Faris NyanNyan

Faris NyanNyan (フェイリス・ニャンニャン, Feirisu NyanNyan), real name Rumiho Akiha (秋葉 留美穂, Akiha Rumiho), also spelled Feyris in some of the anime's fansubs, is a part-time employee and owner of the maid cafe MayQueen NyanNyan, the same maid cafe that Mayuri works at, and is the most popular waitress there. She is a second year student at Kanaria Private Academy and is Yukitaka Akiha's daughter.

Appearance
Faris is a very short girl with long pink hair and pink eyes. She prefers tying her hair into two drilled pigtails rather than leaving it down.

She is usually seen wearing her work uniform, a maid outfit with a headdress, an apron with a ribbon at the back, and black leggings with black shoes. She also has a red ribbon around her neck and on the sides of the headdress. She wears a wristband that is black with white frills to go along with the frills on her skirt.

Her casual outfit consists of an amber dress and a black tiara. As usual, she ties her hair into two braids, but she doesn't wear cat ears.

Personality
Being the waitress and owner of a moe cafe, Faris always adds the Japanese word "nya" (English: "meow") to her speech to boost her "moe-ness". She has the ability to see into people's hearts just by looking into their eyes, which she calls the "Cheshire Break".

She likes to play along with Rintaro's delusions and comes up with scenarios herself. Faris is one of the few people who does not think of Rintaro as "weird".

Her true personality is of a childish and self-conscious girl who really misses her father and longs for intimate interactions with those close to her. She does not often show her darker, more complex side to others, and instead hides behind exaggerated and simplified personas such as 'Faris NyanNyan'; this is one of the reasons she gets along so well with Rintarou. In addition to raising her likeability, this facade allows her to disengage emotionally from potentially troublesome situations and protect herself from getting hurt. Another attribute to her true personality is that she is often manipulative towards others when she wants her way, an example of this behaviour is when she tricks her friend Rintarou Okabe into helping her win a RaiNet tournament.

Rumiho comes from a wealthy family that owns much of Akihabara - she even has her own butler, Kuroki. As such, she tells very few people about her heritage, out of fear that they will treat her differently. The lab members are among her only friends that she trusts enough to show her true self, 'Rumiho' to. Aside from her close friends, the only person she confides in is Kuroki. She is not able to have a very close relationship with her mother because she is often overseas and only comes back for short periods of time. Because she had very few people to confide in from a young age, Faris has become quite a lonesome (but also independent) person, longing for and sometimes clinging to any semblance of intimate company she can salvage.

Rumiho portrays herself as ditzy and foolish to go along with the persona she created, 'Faris NyanNyan', but she is actually quite perceptive, intelligent, and incredibly self-conscious ー she is always considering what impact her actions have on other people and what their interactions with her mean. Even so, Faris is still childish and cutesy at heart, but she exaggerates her playful nature when she's playing 'Faris NyanNyan'.

Another facet of her personality goes hand in hand with her acting ability is "Cheshire Break", her propensity to 'read between the lines' and glimpse the true motives behind other people's actions. Because she distrusts other people ー because she doesn't want to be left alone, Rumiho has become adept at uncovering the lies that everyone tells.

In Nae's route in Linear Bounded Phenogram, a few years after certain events led the world to steadily fall down the path to a dystopian world ruled by SERN, Rumiho seems to have overcome the majority of her fears regarding lies and abandonment. Instead of painting all lies as a bad thing, she accepts that white lies, secrets, and roundaboutness have their place in every healthy relationship, just as bluntness, straightforwardness, and honesty are important components. Her friendship with Okabe and company seems to have greatly helped her with being able to more effectively cope with her loneliness.

Background
As a child, Rumiho dreamed of one day opening her own maid cafe. She begged her father constantly, to no avail, though exactly why he wouldn't let her is never made clear. Ten years before the beginning of the story, to celebrate her eighth birthday, she had her father make a promise to drop work and join the party, but he ultimately cancelled because of a business trip. This made Rumiho really upset and she took it out on him, that she accused him of loving his job more than he loved her and told him she wished he was dead. Grief-stricken, her father decided to take an early flight back, and, in a painful case of irony, died in a plane crash. With her father gone, Faris was free to establish her maid cafe, but she always felt deep grief over his death, especially since the last thing they did was fight.

Faris's Ending
In this world line, Rintaro sends another D-mail to Faris's father, hoping it will keep him from dying along with Mayuri. After the D-mail is sent, his timeline is severely altered. The laboratory never existed and he never met Mayuri, Daru or Kurisu. In this new past, Okabe was a participant in the Rai-Net Access Battler game, where he met, partnered with, and became lovers with Faris. Realizing that without the laboratory, he has no way to create a new timeline, Rintaro decides to accept this new past and start a new life with Faris by his side.

Quotes
"'In order to protect your important friends they wouldn't tell the truth...or tell white lies. Being able to make friends like that...that is a very happy thing.' - Speaking to Nae in Linear Bounded Phenogram."

"'That scar will one day become a scab and flowers will bloom. Even within Nae's heart, they'll probably grow. Until then you should face the wound while thinking of the loneliness of being left behind. At the same time, you should be thankful for each day.' - Speaking to Nae in Linear Bounded Phenogram."

Trivia

 * The electronic district of Tokyo was owned by her family, hence the name "Akihabara".
 * Lab Member 007. She joined in episode 9, recruited by Rintaro because she wanted to make a D-Mail to avoid her father's death.
 * In the side story following Faris in Linear Bounded Phenogram, it's noteworthy that while she refers to Rintaro as 'Kyouma' without an honorific, in her mind she thinks of him as 'Okabe-san'.
 * In her Chuunibyou universe, she possesses a power so-called "Cheshire Break" which enables her to read other people's minds through facial expressions, eye movements, and gestures. Which she uses in her RaiNet tournaments in the previous worldline.
 * Nyannyan is Japanese for "Meow Meow".

Rumiho Akiha