Characters / Maria no Danzai

A list of characters appearing in Maria no Danzai.

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Maria’s family

As a whole

What a happy family!

The Nagare family consisting of inspector Taiichiro, housewife Mari, and their only son Kiritaka. Only later their son dies by a truck ramming him into mush no thanks to his bullies. Mari divorces her husband so she can take revenge on her son's bullies.

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• Good Parents: Both of Kiritaka's parents loved him very much. Mari gave up her dream job to raise her only child as she found him more important than getting the job. While Taiichiro is a bit neglectful due to his work as an inspector (to the point he misses his son's 14th birthday), he truly loved his son: in the present he still remembers the good times he had with his family, and became extremely depressed when he and his wife thought they were the cause of their son's death due to his suicide note. It turned out to be fake, but Mari was the only one who found out and elected not to tell him.
• Grief-Induced Split: Kiri's death destroys the family after Mari divorces Taiichiro to secretly pursue her vendetta against Okaya's gang. Because Mari doesn't share her motives with her husband, Taiichiro is left to grieve alone.
• Happily Married: Mari and Taiichiro were very happy with each other and were both delighted to have their first baby together. Unfortunately, it didn't last...
• Hollywood Genetics: Kiritaka somehow has orange hair in contrast to his mother's dark purple hair and his father's (presumably) black hair.
• In the Blood: Both parents have a sense of justice (Taiichiro as a detective to arrest criminals, and Maria, albeit in a more twisted vengeful way, as a trustworthy nurse who secretly planned to murder the bullies for their monstrosities). Kiritaka gets his morality from them, as he once told Yuda he wanted to be a detective to stop the bad guys, likely being inspired by his dad.
• The Lost Lenore: Kiritaka is a familial example for both parents.
  • For Mari especially since she witnessed her son dying in front of her, leading her to break and get revenge on her son's satanic bullies.
  • For Taiichiro, he lost his wife because of their son's death and his reputation plummeted even though later the child abuse allegiations turned out to be fake. Seeing a happy family only painfully reminds him of the sweet times he had with his own and his regret for taking work over not knowing Kiritaka's pain.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Mari and Taiichiro outlived their only son thanks to his remorseless bullies. Mari had it worse as she literally saw her son die right in front of her.

Mari Nagare / Maria Akeboshi

Voiced by: Sayaka Ohara (manga PV)

Mari Nagare

Maria Akeboshi

The main character. She was a loving mother to her only child, Kiritaka, enough to give up her dream job in order to raise him. On the day of her son’s 14th birthday, she notices that her son has wandered off somewhere and manages to find him… just as he jumps off a cliff, then getting fatally run over by a truck. As if Mari hasn’t suffered enough, evidence shows up that her son has been suicidal. Until she finds Kiritaka’s diary and flash drive; he’s never been suicidal and his bullies forced him into making it seem that was the case. Throwing her old life away, she now goes by Maria Akeboshi, and plans for two years to get vengeance against all that are responsible for ripping her away from her only child.

