Kuroneko Byouinzaka

Overview

Summary

Gallery

"I cannot bear having something around me being broken or collapsing. I get irritated when I see something of the sort. A peaceful world, complete stillness is the only thing I ask of the gods. I am sick of this broken world."

— Kuroneko Byouinzaka

Kuroneko Byouinzaka
Kanji Name	病院坂 黒猫
Kana Name	びょういんざか くろねこ
Romaji Name	Byōinzaka Kuroneko
Character Information
Age	18
Gender	Female
Personal Status
Classification	Human
Status	Alive
Relatives	Meiro Byouinzaka (Cousin) Usui Byouinzaka (Father)
Professional Status
Occupation	High School Student
Affiliation	Outouin Private Academy Class 3-7
Media
Work of Origin	Sekai Series
Novel Debut	Our Broken World
Manga Debut	Seishun Kijinden! 240 Gakuen Vol. 1, Chapter 5

Appearances
Novel Appearances
Series	Sekai Series
Volumes	Our Broken World Eerie and Artless Enclosed World The World We Broke Our Eerie and Artless Enclosed Broken World Mazemonogatari
Manga Appearances
Series	Seishun Kijinden! 240 Gakuen
Volumes	Seishun Kijinden! 240 Gakuen Vol. 1, 3
Chapters	Seishun Kijinden! 240 Gakuen Chapter 5, 6, 16, 17

Kuroneko Byouinzaka (病院坂(びょういんざか) 黒猫(くろねこ), Byōinzaka Kuroneko) is the main heroine of the Sekai Series. She is a third year student at Outouin Private Academy and a friend of Samatoki Hitsuuchi. An eccentric and the subject of many school rumors, she can always be found in the school infirmary, never attending classes.

Personality

Kuroneko can be best described as an eccentric and odd individual. She almost always shows a perfectly composed attitude, and her most defining characteristic is her very talkative nature, often breaking into overly descriptive monologues and talking in roundabout ways, often taking a long time to get to the point of what she wants to say. Even so, as noted by Samatoki, she can also been a good listener. She is highly intelligent, said to be the best student in the history of Outouin Private Academy. While generally very talkative and friendly, she considers herself shy, and she has a compulsive aversion to crowds of people. While she can withstand being in a room with at least two other people, as shown by her composure in the company of Kouda and Samatoki, but when surrounded by a larger crowd, such as the students of class 3-2, she becomes very ill and often throws up. As such, she cannot attend classes normally, and spends all of her time studying by herself in the academy infirmary. She herself acknowledges that she needs to work on her disorder so as to have a future, and she wants to become independent from her family, whom she holds a great amount of disdain for.

She has a close friendship with Samatoki, often spending her time talking to him, and calling him out to the infirmary by scribbling messages on his notebook early in the morning, before anyone else arrives at school. During their talks, she is often the one to overpower the conversation with her long and eloquent speeches. She tends to phrase things dramatically, often sarcastically singing his praises, and more often than not poking fun at him in some way, pointing out the flaws in his thinking and teasing him for both his strange relationship with his sister and his often brash and reckless actions that stem from it. Even so, despite her sardonic veneer, she truly does care for Samatoki, and vows to stick with him, being the only person that he'll never be able to deceive and the only person who'll ever understand his true feelings. She reportedly values Samatoki as a friend due to how simple and easy to understand he is in contrast to others whose feelings she finds obscure and hard to comprehend, which frustrates her.

Kuroneko's hobby is solving mysteries, often spending her time figuring out trivial incidents happening around her in her spare time. At first glance, she appears almost excited to face the mystery of Rokunin Kazusawa's death, appearing to have the same level of composure that she always has upon hearing the news, and deciding to play amateur detective and solve the case herself. However, this idea couldn't be further from the truth, as it's revealed that all of her life Kuroneko has been governed by a certain anxiety, a fear of being left behind by the world; of the world around her moving completely outside her control, a fear which manifests whenever she is faced with something she does not understand. She feels an extreme level of helplessness because of this, considering that the world itself hates her, and thus always feels the need to involve herself in solving whatever cases she is faced with, in order to regain understanding. Her compulsion is violent enough that, whenever she's faced with something incomprehensible, her first impulse is to commit suicide; which she almost manages to do before being stopped by Samatoki. In her own words: She cannot go on living if she doesn't understand something.

