Tengen has so many questions about everything that happened to Michizane's family.
Michizane is emotionally broken, and maybe what Tengen hates most is that the rest and peace he should be able to find with his partner has been replaced by suspicion and lies. Even if Fumiko made some sort of mistake or did some evil deed, it was hard to imagine that she did anything worthy of the curse that fell upon her.
Fumiko's silence is irksome.
And for that matter, they still don't know whether the curse was completed when the baby died, or if she was still marked for further suffering.
It really seems like Fumiko would rely on her and Michizane to try and get the curse broken instead of her brother, who was coincidentally—or not—murdered by Kenji Fujiwara.
Fujiwara caught a famous assassin working for the Katsuragi clan in his home, in the room where his newborn son was sleeping, and it was not surprising that he retaliated the way he did.
Momo wondered if there was some link between the death of Michizane's child and the spat between Katsuragi and Fujiwara houses because they happened back-to-back, but no one was telling them anything.
She found a poem he wrote on a scrap of paper in Michizane's study about how he was a father for only a moment and in that moment he both loved his son and was dreadfully frightened of his appearance.
What was that thing?
It was all so mysterious, because it really seemed like Michizane married a girl that was, by anyone's estimation, normal and very nice. She got pregnant right away, and seemingly lost her sanity over the course of the pregnancy and gave birth to something that didn't even look like a person, revealing that she had been cursed by the dark idol under unknown circumstances at an unknown time for an unknown reason.
Not unknown to everyone—Fumiko clearly knew how she'd been cursed, and she also very clearly told her brother as well.
Daisuke Katsuragi being dead now is just another turn in an increasingly ugly story.
Katsuragi turning out to be a bit of a villain was already kind of a letdown for Michizane, because when they met, he was much younger and thought Daisuke talking about wanting peace and not war was so amazing. As they grew and moved through their lives on the same stage, it became a little clearer over time that the Katsuragi clan avoided open wars by throwing fuel on every other fire that was burning and using other clans to do their dirty work.
Even his early friendship with Michizane was mostly manufactured to try and turn him against Tanashiro, and Daisuke once drunkenly joked that it was a shame Michizane and Kenji didn't kill each other when they met.
Tengen doesn't know how to help her friend; how can you save someone from the fact that people are just terrible? Most can't be trusted, some are evil, and a person with the kindest and best intentions will be crushed by those who have no regard for others when it comes down to anything that matters.
She finds him sitting under a tree by his son's grave a week after Daisuke Katsuragi was stabbed to death with his own dagger and then fed to the demon dogs.
It's so disingenuous. The people that want war don't care; they just want an excuse to kill and say, 'it wasn't my fault.' Unlike villains in books, the ones that exist in the real world never want to own their decisions. They want to do what they do and place the weight of their own judgement on someone else.
That goes for Fumiko too. She didn't just meet the dark idol; she did something to make it angry. No one was going to say she hadn't suffered enough, because what sin could have justified everything that had happened. She was maybe a liar, maybe a manipulator, but to her point, how many others did they know who were playing far more dangerous games?
The baby was born without a face, with a body that served as an embodiment of ugliness and chaos.
It seemed so personal. So specific. So malevolent.
Tengen thought about just dragging Fumiko off somewhere and forcing her to tell through violence, but she knew Michizane wouldn't accept that. There was a part of him that was still searching for a path to forgiveness because despite all the underhandedness, it was also very true that Fumiko had suffered enormously.
Tengen didn't really know how to help him, and her efforts to do so were derailed by the emergence of a cursed spirit so powerful that she was forced to send one of her hawks to a sorcerer to ask him to deal with it.
One of the least charming things about the shaky post-war peace is that the despair of war that had seeped into the earth itself caused cursed spirits to spawn at a maddening rate. She was learning how to perhaps reduce this by using her cursed energy manipulation to disrupt pools of cursed energy, but it was impossible to stop completely.
Michizane, meanwhile, feels like things around him are falling apart, and the political situation is becoming dangerous. Even if he tends to think of Fujiwara as one person who has never betrayed his trust, if he's going to pick sides in a situation where more people are likely to die, he wants to see with his own eyes what the truth is.
Ignoring all of that because he is sad would frankly be an enormous disservice to the citizens of his territory, who are enjoying their first years of peace in a very long time.
He takes a bath, puts on fresh clothes, and tries to push everything from his mind before leaving a note for Tengen and warping straight to Nara.
Upon arrival, he is offered a meal and tea, but since it only takes him about ten minutes to travel and not days, he politely declines and is received by Kikyo because Kenji isn't at the castle.
"Surprised to see you here. Just kidding. You're here to see for yourself, right?" she asks.
"Yes. Sorry if that's a problem. If all of this is going to result in war, I have to make sure that I know the truth."
"It's no problem. Powerful people are liars."
Kikyo brings him upstairs to their private wing, and says, "The assassin was found in Sakura's room. The baby was with her. My son was actually right across the hall and is the one who found the body."
"Did anyone get hurt?"
