Natsume Mochizuki is the main female protagonist of the story. She begins as a sixth-grade girl working as a teen model in Tokyo, where she is already accustomed to attention and a degree of fame. Her life takes a sharp turn when her family moves to the rural town of Ukigumo to help run her ailing grandfather's inn. This relocation forces her to leave behind the vibrant, fast-paced world she loved and to adapt to a quiet, isolated environment that initially feels suffocating to her.

Natsume is described as strikingly beautiful, and her appearance often draws the gaze of others, a trait that becomes both a source of power and a source of danger throughout the story. She possesses a strong will and a fierce desire for something more than the ordinary life her new surroundings offer. Her personality is marked by a restless hunger for excitement and validation, which makes her drawn to people and situations that promise intensity. She is not passive; she actively pursues her goals, continuing her modeling career even against her father's wishes. At the same time, she can be vulnerable and emotional, especially when confronting trauma and rejection.

Her central motivation is the need to feel alive and to be seen as special. This drive initially stems from her career as a model but deepens into a more complex yearning for connection and self-definition. She is deeply affected by her move to the countryside, which feels like a stripping away of her identity. Her relationship with Koichiro Hasegawa, a local boy from a powerful family, becomes the axis around which her emotional world revolves. She is intensely attracted to his wild, unpredictable nature, and she sees in him a reflection of her own inner turmoil and longing.

In the story, Natsume serves as the lens through which the themes of adolescent desire, violence, and the search for identity are explored. Her role is that of a teenager caught between the ordinary and the extreme, between her ambition and her vulnerability. Her relationship with Koichiro is central to the plot: it is passionate, obsessive, and ultimately corrosive. They share a bond that is both romantic and destructive, testing the boundaries of their young lives. After a traumatic incident in which she is stalked and nearly assaulted, she and Koichiro break apart. She later enters a more conventional relationship with a classmate named Katsutoshi Otomo, but this connection lacks the fire of her bond with Koichiro.

Her development is marked by a gradual hardening and a struggle to reclaim agency. She suffers a violent attack by a stalker, which leaves lasting psychological wounds. In the climax of the story, a second attempted assault leads to a confrontation that ends with the stalker's death. This event forces Natsume to confront the darkness within herself and her relationship with Koichiro. She eventually returns to Tokyo and becomes a successful actress, winning an award for her performance. In the end, she carries the memory of Koichiro with her, seeing him as a kind of guiding god, while accepting that they cannot be together. Her final scenes show her as a grown woman who has integrated her traumatic past into her art, even as she continues to feel haunted by what she has lost.

Natsume's notable abilities lie in her talent for modeling and acting, which she pursues with determination despite obstacles. She is also emotionally perceptive, able to sense the hidden currents in those around her. Perhaps her most defining quality is her resilience: she endures profound personal crises and still finds a way to move forward, channeling her pain into her creative work.