This story takes place after the Hare’s Nest incident in which Kimika kidnapped Shiro and tried to use a bomb to kill both of them, believing that death was the only answer. Baku saved Shiro and Kimika was arrested. Shortly after this arrest, Ruu had trouble believing that the culprit was Kimika, but somewhere deep in his heart he knew it was really him. Even though Kimika usually smiled brightly, a tremendous darkness was hidden behind that smile.

"I wish I had realized sooner..."

The epilogue then skips to a flashback. Back then, Ruu worked for a car repair shop. While working there, he often came into contact with a man he absolutely despised, who would purposely torment the weak for his own entertainment. Because of his connections, he was never punished for his actions. One day when he witnessed one of his coworkers being harassed in the bathrooms, Ruu couldn’t handle it anymore and punched this man in the face. The man was not seriously injured, but as a result of this Ruu lost his job. He didn't regret punching the man, but he couldn't accept that he got fired for defending his coworker.

"At that time, I came across a recruitment ad online, from Sara-ya.”

At first, Ruu was a bit confused what exactly they meant with 'cleaning a room a person died in'. The location of the company was also not ideal, Shinkoumi is a place notorious for being unsafe. Of course, he could have picked a different job, but for some reason he decided to send an email to them. The work at Sara-ya was exactly what he expected, and it took some time getting used to it. However, in terms of human relationships, everyone was friendly and comfortable with each other.

"After a long time, when I was no longer called a rookie, I decided to team up with Kimika."

"I don't mean this in a strange way, but as a work partner and a human being, I liked Kimika."

Kimika was a cheerful, fun-loving person, who also had a serious side when they were working together. They would often meet up before and after work too, to talk and to eat together. Kimika used to be a hairdresser before he joined Sara-ya and mentioned that he enjoyed making people beautiful, almost as if a person is 'reborn' after getting a new haircut. Kimika mentioned that he wished he could be reborn too, but back then Ruu did not really understand the meaning of these words. Looking back at it now, Ruu realizes that there were so many hints that something was not right...

Some time after this, Kimika called him in the middle of the night. At first, Ruu thought someone called the wrong number, but after listening closely he realized it was Kimika's voice, wishing for his own death. After this, Ruu learned that Kimika was taken to the hospital after overdosing on sleeping pills. Ruu realizes that Kimika probably called him as a final cry for help.

The story then switches to Kimika's perspective. A bright and cheerful person, that is how people would describe him, which was not wrong, because that is what he pretended to be. Of course, it was not all lies, Kimika truly wished he could be happy. He grew up with three older sisters who were all very beautiful and talented. Compared to them, Kimika was a very ordinary person. Because his sisters were always praised, they were never punished when they used Kimika as a slave or toy, even sexually assaulting him sometimes. Back then Kimika didn't know it was bad, he was just happy that they would spend any time with him.

When he was 11 years old, his oldest sister vanished. A month later, her body was found in the mountains. A suicide note was found near her body, apologizing for not being able to meet her parents' expectations. One year later, his second sister passed away after repeatedly overdosing on sleeping pills. Kimika's family stopped talking to each other, unable to deal with the situation. Shortly after this, the third sister also disappeared. The police eventually found her alive, however, she seemed like a completely different person after joining a religious group. She didn't talk to her parents and brother anymore and locked herself up in her room every day. One day, she texted Kimika to come to her room.

"When I entered the room, my sister was standing on a chair with a belt around her neck, tied to the curtain rod."

She smiled and asked Kimika to remove the chair, explaining that she wanted to die so she could be reborn. Kimika, unable to deny her wish, did what his sister wanted. Kimika started wondering what would happen after death and if they would really be reborn. His sisters were very talented and had no other reason to die, so he assumed it must be true.

"Just like the other two, I wonder if death isn't something they fear, but something they yearn for. If possible, I want to be reborn too."

