Tsurugi Higashikata

A child of roughly ten with an average, faintly plump frame, Tsurugi was first presented as Jobin and Mitsuba's daughter, though he is in fact a boy dressed and reared as a girl to fend off a curse that targets the family's firstborn in each generation. In keeping with that ruse he wears a polka-dotted dress and flats, an origami frog perched atop his head. One shoulder bears a tattoo reading life while the other reads princess.

His temperament blends ordinary childish mischief with an unsettling, adult streak of cunning. Playful yet eerie, he torments both Yasuho and Josuke early on by scrambling their ability to tell people apart, though he later apologizes for the distress. He bonds quickly with the dog Iwasuke, dotes on wordplay, and shows a troubling, overly physical fixation on Yasuho. Beneath the childishness lies genuine menace, as he readily hands Josuke over to be killed when it suits his survival and lures an enemy to his death by disguising a bus as his own father.

Above all, a profound dread of dying to the Rock Disease governs his choices, making him quick to attach himself to whoever seems likeliest to deliver a cure, whether that is Yotsuyu Yagiyama, Josuke, or eventually his father, Jobin. He is closest to his parents and largely indifferent to the rest of the family. Bullied at school and friendless, he is prone to panic when danger nears, since his Stand offers little in the way of direct combat.

Born to Jobin and Mitsuba as the family's firstborn son, Tsurugi was raised in girl's clothing to hold off the hereditary stone affliction. His fear of that fate makes him an easy mark for the architect Yotsuyu Yagiyama, who dangles a mysterious curative fruit in exchange for helping to kill Josuke. When Yasuho stumbles onto him in the family's underground storeroom and learns his true sex, he explains the cross-dressing custom before playing a cruel trick with his Stand, Paper Moon King, which lends supernatural traits to his folded-paper creations and can convince a target that all faces and symbols look identical. He soon relents and apologizes.

After Yotsuyu is killed and the fruit confirmed real, Tsurugi adopts the dog fed by the villain, naming it Iwasuke, and drifts to Josuke's side. He aids the investigation into his own father, helps expose the dealer Aisho Dainenjiyama, and escapes a relentless enemy Stand by fooling its user into mistaking passing buses for Jobin, killing him. Later he barely survives an ambush by Ozon Baby, saved by Jobin, and uses his illusions to misdirect foes such as Poor Tom and, secretly, his grandfather while Jobin seizes the Locacaca branch.

His will to live keeps steering his loyalties, but the Rock Disease finally takes hold, twisting his body toward an origami-like state before his mother's eyes. His grandmother Kaato ultimately stores him within her cards and spends the last of the New Locacaca to shift the illness onto Toru, sparing Tsurugi and breaking the family curse forever at the price of her own life. He is later seen hauling a wounded but living Norisuke to safety and joining the family, alongside a newly accepted Josuke, in mourning and moving forward.