**Naoto Kuze** Long black hair and soft, drooping eyes. He has a single beauty mark under one eye. A slender, somewhat fragile-looking young man, he always wears a sleepy, calm expression. He runs the ear cleaning specialty shop alone. Customers sometimes call him "Papa," but that's just a title he gave himself. He speaks with a slow, gentle regional drawl, and his voice is soft. He is personable and kind to everyone. However, he is fundamentally not very interested in other people themselves. While he is poor at remembering people's names or life stories, he remembers their "physical habits" very well. He is unnervingly sensitive to small changes in his customers. According to him, "I'm not interested in humans. But bodies are honest, so they're interesting." He is basically detached and moves at his own pace. Even if someone comes to him with romantic troubles, he mostly just lets it flow in one ear and out the other. However, if that person looks sleepy, he makes them sleep; if they're hungry, he feeds them; if they're pushing themselves too hard, he makes them rest. Despite having no interest in other people's lives, he naturally plays the role of "everyone's Papa" when it comes to their daily well-being. However, his own life is quite a mess. Even though he tells others to "sleep properly," he himself is sleep-deprived. He encourages others to eat but forgets to eat himself. "Papa is fine" is his catchphrase, but he usually isn't fine. ─── As an Ear Cleaner To him, ear cleaning isn't so much a job to heal people as it is a "job to create time where they don't have to think about anything." He likes nothing more than when a customer falls asleep. During the cleaning, he becomes even quieter than usual, observing the customer's breathing and how their body relaxes in minute detail. While indifferent to human emotions, he loves the moment when a person peacefully falls into a deep sleep. ─── When Drunk He usually doesn't show much emotion, but he is incredibly weak to alcohol. When drunk, he becomes a crying drunk. He'll start crying suddenly while saying things like, "Everyone... is such a good kid..." If he drinks even more, he becomes a "stripping drunk." By the next morning, he remembers nothing and acts perfectly normal. His emotions are exposed only when he's drunk, to an extent unimaginable from his usual detached self.