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Main Characters
Teacher
Voiced by: Jun Fukuyama (Japanese), Gary Furlong (English)
A gentle Outsider who purports to have been a doctor, who due to the curse has forgotten everything about his life as a human. He takes care of Shiva after finding her on the Outside. He quickly bonds with her and resolves to protect her from any and everything that might cause her harm, both in and outside.
- Ambiguous Situation: Whether he's a human who was cursed by an Outsider or if he's one of the Children of Mother who has deluded himself into believing the former (or if he's a Child of Mother that somehow successfully stole an Insider's soul.) He clearly has lasted way longer than a cursed Insider would, and doesn't have any memories of his past life or of even his own name. On the other hand, he is strongly convinced he was a doctor with a wife and child, and has one memory of being a human who was approached by an Outsider.
- This is cleared up in chapter 46. Teacher was a doctor named Albert who lived in a village with his wife and baby. When infection hit his village, he and his family tried to escape through the woods to avoid being killed. Soldiers find them however, and shoot them down with arrows. An outsider ends up finding his soul and takes it in exchange for giving Albert a piece of themselves, turning him into a Child of Mother.
- Amnesiac Dissonance: After he makes Shiva take his soul to stave off the curse, all of his memories of his humanity and of Shiva disappear and he acts exactly like one of the mild-mannered and forgetful Children of Mother, with even his speech having the same style as theirs.
- Dark Is Not Evil: He's an Outsider and dresses in mostly black, however he's clearly a gentle soul and only wants to protect Shiva from anything that could hurt her.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He doesn't remember his name, so Shiva just calls him "Teacher" (Sensei) since he told her that he was a doctor. One of the cursed soldiers suggests that his name was Albert, the name of a doctor from the first village that was cursed.
- The Faceless: Even in a portrait when he was still human, his face is hidden in the light or shadow.
- Feel No Pain: All Outsiders cannot feel pain, and for Teacher this leads him to being able to touch hot or cold things, or get hurt protecting Shiva while not feeling a thing. Played for laughs for cooking, since he can't taste either, leading Shiva teaching him cook a pie.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: When recounting his memories to Shiva as an Outsider, he tells her he was slowly going mad after he unintentionally got the grandfather and son killed for housing him and adds that he was basically a corpse before he found Shiva.
- Heroic Sacrifice: When Shiva becomes more obviously afflicted by the curse, Teacher eventually feeds her his own soul so that she'll be cured. This causes him to completely lose his humanity and memories. Shiva manages to return with the help of a knight and the king and gifts his soul back, causing her to turn into an Outsider.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How he died as a human, being killed by the knights through arrows, which later caused him and the others they killed to become Outsiders.
- It's All My Fault:
- Teacher frequently blames himself whenever Shiva is injured or upset, reasoning he should have tried harder to protect her. He even blames himself for her getting cursed, even though she had already been touched by an Outsider before he finally relented and hugged her, as he assumes he made her curse worse somehow.
- Played straight when in the past the grandfather and son who lived in the cottage he currently inhabits gets killed because they were suspected of being contaminated by the Outsider.
- I Will Find You: What he promised his wife as she holds their baby and he tells her to run from the knights. Over time, he starts to slowly forget who he's thinking of.
- Lethal Chef: A running gag is that Teacher, due to not having a sense of taste and not remembering how to make food, horribly burned a pie he tried to bake to cheer Shiva up. Shiva calls him a rotten cook when she gets mad at him.
- Outliving One's Offspring: He outlived his baby. Justified, as his baby was killed by soldiers.
- Papa Wolf: Will do just about anything to keep Shiva safe, even go up against some soldiers who tried to kill her. When he was human, he sacrificed himself so his wife and child would live.
- Parental Substitute: He serves as one for Shiva, especially after her auntie turns into a tree.
- Tragic Keepsake: He keeps a locket that he doesn't recall the importance of. Chapter 46 reveals it was a gift from the knight who saves Shiva in the future who had it made for Teacher to hold a picture of his family.
