Narcissus

Narcissus is the mythic figure whose reflection gives Kido a way to think beyond vanity, toward the entanglement of origins, isolation, and identity. In Ovid’s account, Narcissus’s gaze into the water does not simply express self-love: it turns him toward the history that made him, a past he cannot erase or return to. His myth also places him beside Echo, whose constrained speech makes mutual recognition difficult until their final exchange. As Kido reads, Narcissus becomes a lens through which he considers Makoto Hara and the many people who have exchanged family registers in pursuit of another life.

Myth and Origin

Kido encounters Narcissus while reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses on a flight to Miyazaki. He had bought the Iwanami bunko edition after searching online for a reliable account of the Narcissus myth, hoping to complete a question Sota had raised two Christmases earlier. The book proves far more symbolically intricate than he had expected, and he doubts he can explain it to Sota; he nevertheless continues reading for his own interest.

Ovid’s account makes Narcissus the child of the river god Cephissus and Liriope, a water nymph. Kido is struck by the circumstances of Narcissus’s conception, described in the myth as an act of violence. That origin changes the meaning of the water Narcissus stares into: it is not merely the surface on which he admires himself, but a sign of his parentage and of the conflict between his parents. To see himself, Narcissus must look toward the circumstances of his beginning. He cannot undo that past, yet neither can he return to it or reconnect with it. Kido’s reading thus makes Narcissus’s reflection an image of a self bound to an origin that remains present without being recoverable.

Narcissus and Echo

The myth also turns on an asymmetry between Narcissus and Echo. Narcissus sees only his reflection and so remains enclosed in a world centered on himself; Echo, cursed by Juno to repeat the endings of other people’s speech, cannot readily make her own love known. She comes from a domain foreign to his, yet their forms of isolation answer one another: he cannot see beyond his own image, while she can speak only through another person’s words.

Their separation is briefly crossed near Narcissus’s death. When the reflected youth repeats his lament, the two voices meet in an exchange of grief and farewell. Kido wonders whether Narcissus might at last feel joy on hearing the beloved voice answer him, and whether Echo’s repetition could also be uniquely hers because it gives voice to the words she wanted to say. The questions do not resolve the myth; they draw attention to the narrow, unstable point at which repetition might become communication. Echo’s dependence on another’s speech and Narcissus’s dependence on his own reflection leave both isolated, but their final exchange momentarily brings those separate forms of longing together.

The Wish to Leave the Body

A line in which Narcissus wishes he could depart from his own body leads Kido to think of Hara. Both figures, in Kido’s comparison, wanted to leave their bodies, but the desires he attributes to them are different. Narcissus might have been able to love himself if he could separate from the self he sees; Hara wanted to become someone else, to love another person, and to be loved in return.

Kido’s comparison then turns inward. Hara’s effort to become a stranger may also have begun as a search for self-love—not merely love for the name Makoto Hara, but for the person who ought to have existed. Narcissus and Hara are not presented as having the same life or motive: the myth gives Kido a way to frame a question about Hara’s assumed identity, rather than a definitive explanation of him. In both cases, the wish to escape the existing self remains connected to the problem of whether that self can be recognized or loved.

Transformation and Kido’s Reflection

Kido finds no simple answer in Metamorphoses to Sota’s question about why Narcissus transforms. Instead, the book offers a range of transformations shaped by different causes and losses: Phaethon’s sisters become trees as they grieve for their brother; Actaeon is changed into a stag after seeing Diana bathing and is killed by his own dogs, who do not recognize him; Daphne becomes a laurel tree while fleeing Apollo. These stories resist reducing transformation to a single explanation.

As the myths pass through Kido’s mind, his thoughts widen from Hara to the people whose family registers were exchanged through Omiura. Like the figures in Ovid, they may have been forced into becoming someone different through grief, desperation, or pressure from others. Their outcomes are not uniform: some find love and happiness, while others fall further from grace. Narcissus therefore belongs to a larger pattern in Kido’s reflections, where transformation can be sought or imposed, and where adopting another form does not guarantee release from the past. The myth’s lasting significance in this episode lies in the questions it lets Kido carry between the reflected self, the borrowed identity, and the difficult hope of becoming someone one can love.