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• Anti-Hero: Maria zig-zags the trope in regards to what her goals are and what she's willing to do in order to accomplish them. Above all else, she wants to murder the five bullies responsible for the death of her son, and will do whatever it takes to kill them, but draws the line at killing only those five people. While she's driven by revenge instead of justice, the fact of the matter is that she does make the world a better place by removing Okaya's gang from it because of how indisputably despicable her targets are. That being said, Maria does not believe that her actions make her a good person even if ultimately she helps more people than she hurts, and feels guilty when people compliment her or thank her for her kindness, however genuine it is.
• Awesomeness by Analysis:
  • She presumed that her two first victims, Kowase and Shikimi, would try to run away had they realized they were in danger. Given that Kowase is a Dirty Coward and Shikimi gets scared easily, she is correct.
  • She quickly observes that Kinugawa has good intuition due to him suspecting her, but he can easily be deceived.
• Beneath Suspicion: Becoming the universally-beloved School Nurse within a couple of months means not a soul will suspect that she's the one offing Okaya's gang one by one.
• Best Served Cold: After Kiritaka's death, Maria spends two years plotting to get revenge on Okaya's gang for killing him, making such preparations as completely changing her name, identity and physical appearance, teaching herself various skills, investigating the backgrounds of her marks, and finally putting her nursing qualifications to use by becoming the nurse at the school they attend.
• Big "NO!": Her son dying in front of her:
  Mari: No, no, ah... (holds his intestines) NO!! COME BACK! NOOOOO!!
• Blatant Lies: She reassures Atsuki, Kowase's homeroom teacher, that Kowase will definitely return one day, even though she killed him one chapter before.
• Broken Bird: Mari Nagare is a broken woman who's been destroyed by her son's death. Once a happily married housewife, she had a great relationship with her husband and son. Mari overcame a tragic past where she grew up orphaned and was bullied because of the kindness of a nurse who would support her in this hard time. She gave up her dream of being a nurse to be a mother with no regrets. Then, her son died, and she was forced to witness his death.
  • A police investigation told her and her husband he died of suicide because of abusive parents. Heartbroken, she read her son's personal journal and discovered the truth that he was being bullied, and the bullies at his school caused his death. Mari snapped, swore revenge for her son, threw away her life, divorced her husband, changed her name to Maria Akeboshi, had plastic surgery, and two years later became the nurse at the bullies' school to exact revenge.
  • It's becoming clear that she takes no enjoyment in killing the bullies, no matter how much they prove themselves to be irredeemable monsters, and that they deserve death. While she has some happiness in helping bully victims and showing kindness to people who need it, it's clear that she's a miserable shell of the woman she once was, even after she succeeds in getting her revenge on all her son's killers, it will likely cost Maria her sanity and life.
• Bully Hunter: Played for Horror. After Mari Nagare was destroyed by her only beloved son's death and blamed herself for it, she read his diary which revealed the Awful Truth that he was bullied to death because of the monsters led by Okaya and watched the videos of the tortures. Her deep grief snapped into Unstoppable Rage at the demons who ruined her son's life, making it her mission to hunt down the ones responsible and send them to Hell with her own hands. She’s not interested in just killing the bullies; she wants to make them suffer, give them judgment, completely destroy their lives, and break them before killing them. While it's horrifying to see the lengths Mari is willing to go to destroy her son's bullies, they show themselves to be 100% completely unrepentant scumbags that destroyed her son's life and the lives of others for sheer amusement, and deserve whatever fate she has in store for them.
• The Chessmaster: As part of her ploy to hunt down her targets, Maria is able to successfully exploit their insecurities to isolate them and turn them against each other using only the slightest bits of subterfuge.
  • After covertly stealing Kowase's phone, Maria blackmails him with a video of himself masturbating, then encourages his punching bag Yashima to not put up with his abuse. When she runs from Kowase later, this leads him to suspect Yashima of hacking his phone because of how Out of Character this is. Maria then kidnaps Kowase while he's busy trying to drown Yashima in his own home, not one person seeing her enter or leave the house.
  • Maria fuels Shikimi's paranoia by letting it slip to her homeroom teacher that she had been sighted in a Love Hotel district, which leads Shikimi to accuse her friends of outing her. Then, to seal the deal, Maria hides Shikimi's gym clothes in Kinugawa's bag to make it look like she's trying to frame him up; when the ensuing argument escalates, Maria vouches for Kinugawa's innocence by revealing that he was with her at the time and couldn't have stolen them, painting Shikimi as a Manipulative Bitch in front of her class.
• Chekhov's Skill: Mari obtained the qualifications to become a nursing teacher years ago, having dreamt of becoming a School Nurse to emulate the one from her own school days. She shares this with Kiritaka as she treats his injuries the night he dies. Two years after Kiritaka's death, she goes ahead and becomes the nurse at his former school as part of her plan to get revenge on his bullies.
• The Confidant: Maria is this to Yashima after the former encourages her to share her worries. The girl tells her that a friend of hers attempted to shoplift and was blackmailed by "a bad person" (Kowase) who forced her to do horrible things. When she asks her if she should bear with it because of her misdeed, the nurse tells her she doesn't need to tolerate all of this and that she will protect her at all costs. Weeks later, Yashima confesses to Maria that she was with Kowase when he disappeared, but she didn't say anything to the police in fear of being a suspect. Maria reassures her that this will be kept a secret. This shows the trust Yashima has for Maria thanks to the woman's compassion.
• Cool Teacher:
  • Maria is widely regarded by the students to be a saintly woman to whom they can always go when they're in trouble, whether they are physically ill, need sex advice or simply need a space safe from bullies. And to her credit, she does honestly try to help them as best as she can, even taking the time to answer anonymous emails asking her for advice. Because she has the trust of virtually every student in the school, this gives Maria free rein to hunt down her targets free of suspicion.
  • The students love her so much that they've invited her to karaoke. Because Maria doesn't know any songs, she turns them down until she decides to at least get a little practice in her free time.
    Maria: This is just practice to be a relatable teacher... And I am certainly not doing this because it's fun...
• Cope by Creating: Its revealed in chapter 14 that in her spare time at home, Maria sews together sock dolls of her deceased son Kiritaka; she has dinner with the doll and pampers it like it was her son. It's clear that this is a coping mechanism Maria uses when she's not focusing on destroying the demons that took her son away.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Maria gives Shikimi a lifeline to escape death: send a single text message to one person and hope that they rescue her before the rope hanging her above the well burns. Shikimi ultimately chooses to text Iijima, only to receive a reply telling her that he doesn't want to see her again. As it turns out, Maria had created a fake Twitter account to impersonate Shikimi, which she then used to belittle him; when she showed it to him after they had sex, Iijima found it convincing enough.
  • She also expects a counterattack from the remaining bullies and becoming a potential suspect to the police, and is prepared for anything that would try to stop her.
• Crocodile Tears: She fake cries in order to fool Kinugawa into thinking that she feels remorseful for being unable to help Shikimi after the latter was accused of trying to frame her classmate, so that she can deter his suspicion on her being the reason why Shikimi didn't want to come back to school.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She didn’t have a family growing up and was bullied back in her school days. What kept her going was a kind hearted school nurse.
• Death Glare: She does this to two guys who are bothering her while she is trying to find Iijima, which scares them enough that their legs give out.
• Death Wail: Her reaction to witnessing her beloved son killed right in front of her.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • Maria didn't expect that Shikimi would be petty enough to send Iijima after her for "humiliating" her in front of everybody in school.
  • Later, she becomes shocked upon learning that her ex-husband is investigating the disappearance of her victims.
  • Things take an unexpected turn when Iijima is found dead by the police, since Maria is not the one who killed him.
• Didn't Think This Through: She used her maiden name to register as a school nurse and get hired by Kiritaka's school. When her former husband gets assigned to the case of Kowase and Shikimi's disappearance, this tips him off that something might be going on with her.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Has this when she's by herself when she remembers her past family life, mainly about Kiritaka.
• Empty Eyes: Maria's eyes used to have life to them when Kiritaka was still alive. But now that life is long gone.
• Empty Shell: Maria puts on a façade of a kind and caring nurse that the students can go to for advice and emotional support with a kind smile on her face. While her kindness to the students is genuine, especially to bully victims, Maria is emotionally dead behind her polite smile. Maria doesn't even get any satisfaction from her killings apart from knowing that her son's bullies are being punished. While Maria gets genuine happiness from helping the victims of her son's killers, she knows that it will not last, because she is already prepared for the consequences after everything is over.
• "Eureka!" Moment: While comforting Yashima over her trauma and her wishing that Kowase was never found, Maria muses how, after being bullied like she was, it's not strange that she would wish death upon Kowase. It certainly wouldn't be that strange if such a victim in her position considered outright killing people, either. She then remembers that there was another victim mentioned in Kiritaka's diary: the student he saved when he first became Okaya's target. Maria quickly guesses that said student, Akihiro Yuda, may have been the one responsible for murdering Iijima a couple of weeks before, and goes to talk to him about it; his reaction practically confirms her suspicions.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Maria may be devoted to avenging her son at all costs, but even she realizes that killing Iijima for being an accidental connection between her and Shikimi is too much.
  • She is not pleased about Yuda's decision to become her accomplice, not feeling right about the boy her son saved going down a path she knows is self-destructive. She goes as far as to record Yuda's confession of Iijima's murder to prevent him from getting involved with her any further.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: When she is handing Taiichiro their divorce papers, she has ditched her Motherly Sideplait and has her hair down in a disheveled way, meaning she has already decided to go completely wreck her life in order to go after the people responsible for Kiritaka's death.
• Fan Disservice: There is no doubt that Maria is a bombshell, but it's only really shown off when she's seducing some truly horrid people for her own ends. That is to say nothing of the fact that at least part of her looks are a result of body surgery.
• Femme Fatale: She's not above seduction to get what she needs, such as how she landed her job or getting Iijima to give up Shikimi. She tends to have an exceptionally low opinion of anyone who falls for such things.
• Freak Out: Watching her only son die, being led to believe that she and her husband led him to commit suicide and then learning the truth of his death did no favors whatsoever to Mari's mental state. Where she was once a loving mother and wife, now she has become a vengeful murderer who will stop at nothing to achieve her goals.
• Friend to All Children: In her role as the School Nurse, Maria portrays herself as this to the students, encouraging them to come to her office for help no matter what they need. While her act is mostly genuine, Okaya and his gang are the sole exception; they just don't know it yet.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: She was once a normal housewife, but the death of her son made her into a vengeful and deceptive school nurse.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Among the skills she obtained is the ability to construct death traps, such as the Drowning Pit she put Kowase in.
• Good Feels Good: Despite Maria's primary goal being to punish her son's bullies, she shows genuine joy in caring for the students at the school as a nurse; being a kind school nurse who helps students at the school was her original dream before she gave up focusing on being a mother to her son. She turned her nursing room into a safe place where students could ask her for advice. Unfortunately, she knows that this happiness is, at best, temporary, and she remains a broken and depressed woman determined to get revenge for her son.
• Good Parents: She really cherished her only child, enough to give up on her dream job just so she can focus on being a full time mom. Naturally, she goes off the deep end when she witness her child’s death.
• Grief-Induced Split: In order to get revenge on the her son’s true killers, she abandons everything of her old life, including divorcing her own husband, Taiichiro. As she’s washing out her mouth after “convincing” the principal to hire her, she envisions herself together with her son and Taiichiro, leaving her more enraged at the bullies for ruining her family.
• Hollywood Hacking: As part of her revenge scheme, Maria taught herself how to hack computers and smartphones. She first puts this to use by hacking Kowase's phone after confiscating it.
• Hospital Hottie: She's an attractive woman who now works as a school nurse, and she undoubtedly can use her looks to get what she wants.
• I Hate Past Me: When Maria Akeboshi sees her reflection as Mari Nagare, not only does Maria see Mari as dead, but as a coward. This is a tragic example of how far gone she is to the point of having a negative opinion on her past self, the same person whom her son loves.
  Maria: ...Begone, coward.
• I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: This is shown during an end-of-term faculty party where she helps Atsuki, who is feeling down because of the disappearance of Kowase and Shikimi. When the principal pressures him to keep quiet and to drink alcohol, Maria helps him stay sober by distracting the principal. Atsuki later thanks Maria for getting the principal off his back, but Maria becomes upset and leaves the party without a word, to his shock. Maria, deep down, feels she isn't worthy of thanks or compliments because she's not the kind person she presents herself as to her fellow teachers and students.
  Maria: Please don't thank me. I'm not the person you think I am.
• I've Come Too Far: After Maria kills Kowase and disposes of his corpse, she has a brief fit upon remembering the times when her son was still alive. She then bites her lip to calm herself down, before slumping against the wall and muttering how many targets she has left before she's finished.
• It's All My Fault:
  • Mari is driven into a deep depression when the investigation into Kiritaka's death points to being Driven to Suicide due to Abusive Parents, going so far as telling her husband that they are the ones who killed him. Her finding Kiritaka mere moments before his death and being powerless to save him probably made it worse. Upon learning the truth she snaps out of it... in a far worse direction.
  • Maria regrets not finishing off Iijima when she had the chance, as her decision to spare him has inadvertently created an accomplice. Particularly because said accomplice is someone whom her child saved.
• I Work Alone: Maria refuses to involve anyone in her revenge, because she knows how damaging and dangerous it actually is. She rejects Yuda's request to be partners in crime and threatens to frame him for the crimes she committed.
• Kindness Button: Maria may be cold-hearted, but only to the bastards who stole her beloved son away from her and to people she sees as tools to continue her revenge. On a different note, she genuinely empathizes with people in trouble, especially bully-victims. She makes her nurse's office into a safe space for bully victims; when she sees someone being bullied, she takes the time to talk with the person and offer emotional support. She even shows kindness to a coworker when her boss is pressuring him to drink alcohol; when he says that he doesn't drink, she discreetly replaces the alcohol with water without her boss knowing so her coworker would not get in trouble and he is not forced to consume alcohol.
• Knight Templar Parent: And how. She doesn’t take it well when she watches her only child die in front of her, along with police collecting evidence that he’s been Driven to Suicide because of having Abusive Parents. She’s consumed with the guilt of it all… until she finds Kiritaka’s diary and flash drive revealing what his bullies have put him through. She decides right then and there they all need to suffer for ripping her away from her son.
• Lazy Alias: Despite cutting off all ties with her old life when she was a happy housewife and mother, Maria decides to use her maiden name while carrying out her revenge. A common surname, but her old surname just the same. This is the reason why Taiichiro almost suspects she is working in the school.
• Like Parent, Like Child:
  • Both Mari and Kiritaka were bullied in school, although we aren't sure how Mari was bullied (aside from the reason being she was an orphan) or how it compared to her son's horrific bullying. Both choose to help people because it's the right thing to do, such as Kiritaka stopping the bullies from harming Yuda and Mari helping Yashima and Atsuki, the former because she reminds of what Maria could have done for her son and the latter because he is a decent man despite being oblivious to two of his students being utterly terrible people.
  • A minor similarity between them is their acting skills. Kiritaka was able to hide his troubles in school from his parents for months as if there is nothing wrong. Maria drops Kinugawa's suspicion on her by crying and pretends to be guilty for not being able to help his childhood friend.
  • They also tend to work by themselves: Kiritaka was willing to be bullied by Okaya's gang in order to get enough evidence to show to the authorities, while Maria planned by herself on how to kill the bullies and never bothers to tell her ex-husband about the fake suicide note.
• The Lightfooted: At one point Maria is able to briefly elude pursuers by running into an alley, then jumping into and hiding in the overhead railings while leaving her purse behind as bait before they can turn around the corner. While wearing heels.
• Long Game: Maria Akeboshi played the long game in her revenge against the demons that tortured her son and murdered him. She even chooses her future victims carefully, choosing the two that would most likely run at the first sign of danger while saving the other three for later because she knows they would stand their ground against her. She has plans for when the bullies realize that someone's after them and even has plans for when the police are involved in investigating the two deaths she has caused so far.
• Love Makes You Evil: Maria is far from evil, but her unconditional love for her unfortunate son is the deepest core of her revenge against the brats responsible for destroying her family. She is willing to do unethical and illegal actions, such as hacking a student's phone and kidnapping, to proceed her goal, then to eventually kill these little shits once she is done with them.
• Mama Bear: She goes on an Roaring Rampage of Revenge against her son’s Gang of Bullies, and she always makes sure to finish her vengeance with their deaths. They’ve had it coming since they all ruthlessly tortured and inadvertently killed her son.
• Meaningful Name: Mari's name's first and second kanji (真里) means "truth, reality, genuine" and "family home of a wife", respectively. She is a stay-at-home mother and wife whose love for her son is genuine. Even after she changed her name to Maria, her "Mari" persona is still present when she takes time to help other students to talk about their problems and her fellow teacher to drink water instead of alcohol out of the principal's sight. However, she believed that side of her is fake.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: In the middle of another panic attack, Maria sees her (pre-surgery) former self as Mari Nagare staring back at her in the reflection, with tears running down her face.
• Misery Trigger: Played for Drama. She is normally calm and collected with a smile on her face, even when commiting murderous acts, but anything that reminds her of her previous life with her husband and son, no matter how big or small, is enough to shake her and bring her to tears.
• The Mistress: She maintains an affair with the principal presumably to keep him under her thumb despite the fact that she clearly detests him and still has feelings for Taiichiro. While in the midst of doing some Ear Cleaning, when he suggests that they could go on a private vacation she accidentally pokes his eardrum after hallucinating Taiichiro on her lap instead of him.
• Morality Chain Beyond the Grave: Played for Horror. Maria has spent the last two years preparing to avenge her son Kiritaka by murdering the bullies responsible for his death, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to kill them all. However, after Shikimi sends Iijima to beat up Maria for taunting her at school, Maria quickly realizes that, once she kills Shikimi, Iijima could be used by the police or even by Okaya's gang to draw a connection between the two, potentially outing her as Shikimi's murderer. Maria prepares to silence Iijima by killing him when the two go to a love hotel, but then an apparition of Kiritaka reminds her that Iijima is not one of her targets. Shocked at what she is about to do, Maria relents and agrees that Iijima doesn't need to die, and decides to silence him by other means after killing Shikimi. What makes this horrifying, though, is that Kiritaka's "ghost" has a hole where his face should be, "leaving his brain and blood-stained tongue to spill." As if Maria's life wasn't ruined enough already, clearly, Maria is still traumatized from cradling his mangled remains. And it's implied that the only thing stopping her from going full psycho is "an apparition of her dead son."
• Motherly Sideplait: She ties her hair in a loose ponytail hanging off her right shoulder. She ditches this hairstyle after her son’s death. She also has her hair down while she hand Taiichiro the divorce papers.
• Ms. Fanservice: As part of her revenge, she undergoes body surgery to seduce men (the principal and Iijima) in order to use them, and some panels show her body in lingeries.
• My God, What Have I Done?: She blames herself for Kiritaka’s "suicide" as his online posts and suicide note constantly talk about taking his life while having a set of Abusive Parents. That is until she finds diary entries exposing his bullies.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Maria enters a dance club where Iijima regularly conducts business in order to find him before the police or Okaya can find him first. She ends up running into Kinugawa, who's there for the same purpose.
  • Her eyes widen when it seems that Kinugawa has found Iijima.
  • When she first sees Taiichiro at the dance club, realizing he's the inspector for the student's disappearance case.
• Outliving One's Offspring: She watches as her only child jumped off a cliff and gets run over by a truck.
• The Paralyzer: She seems to have the ability to paralyze anyone within touching distance of her, though it's not exactly clear what she does.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: It may possibly because she did not expect Kinugawa in the dance club too, but she did not make much effort in disguising herself to find Iijima, and we can still see her full face, leading the bully to discover her.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Maria gives the bullies judgment by destroying their lives by using their flaws, sins, and crimes to destroy them systematically, and when she gets in for the kill, the bullies are wholly destroyed emotionally and die horrifying and despairing deaths. As horrifying as it is to see the lengths she would go to destroy her son's bullies, they show themselves as 100% monsters that are remorseless of her son's death and even curse him, so the readers can't help but cheer as they see the bullies be destroyed.
  Mari Nagare: "Mere revenge is too soft. They deserve judgement."
• Pet the Dog: Maria may have secretly become a serial killer out for revenge, but she still has the heart to look out for those who can't look after themselves, such as Yashima and Atsuki. She encourages Yashima to stand up to Kowase and helps Atsuki stay sober. She's well aware this isn't enough to offset her own sins, however.
  • She does this again with Yashima when the girl admits to Maria she was at the place where Kowase disappeared but didn't want to tell the authorities out of fear. While this is partly to protect herself so the police don't connect her to Kowase's disappearance and murder when she tells Yashima to stay silent, Maria genuinely tries to comfort her and wants her to keep quiet about being with Kowase when he disappeared because she doesn't want her to be traumatized by the abuse she suffered under him or by the police suspecting her for Kowase's disappearance.
• Poetic Serial Killer: Maria takes a moment to give her soon-to-be victims a line explaining why she considers the fates she's giving them "poetic."
  • "Kowase, you have stolen something important to other people... that is why I will steal the oxygen from you."
  • "Shikimi, you have led people down the path to their loneliness... that is why I will drop you into a pit of that same despair."
• Relative Button: Shikimi insulting Kiri is enough proof for Maria that she is an irredeemable devil.
• Replacement Goldfish: She made plushies of her lost son and treated one as if it is him.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: She vows vengeance against the bullies for all the vicious torments put on Kiritaka as well as inadvertently getting him killed.
• A Saint Named Mary: Maria is seen as such a paragon of kindness among the students that they call her "Saint Maria of the Infirmary".
• School Nurse: Subverted but eventually played straight. It was her dream job to be this, as she was inspired by her school nurse for getting her through school while she was getting bullied. But she gave up on it when she had her son as she wished to be more closer to him. That is until he’s killed by his bullies torments and blackmail does she plan for 2 years to get back at them. Part of her revenge plan is to be the bullies new school nurse.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Maria may seem like a sweet lady with a penchant for manipulation and elaborate deaths, but that does not mean she's not capable of defending herself. When Iijima tries to attack her, she easily dispatches all three of his thugs with a little misdirection, stealth and a taser.
• Single Tear: She skillfully shed a tear from her right eye in Kinugawa's view out of "guilt", while her left eye reveals her true feeling.
• Slasher Smile: Throws one at Kowase once he realizes his only escape is to cut off his own hand. Made more chilling by flooding water distorting his perception of her.
• Sleeping Their Way to the Top: In order to become the School Nurse, Maria once gave the school principal a blowjob in his office. While she clearly did not enjoy the experience, she smiled and carried on undeterred. Later, she went to the restroom and forced herself to vomit. All in all, Maria acknowledges this as the "easiest step" in her plan, and describes the principal as a foolish man for being such an easy obstacle to overcome.
• Stealth Expert: She's been shown to be very good at sneaking upon people, with Kowase and Shikimi not seeing or hearing her approach before she sedates them. She even takes by surprise one of the thugs Shikimi's helper had brought with him and tazes him.
• Stepford Smiler: Pulls off a convincing enough smile in front of the principal both when she "auditions" for her job and when he covertly gropes her ass during a drinking party. Of course, both times the principal is too horny to take a closer look and notice that Maria's smile is anything but.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Sure, a grown adult going around to kill teenagers is very disturbing, but said teenagers tortured and inadvertently killed her only child with zero remorse for their disgusting actions even in their last moments.
• That Woman Is Dead: She’s extremely determined to get vengeance against her son’s bullies in their role of inadvertently killing him. She divorces her husband, legally changes her name back to her maiden name, cuts off all contact from all the people who knew her, and decides to completely change her appearance by getting full-body plastic surgery. By now she can’t even recognize her old self... or rather she just doesn't want to see her old self again, seeing her old self as a coward.
• Tracking Device: Mari used an app that tracked her son's location after she noticed him sneaking out of the house late at night. She then found him on the road with broken legs, and, well, you know the rest...
• Tragic Hero: Mari Nagare was once a happily married housewife and mother, and could've been a great and happy nurse; now, she is a woman destroyed by tragedy.
  • Mari had a tragic past where she grew up an orphan and was bullied in school, but the kindness of a nurse at her school allowed her to overcome her past. Seeking to emulate her benefactor, Mari dreamed of being a nurse and acquired the necessary qualifications, but she put those dreams on hold with no regrets to be a mother to her son, whom she loved dearly.
  • Unknown to her or her husband, their son was being horribly tormented by vicious bullies, and eventually he was killed in a prank gone wrong, with Mari witnessing his death. A police investigation concluded that their son committed suicide because of abusive parents, leaving her devastated and blaming herself. Only then Mari learned the truth that her son was tortured and killed by monstrous thugs whom her son referred to as "demons," and the reason he kept quiet about it was so he wouldn't worry his parents while he gathered evidence to turn the bullies in.
  • Mari snapped and swore revenge on the demons that took her son away. Not only that, she planned to give them judgment related to their sins and ultimately destroy their lives before killing them. Mari threw away her life, divorced her husband, changed her name to Maria Akeboshi, had plastic surgery, and two years later became the nurse at the bullies' school to exact revenge.
  • It is shown that her son's death has completely destroyed Maria, who finds no satisfaction or peace in her revenge even though the bullies show themselves to be unrepentant scumbags that deserve death. It also shows that Maria became the exact kind of nurse she always wanted to be: the students widely regard her to be a saintly woman to whom they can always go when they're in trouble, whether they are physically ill, need sex advice, or simply need a space safe from bullies. And while Maria genuinely enjoys helping students, she knows that it won't last.
    • Had the tragedy not happened, Mari could've been the good nurse she always wanted to be –- happily helping students and being a good mother. Instead, because of the sadists who took her son away, Mari has been reduced to a broken, empty serial killer who, while she wants to help the students in her care and is killing monsters, has no delusions that she is a good person nor does she take any joy in her vengeance. All with the implication that when her crusade is over, she will literally have nothing left to live for.
• Uncanny Valley Girl: She's a beautiful, polite school nurse who is considered a guardian angel by everyone... and is also planning a cold-blooded revenge, all while hiding her severe emotional trauma following her son's death.
• The Unfettered: Maria has very few scruples about what she's willing to do in order to inch closer to her targets. If she has to lie, manipulate people or even do sexual favors to get her revenge, then that's exactly what she will do. About the only scruple she has is that she can't bring herself to kill anyone who isn't her target.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: An interesting example where the perpetrator appears to feel already that vengeance is empty, but it's continuing anyway. Mari Nagare was once a happily married woman with a loving relationship with her son, Kiritaka Nagare. Unfortunately, her son died, and the investigation told her and her husband that they believed he was driven to suicide by abusive parents. But when Mari Nagare read her son's diary, she learned the truth that a group of bullies inhumanely tortured Kiritaka, and he died in a prank gone wrong. Mari Nagare snapped and dedicated her life to getting revenge on her son's bullies by killing them. She divorced her husband, changed her name to her maiden name, Maria Akeboshi, cut off contact with her friends, got plastic surgery, and two years later, she's a nurse at the bullies' school to kill them off secretly. However, whenever she kills a bully, she shows no joy in their death, even though the bullies show themselves to be 100% scumbags that are remorseless and their crimes and are ruining other lives other than her sons. It appears that any Slasher Smile or Psychotic Smirk Maria flashes at her son's bullies while they're at her mercy seems to be strictly performative, as she returns to a despondent demeanor every time she's delivered the coup de grace. Maria afterward will remind herself of how many heads she has left to collect as she cleans up and disposes of evidence with grim detachment. Despite likely being aware that revenge will lead her nowhere good, Maria resolves to continue. After all, this isn't being done for herself but for her son, who died at the hands of absolute demons.
• A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Portrays herself as a kind teacher that looks out for the students, when in truth she's plotting to murder the children responsible for Kiritaka's death in the most brutal, painful manner possible.

