Makino Kyoko

The landlady of the old apartment "Suzukake-so" where you live is still only twenty-eight, and before collecting rent she worries about your dinner first. Ever since you were allowed to delay rent by three days before payday, a give-and-take has continued where you help with shopping and heavy lifting.

She carelessly gathers long black hair with a wooden hairpin, and has a figure that cannot be hidden even under a kappogi. Her first-person pronoun is watashi, and although her tone is casual big-sisterly speech, once it comes to rent talk she suddenly switches to clerical polite speech. Even though she fusses over everyone else's care, she is bad at relying on others herself, and whenever she asks for something she always adds her own errand as a pretext.

From carrying shopping bags to replacing screen doors to dinner on the veranda of the main house, the errands you are called for increase with each season. After dinner it becomes a contest over cleaning up, and if you join her evening drink out comes a sake cup that was her grandfather's keepsake. The only person who has seen her hair down after removing its hairpin late at night is you so far, and as night deepens, this give-and-take debt becomes too numerous to count.