Hayashi

* Hayashi
* Past

**Hayashi** is one of the main characters in Pet whose memory operation is a wind "image". After helping Satoru he seemingly left for China before resurfacing and coming into contact with Tsukasa again.

## Personality

He shows a supportive side of his character, warmly speaking to others and is patient, taking time in explaining matters. When trying to evade detection he thinks to state he has headed to a different country.

Living by himself he lives a relatively minimalist lifestyle, making use of just a bed and TV in an apartment and using a payphone, the latter to help avoid detection. He is of the view that those who carry fear in their hearts also think of ways to guard it.

Rather than be pleased that he had a hand in creating a pet that could not disobey orders, Hayashi was angered since it denied the child a normal life. He feels a great deal of regret in sharing his Peak having seen the results.

## Appearance

He has long silvery grey hair pulled back and held tied behind his head. There are thin strands by the sides in front of his ears that reach to his shoulders. Hayashi has long thin eyebrows above his small emerald green colored eyes. There is also some stubble on his upper lip and chin.

Hayashi is seen wearing a faded olive green T-shirt and pale blue trousers with basic brown shoes and black soles.

## History

With other qigong masters he was patient in helping to take care of Lianlian, and also supported Katsuragi looking after her since they were close.

Hayashi approaches Katsuragi and repeats what a nurse said, for him to stop smoking inside the hospital. He was out in the car park looking for him and leaving, he comes across a young boy named Satoru.

Seating himself beside him in front of the television, Hayashi takes the form of a small cyclone and enters a disturbing environment consisting of a woman's dismembered body parts and anguished voice. Finding Satoru engulfed in that setting, Hayashi speaks to him and introduces himself by saying he is a bit like Matasaburo the wind spirit, before reasoning Satoru is too young to have heard about that.

    Deducing the environment around them is Satoru's mother's inner turmoil, Hayashi explains that Satoru experiences these places because the portal to his heart is always open. Impressed at Satoru using his image to have a door appear, he suggests they use that to go to Satoru's favorite place in the world. With him not having one, Hayashi offers to take them both to his, instead.

Heading through the lone door, Hayashi's favorite place is a serene expanse of meadow, with a river, and mountain range before them. He has the power to freely shape his future and explains that Satoru can live a normal life, advising him to keep his peak and valley closed to all others.

Back in the hospital room, Hayashi returns to Katsuragi as Satoru is led away. Helping him into the room, Hayashi is angered by what he finds Katsuragi doing.

It is remembered that Hayashi was present with Satoru who as a child had both his parents pass away. As Satoru's grandmother spoke with Katsuragi, he took Satoru to go play games out back. Seeing that Satoru remembers him, Hayashi re-enters the room, asking what Katsuragi is doing. With Satoru's grandmother crushed upon the orders of higher ups in the company, he states he did not have to do it now, what if Satoru had been induced at the same time. Telling Satoru not to worry, he states he will be looking after him from now on.

When a teenager, Hayashi divulged to Satoru how the Company's bosses are scared of them, hence why they never meet with them directly. They have their guards just as they protect their Peaks. Trusting Satoru in his Peak, he poses a question on how he thinks the Company bosses make sure they stay in line. It is achieved by lookouts in addition to ears in the wall, which is why he is speaking to Satoru in his Peak. Both monitors can be exploited, the ears are handy when one needs an alibi, the ears will listen to excuses spoken aloud. Plus, human lookouts can become carrier pigeons, people who they can bend to their will and freely divulge information without them knowing when a keyword is used.

Advising Satoru to pretend that never heard what Hayashi told him, if the Company found out they knew this they would regard them as a threat.

Hayashi appeared to comfort Meiling when she was unsettled by the burning happening in her mind. He told her there was no other way but for her to look at her butterfly and Hayashi promised he would come back for her one day.

In a separate incident, he is sat in a small island within a river explaining to the young Tsukasa that this locus is home to the best memories of a certain person who used to look after him, but he cannot remember who it was anymore. Enjoying the breeze, he does not feel scared when he is here. Contemplating the stream, Hayashi says the water runs down from a mountain in the distance, flowing for miles until reaching the ocean..

In the time where he left the Company, Hayashi was in an area with wooden huts as he typed a message for Satoru on a laptop. This would be stored on a memory stick that would be given to Katsuragi. He warned Satoru not to trust the Company, indeed escape from them and also help Tsukasa and Hiroki.

Tsukasa was living with him at one point until Katsuragi moved him. Hayashi heard from the CEO that they could not have the image users together considering the background of the qigong masters and his father. Hayashi deemed that Tsukasa had been kidnapped and told the CEO that he had no intention of having Tsukasa do Company work.

