We're back! Again, in such a small period of time. I'm spoiling you guys with updates. And myself with getting to sit down and write so much instead of painting, which if you didnt know, is my main hobby and something I'm trying to push towards becoming professional in.

Anyway, we're finally meeting some canon characters in this chapter! The story's going to pick up soon. We may even meet Naraku in the next couple of chapters.

Miasma

Here the power is ruthless and the truth is deaf. Here the air is filled with the miasma of sin
- Jean Racine

I pitched a low whistle as I came upon Hitomi castle. I'd seen plenty of castles, but being so close to them always filled me with a sense of awe. They were beautiful things, built so marvellously, and it looked so new. There was no ancient quality to this castle. The wood was new, the paint fresh. It was really a sight to behind.

"Who goes?"

And so were the spears that were being pointed directly at me.

I raised my hands slowly to show that I was no danger. "I'm a travelling doctor." Technically I was now, even if my travelling only started about an hour ago when I had left the teahouse in search of this castle. "I have heard from stories that the Lord's son was ill, and thought I may be able to help him."

"You don't look like a doctor."

No? Looking totally dishevelled and exhausted, I thought I looked like the pinnacle of doctor-chic right now, but to each their own. Maybe doctors here got decent amounts of rest and an actual social life that made them far less prone to the exhaustion I felt on a daily basis. If they did, sign me up. It was a rewarding profession, but some more rest certainly wouldn't go amiss.

"Please, I just want to help him." For selfish gain, I supposed, but I needed to make a living somehow. I doubted I could pop to the closest recruitment agency and find a local hospital to join.

The two guards looked at each other, sharing a silent conversation before their spears retracted. One gestured for me to walk between them.

"If you try anything funny, we'll kill you," the taller of the two threatened.

Well, I'd be serious as the grave, then, or else that might be where I end up.

The two escorted me through the castle halls until we reached a sliding shoji screen door. One of the guards slid the door open slightly and whispered to someone on the other side of it.

A short conversation was had before the screen door slid open.

"My Lord, a doctor has come, claiming to be able to heal young Lord Kagewaki."

Well, that's not exactly what I said, but if it was simple enough then hopefully I would be able to.

There was a pause, then another voice spoke. "Show him in."

I was pushed forwards, and stepped into the room, glaring over my shoulder at the guard that had pushed me. Rude. Still, I bowed and waited.

"A woman? You promise me a doctor and show me a woman? And a woman dressed so strangely, at that? What sort of game are you playing with me?" the Lord demanded, voice arch with insult and disbelief.

Right. Warring States. Women were second class citizens.

Excellent.

"Please, my Lord," I began, choking back my pride for now. Think of the money. Think of being able to get nice new clothes. "I have trained many years as a doctor." Under more gruelling circumstances than any doctor had in this time. I'd love to show any doctor here what I'd had to go through for my medical degree. They'd probably drop dead. "Let me see the young Lord and show you my abilities."

He scoffed, and I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

"If you cannot help my boy, I'll have you executed."

Now I really hoped that whatever this boy had, it was treatable.

I was taken into another room immediately after and sat down with an ageing man who told me he was the young Kagewaki's caretaker. He was the one that spent most of his time with the boy and did what he could to ease his discomfort while he lay ill.

A young woman bought the two of us tea while we talked.

I asked the caretaker question after question about Kagewaki's health, trying to figure out all I could before meeting the boy. I couldn't gather much.

Mostly, it seemed the boy just didn't have the energy to do much. Even taking a short walk around the castle grounds or gardens exhausted him. He complained of aching muscles regularly.

Nothing I could slap a name onto right away, unfortunately. That could be caused by any number of things.

How the hell was I supposed to stay alive if that was all they were going to give me? Tiredness and achy muscles.

After I'd dragged literally all I could out of the man, I decided it was time to meet the boy and see what I could gather from him. I'd probably get better answers out of him than his caretaker.

Agreeing to let me meet the young Lord - thank you so kindly for the honour - I was led out of that room and into a much larger room. It seemed pretty barren as far as decoration and was split down the middle with a slatted reed screen. I could make out a figure lying in a futon between the slats. I couldn't make out any details of the boy's figure, though.

I'd have to be patient, I supposed.

"Lord Kagewaki. I have bought a doctor who can help you."

There was that certainty again. Let's hope their faith in me wasn't misplaced. If it was, my life would be misplaced.