"Only the assassin. We don't actually know what happened to him. It really looked like he just broke into Sakura's room and his body fell apart into tiny pieces. Whatever happened to him, it was so quiet that no one else woke up. Even the baby slept through it, and the baby will wake up if he thinks about hearing a sound."
Michizane asks, "And it was a known Katsuragi clan associate?"
"Higurashi. You met that idiot, right?"
"They guy who thinks he is invisible?"
"He is invisible everyone else, you know. You really do look like you need a cup of tea. Or a thousand. Life's been a bit harsh for you this week. I do apologize this nonsense that has prompted you to travel. The timing of all of this was surprising to us as well. It seemed…unprovoked in a way."
Michizane gives her the best attempt at a half-hearted smile he can manage. "You could turn the Great Sea into tea, and I could drink it, and I'd still be a bit gloomy."
"Well, I'm no good at comfort, but you can only have one worst day of your life, and it's probably behind you, so there's that."
Kikyo says, "It happened in here. This is Sakura's room."
"The concubine?"
"Yes. She was asleep with the baby. The assassin entered through the window."
Kikyo slides the door open, and Michizane enters to find an interesting scene.
It's a huge room, filled with fine things: enameled jewelry boxes, a basket of gold hair pins, a collection of fine robes hung neatly in one corner, a mural of the garden painted on one wall in black, with cherry blossoms in the forefront.
"You'd think the Princess of the Sun lives here."
"She is the beloved of a lord."
This was also true of Fumiko, but their room didn't look like this. He wonders if he maybe didn't pay reasonable respect to her as his lady, if she expected this kind of life, and never had the stomach to say what he offered her wasn't enough. It was a pointless thing to speculate about since his territory was still very poor from decades of war while Fujiwara's territory was quite wealthy. The Fujiwara clan themselves possessed wealth separate from public matters.
There's a bloodstain on the tatami mat between the bed and the window, and on the ceiling as well. It's interesting to him how the blood splattered mostly vertically.
"There's residue from Higurashi's technique. His technique is sort of like a bubble, and if you look directly at it, you see what's on the other side of the bubble. When he walks around, his residue stays trapped inside the bubble, which means even after he's been somewhere, there's no trace of him. You can think of this as the bubble popping."
Kikyo answers, "And him too. Kenji has the body in his shadow, but it was like something cut him to pieces and he fell to the ground in a pile."
When Michizane lowers the cloth from his eyes, he sees it.
The blood stain on the floor is contaminated by trace amounts of the dark idol's power. Higurashi was either cursed like Fumiko and his number was called at an inopportune time, or it directly killed him.
He can tell many other people have come and gone from this room. A birth probably took place here and there's a newborn baby, so he would expect at a minimum that members of Kenji's household, other Fujiwara clan members, and household staff have come and gone from this room in recent days.
He came to verify that Higurashi had indeed died inside of the Fujiwara castle, and in a place where vulnerable people would be. The bloodstain is right next to the bed, so in the instant before Higurashi died, the mother and baby were probably in his reach. If he hadn't died mysteriously, he probably would have succeeded in his mission, and that would have been terrible.
"You said he was cut. Is there anyone with a technique like that around?"
Kikyo says, "If that was the case, it wouldn't be much of a mystery."
Michizane stands there, in this room fit for a princess, and remembers a few things:
A few months ago, he and Fumiko fought over the fate of this woman and her baby. She was out of character, irrational, infuriating.
After the fight, he wanted to come to Nara to talk to Kenji, and she developed pains that kept him at home.
Before her delivery, she received a letter from this woman, and she became angry and burned it, then lied to Michizane, claiming she did it because it was insulting.
After the baby died, she refused to tell how she had become cursed, but it seemed clear she'd told Daisuke. Right after, an assassin from their clan appeared in this room and died very mysteriously.
Yes—all of these incidents where Fumiko behaved strangely involved Sakura.
Kikyo can see the young lord clearly digesting information even as they were standing there.
Michizane asks, "Can I ask you some questions about Sakura? Did she come from a sorcery family? I don't really know where concubines come from. Is there a negotiation, does money change hands, I don't know. I grew up poor and I don't know where rich people get extra women."
"We don't where Sakura came from or any details about her from before she came to stay with us. Six years ago, she suffered some sort of serious injury to her head, and it caused her to lose all her memories. She appeared in Nara like that, and ended up sold to a brothel, where Kenji met her. She has a miniscule amount of cursed energy, but no technique, and as far as we know, isn't from any sorcery clan."
"Lost her memories? Does that make someone like a baby?"
"It's hard to explain. She remembered information, but no personal details about herself."
"That seems suspicious."
"She's not a suspicious person."
Still, six years ago?
"What time of the year? When did you meet her?"
"Spring."
"The same year Tanashiro died."
"Yes, when she arrived here, Kenjaku was a newborn."
In winter, the dark idol was lost, and in spring, a mysterious woman with no memories appeared in Nara.
He keeps asking questions and discovers this woman has never made contact with anyone except the contacts she's formed since she arrived with the Fujiwara clan. She's never told them what her real name is, never spoken to her family, nothing. She claims she doesn't remember where she grew up or anything at all about her life.
"Has anyone ever come looking for her?"
"No."
