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".

In 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 in 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.

In 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.

After the satellite Crash
Okabe first encountered Moeka around the Radio Kaikan building when he was revisiting the "satellite crash site". Moeka took a few pictures of him, which irritated him; She says that she did not mean to take photos of him, but the location, to remember where she was. Moeka proceeds to ask Okabe if he knows anything about a phantom retro PC, named IBN5100. Okabe says that his "Super Hacka", Daru, might know something. Moeka then asks for Okabe's email, in order to obtain Daru's information about the IBN5100; But Okabe refuses, causing Moeka to chase him. After Okabe notices her, Moeka shows his photo on her cellphone and says that in order to delete it, Okabe has to exchange e-mails addresses with her. Okabe gives up and sends her a message. Moeka says that she will email him later. He also notices the unusual speed that she texts, and gives her the name "Shining Finger", claiming that she is an ESPer. According to her introduction, Moeka is also apparently a reporter for a magazine known as Arc Rewrite. While Okabe was in May Queen Nyan-Nyan with Daru, she emails him. Reintroducing herself, Moeka apologizes for taking a picture of him and says she actually meant to take pictures of the satellite and the location for her work. Since she knows nothing about old computers, she asks for Okabe's help to find more information about the IBN5100. Moeka also sends a photo of the old computer. She appears to be a completely different person from her real life self when writing mails.

Moeka attempts to strike conversation with Okabe by short mails, asking him if he is a student, his routine and those sort of things.

Okabe sends a mail asking her to call him for more information about the IBN5100, but she feels more comfortable talking by mail. He then scolds her for sending short mails to him and for her spam, Moeka apologizes and asks Okabe to not abandon her and for them to work together to get the IBN 5100.

Search for the Retro PC
If Okabe decides to ignore Mayuri's phone call while looking for the IBN 5100, he finds Moeka crouched on the street while typing with amazing speed in her phone. He tries to talk to her but she is so engaged in her phone that she does not hear him. When she notices him, she does not seem to remember his face so he mentions the IBN 5100. First then she recognizes him, and mails him saying that it is a coincidence that they met there. Okabe goes out to get some coffees for them, causing Moeka to mail him with an apology for annoying him, asking him to come back. He returns and gives her the coffee, which she accepts. Okabe then asks her why she does not talk, which she replies with that sending mails is easier to her. Okabe concludes that she is just afraid of people, and of the insane mad scientist's aura that he exhales. Moeka says that she is weird in a self depreciating manner, which causes Okabe to say that she is actually normal, and that she has her own "Steins Gate" in her heart, something that causes people to follow their way without getting lost, so she does not need to be afraid. He then asks her for how long she had been looking for the IBN 5100 and she answers that she had started about two months ago, asking all sort of people around Akihabara. Okabe says that he has detectives working for him and that finding the retro PC is not hard for someone like him, to which Moeka looks at him with newfound respect. He then says that he is Hououin Kyouma and that he will not stop until he destroys the system, causing Moeka to say that that is Okabe's Steins Gate. Then they part.

After Okabe successfully obtains the IBN 5100, he emails Moeka about it, to which she asks him to lend it to her. He says that it is not his to lend and invites her over to the lab if she wants to see it, but does not allow her to touch it.

Becoming a LabMem
As promised, Moeka visits the lab as Okabe sleeps. She mails him with her usual multiple messages, saying the lab's corridor is so dark that she feels something might come out if she makes some noise. Moeka bows as an apology for waking up Okabe and coming so early and unexpected. She asks to see the IBN 5100, and after inspecting it and taking some photos, asks Okabe to lend it to her. However, Okabe has other plans for it, saying he will not lend it to Moeka no matter what. She emails him with a single message, calling him a meanie, admitting defeat. Moeka asks where he found it, and he hesitantly says he found it in Yanagibayashi Shrine. After Daru enters the lab, she slightly bows her chin to him, which could be a reverence due to her poor social skills. She finds out about the D-Mails after Daru spoke to Okabe about it, and mails him asking for the meaning of this. After Okabe tries to mislead her, she persistently affirmed that she heard it right. Moeka then hears him talking on the phone with his usual chuunibyou way of speaking, and asks him by mail if he is FB. She then gets cornered against the door by Okabe, and is informed by him that she must faces the consequences of discovering the lab's secrets. Moeka asks Okabe if he will kill her, to which he replies that he would only if she leaks the information to the media. Daru says to her that Okabe is a little crazy in the head and that she must ignore his nonsense, and Okabe panics causing Moeka to discover that they have a time machine.

After Kurisu and Mayuri arrive, she is named "LabMem 005" by Okabe to prevent her from leaking information, which she promises not to. Moeka takes a photo of the other Lab Members, which she justifies with a slight smile that they seemed to be having fun. They begin experimenting with the PhoneWave to show Moeka that it is indeed a time machine. After seeing the mail with the date from a few days ago, Moeka believes in them. A Round Table Meeting starts and all the while, Moeka sends various mails to Okabe asking about the meeting, the name of the operation and other things. She also makes some remarks such as "Mayuri-san is funny lol", "Changing the past... I want to try", "Create chaos? Are you a bad guy, Okabe-kun?", "Okabe-kun is funny too", "Everyone here is so smart, I can't follow the conversation", "Many worlds? That seems like something that came out of a book", ". She disagrees when Mayuri says Okabe is a good person, because he does not want to lend her the IBN 5100, calling him a meanie, and she also says that Okabe's argument with Kurisu will not take them anywhere. She gets shocked when she hears them talking about SERN and the experiments they conduct, since Rounders do not get to have access to such information. Regardless, when she hears about SERN she distances herself from the conversation, even ignoring Kurisu when she asks her about what they would change about the past.

