In this story, Yuzuriha is a loan shark who driven people into hiding or death, and is callous of the consequences due to being part of the job. However, one day, she sees Akane, the wife of her recent victim, in an emaciated shape and staying inside her apartment. Her presence unnerved the normally stoic Yuzuriha enough for her to quit her job and retire to a civilian life, even commenting to herself that the experience is more frightening than any death threats she received or horror films she watches with her daughter.
There is also the ambiguity of Akane's presence, whether she was real and broken inside her apartment as a warning or a ghost who haunts Yuzuriha to remind her of her guilty consciousness. It doesn't help that the glass screen in Yuzuriha's apartment was shattered but no glass fragments were found.
At first, everyone was excited for Yuzuriha's baby, until she suddenly freaks out over the fact that the baby was a boy. Her treatment toward her own baby is both neglectful and potential violent until she and her husband divorced, with the husband taking the child. When her sister Karin brought up the baby, Yuzuriha slams the table and insist that there was no baby. All Karin can think about the episode was the dread if she did keep the baby and the fact that she can never see her sister the same ever again.
In this episode, Yuzuriha was quietly sulking in her seat while her co-workers pretended that she never existed. Then a year after the office closed, a shadowy figure stalked Yuzuriha's coworkers, Hiiragi and Akane, then cuts to an apartment complex where Azami lived. The bell rings and when Azami went to check the door, she sees Yuzurihawith a knife...
In this episode, Yuzuriha stalks Akamatsu and his wife, Karin, because she thought that Akamatsu was her lover with the same name. Disturbingly, after Yuzuriha was arrested, the police contacts her "lover," who revealed that he never dated her or even interacted with her romantically. This means that Yuzuriha deluded herself of a lover that never existed, especially as, in the ending, she identified Hiiragi as "Akamatsu." It was such a frightening experience that Akamatsu, Karin, and the other Akamatsu went as far away from her as possible.
A disturbing image from the episode is when Akamatsu looked through the door viewer, only to see Yuzuriha's bloodshot eye gazing back. It scares Akamatsu that he leaps backwards and into the ground.
In this episode, Yuzuriha is obsessed with her co-worker Kuroki after he gave her coffee during overtime work. She starts breaking into his house to make him food while he and his wife Karin are outside for work. When Kuroki tells Yuzuriha to not break into his house anymore, she resorts to ring the doorbell and ask to be let in instead. She also attempts to kill Karin with her knife so she can find happiness with Kuroki, fortunately, she ends up getting arrested, causing Kuroki and Karin to move out.
In this episode, she appears as a nice coworker of Akamatsu. When he accidently got a glimpse into her lucky charm, he discovered it was a stick. Akamatsu kept calling it a stick making her irate and she started beating up Akamatsu within a inch of his life. Akamatsu was taken to the hospital and the police detective revealed that Yuzuriha killed her husband Hiiragi by shoving him and he hit his head after she found out that he was cheating on her. The "stick" that Akamatsu discovered was actually Hiiragi's finger with his wedding ring on it.
In this episode, a mentally deranged Yuzuriha is living above the closet in Akamatsu's house because her ex-boyfriend Hiiragi used to live there until he moved out to stay away from her after she became his stalker. She was also able to enter the house because Akamatsu didn't bother to change the locks. In the end of the episode, it is implied that she killed Hiiragi and buried him under the house.
Kuroki and Akamatsu go hiking and come across Yuzuriha's lodge. While staying there, Yuzuriha keeps asking Kuroki if that's his real name. Later that night, he sees two eyes staring at him through the roof and he freaks out. When he returns home, Kuroki sees on the news that a man that looked like him was brutally murdered and that the primary suspect was Yuzuriha. After he meets up with Akamatsu, he learns that said man was Yuzuriha's ex-boyfriend that had treated her badly. He then realizes that the eyes that were staring at him that night belonged to Yuzuriha herself and that had she mistaken him for said boyfriend, he could have ended up dead.
During Kuroki's realization, the viewers are shown the events of his night at the lodge except this time, a deranged looking Yuzuriha is seen with a knife and ends up stabbing him.
