering “Lives for my older brother” on the back of Yuki’s shirt. As the series progresses, Yuki slowly starts to accept Ayame as a brother, and even tries to understand him. When Ayame is freed from the curse, the first thing he does is finally embrace Mine. Takaya derived his name (normally a female name, meaning from the fifth month, ayamezuki or “month of falling irises,” which is the month of the snake, of the traditional Japanese calendar.