Manga / Shi ni Aruki

Shi ni Aruki (or "Walk to Death") is a suspense/mystery manga by Ryouko, serialized on Shogakukan's Ura Sunday website and MangaONE app from 2016 to 2018.

After parting ways for the day with her best friend, Tokiko Kurosu comes home to discover that her wealthy adoptive father, Tokimune, died while she was at school. Naturally, Tokiko's first instinct is to read a nearby book. The rest of the family aren't fans of Tokiko's uncaring attitude once she finally makes some calls, but aren't exactly surprised she isn't crying alongside the rest of them either. After all, not only has Tokiko displayed a Lack of Empathy her entire life, but she has also been in close proximity to bizarre, accidental deaths for just as long. So they have no problem coming to her defense when the police try to open up an investigation with her as the primary suspect. That is, until another family member dies in freak accident. Then another. Then another. All while Tokiko stands off to the side with a smile on her face...

Shi ni Aruki would receive a spiritual antithesis in Usotsuki Satsuki wa Shi ga Mieru, a horror/mystery series from the same mangaka that also follows a teenage girl with a strong connection to death.

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Shi ni Aruki contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Sou Aoya and his younger sister Ai grew up with these, resulting in him being incredibly protective of her well-being and Ai being stunted emotionally. It later turns out that they had different sets of parents; Sou had his own abusive childhood that led him to later "adopt" Ai after learning about her similar situation.
• Accident, Not Murder: Most of the deaths throughout the series are an example of this, being freak accidents like an industrial AC falling on someone, tripping down a flight of stairs and getting stabbed through the throat by a pencil, or a truck crushing their skull.
• Accidental Suicide: Takahito's attempt to murder Tokiko ends with this. He believes he has successfully murdered her and is dragging her body around to figure out where to hide it when she briefly regains consciousness. He ends up killing himself when, after picking back up his butcher knife in order to properly complete the job, he's startled by her attempting to crawl towards him and slips on a pool of blood, impaling himself.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Aoya spends his final moments hugging Ai and telling her to claim that he'd kept her imprisoned to make the authorities think she was his victim and not his accomplice.
• All for Nothing: Aoya wanted to drink the blood of "pure" people to purify himself. Unfortunately, not only does Tokiko, his last victim, kill him, but before he dies, Tokiko confesses that she's also a murderer.
• Ambiguous Ending: While an explanation for most of the events throughout the manga is given in the final chapter, the notion that Tokiko has been Dead All Along and many of the deaths were the result of a curse attached to her that required those deaths to keep her alive isn't treated as the definitive answer, and the manga ends with both the remaining characters and the audience alike wondering if everything was due to a supernatural curse or just unfortunate coincidence.
• Anyone Can Die: Very much so. Named characters die regularly, with a character lineup sheet at the end of most chapters keeping track of who's alive or dead. By Chapter 14, everyone on the initial character sheet (i.e., the Kurosu family) besides Tokiko herself is dead, so the sheet gets swapped out for a new one featuring her alongside the remainder of the manga's cast; and by the end of the manga, only Kaoru, Ryouta, and Ai are left.
• Asshole Victim: Kinue, Ayako, and Takahito, who were all contemplating killing Tokiko, a member of their own family, end up dying in separate accidents. Takahito especially stands out, as his death comes soon after stabbing Tokiko.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Tokiko admits to Rina that this is the sole reason she took everyone else's growing animosity in stride, as even the older brother who attempted to kill her treated her as cherished family at one point. She then makes it clear that she has no such feelings towards Rina and will happily retaliate in kind if her niece attempts anything similar.
• Bait-and-Switch: Occasionally happens with death scenes.
  • In one scene, a car speeds by Koga... then splashes him with water rather than hitting him.
  • In another scene, Ai leans out the window, the same way Tokiko's friend from the orphanage did before her death... and her hat falls off.
