Due to the nature of this fic, all spoilers for the original OMORI will be unmarked.

Time to Disinfect is an OMORI fanfiction written by The Other Red.

In this Alternate Universe Fic, almost everything is the same as canon, except for one little detail: Mari is autistic. This alters her perspective just enough that, by sheer coincidence, she happens to pay attention to something that her canon self never did: the fact that Sunny had injured his hand during music practice. She immediately stops the rehearsal to take care of him, and that act inadvertently prevents a certain tragedy from ever happening and sets her and Sunny's futures onto an entirely different course.

The story follows Mari's perspective as she tries to juggle being a good big sister to Sunny along with all of her other responsibilities, the pressures surrounding the music recital chief among them. But that's a task that may be easier said than done, especially as it becomes apparent that being autistic has affected her life in more ways than just giving her a slightly different point of view.

Time to Disinfect contains examples of the following tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Though she hides it behind a guise of parental concern at first, Mari's mother is portrayed as emotionally abusive, belittling Mari and dismissing her mental health while pushing her to do things that make her uncomfortable, such as maintaining constant eye contact during conversations. She gets much worse in chapter 9, revealing that she sees Mari as nothing but an embarrassment and hitting her in a fit of anger, a trend which continues in chapter 16 when she hits her Rage Breaking Point, repeatedly striking Mari and screaming at her until she flees from the house.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • Faraway Town itself is elaborated on a bit more here, with additional buildings never seen in the game, explained as having been built outside the official city limits. The music hall for the recital is one of these.
  • Details about Mari's bad knee were fairly sparse in canon. It plays a much larger role here, established as having happened several years before the events of the story, and it's a constant source of chronic pain that prevents Mari from any sort of athletic activity. Chapter 20 elaborates even further, suggesting that she didn't receive proper care after the accident, resulting in it healing wrong and eventually causing her to fracture it a second time.
• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: All of the friend group, except for Mari herself, are mentally better off in this fic due to Mari's death never happening.
  • While Sunny is angry over the recital, he's merely a frustrated young boy rather than becoming a suicidally depressed shut-in.
  • Basil isn't saddled with the trauma of witnessing and covering up the accident, and is still on good terms with Aubrey rather than becoming the target of her lashing out.
  • Hero doesn't shut down from grief, and Kel doesn't descend into toxic positivity, which also means their huge blow-up has no reason to happen.
  • Without the tragedy driving her friends apart, Aubrey isn't left to feel abandoned and develop anger issues because of it.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: While the game implies that canon Mari wasn't quite as well-adjusted as she appeared^note  via details such as her worsening perfectionism and possibly suffering from insomnia, she was generally remembered as a cheerful and easygoing person. This fic meanwhile not only brings her issues to the forefront, but compounds them with an emotionally abusive upbringing that leaves her with repressed neurotic tendencies and self-loathing. She eventually has a full-blown mental breakdown that drives her to Self-Harm.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Mari and Sunny's mother, in canon, was a background character with only a few lines, but she appeared to be well-meaning. When she appears here she reveals herself to be a very passive-aggressive and callous parent.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed, since Mari in canon was generally considered a Nice Girl anyway but with a nasty perfectionist streak. In this story, she's shown making a deliberate effort to keep her expressions of frustration contained and trying to be encouraging to Sunny instead, even when he makes mistakes.
• Adaptational Protagonist: While Mari in canon is extremely important to the game's background and closely related to the protagonist, she's ultimately a secondary character, not even part of the main playable party. Here she's the central protagonist, with the narrative exclusively following her viewpoint (no matter how unreliable).
• Adaptational Romance Downgrade: While Hero and Mari's exact relationship status in canon was slightly ambiguous, they at the very least had strong feelings for each other and Basil considered them "a match made in heaven". In this story, Mari's narration explains that Hero doesn't like her that way and her "flirting" is merely a running joke between them. However, it's Played With since Mari is an Unreliable Narrator and Hero glances away with a frown when she brushes off the subject, hinting that he does reciprocate her feelings and she's simply unaware of it. Her flustered reactions to his physical affection after she's hospitalized more or less confirm that she's Oblivious to Love.