After graduating high school, he studied to become a hairdresser and eventually moved to Shinkoumi, mostly because he wanted to get away from his parents' house. Shinkoumi was a place where nobody would come after him. Even though he tried to distance himself from his past, he always felt like he couldn't truly be happy. Being alone made him very uncomfortable, so he would often stay with (sex) friends or even strangers. One day one of his friends half-jokingly sent him the Sara-ya recruitment ad, but Kimika, still obsessed with the concept of people taking their own lives, became interested in the job. This is where he met Ruu, and later Shiro and Baku. He was a bit excited to meet someone like Shiro who also wanted to die. Kimika also wanted to openly talk about death like Shiro did, so he decided to create a social media account. Before he knew it, he made many friends online who all shared the same mindset as him, agreeing death is the only way to escape from suffering. This is when Hare's Nest was created.

Members of Hare’s Nest focused on overcoming their fear of death and would usually report their daily accomplishments. Kimika tried to do the same and was proud of his group members. Eventually, the first individuals in the group started taking their own lives. Until then, Hare's Nest was mostly a private group, but after the first two suicides it started attracting attention online. After that, the number of deaths gradually increased and the criticism from outside groups grew. At that time, Kimika thought death was the only way to end suffering and didn’t understand what he was doing wrong. He also realized that Shiro joined the group and was surprised when he openly shared these details with him. Kimika decided that it must be fate, finally he would be able to die together with someone.

After that it switches back to Ruu's perspective. Shortly after the Hare's Nest incident, Kimika was sentenced to two years in prison. The sentence was shorter than expected because there was no evidence of intimidation or a detailed planning of the attack. Another reason for this was probably because Kimika's lawyer worked for the Takasato-gumi. It was Eiji who introduced them to each other. Ruu frequently visited Kimika in prison, but during the first visits Kimika did not look him in the eye and barely spoke to him. He didn't understand why Ruu kept visiting him, after all he was a criminal who encouraged people to take their lives and who almost killed one of their friends. He also didn’t understand why Ruu still cared about him, they were only work partners after all. To Ruu however, Kimika was never just a work partner, but someone he genuinely considered a friend. Ruu regrets not noticing Kimika's loneliness and still wants to be with Kimika after he gets released from prison. Kimika still has a hard time trusting others because of his childhood, but somewhere deep in his heart he wants to trust him. Ruu hopes that some day, him and Kimika will be able to laugh together again, just like they used to.

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Some extra notes

The name of the group is simply called Hare’s Nest because Kimika has a pet rabbit.

His username online is Himalaya, referring to the Himalayan rabbit, said to be the oldest rabbit breed. His own rabbit is also a Himalayan rabbit.

Members of Hare’s Nest calls themselves ‘leveret’, a term used to describe a young hare. If you’ve read the Clean Dishes manga you probably also know it’s the name of the manga…!

This epilogue starts with a flashback in which Baku is strangling Shiro. He wonders why Shiro is smiling, in a situation like this, most other people would cry, struggle or beg for their lives, but Shiro seems to enjoy it. Confused, Baku lets go of him and waits for his reaction. Shiro smiles ‘’Won’t you kill me?’’. A hand covered in blood and bruises touches his face. Shiro tells him that they are quite similar to each other, people who don’t have a place they can call ‘’home’’, who don’t really belong anywhere in this world. He suggests they should stay together, so Baku can kill him one day. Baku is not sure why he accepts his offer. Perhaps he recognized the immense amount of despair which made him wish for his death, Baku knew that feeling too well. Just like Shiro, he also had no place he could call ‘’home’’ anymore. It was the first time he encountered someone like Shiro.

After this the game skips to a different flashback. Baku was raised in mainland Japan, not in Shinkoumi. His parents worked as embalmers who took care of the bodies of those who passed away, to prevent them from decaying. They had a strong policy of being open about their work and showed it to their children as well. Therefore, death was always close to him, even when he was just a child. He was proud of his parents’ skills, but at the same time he felt lonely, after all his parents rarely had time for him. It was normal for him to come to his parents’ workplace after school, so the sight of a corpse did not faze him.