• Berserk Button: Tokiko is unnervingly calm most of the time, even in the face of other people dying, but she does still feel emotion. The bonus chapters show that damaging any of her father's possessions is an easy way to invoke her wrath.
• Big Fancy House: The Kurosu patriarch lived in a large, traditional Japanese house that's at least two stories tall, clearly used to show that they're a wealthy family.
• Black Sheep: Tokiko. While it seems like she was treated well as a child, with everyone doing their best to dote on her, by her teenage years, her detached demeanor and the way she attracts death have led to most of the family regarding her with outrage and disgust, which she views as the most honest they've ever been with her. When she dies, the only thing stated in her will is that she doesn't want her remains put with the rest of the Kurosu family.
• Blatant Lies: At the end of the series, one of the nurses who'd desperately prayed for the newborn Tokiko to pull through asks whether the person in question is doing well. Akiyama says that the individual is happy, not wanting the nurse to realize Tokiko committed suicide.
• Book Dumb: Natsuki gets terrible grades. Her mother, viewing her martial arts as a distraction, contemplates hiding her martial arts clothes, or even burning them.
• Bound and Gagged:
  • To prevent her from interfering with their plans, Miyuki's brother Takahito and sisters-in-law tie her up and cover her mouth with duct tape when they go off to kill Tokiko.
  • Tokiko herself ends up like this when Aoya kidnaps her.
• Brains and Brawn: Tokiko and Natsuki. Tokiko is academically gifted, but doesn't do well in gym class. Meanwhile, Natsuki's a physically-fit martial artist with terrible grades.
• Cassandra Truth: Tokiko isn't fond of lying. Unfortunately, when you're standing next to your third corpse that week and have a smile plastered on your face, it's hard to convince people that you aren't the one who did it.
• Breather Episode: Chapter 16 mainly focuses on Tokiko and Natsuki discussing their families and their friendship, with nothing bad happening whatsoever. No, really.
• Brutal Honesty:
  • Not only does Tokiko have a borderline-callous indifference toward death, but she refuses to keep her thoughts to herself.
  • Tokiko's friend Natsuki also has a tendency to do this. She even lost all her friends in elementary school just because she told her friend that her previous hairstyle looked better than her new one.
• Cliffhanger: As expected of a mystery series, several chapters end on an ambiguous note.
  • Chapter 3 ends with Takahito's attempt to murder Tokiko, with her slipping into unconsciousness from blood loss as they had just been stabbed repeatedly in the chest. Chapter 4 reveals that she's still alive, if just barely, and Takahito accidentally kills himself trying to finish the job.
  • Chapter 7 ends with Rina going missing after confronting Tokiko at the hospital. Chapter 13 opens with the reveal that she was murdered, with her body being among others found in an abandoned house a few chapters prior.
  • Chapter 16 ends with Natsuki seemingly getting killed by an aging convenience store sign dislodged by a bird flying off, though we only see Tokiko's stunned reaction to the event. Chapter 17 opens with the supposed blood splatter being bird poop. The sign never fell, and Tokiko's shock was just her (and Natsuki) being startled by the bird.
  • Chapter 18 ends with Aoya confessing to being a murderer and pushing Tokiko into the water to drown her.
  • Chapter 19 ends with Tokiko unconscious and getting dragged off by Sou, who has revealed himself to be the serial killer the police are looking for. They're shown to be alive and well in Chapter 22, but only because the murderer wished to give them one last meal.
  • Chapter 23 ends with Koga accompanying Akiyama to Aoya's apartment. When Akiyama opens the door over Koga's objections, Koga looks inside and says, "What... the hell...?", although the viewer is not shown what he saw in there.
  • Chapter 24 ends with Tokiko taking Ai hostage.
  • Chapter 25 ends with Tokiko claiming that she killed someone in the past.
  • Chapter 28 ends with Natsuki about to be strangled by her backpack when it gets caught in a elevator, just as she was about to affirm her friendship with Tokiko despite just learning that she's a murderer. The next chapter has Tokiko manage to save her, only for her to die regardless at the end of that chapter from getting run over by a truck.
