Kiyomi Hasegawa

As Kiku, a woman with no background or status, Kiyomi sometimes worked as an irregular sex worker through an oiran house to experience freedom and reaffirm her femininity. During these encounters, her secrecy is absolute, and she enforces a strict rule that no man may ejaculate inside her to prevent a pregnancy that would destroy the masquerade.

This vigilance fails during a tryst with a client named Ariyoshi Aoshima. When he ejaculates inside her without consent, Kiyomi immediately stabs and kills him with a hidden knife to eliminate the threat of a potential father and dispose of evidence. A month later, Kiyomi realizes her worst fear: she is pregnant. Recognizing the child as a "death warrant" for her family, Kiyomi makes several attempts to abort the baby using powerful, often dangerous abortifacient compounds. The experience is bloody and terrifying, but the child survives multiple attempts, leaving Kiyomi gaunt and mentally exhausted.

Kiyomi's sister-in-law, Yui, who is absolutely loyal to Kiyomi due to her sacrifice for the family, eventually stops Kiyomi from taking a potentially lethal fourth dose. Yui convinces Kiyomi of a risky contingency plan: they will claim Kenji's "wasting sickness" has worsened and retreat to a secluded mountain temple for recovery. Kiyomi gives birth there, and when they return, Yui announces that she gave birth to the baby, Sakaki, during the retreat, a child supposedly conceived by Kenji before they left. Kiyomi must return to her duties as the restored Kenji, painfully binding her chest to conceal her persistent milk production, while Taro remains happily ignorant of his new sister’s true parentage.

Years later, while visiting the oiran house as Kiku, Kiyomi learns a disturbing truth: Ariyoshi Aoshima's body was never found, and there were no records of his family in the region; it was as if he were a "ghost who bled real blood". Despite this lingering mystery, Sakaki grows up, inheriting the energetic and driven personality of the "late" Kiyomi, even demanding to learn martial arts like her brother Taro. Kiyomi eventually relents, allowing Sakaki to study the ways of the samurai, provided she excelled in feminine studies as well.

After decades of performing her duty, Kiyomi officially retires as Kenji Hasegawa, claiming that the lingering effects of his old illness and age have finally caught up to him. She formally passes the head of household role and the family heirloom katana to Taro, who is now a mature lord with his own son, Hiroshi.

In the epilogue, Kiyomi finally sheds the identity of Kenji and lives out her years in quiet peace, tending her garden and spending time with Yui, her mother, and her growing family.

The mystery of Ariyoshi is finally resolved in the metaphysical realm: the entity that manifested as Ariyoshi Aoshima reveals that the conception of Sakaki was due to the deliberate intervention by the soul of the dead Kenji Hasegawa, carried out due to Kenji’s guilt over stripping Kiyomi of her identity and preventing her from experiencing motherhood. The child, Sakaki, was Kenji’s "necessity" and "gift" to his sister, allowing Kenji’s soul to finally fade away and find peace. Kiyomi's lifelong lie thus ultimately forged a truth more enduring than steel, guaranteeing her family's survival and allowing her to find peace as her true self.

Kiyomi, posing as the samurai Kenji Hasegawa, received Miyuki Aoshima as a concubine and secret assignment from her lord. Miyuki was a former kunoichi with a visibly broken spirit, and Kiyomi was designated as her handler, with full authority to use her or dispose of her if she could not be reformed. Kiyomi recognized Miyuki’s presence as a significant threat to her absolute secret.

For three months, Miyuki served with complete obedience but showed "absolutely no soul" or initiative necessary for a useful kunoichi. Kiyomi decided to eliminate the threat and, offering a knife, commanded Miyuki to dispose of herself. Miyuki accepted instantly, thanking her master.

Miyuki then chose to die not as a warrior, but by slitting her throat as an "ordinary concubine would". This specific act was her final, "unspoken gift of silence," ensuring Kenji’s secret, that he was a woman, would remain buried. Miyuki had realized Kenji's true gender weeks earlier, feeling a faint love for the woman behind the mask, but was too spiritually "deadened inside to say, ask, or do anything about it".

Kiyomi immediately commanded the guards that Miyuki had "taken her own life". Following the cremation, the blood-stained tatami mat was secretly replaced, attributed to "spilled ink". Kiyomi’s sister-in-law, Yui, performed public rituals with a mask of "dignified sorrow" to appear graciously unaffected by the tragedy, while Miyuki's sacrifice became "Another ghost in the garden" and a new secret for Kiyomi to bury.