i may be misunderstanding the story, but could the bird dying be a good thing? the birds name is the name of the curse so it dying shows the curse is also dead. showing there not connected by a curse but through love?

Could be? I can't tell, this Bleached book of one-offs is really twisted. Check out the previous Suicide story chapter (if interested) and see if you feel differently or more strongly about this after the ending of that one. Both are open-ended,both could maybe be seen in a different light, but both seem bleak on the surface for sure, and I don't know that it's not dark all the way down...

last edited at Jun 10, 2025 10:10PM

it feels like it was setting up something good and then it suddenly just ended. it could have been creepy but it just ends up as baffling. unfortunate.

I was Rereading this and decided to look up how others interpreted it and saw an interpretation I liked on Reddit;

The title “A Woman Carrying the Burden of a Burned Face” can be understood to apply to both characters, but it really applies to Kanae (the black haired woman).
Kanae states that her reunion with Tsugumi is not destiny, but a curse.
The bird is a metaphor that parallels Kanae’s situation.
Kanae says she stays alive by drinking Tsugumi’s (the burned face woman) spit. This parallels the bird needing Tsugumi to keep it alive as the bird is her pet. Hell when Kanae says she drinks Tsugumi’s spit the fur coat she’s wearing looks a lot like a bird’s plumage.
Since the bird is in a cage, it can also be said that the bird is trapped by Tsugumi, her captive.
The bird dying at the end is straightforward. A year into living together and Kanae is still having nightmares of Tsugumi blaming her for the burns. All of this is killing Kanae.
For a little added spice of toxic co-dependence:
Tsugumi was first drawn to Kanae’s self-blaming look in contrast to everyone else’s pity.
It looks like Tsugumi understands that her presence causes Kanae some distress but still thanks God (for her burns!) that they were able to reunite.
Kanae may be the only person in Tsugumi’s life. Kanae is introduced in the first panel coming home from an alumni reunion. Tsugumi is the homemaker, dinner and apron included.

I genuinely don't think that Tsugumi killed her own pet intentionally (I could be coping tho). She doesn't come off as the type who'd maliciously do something like that, even in her own monologue (ig maybe the dream sequence from Kanae can be a flashback?). She felt remorse knowing it's her fault Kanae is crying, seemed genuinely shaken up when she noticed the bird died too

Imo I feel like the bird died due to neglect as Tsugumi relies and depends on Kanae so maybe she focused more on Kanae than the bird, failed to take care of it properly and it died

And in the same vein, the more Tsugumi depends and focuses on Kanae, the more it affects Kanae, and that dependency is slowly killing her without Tsugumi being aware of it?