Kiritaka Nagare

Voiced by: Tomohiro Yamaguchi (manga PV)

A second-year middle schooler, he’s a frequent victim of Okaya and his underlings. He puts on a brave face in front of his caring mother, fearing he would only burden himself if he told his mother what’s going on at school. The final breaking point is the bullies blackmailing him with an edited video of his “mother” acting in a porno. Unless he jumps off a cliff, the video gets deleted, if he doesn’t, then the video gets posted online. Kiritaka decides to take the jump, but gets run over by a truck and killed. In front of his mother no less.

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• Affectionate Nickname: His mother calls him "Kiri-kun".
• All for Nothing:
  • Played cruelly straight in the worst way possible in the end, as his failure to accomplish his goal had tragic consequences for his family. He’s bullied for months by Okaya's gang — the torment Kiritaka suffered more akin to torture than bullying. But he endured it all because he was gathering evidence on the bullies and he did not want to worry his mother Mari, who he loved greatly. Then Kiritaka was killed by a prank by the bullies under the threat of a fake porno with his mother edited in being posted online unless he jumped off a cliff, which his mother saw just as a truck ran him over. After an investigation by the police his parents were told that his death was a suicide caused by Abusive Parents, which made them blame themselves. Mari, depressed by everything surrounding his death, discovered a journal about the bullying Kiritaka suffered, leaving her to swear revenge on his bullies. Two years later, Mari is under a new identity, Maria Akeboshi, and is hunting and killing Okaya's gang one by one, having thrown away her marriage and her previous life to get revenge. It is clear that her son's death has completely destroyed Maria, and even though she's getting revenge for her son, it will likely cost Maria her sanity and life.
  • It's also revealed that his father, Inspector Taiichiro Nagare's life, was destroyed as well. Taiichiro is heartbroken about both his son's death and the divorce from his wife. He’s also become an outcast towards most of the police department because they believed he was abusing his son.
  • All in all, Kiritaka failed to report his bullies, it's implied that in the two years after his death his bullies had free reign to destroy his classmate's lives, and his early death at the cost of protecting his mother's reputation and dignity was not only ultimately pointless but destroyed his family as well.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Made into the main target of a sociopathic Gang of Bullies, he did not have an easy school life. Chapter 7 shows that he was the victim of a Frameup orchestrated by Shikimi, which resulted in him being socially isolated from the entire class.
• Animal Lover: He wrote "I'm sorry" 50 times and "I'll kill myself" 1000 times because the bullies threatened to kill a rabbit if he didn't.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: The first chapter shows off all the horrific bullying he’s put through, but when he gets home, it’s revealed it’s all taking place on his 14th birthday. The bullies text him later that night with an edited video of his “mother” acting in a porno, and blackmail him into jumping off a cliff. He survived the fall, but not the truck.
• Broken Hero: Kiritaka was subjected to severe bullying for months. Even so, he was able to pull off a convincing cheerful smile to his mother who probably didn't suspect something is wrong with him until his birthday. More notably, he was ostracized by his own classmates because of Shikimi's Frame-Up, thus making him feel all alone, yet he didn't seem to resent them for this and focused on exposing the bullies. A quite impressive example when the guy was during those times 13.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Jumping off the cliff not only breaks Kiritaka's legs, it leaves the broken bones visible through his flesh. When the truck runs him over, his body is torn apart and his intestines are smeared across the road.
• Decoy Protagonist: The entire first chapter is shown from Kiritaka's perspective, making him appear to be the typical protagonist, but at the end of the chapter, he is killed by a truck. Giving way to the real protagonist, his mother Mari.
• Defiant to the End: Arguably. Okaya, in his last prank to Kiritaka, is once again enraged by Kiritaka's glare of defiance. In the end, Kiritaka dies not because he threw in the towel, but because he threw himself off a highway plateau in an effort to keep Okaya from spreading a porn video doctored to contain his mother's likeness, and had expected to survive with just some broken bones.
• Died on Their Birthday: Kiritaka met his unfortunate end the night of his fourteenth birthday.
• Fatal Flaw: He does things alone, and ironically, his love for his mother is what kills him in the end and destroys his family.
• Hannibal Lecture: In a flashback, he gave this speech to Kowase as he’s trying to drown him. He points out that no matter how much he worshiped the ground Okaya walked on, his boss will never care about him. Two years later, Kiritaka is proven right. Kowase is even more pissed because deep down, he knew Kiritaka was right about Okaya.
• I Work Alone: Deconstruction. Kiritaka endures months of torture by these satanic monsters while he is acting everything's fine with his mother and without getting anyone else involved. It's unknown why he didn't go to his teachers or if they would have been any help, but it is known that he was isolated from his classmates because of a frame-up from one of the bullies. His situation may have improved if he had asked for help because him trying to defeat his bullies alone caused his death and destroyed his family.
• Look Both Ways: He’s severely injured from the bullies blackmailing him into jumping off a cliff. But what ultimately kills him is a truck suddenly running him over.
• Lying to Protect Your Feelings: Deconstruction. Lying to protect your loved ones' feelings has tragic consequences in his case. Kiritaka had a loving relationship with his mother, Mari. He was also horribly bullied at school by a group of satanic thugs and took it upon himself to gather evidence of the thug's crimes so he could turn them in and endured months of torture. Part of the reason he is enduring all this torture or not telling his parents what he's going through is that he does not want to worry his mother. Kiritaka may not have wanted to worry his mother, but keeping her in the dark about his struggles when she and his father could've helped him led to his death, the destruction of his family, and his mother destroying her life and being a shell of the person she once was who only wants to get revenge for his death. Tragically, he accomplishes nothing by lying to his mother to spare her feelings.
• Meaningful Name: Kiritaka's name has the first kanji (桐) that means "strength" and the second (崇), "adore". It describes him perfectly: he has saved a classmate from being strangled to death and endures the inhumane bullying to gather evidence to expose his tormentors, and his parents love him, especially his mother openly expressing it.
• Momma's Boy: He’s very close to his mother, as his father is not home a lot due being more focused on his job in the police force. Despite all the bullying he’s put through, he’s hesitant to expose said bullying as he doesn’t want to trouble his mother.
• Nerves of Steel: Tragically subverted. Emboldened and inspired by his father's work as a police investigator, Kiritaka was seemingly fully prepared to endure as much abuse from Okaya's gang as he would need to to gather enough evidence to have them put behind bars. Unfortunately, Okaya's threat to spread a porn video online doctored to contain his mother's likeness spurned Kiritaka to try and preserve his mother's reputation by attempting to appease Okaya to keep him from following through... by obeying Okaya's command to jump off a highway plateau and sadly, this leads to his death. In the end, Kiritaka died, not by being pushed past his breaking point, but by having his love for his mother cruelly used against him.
• Never Suicide: The bullies forced him into writing suicidal notes for a thousand times or else he’ll be Forced to Watch them kill a rabbit. The police also find his social media accounts talking about having suicidal urges while bemoaning that he has Abusive Parents. It’s not clear if the bullies made a fake profile of him, hacked his account, or forced him into posting the suicidal urges.
• Nice Guy: He is a good kid who put others before himself and shows his appreciation to his mother for her love.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Why did the bullies horrifically torment him? He stopped them from their sadistic game of literally strangling another classmate to death!
• Plot-Triggering Death: Kiritaka's death and the circumstances leading to it leave his mother consumed with a hunger for vengeance.
• Posthumous Character: Introduced and killed off in the first chapter, few flashbacks throughout the story flesh his character out a bit.
• Potty Failure: Kiritaka pisses himself after the continuous blows and kicks to his stomach inflicted by Kinugawa.
• Say My Name: His mother screams his name in distress upon seeing him with broken legs.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Kiritaka only appeared in the first chapter, where he was killed, but he was a significant focus in the first chapter. His death kickstarts his mother swearing vengeance on all the bullies for how they treated and killed him, which influences the entire story of revenge. Later, Akihiro Yuda, the former toy for Okaya's group, kills Iijima to assist Maria in her revenge.
• Spirit Advisor: A hallucination of Kiritaka interrupts Maria as she's about to eliminate Iijima as a loose end. Disturbingly, the hallucination'a face looks like his face was scooped out, leaving little more than a loose dangling tongue atop a slack bottom jaw. A peak inside Maria's deteriorating mental state, no doubt.
• Stepford Smiler: Downplayed. He acts cheerful around his mother to hide the fact he is inhumanely picked on by Okaya's gang, but of course, he does enjoy being with her.
• Take Me Instead: It is implied he agreed to be the gang's punching bag after Okaya asked if he wanted to take the previous victim's place, whom he saved.
• Third-Person Flashback: Whenever Maria recalls or reads an entry on his diary we get to see the horrors that were inflicted upon him.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: All in all, Kiritaka was a kind boy who looked after others before himself, and absolutely did not deserve to be tortured for months on end or to die such a messy death as he did.
• Trauma Conga Line: Kiritaka Nagare suffers a traumatizing series of events that end with his death. He saw one of his classmates being tortured by a group of satanic bullies, so he took the classmate's place to protect him. He was tortured for months, and the bullies ostracized him from his classmates, so he endured the torture alone. He kept quiet about the torture from his parents because he didn't want to worry his mother while he gathered evidence to turn the bullies in. After months of torture, Kiritaka was forced by the bullies to jump onto the road by threatening to post a fake pornographic video of his mother. He jumps and breaks his legs when his mother sees him jump, and then he's hit by a truck and dies, meaning that all he endured was for nothing. The only positive thing about this, and even that's debatable, is that his mother discovered the truth of his death and swore revenge, destroying the bullies' lives before killing them. Still, it's clear that his mother threw away her life and has been shattered by his death, meaning that all he suffered through was for nothing. Kiritaka, enduring all the torture and sacrificing his life, accomplished nothing but his death and destroying his family.

Inspector Taiichiro Nagare

Mari’s husband and Kiritaka’s father. He’s an inspector in the local police police department, but he often puts his job first before his family, but it takes his son’s death to realize his mistakes. During the two year timeskip, he and Mari get a divorce following their son’s death, as his ex-wife decided to abandon her old life in order to get vengeance against the ones truly responsible for their son’s death. He is currently assigned to the Community Safety Planning Division of his police department which handles Juvenile crime activity, and was assigned to investigate Kowase's disappearance.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Chapter 14 shows him literally falling on his hands and knees trying to keep Mari from leaving him.
• All the Other Reindeer: Due to Kiritaka's suicide and subsequent suspicions that he was abusing his own child, he was severely hated and mistreated by his fellow police-officers. He believes he deserves it though.
• Bad Bedroom, Bad Life: Considering what he's been through after Kiritaka's death and Mari's departure, his kitchen is messy with stacks of instant noodles on the table and one trash bag he hadn't thrown away yet.
• The Bus Came Back: Returns to the story two years after his son's death in order to investigate Kowase's disappearance and later Shikimi's.
• Brutal Honesty: When Atsuki claims it's all his fault for not paying more attention to Mari's warnings about Shikimi Taiichiro offers such a brutal reply that both Atsuki and the Principal can only stare at him in disbelief while his partner silently closes his eyes understanding the pain Taiichiro went through.
  Taiichiro: You can't change the past. You can only accept the pain and the regret, and continue living your life while suffering from that guilt.
• Convicted by Public Opinion: The allegations he was abusing Kiritaka were never proven and were eventually lifted, but this didn't stop his fellow officers from believing them.
• A Day in the Limelight: Chapter 14 focuses heavily on him and the heavy toll Kiritaka's death and Mari's divorce took on him.
• Defective Detective: The death of his son and the divorce from his wife made him into a gloomy investigator who believes that his mistreatment from his colleagues is a justified punishment.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Has these in the timeskip after his son's death and especially after Mari divorced him.
• Foot-Dragging Divorcee: He really didn't want to divorce Mari and begged her to stay with him to start over. He still wears his wedding ring, indicating that he still hasn't gotten over Mari leaving him and still has feelings for his ex-wife.
• Grief-Induced Split: Despite his Workaholic and neglectful attitude, his wife had a degree of affection towards him, given her phone call over her concerns about their son. Following Kiritaka’s death, Taiichiro and his wife get a divorce, which likely would not have happened if not for their son’s Gang of Bullies driving him to an early grave, resulting in Maria wishing for revenge at the cost of abandoning everything in exchange for a new life, including her now ex-husband. When Mari handed over the divorce paper to him, he tried to convince her to change her mind, saying they are family. She then asked how they can still be family now that their own son is gone, leaving him more guilt-ridden and unable to move on even after 2 years later.
• Heartbroken Badass: He used to be one of the most trusted police officers in his precinct (taking parts in stakeouts and all), but Kirataka's "suicide" and Mari's divorce absolutely destroyed him. This is best exemplified when he sees a happy family and immediately imagines his old family, and he begins crying.
• Ignored Epiphany: It does cross his mind that Maria might be Mari because they share the same maiden name but he immediately pushes that suspicion aside because Akeboshi is a very common surname. Despite this, he openly wishes to talk to her, but he decides to drop it when Maria happens to be on vacation when he attempts to visit her office.
• It's All My Fault: He believes it was his fault that Kiritaka committed suicide.
• Misery Trigger: Similarly to Maria, he is greatly affected whenever he sees something that reminds him of the life he lost with Mari and Kiritaka.
• Mistaken for Murderer: Kinugawa believes Okaya's theory that one of Kiritaka's parents is responsible for their friends' death, and breaks into Taiichiro's house to look for proof.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After his son’s death, he apologizes to Mari for not being able to protect him, especially believing he’s at fault for focusing more on his job than noticing his son’s suicidal urges. He’s wrong on the last part though.
• Nightmare Face: Played for Laughs with the birth of Kiritaka. When he saw how exhausted Mari was after labor, he tried to tell his son he should sleep now (which of course is impossible to tell to a newborn); Kiritaka continued to cry even more when he saw the scary face of his father.
• Parental Neglect: He loves his son, but because of his job, he doesn’t have a lot of time with him to the point of missing his fourteenth birthday. Of course, he is not proud of himself after losing him and regrets his neglect.
• Parents as People: He doesn't see a big deal that Kiritaka might be hiding something, firmly believing that Kiritaka wants to have some privacy since he's in middle school — except what his son is hiding is that he’s getting horrifically tormented by a Gang of Bullies, but does not want to come forward in order to not make them worry. Taiichiro hangs up on his concerned wife in the matter while dismissing her worries as overprotective; he comes to deeply regret it. In the present, seeing a happy couple with a child reminds him of his lost family, painfully showing him that the cheerful moments he spent with his ex-wife and especially with his son will never be re-created again.
• Perpetual Frowner: He usually doesn't smile.
• Pose of Supplication: When he is begging Mari not to leave him.
• Precious Photo: While he doesn't carry it on person, in his apartment, he has a picture of a baby Kiritaka and another with him holding onto their toddler son and his wife.
• Punishment Detail: He is currently assigned to the Community Safety Planning Division which handles juvenile crime cases and swamps him with work. It's heavily implied that his assignment there was a result of him being falsely labeled a child abuser by his peers. He is actually thankful for it as this means he is justly punished for what happened to his son.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Objectively speaking, he isn't entirely wrong for blaming himself for his son's death. While it is incorrect that his son committed suicide, and he had nothing to do with that. However, his wife did call him regarding concerns she had with her son, and he was somewhat dismissive of it partly due to being busy with his work. If he had spoken with his son, he most likely could've surmised that his son was being bullied before the worst happened.
• Self-Punishment Over Failure: He failed to heed Mari's warnings about Kiritaka which resulted in his son's death (in his defense, he was in the middle of a stakeout and the target was moving). He considers his subsequent mistreatment by his fellow police officers and Mari's divorce as just punishments for failing to properly look after his son as he refuses to forgive himself.
• This Cannot Be!: When he finds out Maria's surname is Akeboshi, he is shocked and immediately suspects that Mari and Maria are the same person, since they share the same maiden name. He pushes the thought aside rationalizing that Akeboshi is a common surname. He still asks about her though. He apparently gives up talking to Maria directly when it turns out she’s absent due to being on vacation.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: He’s constantly busy on his job in the police force, even missing his son’s 14th birthday while dismissing his wife’s concerns just so he will focus on catching a suspect.
• Workaholic: He’s a police inspector, so he doesn’t stay home for a lot of the time. Some time after the tragedy of his son, it is mentioned he had gotten more work than before.