In this episode, it's revealed that Yuzuriha abuses her son Hiiragi for her own sick pleasure. When Tsutsuji and Karin confront her, she proceeds to flip out and attack them, screaming about how Tsutsuji is a traitor.
Even when Yuzuriha is an unambiguous protagonist, she can still be horrifying. In this episode Yuzuriha is nearly Driven to Suicide by her school bully, Akane. Many years later, Akane is hospitalized with a terminal illness and calls Yuzuriha over to ask for forgiveness. Yuzuriha initally seems to forgive Akane...then gives a frightening look as she reveals that she spent every night wishing Akane would die. She then mocks Akane's apology, saying that Akane is only apologizing to make herself feel better and avoid going to hell after she dies. A traumatized Akane screams and pleads for forgiveness, pointing out that Yuzuriha is going to enjoy a life she won't get to have. Yuzuriha's next words are disturbing in their casual cruelty:
Hiiragi's alcohol addiction. In this episode, Katsura hires Hiiragi into the company, who Yuri and Akane notices that he looked about the same age as their boss, despite being a father of an elementary school student. After a month of his hiring, Yuri first notices the red flag when she reads a document that is scribbled with symbols and letters, in addition to repeated absence from work. His company tried to give him medical attention, with fruitless results. After one absence too many, both Yuri and Katsura check his apartment and see a room full of cans and Hiiragi watching TV as he thought it was the New Years. When Katsura tries to snap him back to reality, Hiiragi completely breaks down and fell into a fetal position, much to Yuri and Katsura's horror. This horrible experience convinces Yuri to quit her sugar addiction and most of the employees to drink less.
In this episode, when Tsutsuji served a drink to Hiiragi, he somehow thought it was Tsutsuji proposing to him. The next week, Tsutsuji's parents tell her to hide in her room as Hiiragi has returned and they are trying to get him out of the house. Hiiragi became more deranged and escalated in his stalking prompting Tsutsuji to start locking her door and his mother moving him away from the area. One day, Hiiragi broke into Tsutsuji's room and tried to get her to run away with him. Fortunately the police caught him, and Tsutsuji eventually grew up to have a family. Then a man that looks suspiciously like Hiiragi appears in the background...
The "false friend" version of Hiiragi is incredibly awful even for such a mundane series. At first, it seems like he's a good person who tragically passed away, but is soon revealed he is anything but. He went out of his way to get Kuroki to hate him during their 'friendship' but the most horrifying is his abuse of his wife, Yuzuriha. He only went after her because Kuroki liked her, blackmailed her into marrying him so he could gain access to her money, and abused her every day. She was broken so badly that not only was she happy he was dead, but she immediately asked Kuroki to marry her just so she could have some comfort. The most terrifying part is that Hiiragi had most people convinced he was a good person, even after death.
Hiiragi in this episode is depicted as a Serial Killer who kills unsuspecting victims inside a road tunnel by using a doll as a bait to get them out of their car. When Katsura and Yuri go inside the tunnel with their car, they hit the aforementioned doll; fortunately, Katsura feels something off about the crash, causing him to leave the scene and call the police, which leads to Hiiragi's arrest with the help of undercover police officers. The doll also turns out to be the corpse of the woman who was one of Hiiragi's first victims, causing him to be sentenced to death.
After his wife dies, Hiiragi attempts to commit suicide in front of everyone at the funeral and due to how his daughter Yuzuriha resembles her late mother, he starts treating her like his wife, calling her by the nickname he used to use for his wife and starts hovering over her, going as far as to treat her like he did his late wife and the girls have no choice but to let their father live in his delusion since they can't afford to send him to the hospital and he refuses to see a doctor. Later, Yuzuriha and Akane find out that Yuzuriha was not Hiiragi's biological daughter after finding letters from their mother to Yuzuriha's biological father, the mother going as far as to beg her lover to save her from her husband. The two keep it a secret until Akane shouts it in a fit of anger at her sister, breaking the last shred of sanity Hiiragi has left so that Hiiragi doesn't even remember Yuzuriha and has completely projected the memory of his late wife onto the girl. Yuzuriha then flees the house and hides with friends each time she hears about her father breaking out of the hospitals he is committed to. Years alter Yuzuriha gets a call from Akane saying that Hiiragi has found out where she lives and is coming to get her. She hears a knocking on the back door and sees Hiiragi standing there, smiling and joyfully cheering that he found her.
