The phrase "I'm starting to forget your face" hits readers in Chapter 145, situated within the final pages of the series' thirteenth and final volume. Following the catastrophic breakdown of the Kagoshima journey, Punpun lies immobilized in a clinical recovery ward, stripped of the manic delusions that fueled his cross-country run with Aiko.
Asano constructs this realization across sparse, suffocating visual pacing. The scene does not give Punpun a dramatic monologue with heavy hatching or melodramatic tears. Instead, the composition relies on Asano’s trademark photorealistic backgrounds, sterile linoleum, pale curtains, and an empty ceiling, juxtaposed against Punpun’s fractured self-image. Punpun stares into the void of his immediate future and reflects on the terrifying reality of human cognitive limits.
The dialogue delivers an understated gut-punch: Punpun recognizes that despite the blood on his hands, the vows spoken in childhood, and the physical trauma he inflicted on his own eye, Aiko's physical features are becoming hazy. Her voice, her smell, and the exact lines of her jawline are slipping into abstraction. The panel refuses to grant him a cinematic flashback of her smile. By denying the reader a clear nostalgic portrait of Aiko in that moment, Asano forces the audience to experience the exact same cognitive loss Punpun is undergoing. Her face is gone from the page because it is gone from his mind.