"A doctor?" The voice that came from behind the slatted screen was not the voice of a boy. From all that had been said, I'd expected the young Lord Kagewaki to be a boy, or maybe a young teen. The voice that had just come out of him was deep and smooth. The sort of voice you wanted to hear whispering in your ear when-

I cleared my throat. "A travelling doctor, my Lord. I've trained for many years."

"A woman?"

I was going to get so fucking sick of people being surprised I could do something because I was a woman. "I'd like to ask you a few questions and examine you to see if I can find out what's wrong." After the caretaker cleared his throat, I tacked on: "Lord Kagewaki."

After a long moments pause, I heard the shifting of him sitting up. "You may enter."

"Treat him well, girl," the caretaker hissed in my ear.

As opposed to what? Causing him more harm? What else would I do, besides treating him well? My life hung on making him well. There was no way that I was going to do anything to sabotage him.

Leaving behind the caretaker, and my annoyance, I split the slatted screen and stepped through into the section of the room that Kagewaki resided in. This part of the room was even more barren than the other. Kagewaki sat in a futon in the centre of the floor, and a low table was pushed against the left-side wall. Besides that it was bare.

Who could live such an empty life?

This man, apparently. Who was definitely no boy. He looked like he was in his early twenties, with rather soft features that made up a very beautiful face. Coupled with the voice I knew he had, he was a rather attractive person. I'd always been a fan of long hair and nice voices, though. All my past flames had had the same qualities.

I had a type and this man was it.

Damn.

"My Lord," I greeted with a bow. "May I?"

I gestured to approach and examine and waited for his answer, which came in a silent nod. I knelt beside his futon and reached out to his wrist first, finding the pulse and nudging my jacket sleeve back so I could see the time on my watch. As the second hand ticked away, I counted each beat. "A little slow," I mused after a minute had passed. "I've heard a little about what's been ailing you, but perhaps you'd like to tell me yourself? When did this illness start? What's been troubling you?"

"I've been frail since I was a child. I tired easily." All his life? Well, fuck. I was pretty fucked if it was a chronic illness. I couldn't cure many of those easily. "It got worse as I grew into a man. The fatigue became pain, aches in the muscles. Pain in the joints. Standing, walking, it gets too much. I rarely find myself wanting to try any more."

Aches and pains and tiredness. It could still be a hundred things.

Still, he looked tired. "Are you having trouble sleeping, my Lord?"

"It's all I seem to be doing now." His deep brown eyes turned away, settling on the view outside the window. He looked like he was crumbling at the thought of the illness. Seeing that sort of pain always devastated me more than seeing the actual effects of the illness in people. "Sleeping or in pain."

"Well, let's see what we can do about that. I'll have to think about what's wrong with you, but I can find you something for the pain easily enough. Willow bark tea, for now." I doubted I could send a prescription to the pharmacy and have a nurse do a run for it. "That should ease the pain some. Now, have you had any unusual weight gain lately? A cough?"

He shook his head no to both.

I lifted both his hands and checked them over. They looked healthy enough. The veins looked normal, no clubbing. Parts of his nails were peeling and a little chipped, though. Brittle nails... But then, that could be due to the life he was leading. Life in the Warring States didn't offer luxuries like I was used to, I was sure. Chipped nails may not be a symptom.

All that hair, though...

There were strands all over the futon, long and short.

Humming to myself, I reached for the lock of his long hair that hung over his chest, held it between my hands and pulled gently. Quite a few strands of hair broke clean in half when I pulled. "Well, that's interesting. Tell me, what's your diet like? What do you usually eat in a day?"

"Rice. Sometimes a little fish. I don't have much of an appetite lately."

"Just rice and fish?" Damn. Well that explained away the hair and nails. He wasn't getting the right nutrients with a spotty diet of rice and fish. "That has to change. We need to get some more vegetables in you. That might help with the fatigue, too."

Still, I didn't think malnutrition was the underlying cause. He didn't look all that frail in general. Without preamble, and with professional grace, I pulled apart his yukata so it slid own his arms. He flinched back with the movement, but I persisted anyway. I was right. He didn't look all that emaciated and percussing his abdomen didn't bring up any sounds that I should be worried about.

So what was it?

A few ideas were already starting to form. "I need to think. Thank you for letting me examine you, Lord Kagewaki."

