A taika (胎果, wombfruit) is a person who is blown by a shoku into Hourai when he or she is still inside a ranka. The ranka will find itself inside the womb of a human woman and be born to human parents. Their true appearance will be masked within a conforming shell that protects the taika's actual appearance and allows them to live in Hourai with little indication of their true origins.
If a taika returns to the Twelve Kingdoms, he or she will change to the "natural" state that he or she would have hatched as. Should a taika return to Hourai, their appearance would once again be disguised by a shell.