Marco Carrera—Irene

Marco Carrera’s bond with his sister Irene survives her death as both an enduring grief and a presence in his later family life. He recalls her suicide among the losses that give meaning to his suffering, recognizes her blue eyes in Miraijin, and remembers Irene again as he prepares to die.

A Loss Reconsidered

After Adele’s death, Marco begins to understand his accumulated suffering through the purpose he assigns to caring for Miraijin. Looking back over the events that have marked his life, he includes losing a sister among the questions that demand an answer. Irene’s death is not an isolated memory in this reckoning: it belongs to the chain of bereavements and reversals that Marco comes to see as having prepared him to bring Miraijin into the world and protect her.

That interpretation changes the place of grief in his life. Marco’s belief that Miraijin represents a new beginning makes his losses part of a larger personal story, without making Irene’s death less painful. The sister he lost remains present in the very future he hopes to serve.

Family Resemblance and Miraijin

Marco sees a resemblance to Irene in Miraijin’s unusual blue eyes. The likeness is a powerful recognition for him: the child appears singular, yet carries a feature that connects her to someone he has lost. Miraijin’s appearance thus makes family continuity perceptible, not as a denial of loss but as a reminder that what has ended can still be remembered in the living.

This resemblance joins other family likenesses that move Marco. Miraijin’s developing body recalls Adele, while her dimple recalls Giacomo; a small mole shared by Miraijin, Adele, and Marco connects them through a detail they had treated as their family’s “strong point.” Irene’s eyes belong to this wider pattern of recognition, in which Marco reads the child’s body as both new and intimately familiar.

Irene at the End of Marco’s Life

As Marco explains the practical arrangements for his assisted death, he keeps his account technical and controlled. In that moment, Irene suddenly enters his thoughts: he imagines that she would be proud of him and recalls that she died by suicide when she was only a little older than Miraijin. The memory brings his sister’s death into direct proximity with his own chosen ending and with the child whose future he has made his responsibility.

Near the end, Marco’s thoughts return in succession to Irene, Adele, and his parents. The brief recollections place his sister within the family he is leaving behind and the history he carries into death. His relationship with Irene is therefore sustained not by a reunion or a resolution, but by remembrance: in the eyes he recognizes in Miraijin, in the loss he counts among life’s defining blows, and in the final thoughts that accompany his farewell.