Masumi Hayami

Masumi Hayami (速水真澄) is the Vice-President of Daito Art. He originally is the son of a female servant of Eisuke Hayami, the President of Daito Art. Eisuke is a sterile man so he adopted Masumi as his son/heir. Eisuke personally has no fatherly love towards Masumi, thus, at a young age, raises Masumi in the cold and calculating world of business. Because of this, Masumi has a reputation of being cold and heartless, treating his entertainers merely as living merchandises. Masumi may never change until he meets Maya Kitajima and falls for her, despite that she's 11 years younger than him. However, he's afraid she will never accept him because of his reputation and his past actions. Masumi then does not express his feelings but rather supports Maya from afar by sending purple roses and other financial aids, which makes Maya refer to him as a 'Purple Rose'.

Manga

Childhood

At 6, Masumi and his mother, Aya Fujimura, enters the Hayami household. His father, a building supervisor, died falling from the upper floor of a building site when Masumi was two. Masumi soon charms a lot of servants i

Eisuke's forbidden room

n the mansion, and from them he learns a lot about Eisuke.

Masumi also learns that Eisuke has a forbidden room that doesn't allow anyone in, even the cleaners. But one day, while chasing his toy, he accidentally enters it. Eisuke suddenly appears behind, so angry that he slaps Masumi. He then talks passionately to Masumi, saying that the lady is the famous 'Crimson Goddess', the main character from a play with the same name.

Then time proceeds to when Eisuke was nearing his forties, rejecting every marriage proposal he received. This makes his step-brothers turn greedy of his properties. They keep pressing him to adopt their child and become his heir. He then tests the children by asking them to clean the mud in the pond of his garden. After 80 minutes, they all gives up. Eisuke then goes to Masumi, who happens to be nearby, and asks him to do the same. Masumi, after thinking, goes up and talk to the gardener. The man then uses the machines to suck the pond dry; he is even able to use the mud to fertilize plants afterwards. Masumi reflects upon this experience as 'Hayami-shi might have started to keep an eye on me since back then...'

The story then shifts to Eisuke when he remembers about gathering information on Masumi. He learns that the boy has a high IQ, is popular among his classmates and is very good at baseball. Eisuke then reveals that at about thirty, he fought a war in the tropics and caught an illness that made him sterile. Because of that he loses the will to marry. However, he needs a successor and he states that "he must be a successor that lives up to my standards".

Masumi then enters a period of training. First he is moved to a prestigious school. After school, Masumi goes to his father's office and acts as a cleaner and observes the employees. Then after a year he is introduced in an anniversary. Masumi notices the employees' changes of attitude. His father later explains that that's the reason he puts Masumi as a cleaner; to see different faces of people. This and other events eventually make Masumi realizes that his father treat him as a successor only and has no fatherly feelings towards him. After that Masumi starts to learn about business.

Masumi starts to change when he lives with his father. Every time he's upset, he will go to the planetarium to vent out his feelings, but that is enough and eventually, with a notorious event, Masumi declares his heart has died. He states that he will love no-one, and will not anyone else love him.

Then one day, the Hayami's mansion catches a fire. Eisuke just returns home and he's furious that no-one saves the things in the Crimson Goddess's room for him. Masumi's mother, afraid, splashes a bucket of water on her and rushes in the mansion. Masumi runs after her. Together, they rescues the Goddess's robe but his mother is fatally wounded. While the medical staffs examine his mother, Masumi can't help but notice that the only thing his father have his eyes on right then is the robe.

It turns out that Masumi's mother's spine had been damaged. She visits the hospital frequently. Then she dies of pneumonia.

After the funeral, relatives keep pestering Eisuke not to keep Masumi. Masumi is on the verge of leaving the mansion when Eisuke summons him. The man then questions if Masumi wants to stay or not. Masumi is about to answer, but then his eyes catch the Crimson Goddess's robe that is hung in the room. At that moment, Masumi ultimately says yes, secretly vowing inside to take revenge on his father by taking the Crimson Goddess away from him.