Moeka Kiryu

Moeka Kiryu (桐生 萌郁 Kiryū Moeka) is a part-time editor whom Rintaro Okabe encounters in Akiba. She is practically glued to her phone and cannot function without it. Even when face to face, Moeka prefers to communicate by email, to the point where if her phone is taken away, she will almost refuse to speak until her phone is returned.

She is searching for the legendary retro PC known as the IBN 5100.

Appearance
Moeka is an attractive, elegant and stoic pale-skinned woman with light nut-brown hair, pink-amber eyes and a tall, slender profile. Usually seen with a purple phone and rectangular glasses. Moeka has a stylish sense of fashion, with her outfit consisting of a white button up top with black arm cutouts, a black belt with a checkered buckle, a short black skirt, and black heels.

Her Rounder uniform consists of a black jumpsuit, black boots and a black belt. She also ties her hair up to make it easier to move.

Personality
Personalitywise, Moeka is quiet, absent-minded, reserved, has difficulties interacting with people, and is seen to be expressionless most of the time without actually reacting towards anyone or anything, except for certain situations; her preferred form of communication is via text messages even if the person she is "talking" to is right in front of her. Therefore, Moeka is very protective of her phone and becomes agitated if someone tries to take it away from her.

Never shown to interact with anyone properly, Moeka's maturity has yet to be proportionate with her age, due to a certain turn of events in her past. Thus, Moeka is quite clumsy and the type of person that does not know how to take care of herself.

Via mails, Moeka is a cheerful, playful, and confident person, contrasting highly with her real-life personality. She constantly uses kaomoji like "(^ ^)", "(T_T)" , "(>_<)" and a variety of others, Moeka also uses some netslang expressions like "lmao", "lol" and "orz". Though behaving inexpressive and gloomy in real life, Moeka behaves childish and amusing via mails. Despite this, Moeka does not have confidence, and seems to have an inferiority complex.

At heart, behind her expressionless face, Moeka is just a lonely and extremely fragile girl who desperately wants to be accepted and cherished by someone. As she was neglected (or bullied) by every person she met, Moeka became depressed, very sick, and with hints of paranoid personality disorder. Then, FB contacted her and made her feel loved and accepted. Moeka believed that FB was the only one in the world who was a good and accepting person, due to not having anyone that cared about her; the rest of the world to Moeka was empty, devoid of life, and cruel. Thus, she started isolating herself from people, thinking that FB was the only one that could truly understand her and fearing going through her past again. When her relationship with FB, which meant life to Moeka, required her to kill someone, she killed. By taking another’s life, her life retained meaning. While Moeka is capable of carrying out atrocities for acceptance, she strives to be loved and has the potential to be a good person if led in the right direction. This is reflected in Moeka's image song, "To be Loved".

On the Gamma worldlines, Moeka is very different from the Alpha and Beta’s Moeka. She is very responsible, serious, and incredibly perceptive. One could even call her cold-hearted, since she with Okabe easily killed two Europol agents. Moeka can also talk normally without using mails, though she says she is not good with conversations, she apparently has more confidence in herself and is not so devoted to the person that saved her on this worldline. However, she constantly worries about Okabe, as he gave her a reason to live, and saved her life various times. She considers FB and Okabe as her family, and though not realizing, harbors feelings towards the latter.

On the Delta worldlines, Moeka is much more friendly, though she is still introverted and depressed. She also shows a lot of creativity, as she manages to write a famous romance novel without any experience on it, however, she implies that she used her relationship with Okabe as a base. Moeka is convinced that she is unneeded by everyone, as people always told her that she was an unwanted child, thus making a wall between her and society and not showing anyone her real feelings; not even to Tennouji, who is a father figure to her on this timeline. However, after Okabe makes an unbreakable bond with her, and breaks the wall Moeka made between her and people, she smiles more and starts showing more of her feelings; she manages to have a normal and happy life, with Okabe and the Laboratory Members by her side in her route.

Background
Moeka's childhood is unknown. However, My Darling's Embrace implies that she was born from an unwanted pregnancy. As her parents did not want to have her, they often abused Moeka physically and mentally. One can speculate that they abandoned her or had an unfortunate death.

