Sputnik Sweetheart characters

Also known as K

Appears from the start

The unnamed narrator, a reserved elementary-school teacher in Tokyo and Sumire's closest friend. He loves her without being loved in the same way, listens to her late-night calls, and serves as the steady reader and confidant for her attempts to become a novelist.

Appears from the start

An aspiring writer in her early twenties who has left university to devote herself to fiction. Intense, disheveled, and indifferent to ordinary schedules, she shares an unusually close intellectual friendship with the narrator before falling suddenly in love with Miu.

Appears from the start

An elegant businesswoman of Korean heritage, seventeen years older than Sumire. Sumire meets her at a wedding and is immediately captivated. Miu recognizes Sumire's abilities, offers her work, and begins reshaping her chaotic habits for a more ordered professional life.

First appears in chapter 14

A quiet boy in the narrator's elementary-school class. His mother seeks the teacher's help after he is caught apparently shoplifting, but his account of the incident suggests that he was transfixed by something no one else could see.

First appears in chapter 14

The married mother of one of the narrator's pupils, known through her son's nickname as Carrot's mother. Attractive and emotionally self-contained, she enters a discreet physical relationship with the narrator while both keep their deeper lives separate.

First appears in chapter 11

A man who lived in the same small Swiss town as Miu during her years as a music student. His unwanted pursuit becomes part of the terrifying experience Miu later recounts to Sumire.