Ayame Minamikujō

Ayame Minamikujō (南九条 あやめ) is an aristocratic girl to a vast agriculture fortune and childhood rival to Aki Mikage and more recently, to Yūgo Hachiken. She constantly tries to enter Ooezo High's Department of Dairy Science, saying that she would be claiming Ichirō Komaba's spot after his departure, but she has yet to be accepted and she currently aiming for the same college as Aki.

Appearance
Ayame has long, curly blonde hair, blue-gray eyes and a beauty mark on the lower left side of her face, right by her mouth. She always tries to appear stylish whenever Aki is around to show her superiority.

Personality
Ayame is very arrogant and cocky, constantly boasting about her high status and looking down on people who are not within her status, though she isn't much an achiever and most of her exploits often end up in failure.

Background
Ayame is Aki Mikage's childhood friend and former middle school classmate whose grandfather is the president of the local agricultural co-op union and she attends at West Shimizu High School because she never made it to Ooezo, which is the reason why she mocks Aki (and eventually Hachiken) in Episode 4 upon competing in a local equestrian event. She is currently the only member of their Equestrian Club. It is hinted that her family made their fortune by selling their land to a project infrastructure developer who paid them a good price.

Skills & Abilities
Ayame is somewhat skilled at horseback riding. However, because she focuses of showing off how amazing she looks on her beautiful horse, she often gets disqualified from major competitions for going over the time limit.

Early Days & Challenging Aki
Ayame would constantly try to challenge Aki Mikage to trivial things, such as who dressed better or who was a better leader. Aki never saw them as competitions, however.

Tokachu Hakuyu Equestrian Competition Vs Aki
Ayame appears already on her horse to make fun of Aki for being nervous. Aki, completely unfazed by her dramatic entrance, greets her after a long time away. Her run at the competition is extremely slow, but charismatic enough to get an applause the whole way through. She later is confused at being in last place, thinking points were awarded for artistic touch. Having learned nothing, she went slowly again in her next run, getting disqualified for going overtime. During Aki's run, she skillfully takes first place riding Maron.

Helping Aki in Ooezo's Fair
Ayame visits Yezo High School during the fair in their first year. At first she was looking down on Yūgo Hachiken for not being able to attend due to being in the hospital, but then Aki requests her assistance due to his absence. Ayame agrees and has her father bring her horse, De Royal, and her racing gear.

The first day the Equestrian Club holds a mini-competition with the help of Ayame and the retired third-years. Ayame, however, goes over the time limit and is disqualified. Despite this, the crowd still loved how she rode her horse in the competition. On the second day, she helped out with the Human Ban'ei race. Ayame was furious that she had to pull and demanded to be the one to direct the human team, saying that she was most fit for the position. Her request was denied when she found that position was already filled by Tamako Inada, whip at the ready. The race ended safely and the Equestrian Club's exhibit was a success thanks to Ayame's help.

Aki Mikage
Ayame has a self-proclaimed rivalry with Aki. Ever since they were kids, they would play with one another. Ayame claims that she would always take the lead and have the latest clothes and that everyone trusted her with difficult tasks, while Aki remembers most of Ayame's "wonderful past" as one where Ayame went through a lot of trouble and humiliation. Nonetheless, Aki still treats her as a good friend and a good person.

Yūgo Hachiken
Ayame makes a sort-of rival out of Hachiken and sees him as the reason she wasn't accepted, since he got into Ooezo without a recommendation. She often gets Hachiken's name wrong by replacing the Hachi (8) part of his name with different numbers, calling him "Shichiken" (7) and "Jūhachiken" (18). Later on in their second year, Hachiken suggests that Ayame get a tutor to help her with her studies and forces her onto his brother who has an online tutoring service as an act of spite for the latter.

Shingo Hachiken
Shingo is currently tutoring Ayame in order to raise her grades so that she can enter the the same college as Aki. This will be a large task, however, seeing as her grades were all 1 out of 5 when he began to tutor her. As Shingo needs to keep up his reputation as a good tutor, he hasn't given up on her yet.

Etymology

 * Ayame's surname Minamikujō means "south" (南) (minami), "nine" (九) (ku) and "article" (条) (jō).

Trivia

 * Aki Mikage wonders what salon Ayame goes to in order to style her hair that way.
 * Ayame names her horse "De Royal".
 * Ayame's appearance and personality resembles Karin from the Street Fighter series.