"Has anything weird or suspicious ever happened around Sakura?"
Kikyo sighs, crosses her arms, and says, "You clearly have a very specific suspicion, and so I'm going to freely share with you what I know, because I respect you, because I think at least one thing doesn't need to be as hard as possible for you right now. It we are level with each other, it can help avoid a misunderstanding."
Michizane appreciates this gesture, because he is certain this woman could make this inquiry far more work for him.
Kikyo explains, "Sakura is the kind and sweet and good to everyone, but there is this trend where people who are purposefully cruel to her suffer a kind of 'reciprocal misfortune.' Bad things will happen to them, but it will be related to what they did to her."
"Can you tell me instances where this has happened?"
Kikyo tells him about the brothel mistress who intended to prostitute Sakura who died from a venereal disease that spread to her entire body, the gardener who lost his hands after groping her, and her sister who lost her voice.
The incidents have a certain proportionality to them. Cursing at someone verbally resulted in lost speech, sexual assault resulted in lost hands, and the woman who wanted to prostitute her suffered lost life. The consequences in each case weren't exactly fair, but it was easy to see that the less severe curses occurred with the lesser offenses.
She adds, "If I can be perfectly honest, as soon as you talk to Sakura, you will understand how comically absurd it is to think she might be inadvertently cursing people that are evil to her. She won't even step on an insect. Yet something obliterated an experienced sorcerer here and there's no signs anyone else was in the room."
"What does Kenji think?"
"I've never discussed this with Kenji and cannot speak for him. I would not speak against the Princess of the Sun because I quite like her. She's lived here for six years, right here with our family, and the only people who have ever been hurt are a few people who practically asked for it."
Michizane thought for the first time that maybe Sakura was a vessel for the dark idol.
Cursing Fumiko almost had to mean that the dark idol's power was attached to a human soul. That might mean a cursed object that also contained a human soul or an actual living human.
It didn't really make sense for the concubine to have it, because how would she have come to be possessed by it? And if she was it's vessel, it should have been evident to the people around her immediately. After all, these weren't random people. The Fujiwara was the oldest and most powerful sorcery clan.
"When Fumiko came here, did she meet Sakura, and if so, did they have any interactions that were negative?"
"They definitely met. Fumiko and Sakura were getting along well on the first night of her stay here, but on the second day, she woke up and didn't want to speak or look at Sakura. It was very puzzling. Fumiko yelled at her in the garden over a misunderstanding before she left. I found out from my son who happened to see it."
"What was the misunderstanding about?"
"Fumiko said something that made Sakura believe she knew who she was, where she came from and her name and whatnot. Fumiko denied this and I suppose Sakura begged and cried about it. Made things awkward. She said she was mistaken and apologized, but Fumiko was apparently offended."
"So nothing that would trigger this 'reciprocal misfortune?'"
Kikyo worriedly answers, "That's a very worrying question. Not to my knowledge."
"I'd like to meet her."
"If you swear you won't do anything right now."
"like to confirm my suspicions before I bother with worrying about doing something I can't undo," he replies.
Kikyo isn't sure if she should actually allow this; Michizane is certainly a man of his word, but he has just endured what will be one of the worst events of his life and he clearly thinks there is perhaps someone to blame for that. After giving it consideration, she decides to facilitate the meeting because if she says no and he feels like being unreasonable, there's not anything she can do to stop him from simply tearing the place up looking for Sakura.
"We've been hiding her in a certain spot here on the grounds under careful watch. I'll bring her to you, but please keep in mind this woman just had a baby. She might be asleep and she's certainly not going to be in sorts to receive a guest."
After he accepts these terms, he goes downstairs to a tearoom to wait.
Kikyo is nervous about all this business, because while it seems clear Sakura definitely has some ability to curse others without being aware, there hasn't been any calculable wrongdoing associated with this. Groper loses his hands? She thought that was fine, actually.
If this misunderstanding between the women led to Michizane's young wife being cursed to the point that their child died, that meant Sakura actually was potentially very dangerous under the right circumstances.
Kikyo makes her way to a guarded residence closer to the center of the property and wakes Sakura up, telling her that Michizane Sugawara wants to meet her. She's a little confused by this request, but as they've never met and she's been most isolated with her newborn son.
Sakura changes clothes, pins her hair up, minimally fixes her makeup a little, and tucks her baby into a sling.
Kikyo considers taking the baby from her for the sake of convenience but thinks it might be best if Michizane has a visual reminder that this woman is a mother. Also, Kenshin screams if he is not with his mother and she doesn't want to deal with it.
Kikyo knows that if Daisuke Katsuragi sent an assassin to eliminate Sakura because she had cursed his sister, resulting in the death of the baby, that was an entirely different situation than if Katsuragi had been trying to assassinate the baby for some stupid political reason. By all accounts, if Sakura had cursed Fumiko without cause, any sorcerer would agree retaliation was fair game.
Sakura has no idea any of this is happening, and Kikyo doesn't tell her, even now, because no one would be more upset about the idea that Sakura was cursing people than Sakura herself.
"You seem upset about something. Is everything all right?" Sakura asks as they walk together.