I drew myself to my feet and turned back towards the slatted partitions.

A good DDX session was in my near future.

"Doctor."

I paused at the partition, looking back over my shoulder at the young man.

"Will you tell me your name?" he asked, shrugging his yukata back up onto his shoulders.

"Nori. My name's Nori."

The room that the caretaker and I had shared tea in became my temporary base of operations.

I holed up in there and performed a crude solo DDX, scribbled into my notepad.

Bradycardia
Tiredness
Aching muscles
Joint pain
Brittle nails (malnutrition?)
Brittle hair Hair loss? (↑)
Depression?

They were all just so broad.

Poor diet could be attributed to most of those.

It just didn't seem right, though. There was just something that wasn't right. Something I wasn't seeing. What the hell was it? Usually I'd run a blood panel, see if there was anything else I could see. That wasn't an option here.

Frustrated, I threw my notebook at the wall. "Dammit!"

I didn't usually get so worked up over a differential, but this one wasn't just possible life or death for the patient. This could very well be my own death looming above me. If I didn't figure out what was wrong, then I was fucked.

What could I do?

Maybe treat the malnutrition and see what symptoms were left? It would buy me some time, at least.

I wasn't sure the Lord would be happy with finding out that a diet change was all his son needed to start feeling better, but it was a start.

Speaking of the Lord, he slid open the screen door to the room I was in and stood there expectantly. "Well, girl? Do you have an answer for me? What ails my son?"

To tell the truth or not?

"Well?" he prompted.

"I don't know yet."

He did not like that. The threw his arm out in anger. "You claim to be a doctor, yet you can't find out what's wrong with my son?!"

"There are thing's that I can do to eliminate- Wait, did you just wince?" I stood, eyes narrowing in on the Lord's strained expression. "Do you have muscle aches? Pain in your joints? Are you tired a lot?"

All these symptoms on their own meant very little, but the same symptoms passed down from father to son-

"That's it!"

Idea in mind, I bolted past the Lord and down the hallway to Kagewaki's rooms, ignoring the shouting and men running after me.

I pushed straight past the privacy blinds and crouched next to a surprised Kagewaki. My fingers palpated his throat. There it was. "Swallow. Hard," I ordered. He complied. "Is there pain there? When you swallow?"

His answer was interrupted by the entrance of his enraged father.

"How dare you, woman? Come into my home and-"

"Is there pain?" I prompted over his father's yelling.

"-disrespecting me. I should have you slaughtered for your insolence! You-"

Looking back and forth between his father and myself, Kagewaki hesitated for a moment before nodding. "Yes, there's pain."

Yes. "Lord Hitomi, I know what's wrong with your son."

His tirade cut short, and while he was red-faced with anger, it seemed he was willing to listen.

"He has a condition called thyroiditis. It's something he's had from birth, a hormone defect, that worsened when he became a man." My eyes turned to Kagewaki. He had said his aches and pains had gotten worse as he'd grown older. As he'd hit puberty and his hormones had become even more imbalanced. "It's something you've got as well, my Lord. The aches and pains you've been feeling, that you've assumed were just part of getting older? It's the same condition your son has, just progressing much slower."

They had Hashimoto's Thyroiditis.

I'd done it.

"So you know what's wrong with him." The Lord's glare was sharp. "How will you treat it?"

Well, that wasn't so easy.

Information Time:

DDX - A DDX is a differential diagnosis. Basically where a doctor looks at all the symptoms and rules out potential illnesses until they have a solid theory for why you're ill. Sometimes, in my experience, at least, the doctors will include their patients in the DDX's, and sometimes they won't. I chose for Nori to not include Kagewaki because, well, if she starts shooting off medical terms at him, he's gonna have no clue what's going on, and potentially shout witch. As she's trying to stay alive right now, that's probably not the outcome shes looking for.

This chapter was a fun one to write.

I'd always wondered what Kagewaki's disease was, and since I couldn't find an answer, and I sadly don't have Rumiko Takahashi on speed dial, I had to do some researching and make a guess. Writing it all out like that was great and really interesting.

And I told you all Kagewaki would play quite a big part in the beginning of the story. He's still got quite a few chapters ahead of him yet, too. He and Nori are going to develop together a lot before Naraku becomes a thing.

Well, I'll bid you adieu now. I hope you enjoyed the chapter!