Yae

Yae is a short young woman with dark, slightly slanted eyes set beneath thin brows. Her long dark hair is gathered into a low bun, with a parting on the right and a strand falling to shoulder length on either side of her face.

She wears a short patterned hanten fastened with a sash and buckled belt, over which she drapes a pale animal-skin cloak. Loose light-colored trousers and shin-high straw boots complete the outfit, and she carries her hunting rifle on a strap across her body.

Yae is headstrong and impatient. She refuses to be held back when villagers try to stop her from going up the mountain, and she ignores Shinobu's warnings about demons to press on regardless. Beneath that stubbornness lies a deep sense of duty and guilt. When she finally faces her demon father, she resolves to die at his side, treating even his monstrous transformation as something she must answer for.

From childhood Yae dreamed of becoming a Matagi hunter, though tradition held that women had no place in the role. Her father resisted at first but eventually agreed to train her, on the condition that she always take it seriously. He taught her to survive the cold mountains, to hunt large game such as bears and deer, and to use every part of an animal as a gift of the land. Some time earlier she loses her father to a demon, a creature she at first takes to be a bear.

When Giyu and Shinobu arrive investigating the killings, Yae collapses from fever and dreams of her past, including the night she found her family slaughtered and saw the creature that had once been her father. Refusing to rest, she sets out with her dog Taro to track the demon. The beast kills Taro before her eyes, and she finally confronts her transformed father, firing on him as he attacks. Giyu intervenes and beheads the demon with a Water Breathing technique. In his final moment the demon whispers for her to keep living.

Devastated, Yae turns the rifle on herself, but it jams and Shinobu tackles her in time. She later discovers her father's hardened blood had clogged the trigger, sparing her life. Taking the demon's last words and Giyu's account to heart, she builds a grave for her father and Taro, pays her respects, and resolves to go on living as he wished. Yae debuts in Giyu Tomioka's Story.