Sakuragi Hina
Hina is a twenty year old from the country. She ran away from home to get away from her overbearing father. She often worries that she is unpopular and dislikes it when people think of her as just being a kid. She becomes almost obsessed with finding a boyfriend and mentions the need to throw rocks at couples or go on murderous rampages because of them. Ryuji tells her to just be herself and she shouldn't have any problems roping in customers. He admits to liking honest and natural girls and she cheers up.
At one point Hina asks Ryuji what his favorite feature is, he looks instantly to her breasts and defends with "They're my favorite feature!" Hina, surprsingly, is not offended in the slightest. Ryuji notes that she must not mind when guys are looking as she tends to show them off. She mentions getting embarrassed only if he stares too long. In fact, she likes that he's so honest about it. Ryuji thinks she's very good looking and believes that she could have a boyfriend if she wanted. But Hina believes she's unpopular. When she finds out that Ryuji is also single, she says that she and Ryuji need to stick together as the "unpopular ones" but Ryuji argues "I never said I was unpopular." At first he seems quite annoyed with Hina over it. She continues to sell herself short and he insists that she just needs to be honest and natural.
Through Hina, we learn a lot about how Ryuji thinks of his own family. Hina hated that her father was trying to control every aspect of her life and ran away. Ryuji tells Hina he can relate because his father was the head of a huge organization and he was always compared to his father. Ryuji goes so far as to say that he hated being comapred to his father, but that over all he believed his father was a good dad. Unable to surpass his father bothers him, but he believes that he is living his own life now and that at some point he can overcome that. Through Ryuji's prodding and insistance that her own father is a good man and that he is merely worried, Hina is able to reconcile with her father. She stays in Kamurocho to help. He intervenes on Hina's behalf telling her father that they both know how stubborn she is once she makes up her mind. Ryuji then offers to look after her while she's in Kamurocho.
Ryuji is a realist and believes that dreams are nice but one must take steps towards those dreams otherwise they mean nothing. He scolds Hina for saving up money and reading towards her goal. He says one cannot take one big leap at the end but must take the steps towards the goal in the end. He assures her that her work, even the smallest steps forward, will pay off. He doesn't deter her from her dream. Instead he wants her to succeed but believes that success comes only for those who work towards it. He promises he's going to keep working towards his dream and she should too.
At the end of Hina's substory, Hina notes how young she is and how much she has to learn. Ryuji insists that because she's young she should be happy to learn. She wants to start by learning about him. He says his past is long and that she better be prepared for what she learns. Hina is quite happy to know him, but Ryuji seemed wary at first. He doesn't hide his past but he doesn't flaunt it either. He spends a lot more time looking towards the future than dwelling on his past.
The age contrast of Ryuji and Hina makes me chuckle. On on hand, Ryuji knows what it is like to be the stubborn run away child. This is probably why he and Hina get along so well. He can really see the stupid things he did as a kid and is able to help Hina reconcile with her father. Although Ryuji wasn't quite afforded that, I do not believe that he and his father parted on bad terms. A lot was left unsaid, sure, but I believe they had an understanding of each other. At least, in Dead Souls, Ryuji seemed a lot more mature in that regard. I think that Hina being able to admit that she is young and that she needs to work on how she interacts with her father came much sooner with Ryuji's help than it would have had she had to do it alone. I also believe that Ryuji's focus on the future makes him more reflective of his past. He can say that he did stupid things, but what surprised me was how aware of his father's feelings he actually was. My point in case comes with Hina and her father. Ryuji insists that Hina's dad is just worried about her and that he provided everything, so he can't be a bad man. Hina argues that a lot but later comes to realize that Ryuji is right. She tries to think of things from her dad's perspective, something she wouldn't have considered if not for Ryuji. It makes me wonder if he realized all the things his father had done for him but felt he had no way to express his loathing of the things others did. Perhaps his problem was not with his father specifically but the way others treated him because of his father that caused him to act the way he did. I think that through Hina, who had several similar experiences, we are able to see the young Ryuji and why he did the things he did.