Naoko Osato, sole heir to a centuries-old miso-producing dynasty, inhabits her family’s secluded mountain-ringed estate. Her overprotective parents enforced strict control, employing a private chauffeur for her daily two-hour school commute and forbidding independent living. They later secured her engagement to Shuichi, a socially suitable match, post-graduation. Defying their constraints, Naoko clandestinely pursued a romance with Gunpei Kamafusa, the estate gardener. As her wedding loomed, Naoko sought to sever ties with Gunpei, triggering a struggle that ended with him fatally impaled on a golf club. His corpse defied natural decay, oozing endless blood that accelerated decomposition. Panicked, Naoko consumed traces of his blood to evade suspicion when Shuichi and her father arrived. She concealed the body in a ceiling closet, routinely collecting its blood in glass bottles. Though decaying, Gunpei’s remains intermittently regained facial cohesion upon water contact. Naoko, morbidly devoted, bore two children—Kiriko and Kai—fathered posthumously by Gunpei. She wed Shuichi, upholding a veneer of marital normalcy while secretly tending to the corpse. The children believed Shuichi their father, though Kai idolized Gunpei’s former profession, aspiring to gardening. Years later, investigator Rohan Kishibe uncovered Mutsukabezaka, a yokai inhabiting Gunpei’s corpse and later Kiriko, explaining its supernatural persistence and Naoko’s pregnancy. The TV adaptation depicted Naoko discovering water’s revivifying effect on the corpse and her tense exchanges with Rohan. Despite revelations, Naoko sustained her dual existence: dutiful wife and mother by day, keeper of macabre secrets by night. Her narrative weaves familial obligation, clandestine passion, and spectral horror, tracing her evolution from insulated aristocrat to a woman ensnared by supernatural forces. Desperation and unresolved ties to Gunpei drive her choices, etching the corrosive impact of secrecy and societal rebellion.