A recently discharged servant of a samurai household left destitute by the gradual decline of Kyoto. He wears a blue kimono and carries a sword with a bare hilt. A prominent, festering pimple marks his right cheek. Stranded at the desolate gate with no source of income, he faces a difficult choice between starving or becoming a thief to survive.

An impoverished, aging woman who has found a grim method of survival in the ruins of Kyoto. She possesses animalistic features, moving like a monkey and speaking with a crow-like voice. Relying on a pine torch to navigate the dark, she scavenges among the abandoned bodies left at the gate. She openly justifies her behavior as a basic necessity for staying alive.

A deceased woman whose body has been left unburied at the ruined gate after succumbing to the plague. In life, she worked as a merchant with a reputation for selling dried snake meat as fish to the city guards. Her corpse attracts attention because of her long black hair, which scavengers harvest for profit.