Kikyo nods. "It's nothing."
Nothing, except the outcome of this situation might end with Kenji and Michizane fighting until one of them dies over an accident.
Michizane meanwhile waits in a tearoom. The weather is nice, so the big doors have been opened, and he can see across the porch into the courtyard. Kenjaku is with one of his older cousins, building what looks suspiciously like a small funeral pyre, but it seems like he's having a really fun time doing it.
Kikyo is sure Sakura is probably still quite sore for such a surprisingly long walk, but she doesn't complain about any discomfort, and when they stop in the kitchen so Kikyo can get a tea tray, she wonders what's actually going to happen.
Michizane is still watching a very joyful little boy being very weird when he hears the door behind him slide open.
And there, standing behind him:
A ghost.
His mind simply cannot fathom Ayame Tengen just standing there in the doorway, like that's just something she can do after being dead in his mind for six years.
The cloth that usually covers his eyes is already coiled around his neck, and he can see that it is she. She looks different, sure—it's been six years. He doesn't look like he did back then either. The pink hair, the green eyes, the shape of her soul…it is impossible for him not to accept that this is Ayame Tengen and yet he cannot even begin to understand how this could have happened.
Michizane can also see very clearly that the mystery of the dark idol's power has been solved. All this time, it has been inside of Ayame.
Kikyo can tell something has gone strangely wrong in this conversation because Michizane and Sakura are just staring at each other with odd, unreadable, but very intense expressions.
Instead of introducing themselves, they just stand frozen.
Ayame studies his face, and she's sure she knows it from somewhere, but she can't remember ever meeting him. He's very handsome and he has a face no one would forget, and yet she can't remember where she's seen it before.
She tends to think of her life as being written down in a diary that her mind keeps, but when she hit her head, the diary was lost and so she started a new one, as Sakura. One of the biggest questions in her life is if the old diary was merely misplaced and her mind might find it again, or if it is gone forever and she will simply never know what was written there.
"Ayame…"
Her brain remembers the name of that book, and where it was misplaced when everything went wrong. There is a moment within her mind, 'oh, now I remember where I put that.'
"Ayame…that's my name," she whispers.
Michizane can't understand why she didn't come home or write to them or something, but then he remembers that Kikyo said she lost all her memories and didn't even know her name.
"Ayame Tengen. You were my friend. You have a sister, Momo, who has been missing you all these years," he says.
"Michi…Michi!"
She rushes to embrace him, and Michizane wraps his arms around her.
Kikyo puts the tea tray down on the table and decides to leave, as her fears that Sugawara might hurt Sakura have evaporated.
Ayame being Master Tengen's sister is actually quite sad because these people have been living in a fairly small subset of the population. It's some sort of miracle this secret wasn't accidentally disclosed right away six years ago, the first time Michizane came to Nara, but that week Sakura had been sent out to a country house with Kenjaku because Kenjaku had been coughing and a doctor recommended fresh air.
Since Master Tengen and Sugawara have close ties to a very famous and dangerous power that has been missing for exactly six years, it's not hard for Kikyo to guess how people around Sakura might be getting cursed.
Long after she leaves, Michizane just holds Ayame, until her baby makes a little sound.
"Oops, did I hurt the baby? I didn't mean to."
Ayame says, "It's okay, he likes being smooshed. It probably reminds him of what it was like before he escaped from the womb."
And then his whispers in wonder, "You're here and you're alive. You're all grown up. You have a baby."
She nods. "I do. This is my son, Kenshin Fujiwara."
Michizane pulls the sling back enough to look at the little baby boy, and finds he looks exactly like one would expect of someone placed a curse on Kenji and turned him into a fat little baby.
"I bet you're a good mom."
The knowledge 'Michizane Sugawara's baby died,' catches up to her active knowledge that this is Michizane Sugawara and she cares for him very much, and Ayame says, "Oh no, Michi, I'm so sorry."
"I don't want to be sad right now," he answers, reaching for a chubby little hand, "My dear friend is alive."
She says, "I don't exactly remember what happened. There are some memories still missing, but I remember everything at the shrine going…really wrong. And then suddenly I was in this city and my head was…"
Reaching up, she parts her pinned up hair enough to reveal a huge scar that runs from behind her temple almost to the back of her head.
Michizane answers, "A horse threw you off the steep side of the mountain. I guess you're wondering, why we didn't look for you?"
"I'm not blaming you for anything that happened. Destiny just took us to different places for a little while, that's all," she says.
"Momo was hurt by the vengeful spirit, and I was gone. It was days before anyone knew you'd been left out there, and by then, I think everyone assumed you had died. It was so cold, and you fell. I went to go find out and lay you to rest, but I couldn't find anything. A trapper told me that he'd seen wolves with your body. Now, I realize the trapper probably found you that day and carried you off somewhere. I messed up."
This explained how he made the mistake of believing she was dead, and why the trapper died. According to Kikyo, the dark idol only curses people who are mean to Ayame, and he probably took her and then lied so this wouldn't be discovered.
Michizane feels so stupid for making such an obvious mistake.
"Michi, can you use your powers to bring Momo here? I want to see my sister. Please."