According to Hakohiko Mukaezuki's testimony, she's actually been prostituting herself out from the school infirmary ever since middle school, primarily as a means of gathering information, showing that (despite her aversion to crowds) she has no issue selling her body to strangers, a fact that Samatoki initially finds shocking, although Kuroneko herself never comments on it. Her plans for the future are to move to America and become a researcher at one of its prestigious universities after graduation. Her relationship with the other members of the Byouinzaka family is estranged, being disliked by her cousin Meiro Byouinzaka, although showing no ill will towards her herself, and hating her father, Usui Byouinzaka, for undisclosed reasons, seeming fed up with his actions and proclaiming that she never wants to see him again after graduating, although Usui himself doesn't seem to share the sentiment, even graciously funding a graduation trip for Kuroneko.

Appearance

Kuroneko is a young woman with a short stature and large breasts. She has long straight black hair with even bangs covering her forehead, and cat-like red eyes with a distinctive plus sign design, a trait shared by all members of the Byouinzaka family. She is almost always shown wearing a classic gym uniform, consisting of a white T-shirt with a nametag on the chest, dark blue bloomers and ankle-length black socks. In some instances, she is depicted with a dark purple tank top with a white nametag on the chest worn over the white T-shirt, and at other times, she wears a tracksuit over her T-shirt. When going home from school, she wears the regular Outouin Academy gray sailor uniform, a sight which Samatoki reportedly rarely sees. During her trip to London, she is shown wearing unusual gyaru fashion, consisting of a cowboy hat, a white fur coat over a T-shirt and a black pleated skirt, as well as a necklace with a metallic M attached to it.

Background

Much of Kuroneko's background is left ambiguous, but she appears to come from a wealthy family, one she herself despises. Due to her severe aversion to interaction with crowds of strangers, Kuroneko had to create an arrangement with Outouin Private Academy, the school of her choice, in which she would study by herself from the school infirmary instead of going to classes, an arrangement which the school only tolerates because of Kuroneko's extremely high intelligence, the girl being the most capable student in the academy's history.

At some point during middle school, she began selling her body to both students and teachers within the infirmary, one of her patrons having been Hakohiko Mukaezuki. At some point in the past, she met and befriended Samatoki Hitsuuchi. While the circumstances of their first meeting aren't elaborated on, due to Samatoki referring to her as a friend, it can be presumed they'd been acquainted for at least a year, because of Samatoki's policy of only calling people he's known for more than a year "friends".

Appellations

• Others for Kuroneko
• Kuroneko for Others

Appellation	Japanese	By
I (Boku)	僕	Self
Byouinzaka	病院坂	Samatoki Hitsuuchi
KuroneKo-san	くろね子さん	Samatoki Hitsuuchi Choushi Kushinaka

Appellation	Japanese	For
I (Boku)	僕	Self
Samatoki-kun	様刻くん	Samatoki Hitsuuchi
Mukaezuki-kun	迎槻くん	Hakohiko Mukaezuki
Kazusawa-kun	数沢くん	Rokunin Kazusawa
Kotohara-san	琴原さん	Ririsu Kotohara
Kushinaka-kun	串中くん	Choushi Kushinaka
Usui	笛吹	Usui Byouinzaka

Quotes

Quotes

"I cannot bear having something around me being broken or collapsing. I get irritated when I see something of the sort. A peaceful world, complete stillness is the only thing I ask of the gods. I am sick of this broken world."