• Daddy's Girl: While Tokiko averts being Happily Adopted due to her conflicts with much of the Kurosu family, she's quite fond of her father. She gets furious with Natsuki when the latter gets Tokimune's book dirty, and throws Natsuki's indoor shoes from the roof in retaliation.
• Death of a Child:
  • In a flashback, Nozomi, who was Tokiko's friend from the orphanage, fell to her death while trying to say goodbye to Tokiko.
  • It is mentioned that Ayako and Takahito's son Ayato died after being hit by a car when he and Tokiko were young.
  • Sou Aoya's younger sister was killed by her own parents in a Murder-Suicide as a young child.
• Description Cut: In Chapter 15, Sou proudly states that he and Tokiko are the only ones who realize that the Kurosu family deaths and the abandoned body murder cases could be related. Cut to Detective Ryouta recovering in the hospital from the accident that took Shuichi's life, where both he and Kaoru are discussing the same topic.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Whenever their work with Mistuki is called "occult" or "supernatural", Kaoru insists that it's "undetermined phenomena" instead, arguing that calling something "occult" is just an excuse for not trying to understand the unknown.
• Door-Closes Ending: Chapter 19 ends with Aoya closing a pair of doors after abducting Tokiko.
• Downer Ending: Twelve people die rather senseless deaths, and Tokiko, who may or may not have been Dead to Begin With, commits suicide, leaving the survivors to wonder what the point of it all was.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Chapter 13. Tokiko comes home to find that her last remaining family member, her older sister Miyuki, had hung herself out of grief over losing so much family in such a short period of time. Her suicide note assures Tokiko that she doesn't blame her for any of this, though Tokiko doesn't believe a word of it, convinced her inability to mourn Rika's murder certainly didn't help.
  • In Chapter 14, Tokiko reveals that Aiko, a classmate from middle school, did this a year prior out of guilt for when she and Tokiko allowed their teacher to be killed in order to save themselves.
  • Chapter 32. Tokiko gleefully jumps in front of a train following the death of Natsuki, reasoning that death is the only thing that can make her happy now that the only person who ever truly accepted her outside of her father is now gone.
• Dwindling Party: Most chapters end with a 3x3 grid showing part of the cast. If a character dies, their character portrait is greyed out and splattered with blood in a way that resembles what killed them. In the event that the chapter ends with their fate left ambiguous, their portrait is merely greyed out. After everyone in the Kurosu family besides Tokiko dies, the lineup is swapped out to showcase the remainder of the cast.
• Escalating War: The early stages of Natsuki and Tokiko's relationship. After making terrible first impressions on each other the first day of middle school, they spent the following weeks embroiled in a prank war that, after getting in trouble for destroying school property, shifted into them simply competing over everything. By the next school year, the animosity they once shared became a close friendship before they even realized it.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Tokiko chides her best friend for being ungrateful toward her mother and reminds her that her mother could die any time, creeping her friend out. When she gets home and finds her adoptive father dead, she picks up one of the books at the crime scene and reads it. She continues reading as the rest of her family grieves over Tokimune's body, showing that she's far from normal.
  • Akiyama is introduced eating a parfait while talking on the phone with the professor he works for. The professor calls him out on his work ethic, but he calmly says the professor only cares about finding the truth, and not about the victims. This establishes his Genius Sweet Tooth, his bluntness, and the fact that virtually everyone finds him rather off-putting and insufferable.
• Establishing Series Moment: Not only does the series begin with the Plot-Triggering Death of Tokiko's father, but after it introduces the rest of the family, two of Tokiko's adoptive siblings die in the exact same chapter, proving that Anyone Can Die.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Aoya might be an insane murderer, but he genuinely loves his adopted sister Ai.