"I can do that."
They embrace again, and he holds her hands. "I'm so happy that you're alive, that I don't even know what to do. But I'll bring Momo to you. I don't think you can visit us right now. You have a baby."
It taxes his cursed energy a little, to warp across such a long space back to back, but he thinks he has enough to get back one more time.
When he gets back home, he finds Tengen talking to Fumiko outside, at a little table in the garden, where she'd brought Fumiko for some fresh air.
He interrupts a conversation where Tengen is trying to convince Fumiko to talk to Michizane about what happened.
Michizane's brain snaps back to this situation in an instant, about what Kikyo said…Ayame and Fumiko had a spat because Fumiko did something that made Ayame think Fumiko knew who she was.
He had told Fumiko about Ayame: what she looked like and her personality. If Fumiko forgot the rest, she probably didn't forget that Ayame Tengen had pink hair.
The more he thinks about it, the more messed up it seems, because Fumiko is a part of their family. She is a part of their every day lives and knows that Tengen suffers because she has believed all this time that Ayame died, and it was her fault.
He couldn't even begin to question her motivation for doing this, but it was clear that she did.
Michizane decides he doesn't want to deal with any of that.
Fumiko doesn't matter at the moment.
"Momo, this probably seems a little crazy, but I'm going to warp you to Nara. There's someone who wants to see you."
Tengen tilts her head in a very 'can you see we were doing something important' sort of way. "I'm not in the mood for a visit."
"We're going anyway!"
Tengen is confused by the fact that he seems excited. Maybe happy, even. It's not been a week where happiness seems like an option, and she can't fight him anyway, so she lets him grab her.
Tengen pukes upon arrival, because she doesn't feel that even the sturdiest human bodies are meant to move that fast. Right into a little flower patch, onto some lovely little irises that are in bloom, just to be bloomed upon by Momo.
"Why do you always do that when I warp you?"
She glowers at him and reaches into her robes for a metal flask to rinse the taste out of her mouth and then a couple of gulps to get her through the day.
Somewhere in the background, there's a little pillar of smoke and someone is yelling 'little boys don't set fires' at Kenjaku.
This is the first time Ayame has seen her sister in six years: puking on her flower patch, spitting on the ground, drinking whiskey out of a flask.
Ayame puts a hand over her mouth, "Oh my, Momo."
Momo doesn't even need to see her; her body reacts purely on instinct at the sound of her voice, and she practically catapults herself through the open doors.
"Ayame?!" she asks, when her arms are already around her.
What's going on?
How is Ayame alive? What is she doing here? How did they not know she was alive all this time? There is a lot of important context missing, and she's not sure if she cares about any of it.
Her sister is alive.
ALIVE.
Michizane says, "Momo, Ayame bonked her head kind of hard and lost all her memories, so she didn't know who she was or how to get home, and probably some jackasses brought her to this city. They've been calling her Sakura because of her hair, and she's apparently been here with Kenji for almost this whole time."
Since Momo was told by Michizane that Ayame died and he buried her body, and generally, everything about this situation is odd, she has questions.
It's not like they've been fully estranged. In a sense, Ayame knows a lot about what's happened for her sister and Michizane because they are famous, especially in the world of sorcery. And they know about her life because nothing makes for more interesting gossip than Fujiwara's odd family.
Tengen takes a step back and puts her hands on her little sisters face. "Ayame."
"Momo."
"Ayame."
"Momo."
The baby starts to cry, and she says, "Kenshin, my son."
Ayame shifts her robes a little, and while Michizane can't see anything because the sling is obstructing his view, but he can hear the baby suckling.
He sits at the table and pours the still-warm tea, wondering if it matters that he loved her?
Michizane let go of his romantic feelings because it would have been destructive to hold onto those things when at least in his mind, Ayame was gone. There are many ways to love someone, and he is more than anything, elated to see her with his own eyes again, alive and well.
He's a different person after these six years, and he's certain that she's changed too.
He's glad she's okay, and that she's been cared for.
It's more important for the sisters to be reunited.
The fact that Ayame is the dark idol's vessel is a major issue which will have to be discussed. This isn't something that can be ignored.
As he sits quietly and watches Momo breathe in Ayame's presence like it's the first time she's had a breath of air in six years, he wonders about Fumiko and why she did what she did.
It's pointless to speculate about what would have happened if he and Ayame had reunited before they made babies with other people.
All he really cares about is that this is the first time in a long time that Momo has seemed genuinely happy, and he's not going to spare any emotions to feel pity for the woman who went with them to Ayame's grave and watched her cry.
That wasn't inconsiderate or dishonest.
It was evil.
Even worse, Fumiko clearly knew exactly how she'd been cursed. Maybe she sensed when it happened, and she wouldn't tell him even after their son had died.
The baby starts fussing again, and decides he's going to be difficult, and needing a dark, quiet place to put him down, Ayame takes Momo back to wherever she's being kept, and he lets them go alone, because he can see with Six Eyes Kenji is about to return.
He also doesn't know how appropriate it is for him to linger around intimate spaces where the women go. He's unrelated by blood, and she's a nursing mother with a newborn baby and probably some special needs of her own still.