Moeka is to type the D-Mail this time, since Okabe dubs her as the "Mail Demon", and she writes the contents about the lottery's winning number. After the worldline changes, she is still in the same corner she was before and gets worried when Okabe starts to freak out about the disconnection of his memories and the others'. After Okabe returns, he declares that their meeting is over and dismisses the remaing Lab Members including Moeka. She parts with a slight reverence. A mail from her arrives later saying she had fun and wants to know more about the time machine later.

Moeka's D-Mail
She requests to send a D-mail, since she is now a LabMem, Okabe complies and they meet back at the lab. Moeka stays crouched as she waits for Okabe to arrive. She thanks him when he arrives for the opportunity of sending a D-Mail, and apologizes for insisting, saying she is being selfish. As they enter the lab and prepare to send the D-Mail she asks to maintain its contents a secret, since it is private. Okabe and Kurisu complain about that, justifying that it is an experiment and the contents must be observed. Mayuri supports Moeka saying that he should not pry into a girl's secret. She later complies to change the mail's content, and decides to prevent her from buying a new phone with it. When Okabe calls her "Finger", Mayuri asks why she is being called like that. Okabe says that it is her ESPer power and names her "Shining Finger", to which she frowns and shakes her head slightly, hinting that she is not really fond of her nickname. After that, they send the D-Mail, to which Moeka changed its content fast before Okabe and the others could notice. After the worldline changed, Moeka is not at the lab. Fearing that Okabe may have erased her existence with the experiment, he sends her a mail asking her to reply as soon as she sees it. She does and says she is a little busy at the time.

Sometime after Luka Urushibara's D-Mail is sent, Moeka is seen crouched in the corner of a street in Akihabara, typing quickly on her phone and mumbling to herself about the IBN 5100 when Okabe sees her. She frowns when he asks her if she stole the retro PC from the lab, mailing him she did not even know he obtained one in the first place.

Between Okabe's visit to Faris and his stroll around the now electronic Akihabara, Moeka sends a threatening mail to him with an unknown email address, saying he is being watched. Attached to her mail is a picture of red gelatin.

A tired Moeka is crouched on the stairs of a building in Akihabara, typing in her phone as usual, when Okabe and Mayuri find her. She asks about the progress of the time machine, and Okabe says that they managed to find a way to send memories to the past. Moeka congratulates them, and walks away laughing to herself.

Moeka sends another threatening mail to Okabe, this time saying he knows too much. Attached to the mail is a picture of a severed doll's head, which causes Okabe to panic and delete it.

Rounders' Raid
After the Future Gadget Lab perfected the time-leaping mechanism, a team of Rounders wearing masks, led by Moeka, storms the lab and holds its members at gunpoint. She ordered them to hand over the Time Leap Machine. Mayuri questions Moeka about being a lab member, though this only causes Moeka to points her gun at her. Hesitating and frantically mumbling to herself, Moeka shoots at Mayuri, causing Okabe to panic. She orders Okabe to move away from Mayuri, pointing her gun at him, but Suzuha Amane rushes in and takes out the whole Rounder squad, before pointing a gun at Moeka, resulting in a standoff between the two. These events allow Okabe the opportunity to time-leap back in time in order to prevent Mayuri's death. In one of the various attempts to save Mayuri, Okabe tracked Moeka down and questions her for the reason of the Lab attack. Moeka answer with three motives: first, they discovered something that they should not. Second, they created a time machine. Third, they wanted to make their findings public. Surprised, Okabe asks if SERN knows this much, with Moeka responding "I receive my orders from FB. FB is... everything to me". The Rounders then capture Okabe, knocking him out. He wakens to find himself in a car being driven by Moeka; she asks him if he is John Titor, to which he replies that he is not. The group then proceeds to breach into the lab to kill Mayuri and capture Kurisu and Itaru Hashida. Okabe pleas for the Rounders' forgiveness, saying that he never wanted to expose SERN, that he will give the time machine to them and never say anything about the time machine to anyone, that it was all a game to them, to spare Mayuri. However, Moeka says that it is too late.

Mayuri continues dying at the same time every day, being either shot by Moeka in the attack, or because of other more random reasons, including being hit by a car, being accidently pushed in front of a train etc.

