Yumi Omura

A classmate of Hideki's at the prep school, Yumi Omura harbors sincere feelings for him, sometimes rooted in an older friendship, without ever daring to express them clearly for fear of upsetting the balance of their current relationship. Her presence in the series, discreet at first, gains weight as Hideki's growing attention toward Chi becomes increasingly obvious, both to her and to those around them. Rather than sink into the conventional romantic rivalry so common in this kind of story, CLAMP chooses to handle Yumi's character with great restraint: her hesitations, her small disappointments, and her ability to remain kind despite the pain she sometimes feels say far more about her sincerity than any confrontation scene ever could. This approach makes her one of the most humanly credible characters in the series, far from the binary archetypes of the neglected friend or the jealous rival. Her relationship with Hideki, made of real closeness and painful things left unsaid, illustrates in its own way Chobits' central theme about the difficulty of expressing and receiving sincere love, whether directed at a human being or, as in Hideki's case, at a Persocom whose true nature remains for a long time a mystery to everyone around him, Yumi included.