Saori

As a youngster Saori kept her brown hair long, wore bangs, and had eyes of the same brown shade, a look Nobara compared to a doll. She dressed in a white turtleneck, a beige skirt, white socks, and black shoes. By adulthood she had cropped her hair to shoulder length.

Nobara recalled her as gentle, comparing her kindness to that of a nun. The grown Saori is diligent to a fault, still laboring over her work projects late into the night. She worries that if Nobara and Fumi were to see her now, they would find her dull, and frets about disappointing the friends she once tried so hard to impress.

During her second year of middle school, Saori relocated with her family from Tokyo out to a rural village, the move driven by her mother's fascination with organic living and the spiritual. The two friendships she formed there, with Nobara Kugisaki and with Fumi, soon grew close. Trouble followed, though: the village turned on her family, accusing them of looking down on the locals, branding Saori a bad person, and eventually pushing the household out entirely, a parting that left Nobara and Fumi heartbroken. Years later, amid the Shibuya Incident, a coworker's question about marriage drew her into recounting that past. She described leaving in junior high, recalled befriending two girls seven years her junior, remembered once brewing them black tea in hopes of impressing them, and confessed she had never traded contact details with either, afraid of the very loss that came anyway. Picturing the tears at their farewell, she guessed the girls would think her boring today, even as her thoughts circled back to how Nobara might be doing.