The Bullies

As a whole

Aaaw, look at that wonderful wholesome group of friends lighting that stupid kid's face with sparklers. ^note left to right: Tsuyoshi Kinugawa, Kumiru Shikimi, Nozomu Okaya, Tsubasa Kowase, Mutta Ajiki.

The local Gang of Bullies led by Nozomu Okaya. They make Kiritaka their new target after he saves a classmate from their game of torture. Horrifically a bunch of sociopathic kids, they all relish at Kiritaka’s suffering, going as far as to threaten him into jumping off a cliff, resulting in his death. They faced no repercussions for this, but boy, did they piss off the wrong Mama Bear…

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• Accidental Murder: These devils were not planning to have Kiritaka died in their last "prank" and panicked (sans Okaya) for it... because they didn't want to face consequences for taking his life.
• Asshole Victim: The reason you root for Maria destroying them in some absolutely terrifying ways is because, speaking plainly, there is nothing even remotely sympathetic about them.
  • Tsubasa Kowase is a remorseless blackmailer who exploits girls and harasses them; he also likes to torture his victims by drowning them in water. His fate of being drowned is very much deserved. His final moments showed how much of a degraded scumbag he is, not being able to remember the day or month his victim died and fighting for a future where he can continue to blackmail women and get rich off his victims, with him failing to cut off his hand and drowning in horror.
  • Kumiru Shikimi showed herself to be a remorseless manipulative bitch who likes to blackmail people and frame them for crimes they didn't commit; for example, she lies about her age so she can use the dating app to date older men and blackmail them for money by revealing her true age. She also framed her innocent classmate as a pervert so their classmates could ostracize him. It is made clear that Kumiru Shikimi does not care for the lives she has ruined. So her being exposed as the liar she is by her classmates and her eventual fate of dying in a well and being eaten by insects is very deserved. Any sympathy given to her for how horrifying her fate is and the terror she experiences is destroyed when she shows that she is remorseless about her victim to death in front of said victim's mother.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: It’s not clear who made the threat, but the bullies had no problem with threatening to kill a rabbit and force Kiritaka to watch unless he writes a thousand suicidal notes.
• Bully Brutality: Big time. They draw the line at killing their victims, and even then it's just to avoid going to prison.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Kiritaka's death had devastating consequences on Maria and Taiichiro's life. For them it meant nothing and they went about their business as usual. It comes back to bite them hard afterwards.
• Death by Flashback: A subversion. Whenever flashbacks are shown about one them expect them to meet their end soon. The subversion is that they are not actually the ones remembering them, Maria is reading or recalling their entries in her dead son's diary and is having a Third-Person Flashback.
• Embodiment of Vice: Each and every one of them:
  • Okaya embodies Pride, and is torturing Kiritaka simply because he defies him.
  • Kowase embodies Envy and fear, by being a Sycophantic Servant who brutalizes those who are weaker than him. He also embodies Greed, since he is fond of blackmailing people for money.
  • Shikimi embodies Lust, both my being a Honey Trap for emotionally vulnerable men and for pining over Okaya. She is also a Consummate Liar who frames those she doesn't like to socially isolate them.
  • Kinugawa embodies Wrath, by having a Hair-Trigger Temper and an Unstoppable Rage when beating up Kiritaka.
  • Ajiki embodies Gluttony and Sloth by being a Fat Bastard eating mostly junk food who mostly enjoys watching Kiritaka being bullied in the sidelines
• Enfante Terrible: At the least, Kinugawa and Shikimi were already vicious brats back when they were kindergarteners.
• For the Evulz: Just why are they such a pack of bloodthirsty bullies? Nothing! They just brutalize whoever they want just for kicks!
• Gang of Bullies: Played for Drama. They are a group of bullies who have all individually tormented Kiritaka in some fashion or another as well as other students.
• Hate Sink: They're all largely portrayed as despicably cruel teenagers with no redeeming traits so that Maria is justified in systematically ruining their lives before murdering them in poetically gruesome ways.
• Jerkass: Every one of them are unpleasant, cruel bullies who physically and psychologically abuse other students for shits and giggles.
• Karmic Death: Nozomu Okaya and his gang are a bunch of horrifyingly sociopathic kids that like to torture their classmates for fun, with one of their named victims being Kiritaka Nagare. After months of torture, Kiritaka is forced to jump onto a road because they threaten to post a heavily-edited sex video of his mother on the internet unless he jumps. Kiritaka dies from being run over by a truck, and the bullies balk not at his death, but at the fact that they will get into trouble if his death is connected to them. To avoid this, they plant fake evidence and overall make his death look like a suicide caused by Abusive Parents. Two years later, Okaya and his gang continue to destroy the lives of their classmates, but unbeknownst to them, Kiritaka's mother, Mari, discovered the truth about her son's death and swore to avenge him by destroying Okaya and his gang, erasing her former identity, changing her name to Maria Akeboshi and infiltrating their school as a nurse to do so. Maria plans not to just get revenge on Okaya and his friends: she plans to make them suffer.
  • Tsubasa Kowase is a scumbag who has a habit of drowning his victims and blackmails girls with embarrassing pictures to abuse them and exploit them for money in his spare time. Maria kidnaps him and puts him in a Drowning Pit after saving Yashima, his favorite punching bag, from being drowned for hacking Kowase's phone (which was actually Maria's work). Maria lets Kowase know that she plans to kill him by drowning him, and gives him a chance to free himself if he can guess the number representing his greatest sin; failing that, she leaves him a rusty cleaver to cut off his own hand. Kowase assumes that his greatest sin was Kiritaka's death, but then he realizes he can't even remember the month of Kiritaka's death. He is thus forced to try and free himself by cutting off his hand, but the blade breaks before it could get through the bone. The last thing Kowase sees as he drowns is Maria mockingly showing him a picture of himself on her phone. To add insult to injury, Maria reveals that the real password was Kowase's birth date, since "his greatest sin" was being born. A fitting end for such a cowardly scumbag.
  • Kumiru Shikimi is a heartless harpy who likes to blackmail people by framing them for crimes she committed. For example, she framed Kiritaka for stealing her gym clothes to isolate him from their classmates, and later it's shown that she would fake her age in a dating app so that she could manipulate vulnerable men into giving her money by blackmailing them after revealing her actual age; any men who refused to give in to her demands would be brutalized by her thug Iijima. After Maria isolates her from her friends and classmates (with the implication that Shikimi's classmates already see her as the manipulative liar she is and don't like or trust her), Shikimi sends Iijima to beat her up in retribution for telling her she'll end up alone; Maria responds by kidnapping Shikimi from her own home and hanging her above a well. Maria then proceeds to utterly crush Shikimi's spirit by giving her a lifeline and letting her waste it by texting Iijima, whom Maria has already turned against Shikimi, before telling her exactly why she's such a horrible person and how she's the only one to blame for her current situation as the rope holding Shikimi burns up and she's dropped into the well. She falls straight into a colony of insects, which proceed to enter her orifices. Shikimi ends up dying alone and screaming her lungs out in utter horror.
• Kick the Dog: Their favorite pastime is to make their victims lives a living hell by tormenting them in many sadistic ways like kicking them, Force Feeding them cockroaches, hanging them in a bathroom stall and threatening them with blackmail.
• No Honor Among Thieves: Partners in crime they may be, but they don't really trust each other and they don't have each others' backs, with Okaya being the The Leader who holds the group together through means of charisma and fear while the rest are indifferent or even suspicious of each other.
• Self-Serving Memory: They all exhibit it in one way or the other.
  • Collectively, they don't seem to be too phased by the fact that they caused a person's death, meaning that they rationalized it wasn't their fault somehow, with Okaya even commenting that somebody might even have the wrong idea about the whole situation.
  • When Kowase is near death in chapter 4 he pictures himself with his friends lovingly smiling and having fun while lighting sparklers on Kiritaka's face. Everything is shown as a fond memory of times spent with friends, instead of the horrific brutal torture it actually was.
  • When Maria tells Kumiru Shikimi that she is going to end up "all alone" if she continues on the path she is on, Kumiru is shown having a vision of all her interactions with her "friends", proving in her mind that she is not alone. She fails to see that all of said interactions are superficial or transactional.
• Stupid Evil:
  • They thought it would be a brilliant idea to record all the bullying they put on Kiritaka, then post it online, along with texting him the videos of his torture. Yet it never occurs to them that Kiritaka would collect all the evidence on a flash drive and eventually expose them. Kowase acts appalled when he receives a text and blackmailed by videos of his torment on Kiritaka (which he previously deleted, but what’s put on the internet stays there, since said video is saved on a flash drive).
  • Shikimi, during her younger years is shown putting tacks inside shoes of girls she doesn't like while the teacher is right in front of her.
• A Taste Of His Own Medicine: Maria's preferred modus operandi when dealing with them is to inflict a variation of the same sort of pain they inflicted upon her son.
  • Kowase enjoys drowning people and filming it on his phone. So Maria arranges for him to drown and films it on his phone, showing him an image of his drowning self before he dies.
  • Shikimi once arranged a Frameup which resulted in Kiritaka becoming a social outcast. Maria arranges a Frameup of her own to publicly expose her as a liar and isolate her from her friend group.
    • Shikimi also once treated Kiritaka as a dog and forced him to put his face inside a box of thumbtacks to retrieve her room keys with his tongue. Maria forces her to put her face inside a box of razors in order to retrieve her phone's SIM card.
    • Shikimi cheerfully took a video of Okaya forcefully feeding Kiritaka cockroaches, feeling nothing but sadistic delight at the sight. Her eventual fate shows her about to be Eaten Alive by centipedes, roaches and other bugs after she is Thrown Down a Well in a catatonic state with her hands tied behind her back, completely unable to make even a single move to keep the critters away as they move to invade her mouth, her eyes and every orifice in her body.
• Teens Are Monsters: They all think it’s a fun game to bet how long any unfortunate victim will last their tortures, find it hilarious to watch Kiritaka forced fed cockroaches mixed in his bento, and blackmail him into jumping off a cliff unless a fake video of his mother in a porno gets posted online. And they’re only second year middle schoolers at the start of the manga.
• Villainous Friendship: Largely Averted. Even though they hang out a lot and all band together in making Kiritaka's life a living hell, outside of Kinugawa, they don't seem to care about each other that much, and all mostly seem to be in the group for their own selfish reasons.

Nozomu Okaya

Voiced by: Kengo Kawanishi (manga PV)

The ringleader of the Gang of Bullies.

