Character Arc
As a teenager in Hokkaido, Yae is luminous and full of ambition, dreaming of becoming a flight attendant and singing along to Utada Hikaru with the certainty of someone who believes the future will keep its promises. Her romance with Harumichi is the great event of her young life, a connection so complete it seems impossible that anything could come between them. Then a car accident steals her memories, and the bright girl she was becomes a stranger even to herself.
In the present, the adult Yae drives a taxi through the night, a single mother whose life has narrowed to survival and quiet endurance. She carries the ache of a love she cannot remember but cannot fully shake, an absence that shapes her like a phantom limb. Mitsushima plays her with a guarded gentleness, letting small flickers of the old Yae surface in unguarded moments.
Her arc is a slow, aching reawakening, as fragments of the past return and the woman she became begins to recognize the girl she was. When Harumichi reenters her orbit, Yae must decide whether to reach for a happiness she once thought lost. Her journey gives the series its emotional spine, a testament to how love can survive even the erasure of memory.