Tom Sato

Tom, a character from the It Lives In The Woods and It Lives Beneath books, is a student and a basketball player at Westchester High at the time of the first book. As of It Lives Beneath, he has moved to Pine Springs and now works as a mechanic. He is one of your love interests in It Lives Beneath. He is first seen in It Lives In The Woods, Chapter 4.

Appearance
Tom has neck-length black hair, brown eyes, and fair skin. He wears a pair of glasses and a cream hoodie over a plaid button-up shirt.

His Westchester Wolves basketball jersey (navy blue and white with black outlines) has the number 17 on the front. He wears a pair of sports glasses when playing basketball.

When possessed by Mr. Red, his skin color becomes gray and his eyes are yellow surrounded by black vein-like markings.

In It Lives Beneath, he wears a gray hoodie over a red t-shirt. He also appears to be wearing a smaller pair of glasses and has a man-bun.

Personality
Like Andy, Tom is frustrated at the basketball team’s exclusion of minorities like them. In contrast to Andy, who just joined the team and has a seemingly naive view of it, Tom has been on the team since junior high and has endured discrimination from them, which contributed to his pessimism. Nevertheless, he still has high hopes that Andy will contribute his best to the team.

He is shown to be a friendly person, even to students he doesn't know that well. He continues to be a friendly person in It Lives Beneath. Tom is very protective of the people he cares about, as shown by his reaction when others bully Andy. This protectiveness causes him to feel very guilty about "failing" others during the events of It Lives In The Woods. Guilt ultimately becomes a powerful motivator for Tom, causing him to move to Pine Springs from Westchester and strongly impacting his mental health. In a premium scene in It Lives Beneath, Chapter 5, Tom mentions that he suffered from depression in college, which caused him to skip classes and eventually drop out.

Even though he is aware of the supernatural, he is still shown to be uncomfortable around it. He gains confidence in dealing with the supernatural if you purchase the premium spell book, therefore allowing him to learn a variety of useful spells to help him protect himself and others.

Tom has a variety of "nerdy" interests, including video games and science fiction, and is horrified when Imogen at one point confuses Star Trek and Star Wars. He is also interested in robotics and originally attended college to study Computer Science.

It Lives In The Woods

 * Chapter 4: What's Coming to You
 * Chapter 5: Buckle Up
 * Chapter 7: Party Favors
 * Chapter 9: Ungrateful
 * Chapter 13: Fight or Flight
 * Chapter 14: In the Dark
 * Chapter 15: Everyone Plays Together (Mentioned)
 * Chapter 16: In Memoriam

It Lives Beneath

 * Chapter 1: Dead in the Water
 * Chapter 3: Off the Deep End
 * Chapter 5: Gone Fishing
 * Chapter 6: All Hands on Deck
 * Chapter 7: Hidden Depths
 * Chapter 8: The Floodgates
 * Chapter 9: Any Port in a Storm
 * Chapter 10: Still Waters
 * Chapter 11: Sinking Feeling
 * Chapter 12: Riptide
 * Chapter 13: Hell or High Water
 * Chapter 14: Under Pressure
 * Chapter 15: Sink or Swim
 * Chapter 17: Fishsticks (Determinant)

Andy Kang
Tom and Andy have been friends since they were toddlers. It started when their respective parents were friends in college and often met together as a result. Their friendship has continued to high school, where they are excluded from various exercises during basketball practice because they are the only Asians on the team. If you choose to have Andy free Tom from Mr. Red's mind control, it's revealed that Andy contemplated suicide when he was younger and it was Tom's friendship that helped him through it.

A year after the events of Chapter 15, if Andy survived the final game of "Are You Scared?", they are still together on the basketball team and best friends. Tom is also protective of him. It's revealed that Andy and the rest of the protagonists trusted Tom enough to tell him the truth behind Redfield and the supernatural events in Westchester, though he remains skeptic. They are still shown to be good friends with each other in It Lives Beneath.

Your Character (It Lives Beneath)
He's a love interest of your character. Throughout his time in Pine Springs, you have the options of spending alone time with him as friends or as more. Depending on how much you romance him, you can tell him that you love him and if romanced enough, he will tell you he loves you too. If he survives, in Chapter 17, he tells you that he has re-enrolled at Hartfeld and plans to finish his degree in robotics.

Other Looks

 * -|It Lives in the Woods=

Trivia

 * In It Lives In The Woods, Chapter 7, Tom mentions that so far, he always wins when playing Never have I ever because his life was "pretty boring".
 * On May 2, 2018, the It Lives writers hinted that an old friend from It Lives in the Woods just got a 🔥 makeover for It Lives Beneath and asked players to see if they could guess who it is.
 * It was later confirmed on October 10, 2018, to be Tom in Chapter 1.
 * At the end of It Lives In the Woods, if Ava survives and you pick the option "Cora would've wanted me to have it" when Tom and Ava talk in the library, he tells her that he met Cora once at the bus stop after he almost ran her over with his skateboard.
 * After Imogen's horse, Diavolos, is killed by the lake creatures, Tom tells her the story of his dog Jester. He reveals that Jester died at some point prior to the events of It Lives Beneath.
 * The name Tomoichi is of Japanese origin and means "smart".
 * The surname Sato is of Japanese origin and means: Village, township, sacred, clever, management, capital, color, vividness, ladle, create, human, help someone, bloom, gauze, benevolence. It's the most common surname in Japan.
 * If you go to the barcade with him in It Lives Beneath, he mentions that he started studying robotics to pursue his childhood dream of building the first real Transformer.

Memorable Quotes
(Thank you to the PLL Wikia for letting us use their template for this memorable quotes section!)