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• Awesome by Analysis:
  • By simply triangulating the relationships between Shikimi and Kowase's disappearance, he is able to reach the conclusion that one of Kiritaka's parents must be targeting them, being the only ones who would plausibly have enough resentment towards the whole gang to actually try to murder them.
  • He correctly guesses that Iijima was killed by a third party since the timing is too close to be a separate matter and his disposal is too crude, considering Kowase and Shikimi's bodies were never found while Iijima was found buried at the side of the road.
• Ax-Crazy: Okaya is not only a sadistic and sociopathic individual, his mindset is so warped that his only response to killing Kiritaka is lament that he can no longer keep terrorizing him. The other bullies, all violent and cruel themselves, are terrified of him. And to top it off, he never shows strong emotion towards anything, not even the possibility of suffering consequences for his actions like the other bullies, showcasing how deeply disturbed he is.
• Bad Boss: It is heavily implied he's this to his gang, considering just how terrified they all are of making him angry.
• Berserk Button: Do not mention Kiritaka's name in his presence. Even though it's been two years after his death, Okaya really doesn't want to hear it, because it reminds him of his rebellious eyes that he loathes so much.
• Big Bad: His main role in this series as leader of the bullies and the one directly responsible for Kiritaka's death.
• Big Man on Campus: Okaya is one of, if not the most popular student in the school. The girls regularly swoon when he shows up. If only they knew his real character...
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Naturally he becomes this two years later, since getting away with his evil deeds requires him to act like a model student. Okaya assists the student council with an anti-bullying campaign, but Maria knows him all too well and asks him if he really intends to become a psychiatrist like his father, a profession that "saves the heart of others". Okaya confirms it on the spot, not realizing the Death Glare Maria is shooting behind his back since she knows all too well Okaya is responsible for her son’s death. Not long after, he's revealed to still be the same ruthless psychopath he was two years ago.
• Cram School: He attends to Shintou Cram School.
• Crocodile Tears: Downplayed. He did not shed a tear, but he pretends to sympathize with Taiichiro Nagare, Kiritaka's father, stating that what happened to the inspector's son was "a truly unfortunate incident".
• Death Glare:
  • He glares at Kiritaka for "daring" to look at him with those "rebellious" eyes, which scares the poor boy that he falls to his knee. Right after he and his gang slut-shames his mother.
  • He gives one to Kowase after the latter accidentally triggers Okaya's Berserk Button.
• Devoted to You: While Nozomu Okaya's gang of bullies are controlled by him using their fear of his wrath, they are also generally devoted to him and getting his favor in the gang. Tsubasa Kowase is obsessed with getting his favor and being acknowledged by him and tries to bribe him to get his friendship. Kumiru Shikimi has a massive crush on Nozomu; she craves his love and attention. It's telling that both Tsubasa Kowase and Kumiru Shikimi's last thoughts as they die are about Nozomu; Kowase tries to fight for survival, believing that he has Nozomu's acknowledgment, while Shikimi's last words are her belief that Nozomu will prevail despite realizing that she never had a real conversation with him before she died.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Why does he make Kiritaka life a living hell? He doesn’t like the look in his eyes. He firmly believes Kiritaka looks so defiant against him, but this all started because he stopped Okaya and his underlings from nearly strangling a classmate to death! And he’s pissed that Kiritaka “dared” to again look so defiant after giving a Big "SHUT UP!", directly after the gang slut-shames his mother.
  • Why did he blackmail Kiritaka into jumping off a cliff unless an edited video of his mother in a porno gets posted online? Kiritaka refused to be the one to post it online! And Kiritaka got killed because of this.
• Door Slam of Rage: As Okaya just arrives on the rooftop behind Kowase without him knowing, the latter unknowingly triggers his leader's Berserk Button when mentioning Kiritaka Nagare's name. That mere mention immediately drops Okaya's calm composure enough for him to leave and furiously slam the rooftop's door shut.
• The Dreaded: While Okaya is rather affable to his friends, who are a gang of sadist bullies, they are terrified of incurring his wrath by stepping out of line. It also implies that he’s using the fear of what he can do to them to keep them in line and under his control.
  • Kinugawa becomes paralyzed with fear when he kicks Kiritaka in the face, and Okaya reminds him how he specifically told him not to do that.
  • Kowase has a similar reaction when he mentions Kiritaka two years later while unaware that Okaya, for whom Kiritaka's name has become a Berserk Button, is standing right behind him.
  • When his friends start arguing amongst themselves, Okaya needs only to tap a railing with his fingernail once to get their attention and shut them up.
• Empty Eyes: His eyes aren't just illustrated as empty, they look downright dead, signifying his utter lack of empathy and sadism underneath his polite facade.
• Face Framed in Shadow: His face is obscured as he watches his favorite victim die by being crushed by a truck whereas the other scumbags panic.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: A Pretty Boy who is handsome, popular, and shows himself to be helpful to others, but has the personality of a manipulative, cruel, and sadistic devil.
• False Friend: To this guy, friends = useful tools.
• Faux Affably Evil: Okaya may smile all the time and convincingly portray himself as a charming, polite fellow, but don't let it fool you: deep down he is a sadistic monster utterly devoid of empathy who keeps his friends in line through fear.
• Full-Name Basis: Okaya has his mother listed in his phone's contacts by using her full name, though he still addresses her as "mother" when texting her. He also tends to say Kiritaka's full name when mentioning him.
• Hate at First Sight: Okaya did not like the defiant look Kiritaka had in his eyes the day they first met, and made it his mission to make his life a living hell ever since.
• I Control My Minions Through...: Nozomu Okaya controls his gang of demonic teenage bullies through a mix of fear and charisma. This group of monster teens gets a kick out of torturing their classmates and committing crimes, but they have no real loyalty towards each other. The glue that holds them together is Nozomu. He holds them together with fear, keeping them from tearing each other apart, but it shows that while this gang of bullies has no loyalty to each other, they are genuinely devoted to him and want to get his favor.
• If Only You Knew: While discussing how sloppily Iijima's corpse was disposed of, Okaya suggests that destroying his remains down to his bones or burying him deep in the mountains would be more effective. Incidentally, this is exactly how Kowase and Shikimi's corpses were disposed of, respectively.
• Ironic Name: His first name is written with the kanji for "hope", and he horrifically bullies anyone deemed lesser than himself, tormenting and stripping them of every ounce of their hopes.
• It's All About Me: Though his "friends" don't seem consciously aware of it, Okaya is only out for himself. If he befriends someone, it's only because they are useful to him in some fashion, and if they go missing his only concern is that he might be next.
  • He admits that he only befriended Kowase because he was really good at making money.
  • Although Shikimi constantly fawns over him and tries to get his attention, Okaya barely gives her the time of day and rarely deigns to answer her text messages.
• Lack of Empathy: When Shikimi disappears after Kowase, he still doesn't display any sort of emotion, even casually asking Kinugawa, who is devastated by Shikimi's loss, if he wants some ice cream with a smile on his face. In front of the thug that Kinugawa is ruthlessly beating up nonetheless!
• The Leader: He is the one who holds the bully group together, through being charismatic or invoking fear, and the one usually calling the shots.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: From the discovery of Iijima's corpse, Okaya determines that he wasn't killed by the same person who killed Kowase and Shikimi since the method was too crude and the disposal too sloppy. He concludes that this will put the one targeting them (i.e. Maria) on edge, and implies that he intends to use this as a chance to identify them.
• Meaningful Name: While it can count as an Ironic Name due to the kanji's meaning of his given name (望) being "hope" while he goes crushing other people's hopes, it also means "desire", "resent", and "popularity." These reflect his resentment towards Kiritaka's defiance and his desire to break it, plus being a popular model student.
• Never My Fault: He had the audacity to show up at Kiritaka’s funeral, where he asked Yuda why he thought Kiritaka died. At that moment, Okaya's face can be interpreted as an expression of disappointment, as if he wasn't comprehending that he was responsible for sending Kiritaka to his death and expected him to survive.
• Not Himself: Implied. He still acts like the same remorseless sociopath two years after Kiritaka's death, but during Kowase's breakdown as he tries to drown Yashima, he has Okaya in mind when demanding her to go back how she was. It may hint that although Okaya's demeanor may look the same, Kowase notices that his boss has changed in some way he doesn't seem to favor.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • He prevents Kinugawa from seriously messing up Kiritaka's face not out of compassion, but because a serious head injury would be impossible to hide and justify.
  • He also prevents Kinugawa from killing a random thug in rage by pointing out that this will bring attention to them and delay them fighting back against whoever is targeting them.
• Properly Paranoid: After Kowase goes missing for three weeks, Okaya suspects that he might have been killed and warns his friends that there might be a lunatic coming after them due to some "unjustified resentment".
• Reflective Eyes: His eyes reflect Kinugawa's crying face after convincing him to not kill a thug.
• Sadist: Out of all his friends, Okaya is the worst offender when it comes to sadism. He force-feeds a cockroach to Kiritaka (fully expecting his stomach to get infested), threatens him into jumping off a cliff for shits and giggles by blackmailing him with a fake sex video of his mother (not caring one bit if he breaks his legs) and later becomes disappointed that Kiritaka went and got himself killed, since that means Okaya can't make his life a living hell anymore.
• Sadistic Choice: Forces Kiritaka into this. Either jump off a cliff, or else his mother’s fake porno video gets put on the internet.
• The Sociopath: Nozomu Okaya is a monstrous Sadist who only cares about himself and is only with his "friends" so that he can use them for his own benefit, completely apathetic of their disappearance or death. He does not feel any remorse for making Kiritaka's school life a living hell just because he didn't like his defiant eyes and for unintentionally killing him. His only regret for Kiritaka's death is that he "let him escape", thus he can't torture him anymore. He is able to hide his demonic self by pretending to be a kind and helpful model student thanks to his charisma and superficial charming appearance.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: What makes Okaya's brand of sadism especially unnerving is how he never really raises his voice or drops the smile from his face while saying and doing the most horrific things imaginable to Kiritaka.
• Tranquil Fury: When you press his Berserk Button. While seeming calm, his scared friends know how enraged he is, which is shown when he slams the door shut when leaving.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Okaya is both the vilest of all the bullies and one of the most popular students in the school.

Tsubasa Kowase

Voiced by: Kouhei Yanagi (manga PV)

Counting his ill-gotten gains.

If he’s not beating up and trying to drown Kiritaka, then he’s watching in the sidelines and records Kiritaka’s torture with Shikimi. Two years later, he targets young girls who don’t fight back against him. He becomes the first of Maria's victims.

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• Berserk Button: Kiritaka proving Okaya doesn’t care about him is a MAJOR trigger because deep down, he knows he’s right, and that pisses him off even more. During a flashback, Kiritaka gives him a Hannibal Lecture while he’s getting tortured by Kowase. In his rant, Kiritaka tells him off for being Sycophantic Servant, reminding him that no matter how loyal Kowase is towards Okaya, his boss never once, nor ever will give a rat’s ass on him.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Kowase is capable of acknowledging that sending Kiritaka to his death is his greatest sin, but the fact that he can't even be arsed to remember the exact date, let alone the month he died in, shows how little he regrets it.
• Candids for Sale: One of the ways Kowase makes money is by selling Panty Shots of his schoolmates online. When one of his clients makes a request for elementary school girls, Kowase simply replies that it is possible since he goes to an Elevator School.
• Death by Irony: After he attempts to drown Yashima in an act of Misplaced Retribution, he ends up in a situation where he has to own up to his "greatest sin" or risk drowning himself. Just like he mistakenly thought Yashima was behind his current predicament, he erroneously thinks that he has to input the anniversary of Kiritaka's death that he doesn't remember in order to free himself. He ends up failing to free himself and drowning, a victim of his own Detrimental Determination which ends up breaking his knife. The last thing he sees is Maria holding up his own phone and showing him a selfie-video of him gasping his last breath, mocking his Phoneaholic Teenager lifestyle. The password ends up being his own birthday, as Maria considers him "being born" as his greatest sin.
• Detrimental Determination: In his final moments he is determined to escape by cutting-off his hand, thinking about the full life he is going to have ahead of him, "going to university and becoming rich by selling bitches", if he manages to escape. This ends up making him push his knife too hard into the bone and breaking the knife, thus dashing any hope of him escaping his predicament.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: He reasons with Maria that what he did to Yashima isn't that bad, because Yashima didn't put up much resistance and didn't make a big deal out of his actions. This only serves to make Maria angrier at him, as she recalls how her late son kept all his suffering to himself because he didn't want to upset her.
• Dirty Coward: Kowase only targets docile girls who don't look like they'll fight back. It's also the reason why he was the first victim since Maria reasons that as a coward, she'd better kill him early lest he runs the moment he knows he's in danger whereas Aikiji and Kinugawa have enough of a backbone to stand their ground and get rallied by Okaya.
• Drowning Pit: Maria traps him in a glass box slowly filling with water where his only options of escape are to either unlock his handcuffs via a code or a rusty sawblade.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Immediately assumes that Maria intends to kill him in retribution for bullying Yashima, unaware that her grudge is vastly more severe.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He sexually debases women regularly as a bonus to his blackmail schemes and he's done his part in tormenting Kiritaka several times, but even he got squeamish when Kinugawa kneed Kiritaka in the gut and attempted to choke him on his own vomit.
• Fatal Flaw: He is a despicable person overall, but it's his tendency to jump to the wrong conclusions that allows him to get captured by Maria and ultimately costs him his life.
• Friendship Bribe: Kowase regularly gives some of the money he makes blackmailing people and selling panty shots online to Okaya in order to stay in his good graces, with Okaya later admitting that this is the only reason he bothers to hang out with Kowase. A notable exception occurs when Kowase accidentally mentions Kiritaka's name in front of Okaya: when Kowase tries to give Okaya some pocket money to mend his mistake, Okaya doesn't even bother to take it and leaves the place without a word, leaving Kowase furious that Kiritaka has embarrassed him from beyond the grave.
• Furnace Body Disposal: After he drowns, his body is cut up and burned to ashes by Maria.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Implied. He always refers to women as "stupid bitches", and an extra page in the first volume, which has information about him, reveals he hates Shikimi.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: Maria offers to let Kowase cut off his own hand with a nicked cleaver if he can't correctly guess the code to unlock his cuff. He's forced to seriously consider it once he realizes he can't remember the date of Kiritaka's death. He ultimately ends up failing to cut through the bone of his hand, which results in him drowning.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: While torturing a Bound and Gagged Yashima by putting out cigarettes in her belly, Kowase tells her to "give him some good fucking moaning".
• Meaningful Name: His last name's three kanjis (小和瀬) mean small, blend, and shallow, respectively. When you go with a sentence with these meanings that may describe this guy, it's basically "insignificant person who blends himself into superficial relationships." His first name is written with the kanji (翼) for "help", as him willing to assist Okaya.
• Misplaced Retribution: After Maria anonymously sends Kowase a video of himself masturbating, along with another where Kiritaka is being bullied, Kowase becomes so paranoid that once Yashima runs from him instead of freezing in place like she usually does he determines that she's the one who hacked his phone, and takes her to his home that night to get the truth out of her by drowning her. Kowase then runs into a wall when Yashima repeatedly denies knowing what he's talking about.
• Money Dumb: Kowase is apparently this- he has spent years blackmailing vulnerable students for all they're worth and selling panty shots to perverts, and Okaya even remarked that he only hung out with Kowase because he was good at making money. But when he receives a blackmail demand demanding three million yen, he immediately panics because he doesn't have nearly enough money saved up.
• Moral Myopia: He’s made it a hobby out of extorting young girls in compromising pictures to either sell online or blackmail them into being his punching bag. Yet he’s scared shitless when videos of his masturbation and his part in bullying Kiritaka are texted to him, and even more scared when the sender demands him to pay up 3 million yen or else the videos get posted online. Little to his knowledge at the time, it was Kiritaka’s mother, Maria, who texted him the blackmail, who was only bluffing, but wanted to give him A Taste Of His Own Medicine.
• My God, You Are Serious!: One look at Maria's face is all it takes for Kowase to understand that no, his predicament is not some silly prank, and yes, she has every intention to kill him.
• Never My Fault: During his Life-or-Limb Decision which required him to remember the date of his greatest sin, he blames Kiritaka for not dying on a holiday, even though Kowase couldn’t even so much as remember the month he died in. Not only is Kowase at fault for bullying him to death, but the background of chapter 1 shows off a Christmas tree in Kiritaka’s home. Meaning he died during the holiday season, yet Kowase forgot that detail!^note  Kiritaka died on his birthday; the date was already shown in the first chapter written on the Happy Birthday sign with the cake, revealing to be December 5. Not that this is the answer though
• The Paranoiac: Slowly becomes crippled with anxiety after Maria blackmails him.
• The Peeping Tom: Takes compromising pictures of girls to either sell online (and is not above selling pictures of elementary school girls) or use them as blackmail material.
• Phoneaholic Teenager: He shares this habit with Shikimi as they both love to record all the bullying they put on anyone that’s made their target.
• Sexual Extortion: Had sex with Yashima at least once by blackmailing her. He later argues that since she didn't fight back then that means it's not such a big deal.
• Shameful Strip: He records Kiritaka as he demands the poor guy into taking off his underwear while shaming him for having a small dick.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: When pressed to remember the date of Kiritaka's death in order to save his own life, Kowase curses the fact that Kiritaka didn't die on a holiday after he proves unable to remember the specific date. If you look closely in the background of chapter 1, a Christmas tree can be seen in Kiritaka’s house before he left to meet up his Gang of Bullies threats, leading to his demise. In other words, Kiritaka died before or after Christmas (i.e December), yet Kowase Failed a Spot Check on that.
• Starter Villain: He's the first of the bullies that Maria targets and is ultimately disposed of with very little trouble. Maria notes that she targeted him and Shikimi first because she labeled them as weak-willed cowards who could possibly escape if they weren't first dealt with.
• Sycophantic Servant: Ever since Okaya first approached him and decided his money-making skills were useful, Kowase has been living under the delusion that Okaya is his friend, and regularly gives him money in an attempt to gain his respect. When Kiritaka tells Kowase to his face how little Okaya really cares about him, Kowase becomes enraged, only for Okaya to prove him right over the next two years. Above all else, Kowase is deeply afraid that Okaya will "abandon" him.
• Villainous Breakdown: Between Okaya making it clear how little Kowase really means to him and Maria blackmailing him, Kowase begins to lose his composure as he slowly loses control of his life. Yashima standing up to him becomes the last straw: in response, Kowase tries to drown her and force her to go back to how she was before in a desperate attempt to reassert control, only being stopped by Maria kidnapping him before he can finish.
• Would Hit a Girl:
  • He ruthlessly beats up Yashima and even burns her stomach with cigarettes while’s she’s handcuffed, just for the heck of it. Maria deduces that he only targets girls that won’t back back. He even tries to drown Yashima after accusing her of hacking his phone. Oddly enough, he gets along really well with Shikimi, the only girl in Okaya’s inner circle.
  • Once he thinks he can escape Maria's punishment, Kowase convinces himself that he shouldn't have any trouble fighting her off, since "she's just a single woman".
• Wrong Assumption: His Fatal Flaw is continuously jumping to the wrong conclusions. First, he assumes that Yashima, the girl he blackmails and abuses is the one who sent him the video of him masturbaiting, which leads to him attempting to drown her in an act of Misplaced Retribution, thus opening himself to getting captured by Maria. Then, he assumes that the anniversary of Kiritaka's death (that he doesn't remember) is the number representing his "greatest sin" which will free him from his chains. It's actually his own birthday, since Maria considers his very existence to be his "greatest sin".

Kumiru Shikimi

Going "Fishing".

The only girl in the Gang of Bullies. While she doesn’t get her hands dirty in the bullying, she does enjoy watching it go on as she sits back and record it together with Kowase. Once the latter is out of the picture, Maria sets her sights on Shikimi as her next target.

