Shingo Kiryū

## Name

**Shingo Kiryū** (鬼柳 新吾, Kiryuu Shingo) is a major character of Mermaid Saga, appearing the story “Eye of the Demon”.

## Biography

Unlike his sister who is sweet, he is insane and violent. He enjoyed killing animals when he was a child, and he loses his right eye when his sister accidentally hit him in the face with a knife as she tried to stop him at one point. He’d continue his madness, setting fires and beating women and children, which were hushed up by his family’s influence, and would blame his actions on the loss of his eye which made his sister feel responsible and always keep him from being punished even by his father who once considered killing him.

In the early 1900s before the Russo-Japanese war, he poisoned her fiancée so she would still defend him, slashed Yuta who was working in their manor after warning him to stay away from her, and thereafter was fed a poison that’s been in their family for generations by Akiko who also ate it. But that poison presumably happened to be mermaid flesh since only Akiko fell in a comatose state while he became immortal as his angered father slashed him saying he should have been the one to die only for him to rise from his grave next to his sister’s. He was consequently put in a cell in the basement of the Kiryu manor and knew his sister was dug out since their father hoped she would come back to life too and though she wouldn’t was being kept in a room sitting on a chair like a life-size doll as she wouldn’t rot.

After a few decades, he managed to convince a girl named Sugiko who was charged to feed him to release him, then ripped his sister’s left eye to replace his missing one and fled. However, after placing his sister’s left eye as his new right eye, the image of himself reaching to rip his sister’s eye which made him look like a regular demon would appear to him whenever he kills someone, as that image was the last thing his sister saw and was burned into her eye.

A year ago, he would return to the Kiryu manor, which is currently owned by an old widow living with an elderly Sugiko who works as the housekeeper, demanding his sister referring her as “the doll” who had been placed by the sunniest window, for he hopes that killing her would make him stop seeing the image he’d constantly see, much to the horror of Sugiko who believes he’s a ghost and hid the doll back in a room in a cellar that was dug to be used as an air raid shelter during the second world war. As the old widow wouldn’t give it to him, he once broke into the manor and attacked her only to be stabbed by an antique candle holder through self-defense.

As 1992 approaches, he would torment the old widow again by making her grab a weapon and stab him with it since she still wouldn’t hand over the doll, and the next day shows up in the Kiryu manor where he finds Yuta having returned with Mana though he didn’t recognize him, and introduces a girl he dates and would later kill during the night due to resembling his sister, in the hopes of making her reveal where his sister was hidden. As he comes back to the manor the day after with the morning paper to let them know what he did, he tries to make an advance to Mana who rejects him then is asked by an angry Yuta if he looks familiar to him only to ignore him as he cuts his hand with a knife. However later in the night, he remembers and realizes that Yuta is the person he thought he had slashed thus that he’s immortal like him, so he decides to break into the manor again. While fighting Yuta in the manor with many weapons including a gun, shotgun and sword after causing a blackout, he learns how he became immortal because of what his sister fed him and asks Yuta how to make his sister die for good, which shocks Yuta learning what he did to her and how she’s still living as she is thus agreeing to guide Shingo to her. He finally sees his sister again in the room in the cellar and watches Yuta, who believed she would never rest if Shingo were to finish her off, decapitate her. As he believes his torment is over, he is then slashed by Yuta who attempts to kill him too so he resists but much to his surprise, he’d still see the same image of his wretched self as he hurts Yuta thus realizing he’d tormented by his sister’s last sight for the eternity cuts his own head.