Besides, he thinks they probably need time alone together.
Kenji is greeted by his wife and unexpected visitor, along with the knowledge the monster Momo Tengen is hanging out with his wife and newborn baby back in the guest residence.
They move to his study, where they put all the pieces together.
The knowledge that Sakura and Ayame Tengen were the same person all this time is mind-blowing, although maybe not so much as the fact that it took six years for them to figure it out.
"Are we idiots?" he asks.
"Probably," Sugawara answers.
One thing that doesn't surprise Kenji is Michizane's confirmation that Ayame is holding a strange power.
They compile all the information they have and try to figure out exactly what is what, although everyone is surprised when Michizane tells them about an incident that happened before Ayame was even born.
"Before Ayame was born, some crazy foreigner came to the valley. He was huge, had pink hair, spoke a tongue no one recognized and didn't know how to talk to anyone. He went on a huge tear but mostly seemed obsessed with the dark idol. Master Haru wrote that when the man was close to the dark idol, its eyes started to glow and it started to vibrate and fight against its sealing mechanisms, like it was responding to his presence. The man seemed to be able to know where the idol was even without being able to see it, and Haru was certain her had some kind of connection to it.
"That power was stolen from somewhere and sealed away, so unless the original owners and all their descendants died, it has to be true that there are people connected to that power.
"Anyway, Tanashiro killed the man and nothing else was ever learned about him. Some months later, a pink-haired baby girl was abandoned at the shrine. Since the pink-haired man couldn't talk to anyone, Haru assumed he forced himself on some woman while he was in the valley."
The first piece of evidence that Ayame had some sort of connection to the idol was the fact that the idol had to be kept away from most people on the shrine because the jade statue that contained it cursed people and made them go mad.
Haru was a trained sorcerer, Momo's strange existence made her nearly impervious to curses of that nature, but Ayame had no known natural protection. Haru intended to take her down to the village right away, but the idol didn't bother her. It never had any negative effect on her at all, all the years she lived there.
When the jade statue broke and the power escaped, it clearly jumped into Ayame's body, which should have been deadly. A huge sorcery power going into a body with one drop of cursed energy should have frankly caused something scary, strange, and deadly to happen to her, but instead, it merged safely.
Judging from the scar on her head, it also kept her alive because humans did not survive injuries like that. Ayame did not experience a miracle, the dark idol saved her and then protected her as she began her journey away from home.
First the trapper found her, and that's as much as Michizane knows. Fujiwara knows the next part of the story.
After Michizane found the trapper's body, he left a note at his little hut, which was found by the son of the merchant who also died due to incredible misfortune. This seemed to suggest the trapper sold her to the same merchant who bought the furs.
From there, a doctor connected to the merchant also died under strange circumstance, which hadn't made much sense since Fujiwara thought the trapper and merchant perhaps mishandled a cursed object. The doctor's involvement makes more sense, considering the condition that Ayame was in at the time.
According to the investigation, the doctor spent every other day providing medical care to the brothels on the same street as the one where Kenji found Ayame—the same place where the brothel mistress died from an unknown condition right after.
They mapped out Ayame's cruel journey from the shrine to this castle, at the hands of heartless monsters who dragged a fifteen-year-old girl with a cracked skull away from her home and across the island in search of profit. She plummeted continually into deeper and deeper danger until Kenji Fujiwara reached out for her and brought her to his home so she could have a safe place to recover and find her way.
If his reasons were conflicted or convoluted, Ayame was still saved.
She still received care from physicians, medicine, a place to rest, and care.
Michizane perhaps wanted to flinch at the difference in age when they met, but he knows Kenji probably didn't take advantage or hurt her in any way because the curse didn't kill him.
"I don't think we should tell her," Kikyo says.
Kenji says, "She has killed people. That curse is doing numbers. The only reason it probably slowed down is because there were fewer people able to harm Ayame once she came here."
Michizane adds, "My wife Fumiko has also been cursed, which led to our child passing away."
"Shit," the other man answers, "She's still alive though?"
"Even with Six Eyes, I can't tell if the curse is done with her or not."
Kenji asks, "What are we doing about that?"
Michizane answers, "Nothing."
Fumiko's fear when she angered the dark idol was that in matters of love, if Michizane had a choice, he would choose Ayame.
By taking the choice of love away, he was presented now with matters of life and death, and he chose what he chose.
Michizane turning on his own wife was a turning point, the kind of personal decision that no one could return from.
He adds, "I think the dark idol is doing different things to different people. Higurashi was probably directly killed by its power. The gardener who lost his hands and Lady Kikyo's sister who lost her voice had the mechanism of aggression taken from them. It's different for the others.
"The people the curse has killed probably didn't affirmatively abuse her. The trapper probably didn't beat her or anything. Instead, all those people were confronted with a situation where Sakura was suffering, and it was within their power to help her and end that suffering. They all chose not to for one self-serving reason or another and that was reflected back onto them as a curse. The same is true for my wife. It's possible not even killing Ayame would break a curse where the mechanism and means were defined by the cursed person's actions. And frankly, even if it did, and someone has to die, Ayame isn't the one who was being cruel."