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• Alpha Bitch: While’s she’s not the ringleader, she’s just as depraved as the rest of the gang.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: After Maria abducts her, drugs her, ties her up and hangs her above a well, newly awakened Shikimi starts angrily demanding that Maria let her down. Maria threatens to do so by cutting the rope, after which Shikimi quickly changes her tune and begs her to stop.
• Beauty Is Bad: She is one of the most attractively drawn characters in the series. Also, one of the most morally bankrupt.
• Berserk Button: Maria insinuating that she is going to end up all alone if she continues on the path she is currently on is enough to send her into a fit of rage and demand from her Dumb Muscle to punish Maria for her.
• Birds of a Feather: A twisted example in that one of the reasons she ended up being childhood friends with Kinugawa was that both were ill-tempered brats.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She pretends to truly care about the men she is dating, taking care to not have them spend too much money on her and even offering words of kindness and comfort. It's only when she has them where she wants them that she reveals her true colors as a cold-blooded extortionist.
• Blatant Lies: She outright denies even walking in Japan's "Love Street Hotel" district of Japan, even though the previous chapter showed her outright honey-trapping a man there.
• Bring Me My Brown Pants: Shikimi pisses herself once Maria tells her what awaits her at the bottom of the pit she's planning to drop her into.
• Bullying a Dragon: Finds herself hurling catty insults at Maria despite knowing full well she's at her mercy tied up and suspended over a well.
• Childhood Friends: With Kinugawa. This may be why she wasn't fazed when he grabbed her collar and yelled at her when she was accusing him of stealing her gym outfit. While she didn't seem to care about him much, seeing him like she saw others, her disappearance hit Kinugawa hard.
• Consummate Liar: She is very good at lying and deception, even being able to fool grown men that she is an adult.
• Covered in Gunge: Shikimi notices she landed in a puddle of honey at the bottom of the well. All the better to attract swarms of insects with.
• Dating Service Disaster: For the people she dates at least. She is the living embodiment of the "Romance Scammer" type.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Kumiru Shikimi is a deconstruction of the Manipulative Bitch. Both in the present and in flashbacks, Shikimi is shown to be a highly deceitful and manipulative person who uses Frameups, social engineering, and bribery to move the social ranks, isolate people she doesn't like, and get what she wants. This, however, prevents her from forming any lasting, meaningful relationships, and when she eventually needs someone to seek her out, she really doesn't have anyone she can rely on, as Maria gleefully points out to her. Ultimately, Shikimi dies alone, just as she always feared because of her manipulative actions.
• Defiant to the End: Zig-Zagged, and ultimately into a subversion. Shikimi spends her time at Maria's mercy throwing catty insults at her, but is given reason upon reason to tone it down. Realizing Okaya is going to be targeted once Maria is done with her, Shikimi eventually willingly throws herself into the Saw-like torture puzzle Maria has in store for her, but soon comes to realize her effort was All for Nothing. Shikimi once again insults both Maria and Kiritaka and resigns herself to her fate... until she realizes there is an entire ecosystem of insects at the bottom of the well put there to greet her. Shikimi spends the last panels of the chapter screaming and howling in apology, to Maria's disgust and apathy.
• Dirty Coward: Like Kowase, she's one of the earlier targets since Maria considers her a coward who would run at the sign of danger. While she's certainly mouthy, when the chips are down and she realizes that she's shit out of luck she's quick to resort to begging.
• Disappeared Dad: Her profile in Volume 2 doesn't have any information regarding her father.
• Dissonant Serenity: She can lie calm in a bathtub, enjoying a nice long relaxing soak and buying things online with her phone, all while her helper brutally beats up a guy right next to her in order to extort him out of his money.
• Eaten Alive: It's implied that she was devoured alive by the bugs festering at the bottom of the well, even being subjected to an Orifice Invasion as she was being consumed. It should be noted however that cockroaches and centipedes don't normally eat living human flesh, though Shikimi noticed the smell of honey on the bottom of the well as soon as she landed, meaning something's bound to bite her as she writhes around in the sugary puddle. Chapter 15 showed her body being buried by Maria; her face, hair, and eyes are visible, but it was greatly implied that was all that was left of Shikimi's body.
• Enfant Terrible: When she was a little girl, she used to put tacks inside the shoes of the girls she didn't like... while a teacher was still in the room.
• Evil Is Petty: The main reason she sends a bunch of goons to mess up Maria? Maria told her she was going to end up "all alone" if she continued to treat people like she always treated them. Even Maria couldn't predict that Shikimi would be so petty.
• The Fake Cutie: During her character's flashbacks she is shown putting up a front of child-like sweetness and innocence in order to make Kiritaka's Frameup about stealing her clothes more convincing. Nagare and the reader can see her for the awful person she really is but sadly not the class who socially cast out Kiritaka as a result. She evolves into a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing after Nagare's death.
• Fatal Flaw: Because she is a Manipulative Bitch who regularly lies, betrays and uses people behind a façade of playful cheerfulness, she projects those traits to every person she interacts with, preferring superficial and transactional relationships to meaningful ones. This is actively used against her when Maria eventually targets her.
• Frameup: She is a master at this, whether it involves honeytrapping an emotional vulnerable single man in order to extort him out of money, or placing her clothes inside Nagare's bag to accuse him of stealing them.
• Friendship Bribe: One of Shikimi's Fatal Flaws is that she only believes in bonds based on profit: when a fellow student asked her out, she replied by asking what she would be getting in return for dating him; she has socially isolated people she didn't like by ensuring their peers would gain nothing from standing up for them; and when she goes out with the rest of Okaya's gang she constantly demands that they do stuff for her. As a result, she has no real friends; having this pointed out to her is a very good way to set her off.
• Girlish Pigtails: She sports this hairstyle.
• Goblin Face: She is normally drawn as an attractive slender cute teenage girl, but when she gets angry her face gets considerably distorted.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Volume 2's extra page shows that Shikimi used to have a nasty temper in her early childhood when Kinugawa rudely shrugged off her request to play together and even threw a ball at him despite having already witnessing him assaulting a classmate due to his nastier temper, which could have her beaten up if not for the teacher's presence.
• Hates Being Alone: Her greatest fear is ending up "all alone" and just mentioning that possibility to her is enough to send her into a fit of rage. Maria, being out for revenge for what she did to her son, naturally plays on that fear for all its worth. Eventually, that’s her fate, with her isolated from her social group and hated by her classmates, and she dies alone.
• Her Own Worst Enemy: All Maria had to do during Shikimi's Frameup was to discreetly put her clothes in Kinugawa's bag and make sure he had an alibi. Shikimi then did most of the damage to herself, by suffering a Villainous Breakdown in front of the entire class.
• Honey Trap: She lures gullible men into "Love Hotels", the former not suspecting that she is a high-school student (since she states she is "22 years old" on her dating profile). She then arranges for her helper to bust in, reveal her age and beat the crap out of them until they agree to pay her whatever she wants, in return for her not letting out that they attempted to sleep with an underage girl.
  • She herself later falls into a literal honey-trap, meant to attract worms and bugs on her body in order to give her an Orifice Invasion and eventually eat her alive.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Maria was originally planning to play the long game with her and socially isolate her before dealing the finishing blow. Shikimi sending a bunch of goons after Maria out of pure spite, however, makes the latter opt for a quicker approach.
  • Once she has Shikimi where she wants her, Maria makes sure to let her know she's about to die alone and that she only has herself to blame for it on account of being a Manipulative Bitch.
• Hopeless Suitor: She is head over heels for Okaya and does everything she can to make him love her. Well, since her object of affection is Okaya, that's impossible.
• Hypocrite: She bashes other girls for using men to take them out on expensive dates, and then she outright extorts a man out of his hard-earned money, in order to buy herself a real expensive dress. She also views herself as "more desirable" than Kiritaka’s mother, who she refers to as a "used auntie" over the video of his mother in a heavily edited porno. This coming from the same bitch who shamelessly seduces other men into a badger scam.
• Ignored Epiphany: As she is reading her message history with Okaya, she realises that she has never had a real conversation with him and that she's been Loving a Shadow the entire time. For a moment she thinks about sending him a message asking him if he actually likes her and to come find her if he does. She can't bear the thought that he might give her a negative response, however, and chooses to message Iijima, her badger game partner instead. This doesn't prove to be a good idea.
• Karmic Injury: She realizes that the game of Needle in the Hay Stack, or rather, Hay in the Needle Stack that Maria is forcing her to play is a similar torment she's forced on Kiritaka, and as a result she reads between the lines and deduces that Maria is in fact Kiritaka's mother out for revenge, as otherwise there's no other way a school nurse that only recently got hired in her school would have any reason to target her.
• Lack of Empathy: She laughs at Kowase's face for triggering Okaya's anger by mentioning Kiritaka's death instead of showing any sort of compassion towards Kiritaka or any sort of remorse for the loss of a human life.
• Love Hungry: She absolutely craves Okaya's affection and is willing to do anything to be with him.
• Loving a Shadow: Shikimi has a massive crush on Okaya and constantly tries to get his attention, but it's not until she's at Maria's mercy that she realizes he doesn't give a shit about her.
• Meaningful Name: Shikimi is homonymous for a highly poisonous tree that has a pleasant appearance and fragrance (Japanese star anise). On the outside, that girl is an innocent, cute student; on the inside, she is extremely toxic.
• Ms. Red Ink: The fact that she asks the victims of her Honey Trap enormous amounts of money indicates that she is not very good at spending it or handling it.
• Never My Fault: Once Maria has her at her mercy, she realizes her true relation to Kiritaka, but rather than admit her fault in orchestrating his death or apologize for at least bullying him, she curses out Maria and claims she should die with her son.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: While contemplating who to text one last message to, she mentally points out that she's known Kinugawa since childhood and that he's easiest to talk to, but will probably leave her on read because of that fight from the Frame-Up mix up she had with him before.
• No Honor Among Thieves: When her home teacher confronts her about her "Second Job", the first people she suspects of tattling on her are her friends Kinugawa and Ajiki.
• Not Me This Time: After Shikimi finds her gym clothes in Kinugawa's bag, he unamusedly assumes Shikimi is trying to pull the same Frame-Up she pulled on Kiritaka two years ago and tells her to not be so obvious about it. Shikimi promptly starts losing her nerves as she wasn't trying to do that, and accuses Kinugawa of actually stealing her gym clothes.
• Nothing Nice About Sugar and Spice: She sports Girlish Pigtails, behaves in an incredibly cutesy manner, and likes buying clothes to dress up herself as a princess for the love of her prince (Okaya). She is also a lying manipulative Alpha Bitch who socially isolates the people she doesn't like (even conducting a Frameup at some point) and honey traps emotionally vulnerable men to extort them out of money.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: Subverted. Though the rope holding Shikimi burns and she falls to the bottom of the well, she manages to survive with a mere concussion to her head while remaining awake. When Maria notices this, she tells Shikimi that dying or even being knocked unconscious would have been the much more merciful way to go out after landing. Now, Shikimi is left fully conscious with an entire colony of centipedes and roaches to keep her company.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • She gets this expression when she realises she is at the mercy of the person who also made Kowase "disappear".
  • She gets another when she deduces that Maria is Kiritaka's mother out for revenge, and that she intends to target Okaya next.
  • She gets a bigger one when she realises that the only person she can call in her time of need is Okaya and that she's never had a real conversation with him in all the time she has known him.
  • She finally gets the biggest one when she realizes she's trapped at the bottom of a well and surrounded by an entire colony of insects, which are attracted to the honey Shikimi landed onto and are currently entering her body orifices.
• Orifice Invasion: She is subjected to a horrific one. After she falls down the well, she is horrified to find that there are numerous roaches, centipedes and other bugs waiting for her there. The bugs proceed to go inside her ears, her mouth and inside her clothes. It's not at all pleasant.
• Phoneaholic Teenager: She constantly records all the bullying going on just so she can revel at the torture.
• Psychological Projection: Maria correctly identifies this as her Fatal Flaw. Because she regularly indulges in lies and betrayal, she thinks everyone is a liar and a traitor, especially her close group of friends that she regularly hangs out with. Maria uses this trait to sever all her social bonds and let her have a taste of the social isolation she inflicted upon Kiritaka, before moving in for the kill.
• Really 17 Years Old: She claims she is 22 years old in her dating profile, in order to lure gullible men into her Honey Trap.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: She receives a pretty scathing one, courtesy of Maria.
  Maria: You are a selfish liar. Instead of friends you believe in ties that are connected via profit. Because you've always used lies to manipulate everyone, you don't believe in anyone and nobody believes in you. Have you finally realised? You are the one who has been making yourself the loner.
• Retail Therapy: She likes buying things that she thinks will help her get Okaya's affection.
• Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: This is the fate that Maria sentences her to. It certainly didn't hurt to force Shikimi to injure her face beforehand, or subject her to Creepy-Crawly Torture as she dies, mirroring the torments she put Kiritaka through. But ultimately, Maria couldn't think of a more perfect way to kill a bully who manipulates everyone around her and uses her appeal to get attention and money than to simply leave her to die alone in an abandoned well, with no chance of rescue.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only girl in Okaya’s inner circle.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: Once it becomes clear that she's beyond saving, Shikimi completely breaks down and mumbles at Maria to die and join her son. She pays for that mistake with her life.
  Shikimi: You'll soon be sent where Nagare is. Mother and son, both of you will be fucking messed up...!
• Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: Tsuyoshi recounts how she was caught putting thumbtacks in her classmates' school shoes when she was in kindergarten.
• Sudden Name Change: Her given name "Kumiru" was first introduced in the first chapter, but in chapter 7, it was "Kurumi". It was fixed starting in chapter 9.
• This Is Gonna Suck: She gets that expression on her face when she realises she is all tied up and about to be Thrown Down a Well.
• Thrown Down a Well: Maria's trap for her involves suspending her above a bug-infested pit out in the middle of nowhere, the idea being to make her to feel the isolation she's forced upon others.
• Too Dumb to Live: She chooses to send her final message to Iijima, the same person that she knows sold her out to Maria just a chapter ago, thinking she can still lure him with money somehow, without considering the possibility that Maria might have already dealt with him beforehand.
• Underestimating Badassery: She sends Iijima after Maria who shows up along with a bunch of goons, ready to mess her up. Maria proceeds to take out Iijima's goons with her taser and charm Iijima himself into a Sex–Face Turn.
• Undignified Death: What Maria bestows upon her, and it begins with making her feel a sample of the isolation and loneliness she's inflicted upon others. And to further the point, it can be said much of the humiliation is self inflicted as it arrives by way of transational relationships and deceit. Rather than confirm for herself whether Okaya does or doesn't like her, she sends her final text message to Iijima, someone she knows just threw her under the bus but thinks she can still manipulate. Iijima texts her to go to Hell. Doing her best to stay Defiant to the End by insulting Maria and her son under a complete breakdown, the mask of defiance immediately shatters as soon as she's greeted by a swarm of insects enveloping her at the floor of the well. Her apologetic howls can be heard all the way up the entry point of the well.
• Villain Ball: She is hanging and about to be Thrown Down a Well and is allowed by Maria to just send a normal message, to anyone she wants the only limitation being that she can not tell anyone about her predicament or ask for help. Instead of sending a message admitting her feelings to Okaya (that could have possibly tipped him off that something was wrong with Shikimi), she instead chooses to send her final message to her badger game partner, telling him that she found some pretty rich prey and that he should hurry up and come to find her. Too bad Maria had already managed to turn him against her. And then, when it turns out she is completely screwed instead of apologizing and appealing to Maria's mercy, she proceeds to insult both her and her dead son as the rope holding her finally burns down and she falls to her doom. This only serves to show Maria that she is completely remorseless and lose any lingering doubts about killing her.
  Maria: Thank you, for being the devil that you were.
• Villain Has a Point: When Ajiki accuses her of fat-shaming him, she points out that he’s Twisting the Words.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Played Straight, but later Subverted. Shikimi puts up the façade of being a perky and fun-loving high school girl... but since she's spent years having transactional relationships at best with her classmates, no one really likes her or trusts her word anymore. Even when she framed Kiritaka for stealing her gym clothes two years ago, he noted that few of their classmates believed her claims- they were just worried about ending up the next victims if they called her out. Fast forward to the present day, and her latest claims that there's a pervert in class are met with apathy and accusations of trying her old tricks.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • She suffers a minor one when she accuses Kinugawa of stealing her clothes only to turn out he couldn't have done it because he was with Maria at the time.
  • Shikimi completely breaks down once she realizes that Maria has already turned Iijima against her, meaning she's just wasted her one lifeline. After Maria gives her a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Shikimi tells her to die and join her son in death. Maria makes her suffer the price for it.
• Villainous Valor: To her credit, she displays a surprisingly amount of willingness to play ball with Maria's intended torture for her (a game of Sim Card in the Razorblade Stack where she can only use her mouth and tongue to search for her phone's Sim Card) once she realizes Maria intends to work her way up to killing Okaya. She finds her phone's SIM card pretty fast, to Maria's displeasure, and proudly displays it stuck on her bloody tongue, now nearly cut to hamburger meat.
  Shikimi: You scared?
• Villains Want Mercy: As soon as the rope keeping her aloft burns cut and sends her careening down to the floor of the well, every manner of insect and worm from roaches to silverfish to centipedes begin to enter her many orifices. Shikimi's apologetic sobbing and wailing can be heard echoing from the bottom of the well, as Maria, curled against the entry point of the well mutters that it's too late.
• What You Are in the Dark: After suffering a Villainous Breakdown, Shikimi reveals her true colors by telling Maria to die and join her son in death while making a Nightmare Face, showing how little she regrets killing him. This serves as the final nail in her coffin as Maria loses what lingering doubts she might have had about killing her.
• With Friends Like These...:
  • She doesn't seem to truly care about anyone in Okaya's group and doesn't give a damn when one of them disappears. She is only there because she is interested in Okaya. Everybody else in the group can just drop dead for all she cares.
  • She also describes Iijima as a complete idiot, only trusting him to come to her aid because she told him she has another client awaiting.
• Younger Than They Look: She’s taller and rather developed for high school girls her age, and with the help of makeup and clothing, she is able to convince multiple men that she's in her twenties.