• Everyone Has Standards: Tokiko's casual attitude toward death comes off as callous, but even she finds Aoya's reasons for murdering people sickening and insane.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Tokiko doesn't appear at all in Chapters 20 and 21, which are dedicated to Ryouta, Kaoru, and Mitsuki pooling their information to figure out who the serial killer in the abandoned bodies case is. The chapter ends with the latter two realizing that Sou is the murderer and that Tokiko, if not an accomplice, is his next victim. When we return to that conversation in Chapter 23, it turns out that they have decided to withhold that knowledge, but Ryouta figures it out regardless when following Kaoru the next day, since it was obvious they were hiding something.
• Foreshadowing: Tokiko is often depicted as transparent and with her bones visible, such as at the end of Chapter 12, when Kisaragi suggests that they may need to rethink everything about the case, including the possibility that there was a death involving her before any of the other incidents. This foreshadows The Reveal that Tokiko might been Dead All Along, and Tokiko is portrayed in the same way when the reveal happens.
• Finale Title Drop: The last line of dialogue references the title.
  "For the rest of us, for as long as we live, with each step we take, we walk ever onwards toward that death."
• Four Is Death: A lot of people die in the series, which is compiled in four tankobon volumes.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Ai gives Sou one in Chapter 17, when he begins angrily screaming about the importance of them solving the murder case when Tokiko states she'd rather study than go on a wild hunt for clues in the middle of the night.
• Genius Sweet Tooth: Kaoru Akiyama, an assistant to a university professor and one of the smartest characters in the cast, is almost constantly seen eating or offering others sweets.
• Happily Adopted: Played with regarding Tokiko. She loves her adoptive father, but while they doted on her in the past, she doesn't get along with most of the rest of the family in the present day.
• Hostage Situation:
  • Played for Laughs in the Volume 2 extra chapter. After Natsuki steals one of Tokiko's books, Tokiko takes Natsuki's indoor shoes, calls her to the roof and threatens to throw them off unless Natsuki returns the book. When Tokiko learns that the book is damaged, she throws Natsuki's shoes from the roof anyway.
    Natsuki: What is this, a hostage situation?
  • Played much more seriously in Chapters 24 and 25, where Tokiko threatens to kill Ai if Aoya doesn't do exactly as she says, and is more than willing to make good on that threat.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: A platonic version between Tokiko and Natsuki, with the former trying to end her friendship with the latter after revealing she murdered someone, under the belief that their friendship is doomed to deteriorate horribly and that it is best to end it now before resentment starts to take hold. Natsuki rejects this, stating that she wholly accepts Tokiko for who she is and will never abandon her.
• Incriminating Indifference: Played with. Tokiko doesn't appear to mourn at any point, which gives Detective Shuichi Yashiro reason to suspect her of planning most of the deaths that occurred over the first two volumes. However, the rest of the police precinct decides early on that she's innocent despite his skepticism, and the reader is quickly made aware that Tokiko simply lacks the capacity and mindset to even be saddened by most of these deaths, much less visibly show it for the ones that do bother her. Subverted in that while she didn't plan most of the deaths, she did plan her father's.
• Inheritance Murder: One theory that's proposed is that the murderer killed Tokimune so he'd pass on his fortune, and killed their siblings for a larger cut. Aoya suggests that Rina is the culprit, having killed her father so that she could get his share, and while Tokiko notes that it doesn't explain the deaths of Ayako and Kinue, who married into the family, Aoya argues that maybe Rina killed her mother and aunt to prevent them from getting a share. Of course, Rina later dies, as does everyone in the family besides Tokiko.
• Insane Troll Logic: The reasoning used by the serial killer behind the abandoned body case. Aoya despises himself for going as far as killing Ai's parents when trying to save her from an abusive home life and was going to commit suicide after the fact in disgust for the monster he had become. However, in his panic, he came to reason that since people are what they eat and all their cells are eventually replaced over time, that if he kills and drinks the blood from the bodies of "pure" people, he'd once again be a good person if he does it for long enough (which he deemed to be at least two years).