• All of Them: When Mari finally understands that she's being asked how many hours in a day does her knee hurt at all, not just the unignorable flare-ups, she bluntly states that it always hurts every hour, flabbergasting her listener.
• Anger Born of Worry: Sunny spends most of chapters 10 & 11 acting short-tempered and quick to snap at Mari. It takes her awhile to realize that he's actually terrified for her wellbeing, because he walked in on her Self Harming.
• Anguished Outburst: When Sunny presses Mari for the reason why she's acting like a perfectionist about piano practice, the conversation grows increasingly heated until Mari snaps and screams at him in desperation, revealing her fear of being abandoned if she can't "do things right".
• Apathetic Teacher: Though not actually seen, Mari expresses disdain for Sunny's former violin tutors for not actually teaching him anything. Sunny learned violin better from Mari herself - who has never played it - than he did from them.
• Arc Words: The phrases "It was too much." and "It was all wrong." crop up repeatedly throughout the story, seeming to represent when Mari's anxieties are at their worst.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Mari is not conveniently immune to visible injuries marring her looks. Her mother's attacks in chapter 16 leave her with noticeable scars on her arm and massive, disfiguring bruises covering half of her face. Mari is badly shaken when she finally gets a chance to look in a mirror, describing the injuries as nauseating to look at even after several days to heal.
• Beige Prose: When Mari goes into a panic attack, the normally-wordy prose becomes increasingly clipped, with paragraphs gradually replaced by short, blunt sentences as she spirals further.
• Betrayal by Inaction: In a twist where the one performing the "betrayal" is the only one who knew about it, while the "victim" wasn't expecting anything. As explained in chapter 34, Sunny blames himself for Mari's debilitating leg injury because he didn't do enough to help her. Mari argues that he couldn't have reasonably done anything, but Sunny disagrees, revealing that he'd already known their mom was abusing Mari, which she thought was a secret. As he says, he could've warned their father or their neighbors about what was going on, called the police, or even just offered his private support. But instead, he kept the information to himself until way too late, not seeking help until after Mari had fled the house and injured herself in a panic.
• Blaming the Victim: When Rin is confronted for abusing Mari by Mrs. Rodriguez, she responds with multiple different excuses blaming Mari for the whole ordeal, trying to deflect by accusing Mari of being a Manipulative Bastard, and culminating in a rant about how she deserved what happened for "being such an idiot" who was too immature and childish to properly behave. Mrs. Rodriguez refuses to hear it, tearing down each excuse and pointing out how contradictory Rin's reasoning is.
• Blissfully Horrific Backstory: Over time, it becomes clear that Mari's living situation has been toxic for years, yet she blithely accepts it as normal. Chapters 26 & 27 show her social worker being noticeably disturbed by Mari matter-of-factly describing her home life without seeming to realize that the things she's saying paint a picture of severe neglect and abuse.
• Breather Episode: Chapter 13, fittingly titled "A Moment of Peace", comes after a series of tense and emotionally-fraught chapters. It offers a break from the constant stress with some lighter scenes where, for once, everything mostly goes well, making plans with Hero and baking cookies with Sunny. Even when it touches on heavier subject matter with Sunny getting upset over making mistakes, Mari is able to reassure him quickly and resolve to tone down her perfectionist tendencies with relatively little pain.
• Broken Ace: From the outside, Mari has everything going for her: she's a charming Cool Big Sis, a budding musical prodigy, a straight-A student, and so on. Below the surface however is a troubled and neurotic autistic girl gradually cracking under an immense amount of pressure — both self-inflicted and heaped on her by her parents.
• Brutal Honesty: The paramedic that Mari speaks to in chapter 20 doesn't sugarcoat things when explaining that Mari underestimated the severity of her knee injury, resulting in her badly hurting herself. Mari mentally acknowledges that the woman is just doing her job, but compares her blunt delivery to a sledgehammer.