Tsuyoshi Kinugawa

Voiced by: Kouhei Yanagi (manga PV)

This is his normal face.

The Brute of the Gang of Bullies. Despite being as horrible and as sadistic like the other bullies, he is the only one who has a soft spot for his friends. After the two first members died, his goal is to kill the person behind their deaths.

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• The Alibi: When Shikimi finds her gym clothes in Kinugawa's bag, she accuses of having stolen them during chemistry class, since he was late for that period. Kinugawa retorts that he was at the toilet at the time, so Shikimi asks if anyone can verify that claim; cue Maria validating Kinugawa's claim by clarifying that he was with her at the time, and therefore couldn't have stolen Shikimi's gym clothes.
• Avenging the Villain: After Kowase and Shikimi's deaths he's attempting to hunt down down their killer in order to exact bloody vengeance.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Even though Shikimi didn't care about him and they parted on bad terms, he is devastated when she disappears.
  "She's always been a dumbass since kindergarten. Stupid shit like getting found out by the teacher when she put thumb tacks into the shoes of girls she didn't like. She's fucking stupid, but... (starts tearing up) she's my friend."
• Ax-Crazy: His default response to anyone offending him even slightly is to retaliate with overwhelming, disproportionate violence.
  • One time he kneed Kiritaka in the stomach to the point of forcing him to vomit, before strangling him while he was in the middle of the act, for daring to complain that he was stealing his videogame console. The act was so extreme that even Kowase found it off-putting.
  • While searching for Iijima, Kinugawa beats up a random guy for looking too much like him, as if it was somehow his fault that they had a similar hairstyle and build. When a security guard shows up to break them up, Kinugawa starts to beat him up, as well.
  • Kinugawa curses Iijima for turning up dead before he could reach him despite very likely not being responsible for Kowase and Shikimi's deaths. Clearly, Kinugawa isn't comfortable in any situation unless he's grinding someone, anyone, beneath his heel.
• Bait the Dog: While it's shown that he has some positive traits in how he cares for his friends as well as being willing to be nice to Maria, it's also shown that this doesn't necessarily make him a better person since he's ultimately still a violent brute bonding with other assholes over tormenting an innocent kid, with one flashback showing how he "borrowed" Kiritaka's video game as a gift for Kowase then proceeded to brutalize the former for begging for his game back.
• Barbaric Bully: The most openly violent and brutish of the bullies in that rather than humiliation he prefers just beating the shit out of others.
• The Berserker: With the sole exception of Okaya, there's no one that can stop Kinugawa when he gets mad. If someone who's not one of his friends tries to stop him, even it it's a grown adult, he will shake them off or even beat them up.
• The Brute: Serves this role in the gang. Out of all the bullies, he’s the one that loves to physically torture Kiritaka the most.
• Childhood Friends: He and Shikimi have known each other the longest and have the most on screen interactions with each other in Okaya's group.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: After Shikimi accuses him of stealing her gym clothes, Kinugawa denies the accusation, assuming that she's trying to frame him up. When the argument escalates, Kinugawa loses his patience, grabs Shikimi by her shirt and angrily accuses her of trying to pull the same stunt she pulled on Kiritaka two years ago. Both Kinugawa and Shikimi are stunned into silence as they realize Kinugawa said that out loud, outing Shikimi for the Manipulative Bitch that she is and digging up an incident both would prefer remained buried.
• Dumb Muscle: Played with. He shows a picture of Shikimi to a blindfolded thug while interrogating him about Iijima's whereabouts. Nonetheless, he does briefly suspect Maria when remembering that she was the last person who Shikimi talked to at school, which Maria was able to deflect by shedding some Crocodile Tears. Maria comes to the conclusion that he has decent instincts but not much else.
• Emotional Bruiser: Has been seen enacting violence and shedding tears within the same chapter repeatedly.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Tsuyoshi Kinugawa appears to be the only one in his group of thugs and bullies that actually cares about each member. Kinugawa was generally concerned when Kowase disappeared when his friends were apathetic to his disappearance, even arguing that he was their friend. Later, when Shikimi disappeared, and he and the rest of his friends guessed that both she and Kowase were dead, he was devastated by both of their deaths. Despite parting with Shikimi on bad terms, he is genuinely devastated by her death and wants to avenge both Kowase and Shikimi. Despite this, this trope is a Deconstruction, as he is still guilty of making Kiritaka suffer with the others and blackmailing him to his death, having the audacity to cry about his friends when he didn't bat an eye about witnessing his victim's mother finding him dead and crying.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Kinugawa is not amused that Shikimi and Ajiki don't seem to give a rat's ass that Kowase might be dead.
• Evil Virtues: Huge asshole he is, he does have a sense of camaraderie and loyalty, like worrying about Kowase since his disappearance and mourning after learning about his childhood friend's death. Not to mention he seems to value friendship quite a lot...
• Exhausted Eye Bags: It's clear on Kinugawa's face that he's been crying regularly since he believed that his childhood friend, along with Kowase, is dead.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He flies into a rage when he steps on Kiritaka’s urine while blaming HIM for getting his expensive shoes dirty.
  • Volume 2's extra page reveals he was like this since kindergarten, having already assaulted a fellow classmate.
• Hypocrite: After concluding that Kowase and Shikimi are dead, a grief-stricken Kinugawa decides that the only thing he can do is avenge them by murdering their killer. He says this to Maria, who secretly wants him dead for the exact same reason.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Once Kinugawa starts beating someone up, it's very difficult to get him to stop. And once he has his victims on the floor, he will keep attacking them even if they can't fight back anymore (or even if they aren't the people he was looking for in the first place).
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Kinugawa may be a violent brute who will beat up anyone who ticks him off or tries to calm him down, but even he has enough sense to book it when the police show up.
• Meaningful Name: His last name has the kanji for "demon" (鬼) and "anger" (怒), reflecting how he turns into a berserker when he's angered. His first name is written with the kanji for "strength" (強); he's a brute who relies on his physical strength to overpower his victims.
• Never My Fault: He’s pissed when his shoes touch a little bit of Kiritaka’s urine and beats him up for it. The only reason Kiritaka pissed himself is because of the beating Kinugawa dished on him.
• Pet the Dog: For what it's worth, when Maria turns on the waterworks upon being questioned about what she said to Shikimi, Kinugawa apologizes and doesn't push the matter any further (though it's also played as him being just gullible enough to buy the act).
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Kinugawa initially wanted to direct his wrath towards and lay the blame for Shikimi's disappearance at Maria's feet, certain that something in Maria's harsh tone during his and Shikimi's fight from the gym clothes Frame-Up must have compelled her to put herself in harm's way. He rethinks this once Maria turns on the waterworks voicing out her remorse for telling her off.
• Second-Face Smoke: He does this to Shikimi after she accuses him and Ajiki of snitching about her "job".
• Spit Take: His reaction after learning Iijima's death on the news.
• Token Good Teammate: Surprisingly, given that he serves as The Brute of the Gang of Bullies; he's the only one who actually cares about his so-called "friends". On the other hand, it becomes a Subverted Trope when you realize he's only "good" when interacting with the rest of the gang. To everyone else, he's just another monster.
• Undying Loyalty: He promises Okaya before breaking into Taiichiro's house that he won't reveal his friends' names in case he gets caught.
• Vengeance Denied: Sure, Iijima is not even the real culprit, but Kinugawa still becomes pissed that Iijima went and died before he could find him, leaving him to vent his frustrations on a kicking machine.
• Villainous Friendship: He is the only one in Okaya's group that seems to give a damn about Kowase and Shikimi disappearing, and is especially devastated by Shikimi's loss.
• Would Hit a Girl: Implied. He had apparently wanted to direct his anger at Maria (and all that implies), believing her to be the reason why Shikimi disappeared, but upon seeing Maria shed Crocodile Tears, he buys it and drops the issue. He also nearly flies into a rage in early elementary school when an annoyed Shikimi beans him with a playground ball, but cools off when he realizes, in his words, "what a dumbass" Shikimi is with her bratty attitude.

Mutta Ajiki

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• Berserk Button: He hates being called fat. He will even tell off Shikimi when he deduces that she called him fat. Given that he’s a member of a vicious Gang of Bullies who love to destroy any unfortunate victim’s self-esteem, HOW he got to be a member of is a mystery.
• Eyes Always Shut: His eyes won’t open, yet he somehow views the torture he and the rest of the gang put on any unfortunate classmate.
• Fat Bastard: He’s overweight and a part of a Gang of Bullies. While we have yet to see how he’s tormented anyone, he still did nothing to stop his friends from torturing other classmates and enjoyed every second of it.
• Hidden Depths: There's a lot we haven't seen of this guy yet but he differentiates a bit from the typical Fat Bastard.
  • The reason he's left for later by Maria is because she reasons that unlike Kowase, he has enough of a backbone that he'd stand his ground and work with the others rather than run at the first sign of danger. That implies there’s more to him than just the fat bully he appears to be.
  • Also the fact Okaya is talking to him almost like an equal when they talk about Iijima's death shows there's something behind this fat guy and the most popular kid in school.
  • Just like Okaya, he sees Iijima's death to be unusual enough that someone else must've killed him, showing a smart side to him.
  • Has a slightly crafty side to him as he plays with a crane machine and when the prize wouldn't go down, he slaps the machine hard enough for the prize to finally down the hole.
• Insane Troll Logic: During their torture of Kiritaka, Kinugawa offers to treat the rest of the gang, Ajiki included, since he “won” and Ajiki asks for sweets. Shikimi asks him how much he needs and this makes Ajiki accuse her of calling him fat, but she rightfully points out that he’s only accusing her on a whim with twisted words.
• Messy Hair: He used to have unkempt hair as a middle schooler.
• Never My Fault: This guy never turns down food, particularly sweets, yet he’s in denial that he’s overweight and hates it when he thinks someone calls him fat.
• Unsatisfiable Customer: He overly complains to a Fast Food clerk about the amount of salt on his fries, prompting the latter to get him a replacement portion.
• With Friends Like These...: Like Shikimi, he doesn't seem to care much about Kowase's disappearance and instead opts to complain to the Fast Food clerk about his fries having too much salt. He doesn't even seem concerned about Shikimi, either, even after learning she and Kowase are dead.

School Faculty

The Principal

The principal of the school Maria works in. He is the one who actually hired Maria following her "interview".

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• Bad Boss: He doesn't care about the fact that Atsuki doesn't drink and forces a glass on him by implying there will be consequences if Atsuki doesn't.
• Death Glare: Covertly shoots one to Atsuki after he admits in front of Taiichiro that he did know the rumors about Shikimi being tied to quasi-gangsters, complete with Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises, a vein bulge and a darkened sclera, though Atsuki does not notice.
• Dirty Old Man: Deconstructed. His lust for women leads him to be easily manipulated by people like Maria, who has an active interest in harming a few of his students. Let's just say Maria already has a low enough opinion of this morally depraved pervert.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Sure, hire a lady of questionable character in exchange for a blowjob, what's the worst that could happen?
• Just Ignore It: He couldn't care one bit about serious problems regarding the students, whether they disappeared or died, focusing on his school's image and encouraging the staff to do the same by simply ignoring them. It was privately lampshades by Maria.
  Maria: Everyone looks so happy. It's like Kiri-kun's incident never happened.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: He doesn't seem to give a rat's ass about students disappearing (Shikimi and Kowase) and even dying (Kiritaka) on his watch.
• Skewed Priorities: Cares more about maintaining the illusion that nothing is wrong with the school than to actually deal with the issues of the students and the faculty. When Atsuki shows concern about all the students that have gone missing, the principal cows him into silence because they can't have nasty rumors spreading when the students are about to enter prep school.
• Slave to PR: The principal hopes that, by getting students to go to prep schools in Tokyo, he can spread the name of the school across the country. Because of this he frowns on anyone spreading weird rumors about students going missing.

Atsuki

Kowase and Shikimi's homeroom teacher, he confides in Maria after Kowase disappears.

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• Adults Are Useless: He is Kowase and Shikimi's homeroom teacher and he completely fails to pick up on them bullying, blackmailing, beating up and/or framing their fellow students. When he confides to Maria about Kowase, he even admits he didn't pay enough attention to him.
• Horrible Judge of Character: He completely buys Shikimi's Blatant Lies about her not being in the "Love Street Hotel" district and he is crushed by Kowase's disappearance, completely oblivious to the horrible things Kowase did to Yashima. He also completely believes Maria's Blatant Lies that Kowase will one day return.
• It's All My Fault:
  • He considers himself responsible for Kowase's disappearance, since he is his homeroom teacher and he is supposed to pick up on subtle cues on what is wrong with his students, saying he should have paid more attention to him. While what happened to Kowase wasn't his fault, yes, he really should have paid more attention to him. When Shikimi stops going to school, he starts feeling guilty for that, too.
  • He also considers himself responsible for Shikimi's disappearance because he didn't act on Maria's warnings about Shikimi's lifestyle and associates in time.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Yes, he really should have paid more attention to Kowase but not because Kowase was facing personal problems. He should have paid more attention to him because he was a brutal cowardly bully who was routinely beating up, torturing and sexually assaulting another fellow student.
• The Teetotaler: When Maria offers him a drink at a party, Atsuki gently refuses by saying he doesn't drink. The school principal pours him a glass while subtly letting him know refusing is not an option, but Maria switches his drink with water while the principal isn't looking.
• Unwitting Pawn: Maria uses him to play on Shikimi's Psychological Projection and make her paranoid and suspicious of even her friends.

