Chappy

Chappy is a pet who used to belong to the father of a girl named Shizuka before becoming hers, a quiet, loyal presence in a household otherwise full of tension. As an animal rather than a student or family member directly swept into the story's drama, Chappy mostly stays on the edges of the main conflict.

Despite that small role, Chappy ends up tied to one of the story's more painful threads. The animal becomes something worth saving in the eyes of Naoki Azuma, a classmate pulled into the aftermath of a tragic accident, and his frantic, increasingly desperate attempts to protect Chappy reflect just how much guilt and fear Naoki is carrying by that point in the story. For a character with no lines and no real agency of its own, Chappy still manages to say something about the people nearby: how far someone like Naoki is willing to go, and how much strain he's under, just to keep one more small life from being lost in a story already full of loss.