Isuzu's Father

A middle-aged man, Isuzu's father wears his dark brown hair down to the nape with bangs combed neatly to the right, and his eyes stay shadowed and hidden throughout his appearances. He dresses in a businesslike manner, typically plain suits and ties.

For a time he seemed a gentle, devoted father, forever smiling and clearly loving toward his daughter. That image proved to be a performance. Once Isuzu questioned whether her parents were really happy, his warmth fell away to reveal a furious, self-serving man who abused her physically, verbally, and emotionally. Quieter than his wife, he tends to let her do the talking, but he is no less cruel, unafraid to throw his contempt for Isuzu in her face, and he cast her aside without any thought for the damage he had done.

At some point he married and fathered Isuzu, who was born cursed by the Horse's spirit. The couple kept up a front of a loving home, never quarreling in front of her, until Isuzu innocently asked whether they were truly content and whether nothing ever saddened them. The question turned his smile to a frown and set off his wife, who began screaming and smashing things. Both parents, it emerges, had come to resent their daughter as a burden and had suppressed the feeling for years before it erupted into regular abuse; he was once seen dragging the young Isuzu along by her hair.

When a worn-down, middle-school-aged Isuzu collapsed in the street and was hospitalized, her parents appeared only to tell her it would be better if they never saw her again, no longer knowing how to love her. As she tried to return to them, her father coldly confirmed that they did not want her, and he remained unbothered when Hatsuharu tore into the couple for their selfishness. He has lived apart from his daughter with no contact ever since, while the wounds he inflicted continue to haunt her for years afterward.