Police Precinct

Inspector Taijyou Reiji

The head of the Criminal Investigation Department in Taiichiro's Police department. Since Shikimi was associated with some very unsavoury characters, he joins the investigation headed by Taiichiro.

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• Megane: He is wearing glasses and he is easy on the eyes, unlike Taiichiro who always looks glum due to what he's been through.
• Smug Smiler: He fits the trope to a T, looking down on Taiichiro (even though they are technically the same rank) and smugly telling him to not get in his way.

Taiichiro's Partner

Inspector Taiichiro's partner and best friend. He was present at the stakeout with Taiichiro when Kiritaka died. He is always by his partner's side.

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• The Defroster: At least he tries to be. He tries to offer some kind words to make Taiichiro feel somewhat better. His parther isn't having any of it though.
• No Name Given: Even though he is shown beside Taiichiro both before and after Kiritaka's death, he is not named.
• Only Friend: He was the only person who stayed by Taiichiro's side after Kiritaka's death, and his subsequent stigmatization by the rest of the police department since he was familiar with how much the inspector really cared about his family.

Miscellaneous

Yashima

After Kowase caught her shoplifting, she became one of his most frequent targets.

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• Bespectacled Cutie: Yashima is easily recognized by her trademark glasses.
• Blackmail Backfire: After Kowase threatens to expose her shoplifting and sex videos one time too many, Yashima threatens to expose him in turn by telling everyone of all the abuse he's put her through.
• Break the Cutie: Yashima's experiences with Kowase have all but shattered her spirit. Maria gives her the strength to pick up the pieces.
• Caught on Tape: Stole a few items from a convenience store once, and had the rotten luck to be recorded by Kowase, of all people. Yashima became his personal toy ever since.
• Cigarette Burns: One of the many ways Kowase has tormented Yashima is by putting out cigarette butts on her belly while she was Bound and Gagged, telling her to "give him some good fucking moaning".
• Exhausted Eye Bags:
  • All the stress from being under Kowase's thumb has left Yashima with eye bags as her default look.
  • Even though Kowase has been gone for weeks, Yashima still has the eye bags because she was there when he went missing and has been trying to keep it a secret because she's terrified of becoming a suspect in the eyes of the police.
• Girlish Pigtails: Her default hairstyle is two pigtails draped over her shoulders.
• Grew a Spine: Following Maria's encouragement, Yashima defiantly stands up to Kowase and tells him to get out of her life.
• I Am a Monster: Yashima has been so traumatized by Kowase's abuse that, several weeks after his disappearance, she wishes that he was never found. She's not pleased at catching herself thinking like that.
  "I wish Kowase-kun would never be found again... I've been having terrible thoughts like that..."
• I Have This Friend: How Yashima tells Maria about her troubles with Kowase. Maria is tactful enough to play along while subtly letting Yashima know that she can read between the lines.
• Karmic Nod: One of the reasons Yashima puts up with Kowase's abuse is because, since he caught her shoplifting, she thinks she's just reaping what she's sown. Maria discourages her from this line of thought after Yashima goes to her for advice.
• Last-Name Basis: Yashima is a family name; the girl is always referred to by her surname with no given name mentioned, so far.
• Lesser of Two Evils: Yashima determines that letting Kowase ruin her future prospects by exposing her is far more preferable than having to put up with his bullying for one more day, and dares him to do so while screaming at him to get out of her life.
• Nervous Wreck: Poor thing is constantly soaked in her own stress sweat. Even after Kowase has seemingly disappeared from her life entirely, both the fear of being pegged as a probable suspect in his disappearance, and the realization that she hopes he stays gone, weigh heavily in her mind.
• Oh, Crap!: Reacts with fear when Kowase approaches her from behind, and tries to run from him after her talk with Maria. Unfortunately for her, Kowase perceives this as so Out of Character that he determines she's the one who hacked his phone and draws a cardboard cutter on her, leading to an even bigger Oh Crap from Yashima.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Yashima running from Kowase instead of being paralyzed with fear is seen as so Out of Character by him that he decides she's the one who hacked his phone.
• Sexual Extortion: On the receiving end at the hands of Kowase, who is strongly implied to have raped her, and likely on video.
• Shrinking Violet: Yashima is a shy and demure girl who lacks the strength to stand up to Kowase.
• Stress Vomit: Yashima is introduced giving money to Kowase under threat of being exposed for shoplifting. When she's only able to scrounge up 20,000 yen instead of the 30,000 he demanded, Kowase kicks her in the stomach hard enough that she's forced to vomit.
• When She Smiles: Yashima endured Kowase's abuse and torture for an unknown amount of time after being blackmailed into becoming his slave and looked utterly miserable throughout all of it. Eventually she is kidnapped and tortured by Kowase, but before he can kill her she is rescued by Maria, who kidnaps Kowase before Yashima can notice and eventually kills him. About a month after Kowase's disappearance, Yashima's mood is vastly improved: she's shown going to a café with one of her friends during the summer holidays with a serene smile on her face.

Haruto Iijima

Shikimi's enforcer and right hand man, who helps her in her "badger game" schemes.

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• Asshole Victim: Haruto Iijima made fortune by scamming men with Shikimi and beating them up until they agreed to give them money on top of other criminal activities (including drug dealing at the least). Since Maria left him off for a week, she discovered on the news he was found dead. Although Maria previously spared him because he was not involved in her son's death, that does not take away the fact that he probably ruined other lives with Shikimi, and his death, while horrifying, is well deserved. Maria herself, despite sparing him, is more freaked out about the fact he died unexpectedly than the fact that he died at all.
• Bodyguard Crush: It's implied that he lusts after Shikimi, being awfully close and touchy-feely with her when she asks him to go after Maria. It should be noted that it doesn't prevent him from being susceptible to a Sex–Face Turn.
• Bondage Is Bad: He is a violent criminal participating in Badger game scams and Shikimi's partner in crime. During the aftermath of his sex session with Maria, he is shown wearing a collar and having bruises on his back, meaning he is into hardcore BDSM sex and masochism.
• Brains and Bondage: Not at all. He is shown to be into BDSM as a masochist but he is not very smart. In fact, both Maria and Shikimi comment that he's as dumb as rocks and easily manipulated.
• The Brute: Shikimi's personal one, disconnected from the Gang of Bullies as a whole. Used as her abrasive and psychotic Dumb Muscle.
• Delinquent Hair: He has a very distinct haircut and is most definitely an unpleasant person.
• Didn't See That Coming: As he prepares to assault Maria while he has her pinned down on the ground, Maria unexpectedly takes the initiative and starts frenching him. Then she invites him to an out-of-business love hotel nearby, where they can "take their time". Before long he's turned into putty in her hands.
• Dumb Muscle: He is the one who beats up guys for Shikimi. He is strong, but ultimately he severely underestimates Maria and is very easily manipulated by her into a Sex–Face Turn.
• Eye Scream: His corpse is found by the police without his eyeballs.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: We don't find out his full name when he's first introduced, but a shot of the chat he shares with Shikimi reveals she has him listed as Iijima.
• Genre Savvy: Enough to know at least not to form gangs long term with anyone in his line of work. He apparently makes sure to hire anonymous stooges off the dark web willing to work for dirt cheap, but doesn't care to brief them on any dangers or pitfalls that comes from being little more than a hired Mook. One could only guess he made Shikimi the exception because he really wanted to get in her pants.
• He Knows Too Much: Barely averted; Maria knows that he's a massive loose end that she should get rid of, but is stopped by a hallucination of Kiritaka who stops her from killing him on the basis that he's not one of her targets. As such she's forced to find another way to prevent him from leading the cops to her. Maria is thus thrown a curveball when the police find Iijima's corpse, thanks to Yuda.
• Hypocrite: He calls out and cruelly mocks the people Shikimi lures into her Honey Trap for unknowingly attempting to have sex with a minor. Meanwhile, he has full knowledge of Shikimi's age and he is still shown touching and kissing her inappropriately while telling her that he loves her (the implication being that he is attempting to get into her pants or has already done so). He's 25 years old.
• No Full Name Given: We never find out his full name and he is not referred as anything other than Shikimi's "helper" in-story. In a Freeze-Frame Bonus we find out Shikimi has him listed in her contacts as Iijima. His given name is revealed to be Haruto in the news upon the discovery of his corpse by the police.
• Sex–Face Turn: Bends to Maria's will after she starts making out with him, leaving him susceptible to being manipulated by her.
• "Shut Up" Kiss: He assumes Maria is trying to distract him or stall for time when she mentions they'll both catch a cold out in the rain, but he's fed a mouthful of tongue as soon as he tries to tell her to shut it. Maria finishes the thought by mentioning a nearby love hotel that recently closed down. He complies in full.
• Staircase Tumble: He died when Yuda assaulted him with a claw hammer on a flight of stairs, causing him to fall down the stairs and hit his head.
• With Friends Like These...: His relationship with Shikimi turns out to be completely transactional and he is more than ready to cut her loose when he is shown a fake social media account (actually created by Maria) where Shikimi supposedly exposes him.

Akihiro Yuda (UNMARKED SPOILERS)

A victim of Okaya's gang before being replaced by Kiritaka after the latter saved him from the group's sadistic so-called game. He aids Maria in her revenge by killing Iijima due to him being a potential hindrance to her plan.

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• Ax-Crazy: As a customer gets angry for not getting points (despite Yuda having already explained about it), Yuda thinks of slashing his throat with a box cutter. And when he accidentally caused Iijima to fall downstairs while trying to kill him, looking as his corpse, he thought of Okaya being in his position, smiling and blushing.
• Berserk Button: The rude customer yelling "HA?" or getting aggressive is what seems to tick Yuda into wanting to kill him.
• Book Smart: Kiritaka praised Yuda as the top scorer of their year, and Yuda frequently helped Kiritaka study after they became friends.
• Bungled Suicide: After Kiritaka's death and meeting Okaya at his friend's funeral, Yuda once tried to commit suicide by choking himself with a cloth tied to a doorknob, but was in too much pain to continue, in an attempt to escape the world where the bullies exist whom he rightfully call them devils.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He was the kid that was being hung by the bullies whom Kiritaka saved and replaced. Maria knows his existence through her son's diary and suspects him for killing Iijima.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Intended to torture Kowase by crushing his eyes, slitting his throat and choking him with his own intestines. Subverted in that Yuda's trauma won out and he couldn't bring himself to even get close to Kowase.
• Determinator: Yuda wants to be Maria's helper, despite the woman's refusal and warning of reporting him to the police. In order to show her his value, he records a video of Kinugawa breaking into Taiichiro's house and plans to send it to her email. As a "traitor" who sold his friend as a sacrifice, he believes he can only live as a murderer and does anything he can to help Maria send these scumbags to hell.
• Dirty Coward: Although that is because Kiritaka doesn't want to run away as Yuda suggests, Yuda admits to Maria that "[he] ran away and made Kiritaka-kun a sacrifice." Considering how the bullies torture their victims, it's no wonder why.
• First-Name Basis: Yuda and Kiritaka are implied to be very close friends to have the former address the latter by his first name, although Kiritaka addressed his friend by his surname.
• Foil: Surprisingly, to Tsuyoshi Kinugawa: the twenty-third chapter's title "The Fanatics" highlights their extreme obsession to avenge their dead friend(s) by getting the one(s) responsible for their death to suffer a fate they believe they deserve. Yuda shared a genuine bond with Kiritaka, and the latter's death has made the former extremely guilty for not doing much to prevent it. Yuda didn't think of revenge until he saw the bullies living happily after the fact and was enraged at their apathy. Kinugawa cared about his friends, but it's clear his friendship is one-sided and superficial. As soon as he became aware of his childhood friend dying, he went to investigate and find out the killer.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: After learning about Maria, Yuda would infiltrate the school by wearing his old uniform and follow her around. Maria never even noticed him.
• It's All My Fault: Yuda blames himself for Kiritaka's fate, as the latter took Yuda's place while he "ran away".
• Like a God to Me: He states that seeing Maria cradling Kowase's corpse was like seeing a God and thus resolved to be her accomplice.
• Meaningful Name: Yuda's surname sounds similar to Judas Iscariot. Yuda feels that in his passivity towards the gang of bullies he had effectively sold out Kiritaka as a sacrifice, and lives now in guilt. In a moment of weakness, he tried to take his own life by asphyxiating himself but was unable to follow through. Chapter 19, in which Yuda explains himself to Maria, is named "Traitor", further establishing the connection.
• Must Make Amends: He asks Maria to use him as a way to atone for her son's death due to his passivity regarding the bullying situation.
• Nervous Wreck: Yuda may no longer be Okaya's toy, but the experience has left him quite jumpy, to say the least. He's easily intimidated, yet at the same time is constantly on the verge of murdering anyone who becomes too aggressive with him.
• Oh, Crap!: Starts sweating profusely when Maria asks him point-blank about Iijima, all but outing himself as his murderer.
• Only Friend: After Shikimi severed all of Kiritaka's social bonds, Yuda became the only real friend he had left.
• Psycho Supporter: Between his trauma and festering hatred for Okaya's gang, Yuda is not alright in his head. After learning that Maria also wants to kill them and watching her work, Yuda is now obsessed with becoming her instrument, both as a way to be of use to his idol and to make amends to Kiritaka. He even addresses her with the "-sama" suffix when she confronts him, as he has come to see her as a god.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: He saw Maria abducting and killing Kowase before she eventually revealed herself to him.
• Slasher Smile: After Maria threatens to expose his murder of Iijima to the police with a record of his confession and tells him to get out of her car, she sees through the rear-view mirror Yuda's frightening, determined smile on his face, letting her know that no, he won't back off, and he will help her whether she likes it or not.
• The Shut-In: He shut himself in his room after Kiritaka died, for presumably around two years.
• Stalker without a Crush: Yuda followed Kowase to his house with the intention of brutally murdering him. When he couldn't bring himself to enter, Maria showed up to do it herself. He followed her to the abandoned church where she killed Kowase, then to her house, where he found out about her plot and her relation with his best friend after breaking in. Since then, he disguised himself as a student and watched her.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Yuda reached his breaking point when he realized that, even after murdering Kiritaka, Okaya and his friends moved on and lived happily as if it wasn't a big deal.
  "How dare you live in bliss."
• Tragic Dropout: Maria addresses him as a "former student" of the school; he dropped out entirely following his friend's death and locked himself up in his room to hide himself from the bullies before working as a store clerk.
• Tranquil Fury: After a particularly rude customer starts causing trouble, Yuda keeps calm and apologizes to said customer for making him upset. While fantasizing about murdering him.
• Troubled Teen: Yuda has murderous fantasies about people while he is still in his mid-teens. He also is willing to be used by Maria for her revenge in order to atone and to satisfy his own violent fantasies, which could potentially endanger his life. However, he is a more sympathetic example because it’s clear that his fantasies are caused by trauma he endured as a young teenager.

Shizuka Okaya

Nozomu Okaya's mother.

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• The Ghost: Very little is known about her beyond the fact that Maria claims to be acquainted with her, that she addresses her son Nozomu with the "-san" honorific and that he has her listed on his phone under her full name (while still addressing her as "mother").

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