‘‘I wanted to be a good listener so I wouldn’t cause trouble for my parents, I was proud of them and their work.’‘

When he was a bit older, he started spending less time at his parents’ workplace. Two years later, during his first year in junior high school, Baku’s parents passed away in a car accident. Since he stopped going to their workplace, he only saw them in the morning and at night. He thought their deaths wouldn’t change him much because he rarely saw them, but it left a big hole in his heart. He didn’t cry, it felt like all his emotions had been sucked out of him. The bodies of his parents had been severely damaged in the accident, but Baku decided to embalm them himself. Even though he was never taught how to do it, he had seen it so often he knew what he had to do. With the help of other relatives, the funeral went by without any problems. 

After this Baku’s life started changing. He used to be a quiet and obedient child, but soon after the death of his parents he started getting into fights at school. An acquaintance had asked him if he wanted to take over the family business, but he refused and moved to Shinkoumi instead. 

‘‘Immediately after graduating high school, with the inheritance of my parents and the earnings of my part-time jobs, I started working for Clean Dishes/Sara-ya.’‘

He learned about Sara-ya from online advertisements and he was hired immediately. His job is to clean the rooms in which people have died, be it suicide or murder, but it seems like most employees immediately quit because they couldn’t handle what they would find in these rooms. Baku didn’t feel anything when he saw a corpse, he was used to it after all, which is one of the reasons why they immediately hired him. 

It was one year after he joined the company. Cleaning is usually done in teams of two people, but Baku went alone because a lot of people quit the company. When he starts cleaning the room he notices something is off. There should only be two corpses in this room, so why did he just hear the sound of someone breathing? He decides to inspect the corpses and notices one of them is in fact not a corpse, but a man who’s still alive.

Baku: ‘’I heard someone died here so I came to clean it up, why are you sleepig here?’’

Shiro says he also came here because he heard someone died in this room, but he somehow fell asleep. Baku asks him if he knew the person who passed away, but Shiro shakes his head, ‘’I just like corpses, so I came to see it.’’ After hearing this very abnormal story Baku wonders if he’s lying, who sneaks into a room and then falls asleep next to a corpse? Even for him that’s abnormal. Shiro asks him if he also likes corpses, but Baku shakes his head, he’s just used to them but that doesn’t mean they share the same interests. After this first encounter with Shiro, he meets him again a few times after that. For some reason he often visits the rooms the Sara-ya employees clean.

Sometime after this Baku gets into a fight with a group of people outside. Some other people also join the fight and that’s how he ended up strangling Shiro (which is shown in the first part of this epilogue). Baku doesn’t want to get too involved with this group, so he wakes up the ‘’corpse loving man’’, who then introduces himself as ‘’Shiro’’. Baku doesn’t know if that’s his real name, but he just accepts it, his real name isn’t Baku[1] either, that’s just what some of the cleaners at Sara-ya called him. He didn’t care what people called him anyway. Shiro doesn’t question it and calls it a cute name. After that they learn a bit more about each other, like Shiro’s job as a prostitute (which is also mentioned in the third epilogue!).

‘‘To put it bluntly, it was a terrible room.’‘

Shiro’s living situation was anything but normal and cleaning didn’t seem to be his biggest priority. He quits his job as a prostitute after meeting Baku and decides to also work for Sara-ya. Because of his strange obsession with corpses, the company also hires him immediately. They also eventually decide to live together because Shiro struggles with suicidal thoughts and needs someone to take care of him. Baku doesn’t mind being in a relationship with a man because he has seen so many corpses, gender is the last thing he cares about (thank you Baku, so romantic...).

‘‘No matter what kind of person you are, you are a ‘thing’ that will eventually rot, including myself.’‘

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[1] ‘’Baku’’ is a term used for Japanese supernational beings who are said to devour people’s nightmares. However, when they get greedy they also devour people’s dreams, hopes and desires. The Sara-ya employees joke that Baku doesn’t have any dreams or hopes, which is probably the reason they gave him this nickname. His real name is never mentioned, Shiro’s isn’t either.