Moeka's Fate
Okabe discovers that in order to stop Mayuri's death, he has to cancel every D-Mail sent. In order to cancel out Moeka's D-mail, he tracks her down and heads to her apartment, only to find out that she had committed suicide by jumping off the roof the night before. Time-leaping again to before Moeka committed suicide, Okabe finds Moeka in the corner of her room, mumbling to herself as she types "FB" over and over again on her phone. Okabe then wrestles the phone away from her, and with Kurise's help sends another D-mail telling Moeka to buy the new phone, expecting that this will move the worldline back towards 1%. After finding himself in the same situation, he finally realizes that Moeka must have sent a different D-mail than the one that she claimed to.

In order to find out the actual contents of the D-mail, he searches through Moeka's phone, and discovers that the actual D-mail sent was about the location of the IBN5100. He then tries to cancel out this D-mail, by sending a D-mail saying that the Shrine was a trap, and that Moeka shouldn't go there. After sending the D-mail however, Okabe finds that he has not time-jumped again. Realizing that the D-mail sent before could only be canceled out by a D-mail from FB's phone, he decides to try to force Moeka to tell him who FB is.

Okabe pins her to the ground, telling Moeka both about her imminent suicide and that FB had most likely abandoned her. Moeka then tells Okabe about FB, and how, after Moeka's childhood, FB became a sort of mother figure to her. Moeka also reveals that she placed the IBN 5100 into a storage locker, planning for other members of SERN to pick it up.

FB's true identity
Okabe decides to hunt for FB by staking out the IBN drop-off point. Moeka soon joins the stakeout, and they see the IBN being picked up by a non-descript member of SERN. They then follow the IBN, watching it switch between multiple people, before finally stopping at the house of Okabe's landlord, Yugo Tennouji, for the night before being sent off again. The pair then visit Yugo, and after confronting him with the knowledge that they know that he is part of SERN, he reveals that he is in fact FB herself, pretending to be a woman to appeal to Moeka's insecurity; he also informs the two that Rounders who complete their missions are killed by him. Okabe proceeds to reveal the truth about Hashida Suzu, the woman who took care of Yugo and became a mother figure to him. After he found out the relation Hashida Suzu had to the time machine and the future, he regretted his actions, and committed suicide to protect Nae and Moeka, as he wanted to save the latter.

In retrospect, Okabe believed that Yugo cared about Moeka's well-being, and spared her life in a last-resort effort to protect her. Unfortunately, Moeka's death in that worldline was guaranteed, but this time around, it was Nae Tennouji, Yugo's daughter, who killed her. Her father's death caused her to become vengeful, especially against Okabe and Moeka. She later became the Rounder commander, and killed Okabe in 2025, then time-leaped 15,000 times back to the time of Moeka's death to kill her and warn Okabe of his death.

In the anime, Yugo shoots her before killing himself. As Moeka dies, she apologizes to Okabe for Mayuri's death, believing that her death is her punishment for killing Mayuri and that Okabe is right to hate her, as she would kill to protect the place she belongs. Reminding himself that Moeka did not kill Mayuri in this timeline, Okabe forgives Moeka as she dies.

Moeka is not seen or heard of anymore after her death in the Alpha worldline.

Steins;Gate
After 1% divergence was reached (true ending), Nae injures herself and Moeka helps her with first aid. Moeka takes Nae back to Yugo's store and Yugo offers her a job. Moeka, not knowing Yugo's identity of FB, accepts.

After Okabe gets released from the hospital, he gives Moeka the lab's pin, saying that it is proof that she is Lab Member 005 and that she can come to the lab whenever she wants. Moeka faintly smiles and thanks Okabe as he goes to the lab.

Egoistic Poriomania
Moeka and Yugo are briefly shown, worrying about finances for the shop.

Load Region of Déjà vu
Moeka joins the group at the party after Kurisu returns.

Steins;Gate 0(Anime)
Faris hires Moeka act as Maho's bodyguard after she is attacked.

Later on, she helps Okabe track down the lab when Kagari Shiina was kept by Stratfor.

Near the end of the game, she and the other rounders help Okabe protect the time machine from Stratfor and DURPA.

Steins;Gate 0 (Visual Novel/Manga)
The rounders try to steal Kurisu's laptop from Okabe, Itaru and Maho who had just left Itaru's bunker, but DURPA intervenes and a crossfire ensues. The laptop is then destroyed and the rounders and DURPA retreat. During the battle, Moeka was critically injured and was then found by Kagari Shiina, who tended to her wounds as little as possible to keep her at death's door. On the route branch towards Promised Rinascimento the assault does not happen as Okabe managed to cooperate with Yugo Tennouji, and Moeka was thus not injured and taken hostage.

Quotes

 * "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." - Moeka to Rintaro Okabe in Gamma worldline.
 * "The "me" that you are talking about is also a different me, now I only want to help you."-Moeka to Okabe when he accused her of betraying him.
 * "Don't be angry, I mean... Angry Okabe-kun is scary! (T_T)" -One of Moeka mails.
 * "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..." - Moeka to Okabe in Hiyoku Renri no Darling.
 * "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..." - Moeka 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.

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.
 * Mokea 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, Steins;Gate Gamma Hyde of the Dark Dimension, shows a worldline 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 "bud, sprout" (萌) (moe) and "cultural progress, perfume" (郁) (ka).
 * Moeka's surname Kiryu means "Paulownia" (桐) (ki) and "life, living" (生) (yuu).