Moeka was a constantly bullied social outcast; she desperately tried to make friends and find a place to belong, but failed miserably due to her social paranoia. In 2004, she fell into a deep depression due to hating everything and being hopeless, thinking that she no longer had a reason to live, Moeka decided to commit suicide. She drank several sleeping pills, hoping that she would die, but to no avail. By June 2006, as the pills were not working, her final attempt was to jump off a large building. At that moment, she received a mail from the enigmatic FB recruiting her to the Rounders, a team of mercenaries. While Moeka initially did not believe the offer to be real, she figured that she had nothing to lose and accepted, changing her life forever. As FB often communicated with Moeka and acted as a mother figure towards her, speaking with Moeka about her problems and comforting her, she came to see FB as the person that gave her life meaning and devoted every waking moment to sending mails to them and carrying out their given orders, developing a dependency on FB and their mails. Three months before the start of the series, she was stationed in Nagoya and before that she was in Yokohama. Despite her searching, she had not located a single IBN. Sometime, she started working at Ark Rewrite, an editiorial company that does not actually operate, in Akihabara as a front.

Quotes

 * “Don't be angry, I mean... Angry Okabe-kun is scary! (T_T)” — One of Moeka's mails.
 * “Emailing... is easier.” — To Rintaro Okabe, explaining why she rarely speaks.
 * “Did I do something wrong? I'll fix it, I promise. Just don't abandon me. I'll do anything for you, FB!” — Moeka being desperate when FB stopped sending mails to her and replying to her mails.
 * “I was always told that I am an unwanted child, over and over... that's why I truly believed that I wasn't needed... That's how I've always felt... then I got used to that... I mean, if I was unwanted, then... nobody would look at me... Nobody would expect anything from me... I wouldn't disappoint anyone...” — To Okabe.
 * “People... need to be needed by someone in order to live. If a person isn't needed, she's worthless.”
 * “I had nothing except FB... The only place I belonged... I would do anything to protect it... you're right to hate me...” — To Okabe in her dying moments.
 * “That day four years ago... When I wasn’t needed by anyone. When nobody cared about me. When I had given up on living and was about to jump off the roof of a building... FB saved me with a single message. I didn’t care if it was a joke or not. I was just happy that somebody knew... that I was alive... that it was OK for me to live.”
 * “I killed someone precious... to you... so this is my punishment... I'm sorry...” — Moeka's last words.
 * “Look, even if we were enemies in the world you were before, right now I'm your only ally. Even if the whole world turned against you, I would continue to be your only ally.” — To Okabe on the Gamma worldline.
 * “The "me" that you are talking about is also a different me, now I only want to help you.” — To Okabe when he accused her of betraying him.

Trivia

 * Moeka does not know how to cook, clean or how to do other domestic labors, as shown in Steins;Gate: My Darling's Embrace. She only eats instant foods and almost never cleans her apartment.
 * Moeka can apparently type and send mails at the speed of normal speech, which leads to Okabe calling her "Shining Finger".
 * The nickname "Shining Finger" comes from the ultimate attack of Shining Gundam in G Gundam.
 * Moeka would text FB about 10 times per day.
 * Moeka only worked for Arc Rewrite for two days, seemingly quitting immediately after learning the location of the IBN.
 * Originally, the creators had a Moeka route in mind. But in order for the player to feel closer to the protagonist, Moeka was made to be a character the players would feel antagonism against, so they dropped the idea.
 * The Drama CD Hyde of the Dark Dimension shows a world line where Moeka is Okabe's ally and they are both Rounders.Moeka's novel.png
 * In Steins;Gate: My Darling's Embrace, Moeka writes a novel called "My Rainbow".
 * The story is about a girl who is traumatized about not having a reason to live and not being needed by anyone, but she meets a boy at her part-time job that changes her life. Little by little, she starts realizing that she is important and starts to live a brighter life. It is heavily based on her relationship with Okabe.
 * This is paid homage to in Steins;Gate 0, where it is revealed that she is writing a romance novel. Though she has not finished the first chapter.
 * In the ending credits of Steins;Gate Elite, she is incorrectly listed as "Moeka Kikyu".
 * Okabe has a hard time noticing when Moeka is in the room, frequently getting surprised that she is behind him.

Etymology

 * The name Moeka means “show symptoms of, sprout, bud, malt” (萌, moe) and “cultural progress, perfume” (郁, ka).
 * Moeka's surname Kiryu means “paulownia” (桐, ki) and “life, genuine, birth” (生, ryū).