Kitajima, Maya

北島マヤ

A gifted young actress who previously worked as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant with her mother. Her father passed away when she was a little girl, and her mother, Haru, suffers from mental instability, leading her to view Maya as useless for a long time. She is discovered by the former diva Chigusa Tsukikage and begins a promising, yet difficult, acting career under her guidance.
Her mother discouraged her from pursuing acting, fearing she would become a laughingstock. Maya's mother did not even attend a school play in which Maya performed, particularly because Maya had taken on the role of a pitiful and wretched character. Nevertheless, Maya performed the role magnificently, adding depth and sadness to the character, who was originally intended to be portrayed as laughable and pathetic. Later, Maya is given the choice to pursue acting as a livelihood. Maya declared that she wanted to be an actress. Tsukikage severs Maya's ties with her mother, making the decision to become an actress firm.
Maya consistently receives encouragement from an anonymous fan who sends her bouquets of purple roses. The sender of these bouquets is none other than Hayami Masumi, toward whom Maya shows antipathy, especially since she believes he took malicious pleasure in bringing down Tsukikage's acting school.
Maya's acting talent stems from both her natural skill and emotional personality, unlike Ayumi, whose skills are more technically driven; in fact, Maya practically 'becomes' her characters when she performs, with such brutal training methods and intense delivery. During the early stages of her training, Maya consistently displayed unconventional performances of assigned tasks, such as lying on the floor to "sit on" a toppled chair. People often note how unremarkable Maya appears until she takes the stage. In fact, the prodigy actress Ayumi comments that Maya knows how to captivate the audience, even though she is unaware of doing so. Despite possessing enormous potential and raw talent, Maya does not seem to recognize her own abilities. She views herself as unremarkable and "useless," as her mother constantly called her, though she feels compelled to pursue an acting career because "acting is all she has." She also harbors moments of inferiority in comparison to Ayumi, who is beautiful, talented, and wealthy. Despite all this, Maya does not harbor any malice or ill will toward Ayumi, although Ayumi is secretly competitive toward Maya.
Her nicknames include "The Stage Storm," referring to her innate ability to overshadow the importance of other actors in a play, even when Maya is not playing the main role. Tsukikage also referred to Maya as "the girl with a thousand masks" as a tribute to her versatility in taking on character roles. And "little child" (Chibi-chan) by Masumi Hayami, a diminutive used due to their broad age disparity, sometimes to satirize her immaturity and sometimes out of genuine affection.