Takagi

Takagi is a customer at the bar where Misuzu works whose advances become one reason she leaves the job. His conduct makes visible a pattern she describes as both familiar and unwelcome: men’s attraction to her does not translate into the serious relationship she wants.

Advances at the Bar

Misuzu tells Kido that Takagi had been coming on to her so insistently that she could no longer endure it. At first, she took his remarks for half-joking lines; over time, they became increasingly earnest. The shift from flirtation to pressure is central to her account of why the bar stopped feeling like a place she could comfortably work.

She later specifies that Takagi tried to get her to go home with him after work. She calls the approach vulgar, and contrasts it with his behavior when she had visited the bar as a customer: he had not acted that way then. The difference suggests that the unwanted attention arose within the changed relationship between worker and customer, rather than having been present from the start.

Misuzu’s Decision to Quit

Takagi’s behavior was not the only reason Misuzu left. She had also lost interest in chatting with customers, especially after attending demonstrations; working at the bar had begun to feel like a chore. She says she had taken the job for amusement, not money, and saw little reason to stay once it stopped being fun. Standing all night had become tiring as well. Her departure thus reflects several accumulating pressures, with Takagi’s advances forming a particularly personal one.

Misuzu resists the idea that she is responsible for men’s conduct. She says people lecture her that she leaves a crack in her defenses and thereby gives men the wrong impression, but rejects that explanation in Takagi’s case. Kido agrees that it is not her fault. The exchange situates Takagi’s conduct within a wider pattern of blaming women for unwanted attention rather than holding the pursuer accountable.

Role in Misuzu’s Account

Misuzu says men repeatedly lust after her but do not want anything serious, presenting the pattern with a smile that makes light of a frustration she plainly recognizes. Takagi’s advances are a concrete instance of that mismatch: his attention is intense, but the episode offers no indication of the committed connection she says she wants. In her account, quitting the bar is both a practical response to exhaustion and a refusal to keep working in a setting where customer interaction has become unpleasant.