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John
John
An ordinary high school boy suffering from high-functioning clinical depression, John's world has become colored gray and he's not the same happy-go-lucky kid that began school. He's convinced of his own worthlessness, gets treated poorly by his so-called friends, and struggles to cope with the help of the school therapist Mrs. Smythe. To add to his troubles, he discovers he's being stalked by the violently unstable Lizzie, who is ironically one of the only people that brings a little bit of color into his gray world.
- Cooldown Hug: When Lizzie realizes that she almost destroyed their relationship by kidnapping him, she's seemingly in the process of breaking her own spine. John takes hold of her and refuses to let go. Not even her having a deranged laughing fit at his persistence is enough to dislodge him, and he only lets go when she's stable again. What a trooper.
- Face Death with Dignity: In most of the endings where Lizzie kills him, he resigns himself to his fate before she commits the deed. The only time he's genuinely surprised is when she fatally wounds herself before killing him.
- Happily Married: The best ending of Dawn and Dusk is wedding bells for him and Lizzie. Though he's smiling in their wedding picture, something about his eyes may lead one to the conclusion that their roles might have swapped...
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: As a symptom of John's depression, he's constantly downplaying his own kindness and self-worth, not even capable of recognizing that he's a brilliant student and genuinely kind to other people, even people like Lizzie.
- Missing Mom: John's mother left after divorcing his father, which John interprets as not even her wanting him.
- Nice Guy: Like most protagonists of a Yandere-themed work, John is generally good-natured, such as defending Lizzie from his friends' rude comments and trying to help her because he knows how it feels to struggle alone with a mental illness.
- Parental Neglect: John's father is a workaholic and his mother left when he was younger, resulting in him receiving no love or attention from either of his parents.
- Sleepy Depressive: A downplayed example, as John is able to get up and go to school fine, but usually all he ever does after finishing his homework is go to bed.
- Spanner in the Works: To Koitec as a whole as he ultimately motivates Lizzie to fight back against them instead of running and hiding in the true ending. In one specific scene, he distracts the Koitec mercenaries who are about to shoot at an overwhelmed Lizzie just long enough for her to collect herself and kill them.
- Stockholm Syndrome: Several days into captivity in Lizzie's basement, John questions the fact that he still cares about Lizzie and wants to get help for her, wondering specifically if this Stockholm Syndrome kicking in. Though as noted by Miss Smythe in the True Ending, he might have been "different" enough already that on some level, he enjoyed it.
Lizzie Doss
Lizzie Doss
A girl from John's school who's secretly been stalking him, being herself extremely mentally unstable. She latches on to John and starts leaving him notes, following him home, and watching him at all times. She'll do anything to make him happy again, no matter what she has to destroy and who she has to hurt.
- Abduction Is Love: Later on in the game she knocks John out and imprisons him in her basement, revealing that her ultimate plan all along was to wear him down until he became hers. This can technically work depending on the player's choices.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Lizzie's obsession with John and desire to protect him is partially because he's nice to her when the other students think she's creepy.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: As the game goes on it becomes clear that Lizzie doesn't, and has never, been able to empathize with or fully understand other human beings as a part of her condition, leading to her behaving perfectly normally and supportively as John's "girlfriend" while holding him captive and being bent on controlling his life. There's also her screwed priorities in thinking nothing and nobody matters outside of John.
- There's also the fact that the kidnapping happens if John wanders around her home instead of staying put, demonstrating Lizzie's obsessive concept of what constitutes a breach of trust. Mind you, if he does stay put, she merrily rocks his world right there and then.
- Declaration of Protection: After their first date, Lizzie decides she needs to protect the deeply depressed John from the cruel world around him, noticing how his friends only make his issues worse.
- Empty Shell: Lizzie eventually explains that all of her life she's felt empty and has been seeking something that would fill that emptiness, and found that John was the only person who could fill that void.
- Giggling Villain: Has a habit of unsettling titters during her moments of mania. Upgrades to Laughing Mad during John's Cooldown Hug and at her "completion" in the True Ending.
- Happily Married: The best ending of Dusk and Dawn is wedding bells for her and John, Lizzie wearing an elated and completely normal smile in their photograph.
- Heel Realization: If you put Lizzie on the Nihlazine, she'll comment about seeing things "differently" and realizing that as much as she wants to protect John from his asshole friends, she needs to protect him from herself, too. This is subverted later, when it's revealed that Lizzie stopped taking the medication after she'd learned what she wanted to from her change in perspective, and continues to be her Yandere self afterwards.
- A more genuine one happens when John has a chance to escape her basement, doesn't take it, and proves to Lizzie that he could have done it if he had wanted to. Lizzie promptly realizes that she almost ruined the one good thing in her life in a fit of paranoia, almost cripples herself before John stops her in time with a tight hug, and, after a screaming fit of laughter at the absurdity of the situation, becomes as stable as a person like her can get.
- Psycho Knife Nut: A stalker Yandere, she has a collection of knives and demonstrates at the county fair how good at knife-throwing she is, though she mainly uses them for practical reasons. She specifically notes that when John came into her life, she became obsessed with every little detail of them in order to protect him.
- Psychotic Smirk / Slasher Smile: The girl can smile nicely and even cutely, but when her eyes are over-bright (or dull), she's usually wearing one of these. The latter becomes more of a Broken Smile during her second Heel Realization.
- Relationship Upgrade: Depending on the player's choices, Lizzie can decide to happily do the deed with John in two places: Either at her house instead of kidnapping him, or at the county fair.
- Single Tear: During John's Cooldown Hug, a single, gentle looking tear after Lizzie's fit of Laughing Mad is John's (and the viewer's) cue that Lizzie is done being an out-of-control Yandere (at least for now), and perhaps has become ready to really be John's girlfriend.
- Stalker with a Crush: It's made clear early that Lizzie follows John home and watches him at night, and even knows his locker combination to leave him notes and little gifts. Later John finds a closet full of pictures of him in her house.
- Unkempt Beauty: However neatly she may dress, and whatever timid facade she may put on, one subtle clue from her first appearance as to her instability is the mane of perpetually unruly but luxuriant blonde hair she wears.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: At her best. And definitely in the True Ending.
- Yandere: Lizzie is violently unstable and her instability centers around making sure that John is happy and in love with her. She burns down a famous tree in the school at the beginning of the game because she overhears John saying how dumb the myth about it is, and only gets worse from there.
Mrs. Smythe
Mrs. Smythe
John's therapist, the only person aside from Lizzie who helps him feel even a little bit better. She mostly tries to treat John's symptoms with medication, most recently an experimental drug called Paxetine, though its side effects seem to be making John worse in some ways.
- Blatant Lies: Her reassurances to John that KioTech wants to take Lizzie in to cure her, which she doesn't even bother to maintain once Lizzie has been captured. Of course, she expects John to be still under the effects of Paxatine and he's being threatened by several armed guards, so it doesn't really matter if he believes her or not.
- Off with Her Head!: In the true end, Lizzie decapitates her with an axe.
- Psycho Psychologist: Lizzie seems to think Mrs. Smythe can't be trusted, although she's obviously a biased source. The truth is that she's right, even if for the wrong reasons; Mrs. Smythe actually isn't treating John for his depression at all, but was using Paxetine to make him easier to control in order to get to Lizzie.
- Psychotic Smirk: She sports one in the true ending when she reveals her true nature, smirking all through torturing Lizzie and John.