It certainly suits Kenji and Kikyo for Sugawara to side with Ayame in the matter.
Kikyo says, "Back to my point. The dark idol is clearly protecting her. Perhaps it favors her, or she is somehow its rightful owner. They are coexisting because Sakura, Ayame, whatever...she doesn't know it's there. If she knew, she'd be horrified, and she'd probably try to resist or fight it. We don't want her to become hostile to a power that could easily overpower her or hurt those around her. She can live alongside the power, and as its vessel, whenever passes away, it will go with her."
Kenji has a lot of feelings about this issue as he is the one who loves Ayame, but he also knows that because he has those feelings, it might be best to let the others speak first. Actually deciding to let a power so dangerous someone sealed it away exist freely within his household is dangerous. They are probably making the right choice, but it is a risky choice.
If the person involved was a stranger to everyone, the conversation would be different.
"Who knows?" Kenji asks.
"Just us in this room. I'm going to tell Master Tengen as well. She was trained in sealing and restraining the dark idol so if something goes wrong, she's probably going to be the only person who can help us. Fumiko knows Ayame cursed her, and who Ayame is, so it's possible that she was able to make that connection," he answers.
Kenji says, "Daisuke definitely knew. The cursed weapon they sent to be used in the killing was very powerful. And if he knew something, he definitely told his mother. High chance Lady Midori is going to control the Katsuragi clan through a proxy, maybe her nephew, but she wouldn't risk a papercut to save Fumiko's life."
They talk through everything, and while it is useful to understand why everything had happened, they're not committed to any particular action and decide they'll keep living as they have been.
There's a little part of Michizane that wishes he could bring Ayame home to him and Momo, but the reality is that the life they shared was cut at the roots and she established new roots with these people. She made a conscious decision that if she learned about her past or she didn't, she would build her life with Kenji.
It's perhaps a little sad that they'll be separated this way, but that's a lot less sad than waking up every day and thinking she's dead.
He asks if he can go back to the room with Momo and Ayame, and Kenji allows it even though in any other scenario, an unrelated man with sorcery abilities wouldn't be allowed anywhere near a nursing mother.
They have their midday meal together, and Momo jokes about her sister the shrine maiden becoming some rich lord's concubine, only to be met with laughter and a little quip about how Tengen is a woman raising an army of sorcerers and Master Haru would probably have a lot to say about both of them.
Kenjaku crashes their reunion unknowingly. He is confused because Ayame tried to teach him that he should have respect for the dead instead of playing with them, and so he started building little pyres in the garden to cremate dead birds and mice and now everyone was mad about that too.
"I think it's very sweet that you are showing them dignity in death," Ayame says.
Momo has never met this friendly but very weird little boy, and after being introduced, he climbs up onto Ayame's lap like he's her little son too.
Kenjaku announces, "This is my brother Kenshin. He's just a baby, but I'm going to teach him everything I know. We're going to do everything together."
Momo says, "Maybe that's not the best idea."
Ayame lifts one of his hands and smells it before she lets him touch the baby, and Momo asks, "Did you just smell him?"
"To make sure his hands are clean. For certain reasons, it's really important for Kenjaku to wash hands a lot. We do a lot of handwashing."
"Why not just ask him?"
"Sometimes he forgets."
Kenjaku clarifies, "Sometimes I lie."
After he visits baby and mother, he runs back outside to provide more grief for his watcher. He tied a rope low on the ground between two trees and he wants to know if he makes his cousin mad enough to chase him if he will trip on the rope. He doesn't have a plan for what will happen after that, but that's what makes it exciting!
Michizane and Momo spend the rest of the day with Ayame, until she unexpectedly falls asleep, and they realize she probably needs to lay down and rest with the baby.
Then the two of them talk outside, and he tells her about everything.
XXX
Fumiko is left alone.
Not alone, maybe.
Tengen's student Narumi and her brother Tomo are there. Narumi is trying to be nice to her, but really she just wants to go to sleep and never wake up again.
Certainly, Michizane whisking Momo Tengen away was about one person, which means they've by now figured everything out.
Even though she knows very well that her own actions caused everything that happened, there is an aspect of all of this that is fundamentally unfair.
Human beings are evil to each other all the time and it rarely results in consequences. Fumiko has been the constant victim of vicious abuse from her clan that left her desperate to make something of herself and leave her family.
Ayame Tengen really did have everything: a son who was still alive, the love of two handsome lords, incredible beauty, unstoppable charm, and if all of those things failed, an ancient monstrous power that would torment and murder people who weren't nice to her.
What did Fumiko have? A grave she was too scared to visit, a husband who probably hated her, plain looks, no charm at all, and could no longer do the things every woman could do for a man.
Her actions lead to the deaths of her precious son and her brother, and she cannot bear to face her husband or mother. She doubts she will be welcome in either house in the future, and sincerely believes that her mother is probably so blind with rage that she will actually kill her when Michizane inevitably sends her home to her clan.
For Lady Midori, her unwanted, disappointing child getting her beloved golden son killed is probably difficult for her to even process.
