The note arrives, borne by the uro-san, on a dull autumn morning. It's from an old mushishi, a regular of the Karibusa archives. He'd written to her first, it says; thought she'd want to know immediately, given whom the news involves.
She smiles a little at that, despite the gravity of the situation. She's sure Ginko wouldn't be too flattered to know that others are thinking of him as her pet mushishi.
Someone else might have panicked, might have insisted on heading there in person, in defiance of all common sense. Tanyuu knows her strengths and her limits, her responsibilities to things greater than personal ties. Whenever she thinks in terms of what she can and cannot do, it's not a matter of physical ability; it never has been.
She picks up her brush, instead. Begins to compose a letter of her own.
Even if Kumado thinks about the things which bind their respective families — and he has had a still-lengthening lifetime in which to do so — he has, nonetheless, reached no conclusions. What is the weight of a generation's debt against an individual's sacrifice? What meaning can those concepts even have, in the face of the finality of duty?
It's an issue he can't hope to solve anytime soon. Certainly not today. But he's fairly sure, all the same, that this is a personal favour. Whatever he may owe to Tanyuu, as a mushishi of the Minai clan, it isn't this sort of... errand.
The old mushishi recognises him upon opening the door, and greets him with a wry smile. "This is a strange one for you, Minai-dono."
Kumado steps inside with a curt nod. "Karibusa-dono has explained the situation to me. She is fairly sure she knows what it is—"
"I meant the mushishi."
There's a familiar figure leaning against the wall. Perhaps not so much 'leaning against' as 'leant', as if it were a scarecrow or a sack of rice; nothing animating its form.
There's a parallel there which Kumado carefully doesn't draw. He steps closer, observes Ginko's unresponsive body. Breathing, but somehow lifeless. His one visible eye is open: a vivid, empty green.
"I have my own theories," the old mushishi comments. "But what did Karibusa-dono say?"
"Miren-nashi. Not quite the season for it, though."
"No. But can't say I'm surprised. The things I've heard about this one... Ginko, was it?"
Kumado sets down his box, opens a drawer and searches for the herbs he needs. He can guess at the shape of those theories. No origin, no particular future; it's easy to see how a blank slate would prove tempting to a mushi that preys on those without attachments.
There's something unsatisfying about that explanation, all the same. Is he disappointed? He's not sure why he should be. He throws a handful of herbs onto the brazier, waits for them to sputter and start to smoke.
The old mushishi watches as Kumado closes his eyes. "Sure you can get him back?"
"I have to," Kumado says, and closes his eyes again.
It's an open question — at least to some philosophers — whether sensations can exist without a self. Let's say, for now, that there's light. A river of light, made up of creatures of light, flowing in no particular direction, because directions do not exist without a frame of reference. Time must be passing, for these things to be happening, but there is nothing to note it.
But then, suddenly, unexpected: a patch of darkness. Something blotting the light out, which means there must be something it is blocking the light from. And then there's something else, a different order of sensation.
In the darkness, something flickers and recognises the new element as noise.
Noise, which has a form, which has a meaning. And then, another sense, adding texture to the world: smell. Another, more direct, immediate: a sensation which has a location, to which something must surely correspond. And the patch of darkness grows and shifts, gains definition and shadow, has a shape which has a name—
Ginko blinks. Looks up at Kumado.
"About time," Kumado says.
He takes his hand off Ginko's shoulder, leans back and watches sense return to that green eye. Behind him, the river of light flows onwards.
Self reasserts itself, dizzyingly. Ginko puts a hand to his head, winces as he feels himself return.
"Come on," Kumado says, already standing up. "We're waiting."
There's a solid floor beneath him. There's air in his lungs. There's smoke, a thin haze through which Ginko can make out Kumado's form and, a little further away, the walls of a mountain hut.
Someone laughs from behind Kumado. "Well done."
There was... he'd been on a mountainside. Someone had asked him to investigate. The koumyaku-suji had been surprisingly strong there, for autumn. And he'd... what had he done? Tried to ride the mugura? But there had been something else, some other presence.
He'll have to think over it later, after his head clears. "Thanks," Ginko says: first to Kumado, then to the old mushishi who emerges from the shadows. "You saved me. Again," he adds, glancing back to Kumado. "Two lives, now; it's a heavy debt."
"Your debt isn't to me. Tanyuu-dono sent—"
"Not entirely," Ginko agrees. "But at least in part. I'll thank Tanyuu too, of course."
There's something else beneath Kumado's strange stubbornness. He's already sweeping the half-burnt herbs off the brazier, no longer looking at Ginko, when he continues: "She recognised it from the description alone. Miren-nashi."
Ah. That would explain it. Ginko knows the sort of prey that mushi is meant to like, the implications if it finds a human target. It seeks the unfettered, those as good as nameless; it's the exact opposite of Kumado's lot, of the ties of history and blood that have bound him to himself, to his identity as a Minai mushishi.
That's what others would say, at any rate.
The old mushishi's staring at him, with a casual and undisguised curiosity. There's a suspicion there which Ginko knows he can refute, if he wanted to.
"I'll really have to thank her, then," he says instead. "In person. You coming along?"
Kumado looks up, surprised. Ginko grins back.
He's got more than enough that ties him to this earth.