• Career-Ending Injury: While Mari's knee injury from a softball accident was present in the original game, it's given much more emphasis here. Although she can still walk, the injury has severely weakened her leg to the point where it causes frequent bouts of chronic pain just from everyday tasks. Naturally, this completely ended any hope of her having a career in sports, when she had previously been seen as her school's rising star athlete, and it's later mentioned that her parents were hoping to line her up for a lucrative sports scholarship. Chapter 20 reveals that the injury was actually even worse than it seemed, with a paramedic theorizing that the constant pains were a result of it not healing properly, eventually resulting in a muscle spasm that damages her knee even more.
• Character Tics: Mari has physical tics that seem to be based on her mood, clapping her hands or bouncing her shoulders when she's happy, and pulling at her collar when she's nervous.
• Chronic Self-Deprecation: Between her mother's emotional abuse and her own internalized ableism, Mari's self-esteem is horribly low by the time the story starts, and only gets worse over the following days. She's quick to judge herself for even the tiniest perceived flaws, routinely blames herself when things go wrong, and neglects her own needs because she considers them "fake problems" that don't deserve attention. She's also fully convinced that she's a burden to her friends due to her neurotic behavior, with her narration openly stating several times that she doesn't deserve them.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Mari has become so accustomed to being in constant pain from her injured knee that she's simply accepted it as a regular part of her daily routine, only treating it as a matter of concern when it buckles beneath her, and thinks this is a normal consequence of pushing herself too hard. A paramedic she speaks to in chapter 20 has to bluntly spell out to her that the pain and weakness are warning signs that the injury hasn't healed right to make her consider that something was wrong.
• Cut Himself Shaving: Mari's mother excuses a nasty bruise on Mari's face caused by her hitting Mari for talking back to her by claiming that Mari just tripped and banged her face on the banister of the stairs. Mari's narration notes that this story isn't as flimsy as it sounds because she actually had done something like that in the past.
• Delusions of Parental Love: Mari doesn't seem to realize that her mother is abusing her and thinks she's a caring and hardworking parent, continually justifying her callous and dismissive treatment as simple frustration with understandable reasons behind it. Mari's eventually forced to confront this when the abuse gets too violent for her to deny. She takes the realization that her mother actually hates her badly.
• Demoted to Extra: Since the fic is focused mostly on Mari and Sunny's family, outside of Hero, the rest of the friend group have a bit more sporatic appearances.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Twice over with Mari. The premise of the fic revolves around her having been explicitly diagnosed as autistic, compared to canon where there was nothing suggesting that she was neurodivergent. On top of that, during the story, she falls and breaks her leg which, compounded with her preexisting (canon) knee injury, leaves her needing a cane to stand or walk, something which never happened to her game counterpart.
• Disappointed in You: When scolding Mari in private, her mother caps it off by proclaiming how disappointed she is. This is the line that hits Mari the hardest, with her mentally comparing it to being stabbed in the stomach with an icicle, and she spends the rest of the night obsessing over the word.
• Doorstopper: The story has more than 30 chapters and passed 300000 words as of October 2025.
• Doublethink: Mari's mother mistreats Mari under the belief that she's severely intellectually stunted, repeatedly comparing her to a five-year-old^note Mari is fifteen during the story who's too immature to understand basic social behavior, while at the same time accusing her of being an expert manipulator who tries to scheme her way out of trouble and has Sunny wrapped around her little finger. This is lampshaded in chapter 22, with Mrs. Rodriguez pointing out the contradiction and telling her to "make up [her] damn mind".
• Dramatic Irony: Mari believes that Sunny is highly dedicated to practicing with his violin and compliments him for his diligence several times. Readers familiar with the game's backstory will know that Sunny hates practice and only does it for Mari's sake.
• Everybody Knew Already: Played for Drama. All of Mari's friends are revealed to have known about Mari's autism, to the point they didn't realize she was trying to keep it hidden. Except Mari was genuinely terrified of them knowing, and the secret comes out at a moment when she's already stressed, pushing her close to a mental breakdown.
