Mai Kawasumi

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Mai Kawasumi is a major character in the visual novel and later anime Kanon. Mai was girl from an unspecified city in Japan, who possessed mysterious healing powers. As a child, Mai spent time with her mother, who was hospitalized with an unspecified disease, praying for her recovery and at one point crying on her hand. Mysteriously, Mai's mother recovered, and in so doing, Mai discovered the her tears in particular have mysterious healing powers.

During her teenage years, Mai was feared by most of her classmates as mysterious accidents seemed to occur around her, specifically damage to school property. Because of this, Mai has a quiet, shy personality and has few friends, except for her best friend Sayuri Kurata and protagonist Yuichi Aizawa. In truth, Mai is involved in the damage to school property, namely, she spends her nights at the school fighting mysterious formless "demons" in the building, armed with a longsword, though it is not clear where she got a hold of the weapon. Mai always keeps the sword somewhere where she can easily access it, feeling weak without it.

These "demon" attacks become more intense when Mai meets Yuichi Aizawa in the school building after hours, and observes her fighting the demons. During the course of the series, Mai is invited to school dance by Yuichi, which results in an attack by at least one "demon", which Mai is forced to fight, resulting in severe damage to the gymnasium. Mai only narrowly escapes expulsion for this, and later Sayuri Kurata is attacked by one of the "demons", with Mai finding her unconcious in a school bathroom. Around the same time, mysterious black marks start appearing on Mai's body, and Mai starts to feel pain after killing a "demon".

Mai fights a final climactic battle with the "demons", in which Yuichi attempts to aid her armed with a bokken, but ends up only being attacked by a "demon". Mai successfully defeats a group of demons, but the "black marks" keep growing on her body. Mai and Yuichi are then confronted by another demon, and Yuichi finally realizes it is in fact a "dark side" to her powers. The reason Mai feels pain after slaying a demon is because she is literally killing part of herself. At this point, Mai attempts to commit suicide by stabbing herself with her sword. Mai is saved, however, by a manifestation of healing powers, which save her life. At this point Yuichi remembers that he had met Mai before during their childhood ten years earlier. Yuichi and Mai used to play in an empty lot, until the high school Mai and Yuichi would attend was constructed on the site of the field. Mai made up story of demons, actually construction machinery, destroying the field, and phoned Yuichi to come help "battle the demons", but Yuichi replied that he was moving that day, and Mai never saw him again until they met ten years later. Because this, which Mai viewed as something of a destruction of her childhood memories, the "demons" manifested in her school years later. Mai is shown to be a lover of nature and animals, and wishes to be a veterinarian.