Eiji Miyake

Eiji Miyake is the novel's main character. Following the death of his twin sister just a week after their eleventh birthday, Eiji's driving ambition has been to discover the identity of his father and to meet him, but many obstacles stand in his way, and not all of them are external.

Over the course of the story, it becomes clear that Eiji has dealt with the death of Anju by not dealing with it. He withdraws from everyone connected with his sister. Shortly after her death, he goes deep into the woods as an escape, and when he comes out he can no longer stay in his grandmother's house, where he and Anju grew up. Instead, he spends his adolescence moving from one uncle's house to the next. He rejects his mother completely, and although she is rarely around anyway, it becomes clear that, over time, this...