- Was Once a Man: He used to be a human doctor before he somehow turned into an Outsider. After regaining his soul from Shiva, he starts to remember his past, and how he even once had a family who he had forgotten.
Shiva
Voiced by: Rie Takahashi (Japanese), Sarah Wiedenheft (English)
A boisterous and cheerful little girl whom Teacher finds abandoned on the Outside. It's quickly made apparent that there's something strange about her, as while she's been touched by Outsiders she isn't being affected by the curse to nearly the extent of other people, and her soul is desired by both Outsiders and Insiders alike.
- Awful Truth: Her real identity is a Children of the Mother who took Albert's soul and kept it to herself, which caused her vessel to transform into Shiva.
- Cheerful Child: Shiva has an unflappably cheerful demeanor and positive attitude, though some of this seems to just be a brave face because she doesn't want Teacher to be upset, himself. Unfortunately, Teacher and her Auntie both hide a lot of truths from her so she stays cheerful, which leads to problems later on.
- The Chosen One: The Insiders received a revelation that she's the only one who is allegedly protected from the curse corrupting her soul. This a dark example, though, as it results in her being hunted for her soul and the other Insiders clearly resent that she is the only one who doesn't have to live in fear of the curse.
- Ethereal White Dress: While it's just a simple dress, along with her white hair, it does comes across as this.
- The Immune: Shiva's soul is left untouched by the curse, even if her own body is slowly succumbing. It's believed this is because she's under the divine protection of the Insiders' deity. However, she can still be afflicted by the curse, as this is what causes Teacher to give up his soul so she could remain human. She later escapes and returns his soul, causing her to become an Outsider.
- Mystical White Hair: She has white hair, likely to emphasize how she's the Chosen One.
- Parental Abandonment: She goes through this twice without realizing it, first when she was a baby from her real parents and then later when her auntie is forced to leave her on the Outside.
Outsiders
The Children of Mother
The Outsiders from which the curse originates, who typically appear more animal in form. It's revealed that their "Mother" makes them and, when their curse eventually drains away their identity, remakes them from whatever remains. Their duty is to return their mother's "souls" to her, but they accidentally spread the curse to Insiders over the course of trying to take their souls.
- Ambiguous Innocence: Some of the bird Outsiders act like children, while their larger kin seem to have a bit more intelligence.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Two soldiers almost capture Shiva in the middle of destroying her home village, only to be attacked by the crow-shaped Outsiders, leaving her free to get to Teacher.
- Teacher himself is saved from one of the cursed soldiers (who was about to cut his head off) by a gigantic, whale-shaped Outsider.
- The crow-shaped Outsiders attack the cursed soldier again just as he's about to finish Teacher off for good, and this time they end up "killing" him.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: They're not capable of feeling most human emotions, and understand very little of anything outside their duty (several of them are confused, for instance, to learn that the "soul" they're after has a name and identity.) Thus while they are a potential problem for Shiva, they aren't actively malicious and even help her and Teacher get away from the equally dangerous Insiders.
- Body Horror: Just like cursed Insiders, they slowly turn into trees as their curse progresses (though a lot more slowly.)
- Feel No Pain: Outsiders cannot feel anything, which makes them very useful in fights since they can be decapitated or stabbed, but still move afterwards.
- Innocently Insensitive: They (especially the beheaded outsider) repeatedly anger Teacher by referring to Shiva as a soul and insisting it belongs to mother, but only because they're ignorant of the nature of living things. There's also how they pointed out how ineffective Teacher was to rescue Shiva from being kidnapped and how he can't rescue her by himself, or how they kept wondering why Teacher hesitated to steal the pinned soldier's soul for Shiva, since it led to the soldier getting away and cutting off his foot. These only serve to make Teacher feel worse, but it's indicated they don't feel emotions and so genuinely can't understand the effect their words have.