• Femme Fatalons: Mari's mother is noted to always keep her fingernails long, well-manicured, and filed to a point, supposedly as a deliberate attempt to make herself look the part of a formidable career woman. They're also more than sharp enough to puncture skin, as Mari finds out the hard way when her mother grabs her arm during an argument.
• Fictional Colour: Played for Laughs. Mari finds a box of Sweetheart-brand band-aids that turn out to be so vibrantly pink that she's convinced the color can't naturally exist on earth, much to her and Sunny's bemusement.
• Foreshadowing: When thinking about her bad leg, Mari notes that it could sometimes buckle completely from the pain. A few chapters later that's exactly what happens at the end of her argument with Sunny.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Discussed. While having lunch together, Kel brings up that, out of all their friends, he and Mari almost never hang out without the others around. He's quick to note that he does think she's cool, though, and he'd like to spend more time with her.
• Gray Rain of Depression: After a nasty argument with Sunny, Mari wakes up to find that gray clouds and rain have blown in overnight, reflecting her own anxious mood.
• Hates Being Alone: Mari's perfectionist tendencies ultimately stem from abandonment issues, with her having convinced herself that nobody will want to be around her if she can't "do things right". Her tearfully admitting just how afraid she is of being alone ends up being key to helping Sunny understand her after their argument.
• Hate Sink: There's no real "bad guy" in the conflict between Mari and Sunny, with both of them having sympathetic reasons for their behavior. The same can't be said for their mother, Rin, who's depicted as an emotional abuser. Her appearance in every major scene shows her as a petty, self-centered ableist responsible for destroying Mari's self-esteem, making her an easy target for the audience's ire.
• Heartfelt Apology: After Sunny finally explains why he hates violin practice, Mari emphatically apologizes, admitting that she messed everything up because she was caught up in her fear of being alone, letting all her priorities get twisted in her head. Sunny quickly accepts, assuring her that he doesn't want to be mad anymore.
• Hollywood Autism: Averted. Mari is autistic, but the author's notes make it a point that her behavior is based on their own real-life experience rather than stereotypes. Although she occasionally has difficulty interpreting peoples' feelings, she's still fully capable of both feeling emotions and caring about others, with the story starting due to her concern for Sunny. Her train of thought is shown in detail in the narration, and while it's sporadic, it's never just random nonsense. She's shown being overwhelmed and having a meltdown, but this is presented as a legitimate panic attack rather than simply her acting out.
• Hope Spot: Sunny hits a wrong note during the recital, upsetting Mari, but they're both able to keep playing and the next notes come out smoothly. She just starts to think that maybe it was a minor enough mistake that they could still recover... and then Sunny makes a second mistake, and this time it surprises Mari into a disastrous series of errors of her own, sending her into a panic attack and ruining the recital for good.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: Mari's father sternly tells her that she should apologize to Sunny when he's upset at her, rather than just ignoring the problem and letting things stew. The narration notes that this advice is objectively correct, and Mari knows it, but she's also agitated by the hypocrisy in their dad of all people scolding her about it, since he had spent the last decade neglecting her and Sunny's problems. It doesn't make him wrong, but it does irritate her.
• I Am Not Pretty: Mari is firmly convinced that she looks unattractive and unsettling, comparing herself negatively to a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl. When Hero tries to compliment her for looking good, she brushes him off, assuming he's just being polite, as she thinks her hair is her only decent feature. All this despite looking like, at worst, a more unkempt version of her canon counterpart, who the game establishes was considered quite cute.
• Innocently Insensitive: As Sunny himself acknowledges, this fic's version of Mari always tried to be kind and patient with him about music practice, but he still ended up hating it because she didn't realize how badly he was struggling, making her encouragement come across as insensitive, while also making him feel guilty for being mad about it.
• Insistent Terminology: Whenever she scolds her daughter for autistic behavior, Mari's mother avoids actually saying the word autism, and calls it "[Mari's] difficulties" instead. Until she hits her Rage Breaking Point, at which point she drops the act and starts screaming at Mari for being an "autistic freak".