Tsutsuji goes to her closet to change when she opens it only to find Hiiragi hiding in there after he broke into her house. The old man creepily asks the girl if her parents have left the house yet and grabs her arm. Thankfully, Tsutsuji gets rescued by her teacher Tokusa in the nick of time. However, when Tokusa looks in the closet, he finds shoes, a rope, a knife and wonders how long Hiiragi was in there. Tsutsuji is understandably shaken up about the situation and Tokusa makes sure to inform her parents as well as the police about what happened. A while later, Tsutsuji and her family go to the police station where they are informed that Hiiragi's house was investigated, and the police found multiple pictures of elementary school aged girls. Hiiragi had also admitted to the police that he had plans to kidnap Tsutsuji and several objects in his car lead police to believe that he also had an intent to kill. Among these items were pictures of Tsutsuji returning home from school, a map of the routes she uses to go to her friends' houses and some of her trash. When shown a picture of him, Tsutsuji's family initially doesn't recognize him until Yuzuriha remembers that she and Yuri ran into him the other day when he was stopping their dog, Etran from running away. This leaves Tsutsuji confused as Etran is usually hostile to people he doesn't recognize but he had been friendly to Hiiragi. This leads to police officer Katsura to deduce that Etran eventually recognized Hiiragi over time because the latter was watching Tsutsuji for a long time.
Hiiragi tries to steal Akane's dog because he claims it was his deceased dog. But, Tokusa explains to Akane that Hiiragi never even owned a dog in his life and the only reason he tried to steal Akane's dog because he wants to eat it so it would make him stronger due to his frail body and being forced to eat dog meat when he was a boy. To make things worse, Hiiragi claims that dogs that are loved by people are of higher nutritional value and the police discovers that his house had become a slaughterhouse for dogs and there are a lot dog bones buried under his yard. Hiiragi also went to a dog adoption center to adopt a few dogs so he can eat them. After Hiiragi was arrested, he ends up being featured all over the news headlines.
While Kuroki was on the process of leaving the apartment, he notices an empty and decrepit box in the middle of floor. As he was curious of the box's presence, Akane, whose scarlet eyes shine in the darkness, appear behind him and gives him a spook. Kuroki witnesses the worse of Akane's breakdown as she screams Bloody Mary of her hallucinations, who are miniature apparitions of himself with dotted eyes and mouth (as seen in the page image), staring at her and begs for his forgiveness. Kuroki abandons the apartment and calls her parents of where Akane is. In the end, Akane was sent to a mental hospital, who still hallucinates something at the corner of the ceiling.
Hiiragi's daughter, Akane, is overly obsessed with an up-and-coming actor, Katsura. She then asks her father to hold a wedding for her and he threatens his employees who are single and in their twenties to come to his daughter's wedding under the threat of losing their paychecks if they don't come. During the wedding, the "groom" turns out to be a body pillow with Katsura's photo taped on it. To make things worse, Akane chooses Tokusa, one of the single employees, to get her pregnant in order to make up the illusion that she is having a child with Katsura. Tokusa is horrified by this and quickly decides to quit the company and get away from the crazy family. Akane does end up having a child in the end. However, it is suspected that her child does not exist at all.
Kuroki is commuting inside a bus and sits next to a woman who carries a baby doll, she begins to chase after him to persuade him into taking care of her and her "baby". He decides to visit his friend Katsura's house to hide from the woman, however, she manages to find him easily, and she only leaves when Katsura threatens to call the police on her. She ends up getting arrested after falling into Kuroki and Katsura's trap. It is revealed that the woman's husband left her after their child died long time ago, which caused her to become mentally unstable to the point where she thinks that the doll was her baby and the reason she decided to go after Kuroki because he resembles her ex-husband.