• Irony: A lot of fuss is made over Mitsuki's smoking habits, with several characters voicing concern that she'll die from a fire (if lung cancer doesn't get her first), since she had taped up the smoke detector in her paper-filled room. She ends up dying in a freak accident caused by a faulty fire extinguisher.
• It's Personal: Tokiko doesn't feel particularly bothered by any of her family members dying. At least until her older sister Miyuki dies, which is the first death to leave her visibly stunned and the only one other than her father that she admits feeling emotion over. From that point, she's motivated to figure out what's going on with the serial killer case in hopes of at least avenging their death.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Miyuki, the eldest of the Kurosu siblings, is rather temperamental, and her brothers and Haruka are a bit scared of her, but she's the only one who's halfway decent to Tokiko.
• Jerkass Realization: While listening to the serial killer explain their motives, Tokiko thinks about how disgusted she is by them and wonders how disturbed they must be to continue talking like they are, only to sadly realize that this must be how others feel whenever they listen to her tirades about death.
• Killing in Self-Defense: Tokiko kills Sou by stabbing him in the throat, causing him to slowly suffocate on his own blood.
• Last Episode, New Character: The penultimate chapter introduces Tokiko's birth mother and the nurse who delivered her, the former of whom only appears in a flashback and appears in the present day in the final chapter.
• Last-Name Basis: Most of the characters outside of the Kurosu family(who are referred to by their first names to tell them apart) are referred to by their surnames.
• Last Request:
  • Tokiko asks the serial killer that if he succeeds in murdering her, they should iron and fold her clothes before burning them, in hopes that doing so will allow her to look presentable when she re-encounters her father in the afterlife.
  • As he takes his dying breaths, Sou asks Ai to lie to the police about their relationship and claim that he forcibly abducted her after killing her parents, rather than the truth that she willingly left with him.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The bizarre mix of accidents, suicides, and murders surrounding Tokiko. The Kurosu family, as well as occult researchers Kaoru Akiyama and Professor Mitsuki Kisaragi, believe that the deaths are caused by some supernatural curse that is related to Tokiko in some way. Meanwhile, other characters such as police detectives Shuichi Yashiro and Ryouta Koga, as well as investigative journalist Sou Aoya, insist that there must be a more grounded explanation. Come the end of the manga, while the remaining characters are now willing to entertain the "curse" idea as plausible — and for what it's worth, the final death tally does list Tokiko as "dead" rather than "died", and the manga is littered with imagery of her with an exposed skeleton — it isn't an agreed upon conclusion and even Kaoru admits that his assessment isn't as definitive as he'd like.
• Mood Whiplash: Chapter 16 ends with Natsuki seemingly being killed... and the start of the next chapter reveals that it was just a bird that almost pooped on her, with Tokiko jokingly wishing Natsuki actually got hit.
• Murder by Inaction:
  • How one of Tokiko's teachers died two years prior. Tokiko and a classmate had gotten lost in the woods during a school trip and were being chased by a mysterious individual. When they saw their teacher in the distance loudly looking for them, they hid and stayed silent, using him as bait for the killer in order to save their own lives.
  • Chapter 26 reveals that this is how Tokiko killed her father, Tokimune. Since she valued her father's happiness above all else, yet her father told her to pursue her own happiness, she felt the only way to fulfill that request was to kill him, so those two things can never come into conflict. As such, she researched that the elderly often die from household accidents like falling, and orchestrated a situation where his chance of killing himself in this manner would increase (i.e., asking him to regularly pick out books for her from the house's private library).
• Murder Makes You Crazy: After killing Ai's parents, Aoya believed he had become a "monster," then decided to kill and eat "pure" people in order to purify himself.
• Murder-Suicide: Aoya's parents murdered their young daughter and then hanged themselves.
• Nice Girl: Natsuki. Despite her Brutal Honesty and the fact that they started off pranking each other, she's a kind and supportive friend to Tokiko. Even after hearing that Tokiko killed someone, she refuses to stop being friends with her, merely asking her to come with her to the police station so Tokiko can turn herself in, and promising to be there for Tokiko.