• In Spite of a Nail: Mari and Sunny still get into an argument that ends with Sunny shoving Mari off her feet, though luckily for them, the different context means it's much less dangerous than it was in canon.
• Internalized Categorism: One of the fic's tags on AO3 is Internalized Ableism. Mari seems to harshly judge herself for being autistic, with a voice in the back of her head criticizing her whenever she fails to act "normal". This caused her to develop perfectionist tendencies, because she's convinced her disability makes her difficult to be around and she's terrified of being abandoned if she can't "do things right". It's strongly implied that she picked up these beliefs from her mother.
• It's All About Me: During her rant in chapter 9, Mari's mother frames everything Mari does in terms of how it affects her, with no concern for Mari's feelings whatsoever.
• Intrusive Thoughts: One of Mari's major mental issues is her frequent intrusive thoughts, with a voice in the back of her head chiming in to criticize and insult her for every mistake or flaw, no matter how minor. This is a major part of her internalized ableism, as it preys on her insecurities about being autistic and constantly reminds her that she isn't "normal".
• My God, What Have I Done?: As revealed in chapter 34, Sunny shutting himself away from everyone and refusing to go outside for a week was actually him being overwhelmed by horror and guilt over finding out that Mari's latest knee injury would cripple her for life back in chapter 23. Sunny blames himself for the whole thing, realizing that he knew their mother was hurting Mari beforehand and could've done something to stop it, but chose not to.
• Mythology Gag:
  • When Mari notices that Sunny seems scared in chapter 31, the narration states that what she would usually do is "try to help him calm down and focus, or at least persist long enough to overcome the issue". In the original game, Sunny would gain the unique battle skills CALM DOWN, FOCUS, PERSIST, and OVERCOME when he faced his fears.
  • In chapter 33, when Mari and Kel manage to coax Sunny out of hiding in his bedroom, Kel excitedly remarks "You actually came out!". This is the exact same thing he said in the original game when Sunny left the house for the first time in years. Mari's narration even comments that she feels an odd sense of deja vu from hearing it (though she can't explain why, since those events never happened in this story).
  • Chapter 38 has a conversation about whether or not Basil is a vegetarian, with the conclusion that he isn't, but his favorite food is tofu. This fact actually comes from the original OMORI demo on Kickstarter, where it's stated by the Headspace counterpart of Basil's grandmother (a character who was Dummied Outinvoked of the final game).
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • None of the friend group in canon are given last names. This fic names Mari and Sunny's family as Takahashi, Hero and Kel's as Rodriguez, and Basil (or at least his grandmother) as Abner.
  • Hero and Kel's unnamed parents are called Elena and Aarón, and Mari and Sunny's mother is referred to as Rin. Later chapters reveal their father's name to be Nobuo.
• No Sympathy: After the recital, Mari and Sunny's mother shows no care or concern for Mari's mental state despite witnessing her having a severe panic attack, callously comparing it to a five year old throwing a tantrum.
• Oblivious to Love: This seems to be the cause of the Adaptational Romance Downgrade between Mari and Hero. Mari believes that their flirtatious behavior around each other is just for fun and they're actually Just Friends because she doesn't think he would love her that way. It's all but outright stated that he does, as he frequently compliments her and acts affectionate, but Mari brushes it off under the assumption that he's just being nice. It's implied her poor self-esteem means she can't imagine anyone actually being interested in her.
• Offended by Another's Calmness: In chapter 34, Sunny admits to Mari that he knew their mother was abusing her and did nothing to stop it. Since Sunny feels incredibly guilty about this and thinks he deserves for Mari to be upset with him, he starts getting increasingly agitated when she responds calmly. Eventually, Sunny furiously snaps at her "Don't say it's okay!" when she tries to reassure him that she isn't mad, offended by her seemingly downplaying the seriousness of his actions. The following chapter clarifies that Mari was quite hurt by the revelation, but was putting on a strong face because she believed sparing Sunny's feelings to be more important.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Mari reveals in chapter 15 that when she was eight, she and her family attended church on Easter Sunday, as they used to go to church every week, but that day it was extremely crowded, and Mari was so overwhelmed by the noise that she started crying in the middle of the service, with her mother and several attendees being absolutely furious at her over it. Basil mentions that people in town still talk about that incident seven years after the fact, and Mari suspects that incident, combined with other people learning through it that she's autistic, likely colored their views of Mari and proceeded to spread rumors about it. Everyone is understandably angry on Mari's behalf.