—Kuroneko to Samatoki, Our Broken World, Problem Part

"Life has been a nest of worries and fears since the very beginning, you know? Not understanding how and where things came to be, not understanding what was happening. Everyone leads their lives sloppily, letting that pass...... but it's impossible for me. I can’t become that dull. I'm terrified. I'm scared of what I don't understand. I get worried by looking at something I don't know. I can't bear the sensation of having something behind my back. I hate not knowing people's feelings. I become afraid when I encounter a fact I don't know. I can't comprehend, no matter what, the feeling of being excited when encountering something unknown. And since I can't comprehend it, I become scared again. I'm scared of contradictions. I'm scared of fallacies. I'm scared of errors. I'm scared of everything but the truth. When I wonder if I'm hated by the world..... I get scared. If there's something I can't understand, I can't continue living on."

—Kuroneko to Samatoki while trying to commit suicide, Our Broken World, Detective Part

"It hurts, Samatoki-kun. I'm suffering. Suffering a continuous and unbearable pain. I can't endure this pain. From the very beginning, life is a dead end, incomparable to all...... Enough to make one cry, regardless of shame or honor. The world is a path from collapse to extinction."

—Kuroneko to Samatoki while trying to commit suicide, Our Broken World, Detective Part

"When was it again, I commented that you don't pay attention to the world, but I shall correct myself. You certainly neglect the world—but you don't stop there. You don't consider yourself in the equation for many things. You got too entangled in the world, as if you weren't interested in your own happiness. If this world was a test problem—you forgot to sign your own name. You said things like 'for your sister's sake', 'for Mukaezuki-kun's sake', 'for Kotohara-san's sake'—all sorts of lies. You lied to most of your world, to most of your own world. You deceived the world. You deceived for the sake of harmony. All you can do is lie. Therefore—you are the worst. It's the same as the fear that took over Kotohara-san. Having told a lie to the world—you now feel like the world is deceiving you. Since you only lie, you cannot trust anyone. Exactly, that is the true agony liars go through. Not being trusted by anyone, that's not a problem—becoming unable to trust anyone. You feel like everyone is trying to get ahead of you and end up carrying incomprehensible doubts with no clear answer. You're deceiving someone, so they might be doing the same. Maybe you only consider something the best option because you’ve been deceived, maybe you are mistaken, maybe you are mistaken, maybe you are mistaken. Maybe you keep on being mistaken. The result, which should be the best, might in fact be the worst—you think that way."

—Kuroneko to Samatoki, Our Broken World, Answer Part

"You cannot deceive me no matter what. Even if you deceive everyone else in the world, even if you deceive the world itself...... I will see through your lies. I will prioritize you over everything else and demonstrate your deceits. So you are fine, Samatoki-kun. Your world is still completely fine, Samatoki-kun. Your world.... isn't broken."

—Kuroneko's reassurance to Samatoki, Our Broken World, Answer Part

Trivia

• Kuroneko's last name, Byouinzaka, means "hospital hill".
  • Her last name is a reference to the novel The House of Hanging on Hospital Hill (病院坂(びょういんざか)の首縊(くびくく)りの家(いえ), Byōinzaka no Kubikukuri no Ie) by Seishi Yokomizo.
• Kuroneko's first name means "black cat".
  • Her first name might be a reference to either the novel The Black Cat House Murders (黒猫館(くろねこかん)の殺人(さつじん), Kuronekokan no Satsujin) by Yukito Ayatsuji or the novel Delta in the Darkness: The Black Cat Triangle (黒猫(くろねこ)の三角(さんかく) Delta in the Darkness, Kuroneko no Sankaku Delta in the Darkness) by Hiroshi Mori.
• Her nickname, Miss KuroneKo, is made up of the hiragana for kurone and the suffix 子, a common name ending for girls. However, it is homophonous with her first name as written in kanji.
• Although she is not on the list of Nisio Isin's 10 favorite characters written by him, as given in the Nisio Isin Exhibit Interview, he has stated in the afterword of the reprint version of Our Broken World that she is often one of the answers he gives when asked for his favorite character of his.