Junko's history begins in a decently temperate—if a little cold morning on January the twentieth, at Osaka's Sumitomo Hospital. It is linked to quite the interesting anecdote as well. Her mother had arrived there the previous day, and her reason was to acompanny her own brother and sister-in-law; the latter had started labour, something that resulted in the birth of her niece. Call it coincidence, luck, or just plain casuality, but it was only moments after meeting that beautiful baby girl that she started labor as well, despite the actual date for such an event to be expected to be some days later.

Luckily, and despite the surprising development, Junko was born as a healthy baby. Her tendency to be completely unable to keep quiet for long and an unbridled amount of energy ever since she was small made her a bit of a handful for a single parent, but she was, overall, well-behaved as a children, even if a bit nosy.

It came as no surprise that she was pretty much raised alongside her cousin, considering how the two families' homes were walking distance across each other, and how Aoi's working hours had the habit of extend themselves more than what a young child could bear. A normal routine sometime after Junko learned to walk was to just sneak out of her house into her cousin's, spend most of her day there, and return once her mother realized her absence. Sure, the first attempts had been met by a measure of panic, but after a while it had gotten frequent enough one could even call it a routine.

Curiosity regarding some unsavory topics was naturally triggered over time, however. Why her cousin-turned-best-friend had two parents, and she had only one? That question was asked for the first time when she was around six, and the answer was... diverting the topic somewhere else; as you might have imagined, the attention of a young child could be refocused with relatively simple actions. No harm, no foul. Besides! That probably meant her father was probably involved in some kind of super secret project she couldn't know about, right? Exciting!

Life was entertaining enough to prevent her from prying further, especially when her aunt and uncle insisted on that being a topic that should be discussed solely between the girl and her mother, so it wasn't like Junko was willing to sacrifice her stays at her cousin's house to talk about something that was being chronically avoided. Life was just too fun at the moment.

Things wouldn't remain that way forever, sadly. The little girl grew, and while she remained pretty much best friends with her cousin, their prospects for life were [i]vastly[/i] different. While Junko had an obvious penchant for traditional physical activities and sports, her cousin was already showing to be very talented at singing and dancing. The two promised each other to be succesful at what they decided to do, and to encourage each other no matter what.