Fusagi

Quick Facts

A quiet, middle-aged regular at Funiculi Funicula and the central figure of “Husband and Wife.” A landscape gardener facing early-onset Alzheimer’s. First appears in Chapter 1 (glimpsed with a travel magazine), becomes central in Chapter 2. Key relationship: Kohtake (his wife). Signature objects: a travel magazine and a sealed letter. Key theme: Acceptance and The Unchanging Present.

Who They Are

Beneath his unassuming exterior, Fusagi is a man holding on to one last, crystalline purpose: deliver a letter to his wife before his illness erases her from his mind. He’s introduced as a “dull-looking man” in workmanlike clothes—fleecy-sleeved jacket, navy polo and shorts, setta sandals—details that ground him as practical and ordinary. That ordinariness makes his private crisis feel even more devastating: he’s not a grand tragic hero, just a husband trying to secure one loving truth before time seals it off.

Personality & Traits

Fusagi’s personality is filtered through the fog of Alzheimer’s, but his choices reveal the core he’s protecting: a gentle, self-effacing love. The contrast between his quiet exterior and his painstaking, single-minded mission sharpens the story’s emotional stakes—he is withdrawing from the world even as he arranges a final act of connection.

• Quiet and reserved: Sits alone absorbed in a travel magazine; avoids small talk unless prompted (Chapter 1). His reticence intensifies as the disease progresses, shrinking his social world.
• Forgetful: The staged decline—forgetting his wife’s name, then her face—turns memory loss from a trait into the plot’s central conflict (Chapter 2).
• Secretly determined: Returns to the café day after day, waiting for the chance to time travel and hand over his letter. His patience reads as resolve rather than passivity.
• Loving and considerate: The letter centers Kohtake’s well-being, not his own; he asks her to choose as a wife, not feel bound as a nurse. Even while fading, he protects the dignity of their marriage.

Character Journey

Fusagi’s arc is a regression in memory but a revelation in meaning. Present-day Fusagi moves from quiet familiarity to the shattering moment when he no longer recognizes his wife, dramatizing how illness strips away identity. Yet when Kohtake travels two years into the past, we meet a lucid, anxious, profoundly gentle Fusagi who understands what’s coming and writes a letter to safeguard the part of their bond he can still control. The paradox of his journey is that love persists where memory cannot: the man who forgets is also the man who planned for forgetting, preserving his marital promise even as his self erodes.

Key Relationships

• Kohtake
  Their marriage anchors the chapter: Fusagi’s every action—waiting at the café, writing the letter, consenting to be left if necessary—aims to protect her from being trapped in a caregiver’s role. The relationship reframes memory loss from a private tragedy into a shared negotiation of dignity and duty, a living argument about love’s form when recollection fails. Their story crystallizes the theme of Love, Communication, and Regret: the letter says what daily life can no longer safely say.

• The Café Staff
  Nagare Tokita and Kazu Tokita function as guardians of routine and ritual, giving Fusagi a steady world as his inner one unravels. Their gentle interventions—calling his wife when needed, honoring the rules without spectacle—let dignity replace pity.

Defining Moments

Fusagi’s most revealing scenes pair ordinary gestures with devastating implications: a polite question, a sealed envelope, a magazine note scrawled beside a place name.

• Forgetting Kohtake (Chapter 2)
  When she sits across from him and he asks, “I’m sorry. Have we met before?”, the illness stops being background and becomes the emotional front line.
  Why it matters: It resets the stakes—Kohtake isn’t just supporting a declining husband; she’s now invisible to the person who defines her.

• Giving the letter in the past (Chapter 2)
  In their time-crossed meeting, lucid Fusagi hands over the letter he prepared before the illness advanced. He names his fear, then crafts a path through it.
  Why it matters: The scene provides Healing and Emotional Closure without curing anything; love acts within the limits of the café’s rules and the illness’s reality.

• The travel magazine habit (Chapters 1–2)
  He pores over destinations and jots notes—not random browsing, but an anchor to the trips they took together.
  Why it matters: It’s memory-work in disguise, proof that even as recall falters, devotion seeks structures to keep their life legible.

Essential Quotes

“I’m sorry. Have we met before?” (Chapter 2)

A knife-twist in the politest voice. The apology softens the blow even as it delivers it, showing how the disease preserves manners while erasing intimacy. The line transforms Kohtake’s presence from comfort into crisis.

“So I forget? I forget you?” (Chapter 2)

Spoken by the past, lucid Fusagi, this is fear made plain. The repetition enacts the very slipping he dreads and forces both of them to confront what love must look like when recognition disappears.

“You are my wife, and if life becomes too hard for you as my wife, I want you to leave me. You don’t have to stay by me as a nurse. If I am no good as a husband, then I want you to leave me. All I ask is that you can do what you can as my wife. We are husband and wife after all. Even if I lose my memory, I want to be together as husband and wife.” (Chapter 2)

The letter insists on the marital bond as a choice, not a medical obligation. By distinguishing “wife” from “nurse,” Fusagi protects Kohtake’s agency and the dignity of their relationship; paradoxically, his permission to leave becomes the deepest expression of wanting to stay.