• Not Helping Your Case: Tokiko is very blunt when speaking her mind, which when combined with her views on death and blasé responses to terrible situations, makes it easy for others to suspect that she's secretly a sociopathic killer.
• Odd Reaction Out: When the Kurosu family is introduced in the morgue after the patriarch Tokimune dies, they react with sorrow, anger, worry, and unease... then there's Tokiko, whose closeup panel is featured last and shows her still calmly reading the book she found near Tokimune's body.
• Omake: The volume collections include short bonus chapters detailing how Tokiko and Natsuki first met and became friends, despite their polarizing personalities.
• Only Friend: Tokiko and Natsuki are each other's only friends, having met in middle school. Notably, Natsuki is only character other than her father that is able to inspire any positive emotion in Tokiko outside of aloof amusement, and Tokiko proudly declares at several points that she doesn't need anyone other than Natsuki.
• Only Sane Man: Miyuki seems to be one of the few people who doesn't believe Tokiko is a Doom Magnet... or, at the very least, that she doesn't deserve to be punished for it if she does happen to be one.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Takahito and Ayako's son Ayato died in a car accident when Tokiko was in elementary school.
• Perpetual Smiler: Akiyama has a grin permanently plastered on his face, which makes people wary of him.
• Pet the Dog: While Haruka hits Tokiko in a fit of rage, she does gives Tokiko a cooling pad as an apology, before asking her not to say anything that would upset people.
• Practically Different Generations: Tokiko was adopted when her siblings were already fully-grown adults. Her older brother Hiroaki has a teenage daughter in Rina, implying he's at least 15 to 20 years older than Tokiko. He's only the second oldest of her siblings, so Miyuki is probably even older.
• Punny Name: "Kurosu" was presumably chosen because it sounds like "korosu," the Japanese word for "kill."
• The Reveal:
  • Chapter 18. Sou is revealed to be the serial killer that the police are looking for, with him having planned for the past two years to make Tokiko his final victim.
  • Chapter 26. After revealing to Sou that she did kill a family member at the end of the previous chapter, she goes on further to reveal that said family member was her adoptive father, giving her own Motive Rant to match Sou's from earlier.
• Revenant Zombie: In the final chapter, Kaoru theorizes that Tokiko might have been this. Rather than being resuscitated by the nurses at birth, he believes she was already a neonatal death, and the nurses and doctors' desires for her to live reanimated her corpse. The deaths that surrounded her in life were payment for this, and he additionally uses her nonchalant feelings about death as proof for this theory. The other characters are naturally skeptical of this conclusion, but begrudgingly admit that this is at least a possibility.
• Speech-Bubbles Interruption: When Takahito rants about how Tokiko killed his father and two of his siblings, his sister Miyuki yells, "Will you listen to yourself!?" with her speech bubble going on top of his.
• The Stoic: Ai, similarly to Tokiko, is incredibly unfazed by most things. In contrast, her default expression is the neutral affect usually seen with this trope as opposed to Tokiko's usual smirk, and she ultimately showcases far less emotional range, always seeming bored or disgruntled.
• Survivor Guilt: Aoya feels guilty for getting home after his parents had murdered his sister then killed themselves.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Sou, who reveals himself to be the serial killer in the abandoned body case at the end of Chapter 18. The following chapter explains he murdered Ai's parents so she wouldn't have to experience the same abusive childhood that he did, with the murder of Tokiko's teacher being a panicked response to someone finding him in the woods when he attempted to commit suicide afterwards. It's later elaborated that his abusive childhood included a traumatizing moment where his parents murdered his younger sister the one day he decided not to go straight home, then attempted to murder him before hanging themselves. Downplayed in that Tokiko doesn't really care, since the murderer still chose to kill people, sad backstory be damned. Plus, they're attempting to kill her, which doesn't help their sympathy factor.
