Misuzu Goto and Daisuké Taniguchi’s former romance

Misuzu Goto and Daisuké Taniguchi’s former romance is a bond preserved in memory but unsettled by identity exchange, separation, and the people the former lovers have since become. When their reunion approaches, Daisuké’s insistence that Misuzu is the person he would want beside him on his deathbed collides with Kido’s recognition that a decade spent living as someone else has opened a gulf between them.

The old triangle

Misuzu’s history with Daisuké is bound up with the estrangement between Daisuké and his older brother, Kyoichi Taniguchi. She tells Kido that Kyoichi had a crush on her and suggests that she may have contributed to the brothers’ falling-out. Her recollection complicates the brothers’ apparent opposition: Kyoichi is the polished, popular player, while Daisuké is awkward and readily made the butt of jokes. Yet Daisuké’s cheerful performance has a breaking point. Misuzu describes him as someone who can seem to enjoy being teased until he suddenly cannot bear it and goes ballistic; what looks abrupt to others, she insists, has been building all along.

That account gives their past romance a place inside a wider family conflict, rather than presenting it as an isolated love story. Misuzu does not claim that her attraction caused the brothers’ rupture outright: she says she may have had something to do with it, and identifies Kyoichi’s crush as the circumstance behind her involvement. Her recollection also offers Kido a way to understand how differences between the brothers might conceal a more complicated resemblance.

Separation and remembered intimacy

Daisuké’s refusal to meet the Taniguchis is categorical. Even if he becomes homeless, he says, he will not see the family; whatever the census records say, he asks that the name Daisuké Taniguchi be allowed to rest in its grave. Misuzu alone is an exception. He tells Kido that he cannot say how long he has wanted to see her again, and that when he imagines himself on his deathbed, she is the only person he wants there. The scene keeps recurring in his mind, a private future imagined across a separation he otherwise refuses to bridge.

His memories of Misuzu have survived the identity exchange more fully than many of his memories of being Daisuké. He says that most of those recollections are barely holding on, but their time as a couple returns to him often, including their sexual intimacy. The vividness is touching in its persistence, but the way he speaks about it is also unsettling: after learning that Misuzu is single, he gives Kido a lecherous smile and calls her the hottest girlfriend he has ever had. The scene places lasting attachment beside a coarse, possessive recollection that may not match the person Misuzu has become.

The approaching reunion

Kido tells Daisuké that Misuzu will arrive in fifteen minutes and describes her as beautiful as ever. Daisuké immediately asks whether she is married and reacts to the news that she is apparently single with excitement. Kido does not answer the question on her behalf, instead telling him to ask her himself. The short exchange turns the long-anticipated reunion into an imminent event while making clear that neither Kido nor the reader yet knows what Misuzu will make of the man waiting for her.

Kido’s cell phone then chimes with word that Misuzu is on her way. He wonders whether seeing her might cause some change in Daisuké, but cannot tell whether she will be painfully disappointed or offer him a helping hand. He even considers whether she might renew her love for him, while recognizing that the outcome is unknowable. Rather than remain to witness the meeting, he bows out, saying that he is leaving because she will be there shortly. Daisuké responds with surprise that he is going.

Memory against change

The reunion’s emotional uncertainty comes from the difference between remembering love and encountering a former lover as he is now. Kido observes that Daisuké seems to have changed since he dated Misuzu. He considers whether Daisuké’s new confidence comes from believing himself to be the child of a yakuza, or whether Daisuké has unconsciously begun to imitate Kyoichi. Kido does not settle on either explanation; he reads the man’s apparent psychological deterioration as a consequence of his circumstances, not as proof of an unchanging innate character.

Daisuké’s aversion to seeing the Taniguchis remains genuine in Kido’s eyes, yet Kido also senses regret about the life Daisuké chose in the exchange. He compares that regret to an investor who sold at a loss just before a stock rose again: Daisuké seems to wish he had considered the swap more carefully and chosen a life closer to the one he began with. The comparison captures a painful asymmetry. Daisuké can insist that the old family name is dead, but his recollection of Misuzu and his second thoughts about the exchange show that the abandoned life has not become emotionally inert.

Significance of the former romance

Before the meeting, Kido realizes that his own feelings have clouded his judgment. He had been slightly jealous when imagining Misuzu and Daisuké reunited; now he recognizes that he underestimated the gap the intervening decade had created, especially because Daisuké has been living another person’s life. The reunion therefore tests not simply whether affection has endured, but whether the remembered couple can meet across altered identities and changed circumstances.

Kido is disturbed by the collision of Daisuké’s sexualized memories and Misuzu’s account of Kyoichi’s persistent desire for her. At the same time, he sympathizes with Daisuké, whose circumstances drove him away from the Taniguchis, and grieves over Hara’s single-minded adoption of Daisuké’s past as his own. The former romance thus sits within the novel’s larger entanglement of people and borrowed lives: it is a genuine attachment, but its surviving memories cannot guarantee recognition or restore the past. The account ends before Misuzu and Daisuké meet, leaving her response—and any renewal of their love—unresolved.