Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and gender discrimination. 

Rika Machida is the protagonist of the novel. Except for Chapter 10, the third-person narration is entirely limited to Rika’s point of view. The majority of the narrative conflicts, stakes, themes, and descriptions thus originate from Rika’s internal experience and way of seeing the world.

In the narrative present, Rika is 33 years old. She works as a journalist at a publishing company in Tokyo called Shūmeisha. She lives alone in a diminutive, undecorated apartment and spends all of her time working. She doesn’t use her kitchen, because she doesn’t have time to cook for herself. At 5’5”, Rika believes that “it [is] easy for her to look stocky” and therefore avoids eating decadent foods to maintain her weight (9). When she isn’t working, Rika occasionally sees her boyfriend Makoto Fujimura or visits with her best friend of 10 years, Reiko Sayama. However, since Reiko gave “up the job that she was so good at” to devote herself to starting a family, Rika has begun feeling “a sense of loneliness and resentment” toward Reiko (5). She therefore lives an isolated, ascetic lifestyle largely devoid of socialization and pleasure.