Mayu

Green eyes, wide and bright, sit beneath a sweep of long brown hair that Mayu keeps straight and lifts into a quiff toward the left, where a single pink blossom is tucked. A plain purple kimono drapes her slight frame.

A romantic streak runs through her. Even fresh from the loss of her parents, Mayu falls quickly for the swordsman who cuts down her attacker, offering to accompany him once his work is done and carrying meals to him each day. She warms to Masayoshi, cheers on his goals, and pities the Hollow nature buried within him, though its outward form frightens her.

Not long before the story finds her, a Hollow slaughters Mayu's relatives, her parents among them, leaving her the family's lone survivor. She digs graves by hand for the dead and returns to pray over them.

While she prays, that same Hollow ambushes her and chases her through the trees until she stumbles, only for a passing Shinigami, Masayoshi, to fell the creature and catch her. Yachiru Kusajishi soon appears and recognizes the man as an old friend she calls Mappy. Mayu gathers firewood for his camp and listens as he recounts losing his wife and vowing to hunt down every Hollow so no one else suffers such grief. Smitten, she asks to travel with him. Yachiru warns that drawing close to Masayoshi is dangerous, and the truth emerges: a Hollow possesses him and is slowly devouring him, having driven him to kill his own wife. The strain warps him into a grotesque hybrid, yet when the lurking Hollow lunges at Mayu, Masayoshi throws himself into its path, destroying it and taking a fatal wound. The Hollow inside him fades as Mayu cradles his dying body and weeps.