Katsura's obsession with Yuri reaches to the point where he thinks that he was going to marry Yuri, with Yuri herself being terrified when she finds out about it, because she received many phone calls and letters from him anonymously before she was invited to the "wedding party". After the truth was out, his friends decide to take him to a medical health clinic to get him back to reality.
Tsutsuji being stalked by someone. She tried to run away, but she bumped into a man who turned out to be Tachibana who tried to rob Tsutsuji's house years ago and cut her on the back of her neck but fled when he heard police sirens but was caught and sent to prison. If it weren't for Hiiragi who was revealed to be the stalker, she probably wouldn't have made it.
Another for Tsutsuji is where Akamatsu only became interested in her because Kuroki liked her. When they were kids, Akamatsu was always charming but he had a rotten personality he kept hidden. Akamatsu hated Kuroki since they were kids and always wanted to be ahead of him, resulting in his marriage to Kuroki's crush Tsutsuji. One day, Akamatsu finds out that Kuroki got engaged and throws a potted plants at Tsutsuji while yelling all sorts of abuse at his wife, which also causes Tsutsuji to get so stressed that she has a miscarriage.
Kuroki was adopted by Tachibana and Yuzuriha after his biological father died in an accident and his biological mother was unable to raise him due to her depression after her husband died. However, it is revealed that Tachibana orchestrated the murder of Kuroki's biological father, Katsura, so he can steal the insurance money and the house where he and his family used to live in. Tachibana also manipulated Kuroki's biological mother, Azami, into letting him raise Kuroki and tried to keep her from seeing him by lying to her that Kuroki didn't want to see her. Despite the atrocities that Tachibana did, he almost certainly did genuinely love Kuroki.
Tachibana's extreme devotion to an anti-medicine cult named Yorozuism has reached a disturbing level, causing him to neglect his own family. First, he forced his wife, Yuzuriha, to work overtime, so he can donate the money to the cult; however, when she passed out due to overwork, he blamed her because her faith in Yorozugami-sama wasn't enough. Second, he performed an exorcism on his first daughter, Azami, when she had a seizure, causing her to have an incurable disease. Third, his second daughter, Akane, resents him because she lost all of her friends and was bullied for having a cult-obsessed father. Moreover, he groans every night when he got hospitalized, not because he is in pain, but rather he tries to say Yorozugami's name. In the end, Tachibana ends up paralyzed for the rest of his life.
At the end of the story, Yuri becomes a follower of Yorozuism.
This mildly NSFW story features Yuri going into labor with no one around to take her to the hospital. The result gives everyone in-universe-and-out a scare.
Karin saw Azami feeding her crows. At first the noises the crows made caused her to lose sleep. However, Azami was arrested for murder and it was revealed that she had killed her boyfriend Tachibana during an argument and the stuff that she was feeding the crows was actually his body parts. Kuroki, Karin's father was so disturbed that he vowed to never tell Karin, even though she saw Azami and the crows.
Tokusa was working at a black companyExplanation A Japanase term for company that overworks and exploits its employees and doesn't follow Japanese labor laws run by Hiiragi. Due to the horrible working conditions, he all that he could think of was death after his first year. However, after seeing an image of a beautiful forest, he found a reason to carry on with the hopes visiting it one day. When he shows the picture to his college friend Akamatsu though, he learns that said forest wasn't real and that it only exists in a video game that his friend's company made. Distraught by this, Tokusa heads home thinking about how everything he put up with during his work was all for nothing. What didn't help with his mental state was Hiiragi calling him over the phone to make another insane request for him to not take time off of work. With this in mind, Tokusa sees some sleeping pills that he bought and attempts to overdose so that he can sleep forever. While Akamatsu manages to interrupt his attempt, it is still a pretty chilling moment.
, Yuzuriha is a loan shark who driven people into hiding or death, and is callous of the consequences due to being part of the job. However, one day, she sees Akane, the wife of her recent victim, in an emaciated shape and staying inside her apartment. Her presence unnerved the normally stoic Yuzuriha enough for her to quit her job and retire to a civilian life, even commenting to herself that the experience is more frightening than any death threats she received or horror films she watches with her daughter.