Tales of the Republic Era: The Mask

Yamaguchi Chie: Character Profile

In 1921, an economic crisis struck Japan. Eight-year-old Yamaguchi Chie was orphaned when both her parents starved to death, and the Japanese government took her into its care. With militarism rampant and warmongering rife across the country, Chie was forcibly sent to a secret agent training camp in Hiroshima.

The twelve years she spent at the camp were a cold, cruel purgatory. To stay alive, she was forced to suppress her nature and bury every trace of tenderness, enduring grueling spy training day after day. She excelled at everything, from hand-to-hand combat and infiltration to gathering intelligence, and achieved top marks in every test, growing into an exceptionally capable covert agent. Deprived of family affection from childhood, she longed all her life for the warmth of an ordinary family. But the training camp offered nothing but violence and scheming, with not a hint of warmth.

After twelve years of lying low, her character and abilities fully forged, she could no longer bear her prisonlike existence. She fought to the death against her instructor and finally escaped the spy base that had held her captive for years.

Her escape sent shockwaves through Japan. The authorities immediately launched a citywide manhunt, determined to reclaim their elite agent. During her flight, Chie stumbled into a riot sparked by the Japanese government's suppression of antiwar activists. In the chaos, she encountered An Hui, an innocent young woman from Shanghai who had been killed.

The two women looked almost exactly alike, in both face and figure. With no other way out, Yamaguchi Chie seized her only chance to survive and took An Hui's identity, erasing her past as a Japanese agent.

Under her new identity as the Chinese girl An Hui, she traveled to Shanghai and entered the peaceful, welcoming An family home. The An family were kind and warmhearted, treating her with tenderness and care and giving her the family affection she had never known throughout her life…