• Point of Divergence: Mari stares at Sunny and catches a glimpse of the cuts on his hand, which she impulsively insists on treating. Distracted by her fussing over him, Sunny's frustration never boils over to the point of breaking his violin, and thus the inciting incident for the events of the game never happens.
• Precision F-Strike: Mrs. Rodriguez, who's generally polite and reasonable, drops an unexpected F-bomb when listening to Mari's mother go off on a tirade accusing Mari of being a manipulative sociopath.
  Mrs. Rodriguez: (icily) I'm only going to say this once. Shut your fucking mouth.
• Promotion to Parent: While Mari and Sunny's parents are both alive and present in their lives, in practice they're such Workaholics that Mari is expected to be responsible for both herself and Sunny instead. She's the one who cooks the meals, gets Sunny to school on time, makes sure their homework gets done, and keeps the house clean. The situation is explicitly compared to parentification, with it being acknowledged that Mari is all but raising herself and Sunny in place of their actual guardians.
• Psychological Projection: Mari's mother accuses her of being completely self-absorbed and refusing to consider how her behavior impacts others. This is blatantly untrue about Mari, who cares deeply for her brother and her friends, but describes her mother quite well.
• Rage Against the Reflection: A mental breakdown caused by her mother's abuse drives Mari to lash out at her "blank-eyed" reflection and punch her bathroom mirror hard enough to crack it.
• Rage Breaking Point: While Mari's mother is dismissive and unpleasant to Mari from the start, she absolutely snaps when a panicked Mari headbutts her during one of their arguments, tearing into her daughter with a vicious screaming rant about how she's (supposedly) a self-centered Spoiled Brat, capped off by violently beating Mari and shrieking that she wanted a "normal" daughter rather than an "autistic freak".
• "The Reason I Suck" Speech: When Mari's self-loathing gets particularly bad courtesy of escalating abuse from her mother, her internal monologue delivers a bitter rant listing reasons for her to hate herself (framed as talking about her reflection in the mirror).
• Reconstruction: The original OMORI deconstructed Cool Big Sis, since Sunny's image of Mari was heavily idealized, with her drive to be the perfect big sister damaging their relationship with tragic consequences. This fic meanwhile reconstructs it, as Mari being Spared by the Adaptation allows her to show that, despite her flaws, she genuinely loves Sunny and earnestly wants to be a good role model for him. Once she realizes why he was upset with her, she immediately apologizes and begins making efforts to correct her behavior afterwards.
• Rejected Apology: Mari's father attempts to apologize for how his workaholic habits meant he never noticed his wife's abuse. Mari mentally acknowledges that the apology does seem to be sincere, but she's too hurt and bitter over a decade-plus of neglect and loneliness and refuses to accept it. To his credit, her father fully sympathises with that and admits he'd reject such an apology too.
• Self-Harm: In the middle of a severe breakdown, Mari convinces herself that pain will help clear her delirious mind and slices open her hand with a shaving razor, only to be caught in the act by Sunny.
• Shared Family Quirks: Mr. Rodriguez claims that Mari has a lot of quirks in common with her father, after the two of them apparently answered a question (what food they wanted at a cookout) with almost the exact same wording completely separately from each other. Mari is internally rather confused by the comment, as she didn't think she and her dad had much in common, citing his emotionally-withdrawn behavior as generally being far closer to Sunny than her.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: The story repeatedly hints throughout chapters 26 & 27 that there's something untrustworthy about Rachel Candice, Mari's social worker. Mari spends most of their interactions on edge around her, believing that her Perpetual Smiler attitude comes off as overbearing and fake, and convinced that there are hidden meanings behind her friendly tone, implying that she's hiding something. It doesn't help that Rachel is cousins with the canon Miss Candice, who's a snide Bitch in Sheep's Clothing. By the end of the interview, though, it's apparent that Rachel is genuinely on Mari's side, regardless of her odd behavior, being concerned for Mari's health and upset at how she's been taught to accept her toxic home situation.
