Moeka Kiryu

Moeka Kiryu (桐生 萌郁 Kiryū Moeka) is a part-time editor whom 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 to make it easier to move.

She is the tallest and the bustiest among all the female characters.

Personality
Personality wise, Moeka is quiet, absent-minded, reserved, has difficulties interacting with people, and 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 from her hands.

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 and charismatic person, contrasting highly with her real-life personality. She constantly use 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 world line, 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 easily killed, with Okabe, two Europol agents. Moeka can also talk normally without using mails, though she says she's not good with conversations, she apparently has more confidence in herself and isn't so devoted to the person that saved her in this world line. 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 realising, harbors feelings for Okabe.

In the Delta timeline, 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. However, after Okabe makes an unbreakable bond with her, and breaks the wall Moeka made between her and people, she smiles more and start showing more of her feelings; She manages to have a normal and happy life, with Okabe and the Laboratory Members by her side. (Moeka's 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. We 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. 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 SERN unit, 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.

Plot
(SPOILER ALERT)

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 didn't mean to take photos of him, but the location, to remember where she was. Moeka asks 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 give up and sends her a message. Moeka says that she will email him later. According to her introduction, she is also apparently a reporter for a magazine known as Arc Rewrite.

After numerous e-mails asking about the IBN5100, Okabe says that he successfully obtained it and Moeka visits his lab, asking to see the IBN5100 (as she was the one who suggested it to him). As Okabe ignores her mails, Moeka attempted to carry the computer away (before crumbling under the box's weight). Okabe reluctantly dubs her "Lab Member 005" to prevent her from leaking the PhoneWave's secret. She also requests to send a D-mail, saying that it is in order to prevent herself from buying a new phone.

When the Lab is about to complete the Time Leap machine, Okabe bumps into Moeka and she questions him if he already got rid of the time machine. After Okabe explain about the Time Leap Machine and answer all of her questions, Moeka congratulates him. 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, Moeka shoots at Mayuri, causing Okabe to panic. She orders Okabe to move away from Mayuri, pointing her gun at him, but Suzuha Amane rushed 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 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. 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 other more random reasons, including being hit by a car, being accidently pushed in front of a train and a multitude of other reasons.

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 head 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 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 IBN5100 into a storage locker, planning for other members of SERN to pick it up.

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 world-line 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. As Moeka dies, she apologized 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.

After 1% divergence was reached (true ending), Nae injured herself and Moeka helped her with first aid, bringing her to Yugo's store. Due to that, Nae introduced Moeka to Mr. Braun and he decides to give her a job. After Okabe got released from the hospital, he gives Moeka the lab's pin, saying that it's the proof that she is the 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.

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 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.
 * "I killed... someone... precious... to you... so this... is my punishment... I'm sorry..." -Moeka's last words.

Trivia

 * The name Moeka means "bud, sprout" (萌) (moe) and "cultural progress, perfume" (郁) (ka).
 * Moeka doesn't know how to cook, clean or how to do other domestic labors, as shown in Steins;Gate Hiyoku Renri no Darling. 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" is the ultimate attack of Shining Gundam in G Gundam.
 * 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, is considered by fans to be her route that never existed within the Visual Novel.
 * Moeka's novel.png 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.
 * In Episode 6, Lab Mem 005 joined and Moeka joined because Rintaro Okabe didn't want her to leak the PhoneWave secret.