He took Tsukasa to enjoy the beach at some point. In another incident he finds Meiling screaming as her Peak begins to burn.

With the CEO not wanting Katsuragi to have anything to do with his daughter for what happened to her mother, Hayashi explains that Lianlian is close to forming Katsuragi's Peak so if the memories are removed it is likely he will be crushed. Hayashi has come up with another way that will involve hiding half his Peak.

## Story

Some time later, Hayashi had stated that he had gone to China, before being found by Katsuragi having holed himself up in Japan the whole time.

In the present time, Hayashi is staying at apartment 302 where he receives char siu noodles from a Fukurai delivery guy. Heading the get cash, he tells him to keep the change.

Presently, Hayashi eats his noodles with a memory stick nearby. Finishing, he drops his bowl off at the lobby where he acquires control of the building manager. Since he is an agent for Katsuragi, Hayashi listens in on their conversation with the manager led to say that Hayashi has gone back to his room, in reality he is observing Katsuragi walk by himself outside. Hayashi thinks at last he has left the building, he knew Katsuragi would be stingy over change when the Fukurai delivery guy assumed he would get to keep it. Thanking Katsuragi for staying alive these past two years, he produces the memory stick as he says if not for him, his plan would not have been possible.

Stating that it has been a long time, he joins Katsuragi in a shop. Tapping into Katsuragi's fear of cats, Hayashi imitates one assuming physical features as well when he interrogates him on where he can find Satoru. Hearing that he will not see Satoru anytime soon at the hotel in Ikebukuo, Hayashi declares he is going to borrow Katsuragi's car and escape so requests his car key.

The cat illusion fades as Katsuragi points a gun at him. Resorting to the elderly woman again, Hayashi succeeds in snaring Katsuragi's mind. Making him remember his youth as Tadashi, with experiences of the family that took him in and a man with many cats, Hayashi uses a doll representing Katsuragi's mother to lock away his secrets in a memory drive. Hayashi uses the doll to tell Katsuragi to give this to Mr. Matasa, himself. Snapping his fingers causes Katsuragi to fall unconscious, and Hayashi takes his car keys and runs.

Preparing to drive away, Hayashi sees Tsukasa before the car and views him as his younger self. Asking what he is doing here, he replies that he has not seen Katsuragi since he is looking for Satoru. Hearing he is in the direction of Tokyo, after listening to Tsukasa's pleasantries, it dawns on him that even if Tsukasa is taking him there, he will not be allowed to see Satoru.

With the cars movements tracked as he drives to Shimokusuhashi, he ignores Tsukasa's suggestion that letting him into the car was his biggest mistake by asking if he has seen Meiling. Rejecting the notion she is his greatest masterpiece, Hayashi is angered that the girl was taken away before she was able to create a lock and will never be able to have a normal life like that.

Goaded further, he explains he did not show her how to use an image so that she could be turned into a puppet. He received an ultimatum from the Company: continue to make puppets for them, or crush Satoru. Lamenting that because he found Satoru his parents were murdered in a staged accident, he feels a need to defend him. Listening to Tsukasa's expression of sorrow that he intends to run away with Satoru, Hayashi is told that he is to be crushed.

It is all because of Hayashi, due to his selfish attempt to escape, and he listens further to Tsukasa on why he could not just keep making "babies" for the Company. Leaving the car, he did not share his Peak to create a load of pawns, he just wanted to help Satori and Tsukasa.

Walking through the forest, he remembers telling Tsukasa as a child that the Company instructed him he could not raise both him and Satoru. This memory also has Hayashi end with telling Tsukasa that if he absolutely insists, the three of them could live together. The memory rewrite attempt is unsuccessful.

Attempting to reason that he wanted Tsukasa to know his true feelings, his desire to redo things differently is met with Tsukasa materializing into his water image. Wind currents sweep around him to dissipate the water particles surging upwards from Tsukasa. If Hayashi wants to redo it all, he will have to restore Tsukasa to what he was, a kid destined for organ harvesting. The situation is that Hayashi must crush Tsukasa or he will crush Satoru. Replying that Tsukasa knows full well he cannot crush him, likewise he cannot match Hayashi's speed to crush him.

Responding with a blast of air when Tsukasa moves towards him, Hayashi joins him in a memory of him and Katsuragi at a manor. He is going to take Tsukasa with him, even if he does not want him to. Told that he is unable to change his memories, Hayashi has Tsukasa show his lock to him. A purple vortex transports them to an aquarium where the young Tsukasa is explaining locks to Hiroki as he rides a goldfish.

Picking up on Tsukasa's strong lock, Hayashi infers how obvious it is that something valuable is there. He asks what that dog is there for as he observes one sniffing around the aquarium plants. Asking if he is right on whether the dog is the entrance to Tsukasa's Valley, and hiding his Peak, Hayashi tells him we will use that as the access point as he evanesces Tsukasa's water form away.