• Symbolic Cast Fadeout: Most chapters end with a 3x3 grid showing part of the cast. If a character dies, their character portrait is greyed out and splattered with blood in a way that resembles what killed them. In the event that the chapter ends with their fate left ambiguous, their portrait is merely greyed out. After everyone in the Kurosu family besides Tokiko dies, the lineup is swapped out to showcase the remainder of the cast.
• Teen Pregnancy: Tokiko's mother is wearing a Sailor Fuku when she goes into labor, suggesting that she was a high schooler— or worse, a middle schooler— when she got pregnant.
• Tempting Fate: There are several moments where Tokiko and Natsuki's friendship is highlighted, where it is made clear that Natsuki is the only person that Tokiko unequivocally trusts and cares about, and that Tokiko's only goal and desire in life is to always be together with her. This leads to a number of fake-out deaths concerning the character throughout the manga, which culminate in her actually dying at the end of Chapter 29, which prompts Tokiko to commit suicide two chapters later.
• Thinking the Same Thought: As Miyuki tells off the detectives for suspecting Tokiko, her biological siblings all think, "Nee-san's scary as always."
• Unwanted Assistance: How Tokiko views Sou's attempts to clear her name. Tokiko makes it painfully clear at multiple points that she couldn't care less if anyone, family included, views her as a murderer; especially since the police had already officially closed her case as being a bunch of unfortunate accidents. She does find his efforts entertaining enough to go along with though, before genuinely coming engaged in solving the possible connection between her family's deaths and the abandoned body murder case when an overlap in the two results in Miyuki committing suicide.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 18. Aoya turns out to be a serial killer who's obsessed with killing Tokiko.
  • Chapter 25. Tokiko confesses that she killed someone.
  • Chapter 32. Tokiko, the protagonist of the series, dies.
• Wham Line:
  • In Chapter 18, Aoya tells Tokiko about the Shirokis' murders two years ago, and how their daughter disappeared.
    Aoya: Two years. That's how much time the killer needed. That's how long it takes to replace everything. I really do feel sorry for you, Tokiko-chan...
    Tokiko: Aoya, I don't know if you've mistaken me for someone else, but...
    Aoya: How could I ever mistake you!? I was always going to kill you last.
  • In Chapter 25, Tokiko drops a surprising revelation about herself.
    Tokiko: If you're going to assume anyone capable of murder is a tainted monster and come looking for blood from the pure, then you really never should have tried drinking mine. Why? Because I did, after all, kill one of my own family.
  • In Chapter 28, Ai gives a startling answer when asked how many members of the Kurosu family her brother killed.
    Ai: Just Rina.
  • In the final chapter, Akiyama reaches a startling conclusion about Tokiko and the curse surrounding her.
    Akiyama: Long before we had the chance to meet her, she had died immediately at birth. The desires of those present, for her to live, gave the soul of Tokiko, departed from her body, as compensation, and so, Tokiko's corpse came to life.
• Wham Shot:
  • Chapter 7 ends with Miyuki calling Rina, who doesn't pick up her home phone. She tries her cell phone, and the last panel reveals that the cell phone has been dropped into a canal, meaning that Rina has gone missing.
  • At the end of Chapter 13, Tokiko gets home and sees that Miyuki has hanged herself.
  • In Chapter 18, a shot of a yearbook shows Ai's photo, which is labeled Ai Shiroki, meaning she was the daughter of the couple who was murdered.
  • In Chapter 26, after Tokiko kills Aoya, she leaves the place where he was holding her, which turns out to be the Aoya residence. This reveals that the Cliffhanger in Chapter 23, of Koga discovering something in Aoya's apartment, took place after Chapter 26.
• Would Hurt a Child: Tokiko threatens to fatally stab Aoya's adopted sister Ai with a pencil unless he does as she says, then later nearly drops an iron on the girl's head, forcing Aoya to save Ai.
• You're Insane!: Tokiko thinks this verbatim when Aoya reveals that he's been killing and eating people to purify himself.

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