Michizane and Momo probably already know that her brother sent an assassin to kill their precious Ayame, and that she's been lying to them every single day.
Since Fumiko didn't set out to become the villain in anyone's story, she really can't fathom how it all went like this. One unconscionable act turned into an unconscionable life, and a third party hearing all about this would probably think she was some purposefully evil person who set out to ruin everyone.
She just loved a boy and wanted to keep him for herself, to have someone who loved her and only her, and to make a life away from her family so she could prove to her mother that she was somebody worthy of love and respect.
To make matters worse, Fumiko's body feels like it is broken in some sort of way; everything hurts. Her emotional state is dismal or numb depending on the moment.
Besides, no one knows if she is still cursed. She still thinks she is. She thinks this suffering is part of the curse.
It really seems like there's only one thing to do.
If she ends herself, the curse won't have a chance to do it. It'll be easier for everyone; her husband won't have to humiliate both of them with divorce, she won't have to face her mother, she'll be with her little son, justice for her sins, all that.
This is really the only act she can do that will fix anything that has gone wrong and give her any relief, and yet, Fumiko is scared to do it.
As she considers the possibility, something glimmering in the stove catches her eye, and she reaches inside to the cooled ashes to pull out the good luck charm that Ayame Tengen sent her with her letter.
It didn't burn, which meant that however accidentally, it had some kind of power to it. If she'd been cursed to grave misfortune, would this thing save her? It was made by the vessel after all.
Did it matter if she was just going to leave the world of the living?
Was everything really over?
Was there nothing left?
It seemed like a shame, to have lived her life, and never been happy, despite the price she paid for trying to steal that happiness from someone else.
Fumiko tries to figure out if she's angry or she wants vengeance, but who would she even take vengeance on? She was the one that hurt everyone else. If anything, they should take vengeance on her.
Still, Fumiko can't stay here, and she can't go home, so what is the third thing she could do?
She can leave.
There's a hidden floor safe under the floorboards in Michizane's study, with strings of gold coins. It's not enough for a retirement plan, but it's something. She doesn't think he will mind her taking the coins since she is leaving. He is considerate enough that if he was there, watching her prepare to run away, he'd probably give them to her.
She leaves behind a note, telling her husband that she regrets everything, packs a few things, and after dark, slips out to the stables.
Riding a horse is something she certainly shouldn't be doing in her condition, and it hurts to even mount the animal. It's impossible to get comfortable, and the bouncing motion hurts quite badly, but she has to get away from this place.
She rides north, hoping to escape from the range of Tengen's barriers, and disappear into the warring no man's land north of the Sugawara and Fujiwara territories.
For days, she heads north, stopping now and then at an inn for the night, all while her condition seems to begin to mysteriously decline as infection sets in.
A fever follows and a traveler finds her unconscious atop the horse and shows her mercy, bringing her to a place where she can receive treatment and recover.
Fumiko awakens in a strange, isolated community in the northeast.
The locals working to help her are very kind to her; perhaps kinder than she would expect from strangers.
When she makes it out of bed after some days, she goes to the window and looks outside to find a huge stone statue outside.
The statue depicts a monster, with a weird, boxy head with six eyes and huge claws, naked with every detail etched into her body including an odd-shaped scar on the lower belly.
This is a statue of Tengen in her cursed state.
After staring at it for days in unsettled confusion, Fumiko decides a man made this sculpture because despite the fact that Tengen's body is quite androgenous, the maker of this statue gave her enormous breasts as big as her face. It would infuriate Momo for the rest of her eternal life to lay eyes on this atrocity even once.
People from this weird little town come and lay out offerings at the feet of the statue each day. They pray to it, kiss its feet, weep and beg it for salvation.
It's so bizarre!
A few days later, a woman takes her on a short tour of their 'community,' the Star Society, a huge tract of land surrounded in a giant wall made by someone's cursed technique and filled with cultists who worship Tengen. It was started by a group of soldiers who saw Tengen's transformation and decided she could be their god.
The Star Society seemed to sincerely believe that because Tengen initially targeted people who did injustice, if she fully transformed, she would wander the land punishing various classes of evildoers: the greedy, the lustful, the murderers, the warlords, the thieves…all the usual villains.
These people are clearly idiots, and yet they've set up a wholly self-contained bubble to live in. They have peace in this remote location, access to ocean fishing, plenty of farmland. With peace, fresh mountain water, and bountiful food stores, these people live very well for a group outside of one of the safer territories.
Even though she knows the Star Society is incredibly misguided and they appear to be lusting after the apocalypse, they're actually very nice to her, and they don't ask her any questions about who she is or where she came from.
They send her to work in a kitchen, and no one judges her because she has no idea how to cook anything. They just teach her how to help them, and it's actually fulfilling, to work and then eat that work and see other people eat that work. She doesn't have to think about her clan, or her mother who probably wants to stab her to death, or her husband she abandoned after absolutely destroying her life, or her son who died.
Fumiko does her little chores, she plays games and makes friends with the other members of the Star Society at night, and she just coasts through life for a while.
She decides that these people are incredibly weird, but also probably harmless. Surely they wouldn't actually do anything to cause problems for anyone, right?