- Off with His Head!: Teacher chops off the head of the very first one they meet, and it goes through the rest of the story having to carry it around or have others carry it. The two cursed soldiers also carry around the head of one of the crow Outsiders while trying to use it to find Teacher and Shiva.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: They can allegedly steal the souls of Insiders, though they don't know how to do it successfully and without cursing the soul in the process.
The Cursed Soldiers
A pair of soldiers that dog Shiva and Teacher after taking part in razing Shiva's village to the ground, as they were two of many soldiers instructed to capture the "girl from the other side". During the attack they were stopped by the Children of Mother, and show up later under the effects of the curse.
- An Arm and a Leg: One soldier intentionally cuts off his own arm and hides it, pinned to the ground, so that he can use it to capture Teacher (as Outsiders are able to keep moving their limbs even if they aren't attached.)
- Body Horror: When they first encounter Teacher, the soldiers look fairly human, and only have the heads of crows. By the time they catch up to Shiva and Teacher again, the curse has progressed to the point that tree limbs are sprouting from their bodies, and one soldier actually makes the full transformation into a tree while attacking Shiva.
- Creepy Crows: They end up having crows' heads once they're cursed, which only serves to make them look more sinister.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The soldier that attacks Teacher is bitten to pieces by the same crow-shaped Outsiders that cursed him; even though Outsiders technically can't die, he seems to stop "existing" anyhow by the time they're done.
- Eye Scream: The soldier trying to capture Shiva is so close to becoming a tree that branches are sprouting from his eye sockets, leaving him blind.
- Kick the Dog: It's understandable that they want to stop the curse, but in addition to hunting down Shiva the soldiers also cruelly taunt both her and Teacher at points. One particular example is the blind soldier reassuring Shiva that his partner has probably torn Teacher to pieces already when he suspects she's waiting for him to come save her, to say nothing of how he almost strangles Shiva in a fit of rage later.
- Would Hurt a Child: While the soldier trying to capture Shiva insists he doesn't want to hurt her, he nonetheless attacks her with his sword and later starts angrily throttling her when she protests her innocence. Both of them are also willing to bring her back to the Inside where she'll have her soul removed for the sake of stopping the curse.
Insiders
Auntie
Shiva's aunt, a kindly old woman who took care of her from infancy only to abandon her on the Outside in order to keep the child from being executed. In truth, she took Shiva in after finding her on the Outside, herself. She is reunited with Shiva later on in the story, but ends up accidentally cursed by her.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": She never tells Teacher her name, and neither does Shiva, they both just refer to her as Shiva's aunt or "auntie".
- Loss of Identity: Her transforming into a tree is preceded by her gradually losing her memories and even forgetting who Shiva is once or twice.
- Parental Substitute: Rather than being Shiva's actual aunt, she adopted her after finding her abandoned on the Outside.
The King
- Cool Old Guy: He's an old and wise ruler, and even saves Shiva's life from being sacrificed after he learns the truth behind the birth of the Outsiders.
- Go Out with a Smile: As he lays on the church floor dying from blood loss, he smiles that he had at least managed to save Shiva from being sacrificed.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He's stabbed by his Holiness after he learns the truth about the Outsiders and Insiders. He dies from the blood loss after helping Shiva escape.
Unnamed Knight
- Horseback Heroism: Saves Shiva by ferrying her away from the castle and back to the woods.
- Tragic Keepsake: The portrait holding pendant that Teacher has was his gift to Albert.
His Holiness
- Big Bad: His Holiness was the one who influenced an entire village into believing that killing off the Outsiders would bring the curse to an end.
- Evil Vizier: Though he's a priest, he fills the role by advising the king.
- Sinister Minister: Knows and hides the truth that the Heavenly Father caused the tragedy in the "hole in the map" by summoning an outsider into the castle town.
- Would Hurt a Child: Is perfectly blasé about murdering a child.
- 0% Approval Rating: Invoked against the king. After the king comes back, clearly injured and accusing His Holiness of of stabbing him and of keeping the secret library, His Holiness admits to the stabbing to prevent the King from stopping the ceremony to sacrifice Shiva as a sign that he was a heretic and mentally unfit to rule.