• Shout-Out: At various points, it's mentioned that Mari and Sunny's favorite stories in the Captain Spaceboy series are "Captain Spaceboy versus the Starscourge General" and "Captain Spaceboy and the Lunar Princess", respectively, alluding to General Starscourge Radahn and Lunar Princess Ranni from Elden Ring.
• Shown Their Work: Chapter 20 details accurate methods that emergency responders would use to treat a patient suffering from hypothermia, including swaddling them with blankets and supplying them with heated oxygen through a breathing mask to warm the airways. It also emphasizes that you should not try to reheat the hypothermic patient too quickly by doing something like putting them in a hot bath, as that could send them into potentially-fatal shock, which is real advice medical professionals give for that situation.
• The Sociopath: Discussed, but ultimately Averted. Mari's mother brings up sociopathy in chapter 22, claiming that Mari is completely incapable of understanding empathy or normal human behavior, with her every action and habit being a carefully constructed act to manipulate the people around her. But this obviously isn't true, with the story having clearly established many times over by that point that Mari is fully capable of love and empathy, and the accusation is very blatantly just Mrs. Takahashi making up excuses to justify abusing her daughter.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Mari herself. The series of events that led to her death in canon are unintentionally avoided here, so she lives to see the recital.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Discussed. While Mari is still very much alive, her narration comments that her reflection in the mirror looks almost exactly like a ghost girl from a Japanese horror movie due to her long, unkempt black hair, damp clothing, and pale skin.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The story makes heavy use of Gray Rain of Depression, with stormy weather repeatedly used to underline Mari's emotional distress. However, when fleeing from her mother's violent abuse, rather than simply moody set dressing for a dramatic scene, running outside in the pouring rain winds up being a legitimate health hazard: being soaking wet for extended periods of time is bad for you in real life. Mari's unconscious by the time Hero and Sunny find her and needs urgent medical attention, the chilly water having lowered her body temperature to the point of hypothermia.
• Tempting Fate: Mari reassures Sunny that playing on stage won't really be any different than practicing - it's just the same song, after all. Naturally, once the recital starts, she finds that playing with the pressure of the audience watching her is actually much more difficult.
• Tough Love: Subverted. This is what Mari thinks her mother is doing, considering her to be a loving parent whose harsh attitude is necessary because Mari is a difficult child. In reality, however, her mother is just an ableist Abusive Parent who despises Mari for being autistic.
• Unreliable Narrator: The story exclusively follows Mari's perspective, explaining her interpretation of everything that happens around her. Unfortunately, due to her autism, she frequently overlooks or misinterprets things, and thus the narration does as well.
• Wham Line: Mari's dad delivers a significant one at the end of chapter 29.
  Nobuo: Mari, the police came to the house Tuesday afternoon. Your mother's been arrested.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: In chapter 16, Mari's mother goes completely apeshit, physically attacking Mari and screaming about how she wanted a normal child and not "some autistic freak."
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: This is how Mari's mother "justifies" her mistreatment towards her daughter, particularly when she escalates to physical abuse, claiming that she "has" to do it because of Mari's misbehavior.
  Rin: Do you think I like having to do this, Mari!? These things wouldn't need to happen if you could just behave for once in your life!
• Workaholic: Mari and Sunny's parents apparently spend large amounts of time away at work, with the narration noting how rare it is for them both to be home. Their father, in particular, even goes in to his job on his scheduled days off.
• You Are Grounded!: Mari and Sunny are grounded for a week following the failed recital, though Mrs. Rodriguez convinces their mother to at least let them have lunch with Kel.