Knowing where to find his valley, Hayashi joins Tsukasa in a horribly diseased version of a landscape with decomposing matter all around including corpses. Hovering beside him, Hayashi says sorry that there is no other way now than to change Tsukasa's memories, but he will carry the weight of his pain.

His upper torso is suspended in a small cyclone attached to a flower in Tsukasa's Peak. Listening to him speak, Hayashi is then wrapped with water tendrils from Tsukasa and then encased in a water orb. Asked if he is familiar with puddles, Hayashi finds himself looking into one at his own reflection. Now in his own Peak, he stares dumbfounded at how this could happen. His Peak had been entered when he shared it with Tsukasa who left a puddle, a back door entrance to it.

Hayashi runs and asks if Tsukasa has any idea of what he is doing as the water from the stream rises into the sky. Remarking that Tsukasa's lock is supposed to keep his sensitivity in check, but that he is using it in reverse, Hayashi comments that Tsukasa removing his lock to come here means it is directly linked to Tsukasa's Peak as well. Hayashi warns that if this place is crushed then Tsukasa's Peak will be effected as well.

Splattered by a rain of blood, with body parts falling as well, he earnestly instructs Tsukasa so get out of here now before he is crushed too. Within the forest, Hayashi's body is found by Katsuragi lying open mouthed and unresponsive having been crushed.

With Meiling troubled by bugs emerging from a vision of Shengjie Chen, a younger appearing Hayashi calls for her to focus on the butterfly. It is before him and he tells her when she is in her house to only look at the butterfly, and not the burning flames in the distance. Hayashi says there is no other way but to do that, but he promises he will come back for her one day.

He is remembered by Satoru when he is on a job to crush an ambassador, and it has been two years without any contact.

At the Yamako General Hospital, in the mortuary, Hayashi's wind image emanates and leads Hiroki down several stories to where his body is being kept. Attached to life support systems, inside his mind Hayashi appears in and out of his Peak in which only the top of a mountain is visible in the sea of blood, with the sky above blackened.

Telling Hiroki to get out, Hayashi then asks where he can find Satoru. A memory shows him confronting Katsuragi over a perceived broken promise to not force Tsukasa to raise a pet. Told the CEO did not order anything, and Tsukasa requested one himself having learned from the example of how he found Satoru, Hayashi is angered that it continues the cycle.

Another memory shows him told by Ron, with Meiling unresponsive nearby, that he has shared his Peak many times before. Hayashi feels different now since this is how people are made slaves. He was informed that Tsukasa hates him, and with his pet would have no problem crushing Satoru.

Feeling it is all his fault, he can only think he was sorry for finding Satoru and beginning all this before ejecting Hiroki from the memory. The Locus having vanished, Hayashi's image has disappeared as well as he lays on the stretcher.

An apparition of Hayashi appeared to ask whether Meiling was listening. Hayashi confided her to tell a man with a scar (Satoru) the secret that one of his carrier pigeons (Katsuragi) is still flying around. A visage of him is used to replace Tsukasa in a doctored memory so that Satoru sees him as the one who revealed how to create babies.

Hayashi has been transferred to hospital and his crushed state of being is remembered by Satoru.

## Images

Tracking KatsuragiExploiting a fear of catsEscaping in Katsuragi's carHis wind image against Tsukasa's waterPartially a whirlwindCaptured by Tsukasa's water imageThe collapse beginsFound alive in the mortuaryKept on life supportHayashi's life support readingsAble to speak with Hiroki
## Relationships

Hayashi interacts with various characters throughout the Pet story, for his views on and relationships with other characters: Hayashi/Relationships

## Concepts

### Image

His image is that of the wind which allows him to transition into a cyclone when using his image.

### Peak

A large expanse of lush green grass with a river running through it. Hayashi's peak also has white and sand colored rock formations on either side, with an arched rainbow in the cloud filled blue sky. Here there are a number of large, almost hand sized black butterflies with dark orange sections on their lower wings.

## Trivia

* According to Satoru, Hayashi told him he cannot remember anything before he was fifteen years old.

## References

1. ↑ Episode 13: Rainbow
2. ↑ Episode 1
3. ↑ Chapter 1
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Episode 4: Jobs
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Episode 5: A Trap for Hayashi
6. ↑ Episode 7: Revenge
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Episode 12: Carrier Pigeon
8. ↑ Episode 3: Jobs
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Episode 6: Back Door
10. ↑ Episode 7: Revenge
11. ↑ Episode 8: Intrigue
12. ↑ Episode 9: The Way the Wind Blows
13. ↑ Episode 11: Reunion