Michizane Sugawara has seen much evil in his life, but he thinks the poisoning of She-Devil ranks among the most senseless and cruel acts he's witnessed.
There was no practical reason for it, no matter how long he stands there, trying to bend his mind around the reality in front of him.
Kenichi had gotten up at dawn's first light and run out to check on She-Devil, only to find her languishing in a pool of bloody discharge that had come from her nose, barely able to breathe. The boy burst into Sugawara's bedroom almost in tears that the horse had gotten very sick overnight, and even though he fetched help right away, her condition only worsened.
Unbeknownst to anyone, Kenjaku did not give her enough poison to kill her because he had never murdered a horse before and also because She-Devil also tried to murder him, so she was still awake in the morning, and had suffered throughout the night.
Sugawara thinks at first that perhaps her wound had festered, and illness had spread to the rest of her body, but his father in law says right away to him in private that someone had poisoned her.
When Kenjaku is fetched, he's actually quite tired because he had a rather terrible night. Since it was usually impossible to guess when Sugawara was asleep, he knew he couldn't use cursed energy in the commission of his crime, but that posed a serious problem that he grossly underestimated.
Zhang's middle-aged body, which is small and slight, has less mass and upper body strength than that of Rei Sugawara.
The difference between his body and that of a normal horse was absurd by itself, but even among horses, there were degrees of power, breeds that were bigger or more muscular or nimbler. She-Devil was huge and naturally extremely athletic, and she seemed to know she was better than other horses.
Kenjaku thought it would be okay because she couldn't get up from the floor on her own due to her injured shoulder.
Horses were incredible intelligent and generally understood the moods and intentions of humans, so She-Devil seemed to understand that he had come as an enemy, and when he tried to force poison-soaked rice into her mouth, she managed to get up.
She then proceeded to throw him to the floor, kick him, and when he tried to fight her and make her eat more of the rice, she knocked him down and physically stomped on his abdomen so badly that he thought his organs were perforated.
In the end, she only got a little of the poison at first and he had to drag himself under the stall door on his belly to escape.
Then he still couldn't use reverse cursed technique, so he had to limp away from the estate while concussed and vomiting into his own robes to keep from leaving a trail behind.
Once he healed himself, he had to go back and wait for her to get sick so he could clean up his blood and missing teeth off the floor. And of course, once she was a little sick, he made her take the rest of her poison because at that point, it was very personal.
It took forever to clean up the signs that he got beat up by a horse and he assumed that they would just assume the horse got sick overnight. Deep wounds could quickly turn deadly with little warning.
Kenjaku is dismayed to find out the absolute first thing the specialist said was that She-Devil was definitely poisoned, and he even accurately guessed the poison that Kenjaku had used and the approximate amount that was administered. The old man knew all about the plant because it grew in the wilds all over and horses often ate small amounts.
"Perhaps the horse ate it accidentally?" Kenjaku asks.
Sugawara's father in law says, "Unlikely. It's winter, first of all. She-Devil has been here all this time, and she was definitely poisoned during the night. Kenichi made her last meal last night, rice porridge with a little green tea and soft sweet beans and soybeans with seaweed. They ate the same meal and Kenichi isn't sick. And to make the most obvious point, a horse that eats like an ailing noble child probably doesn't eat weeds."
They agree not to tell Kenichi the horse had been poisoned simply because her death from illness was maybe a little easier to swallow than the idea that someone really went there and poisoned her.
Kenjaku is stressed because he did everything to avoid Six Eyes, but he didn't consider that Sugawara's eyes weren't the only factor he needed to consider. Perhaps in his arrogance, he underestimated the expertise Sugawara's father in law, who knew only after five minutes that she was poisoned, what the poison was, how it was administered, how much was administered, when it was administered, and that there was simply no way that it was accidental.
It is impressive and infuriating, but then again, he was the most powerful 'horse professional' on Akitsushima, so Kenjaku knows he should have given this more consideration.
He was supposed to awaken to the news the stupid horse had died, and a baby brother grieving that sometimes things just go wrong.
Still, Kenjaku made mistakes and he is left wondering about other potential failures.
Did any guards see him moving around late at night? He took the rice he mixed the poison with from the kitchen. Did anyone see that? He didn't use cursed energy, so Six Eyes won't identify him, but mistakes were made, weren't they?
Now that the poisoning is known, Six Eyes comes out in full force, and while Kenjaku sits with his brother, Sugawara pulls the cloth from his eyes and looks around the stable. He doesn't see anything useful, which is useful information in and of itself.
Why would someone poison this boy's horse?
Since horses can't vomit, so the old man proposes draining her stomach with a metal tube as a last resort to try and help her survive. There's no history of that being successful, but he thinks it may give She-Devil a small chance of survival. It will also allow them to see what is in her stomach.
Kenjaku says, "It seems like that might just be painful and prolong her suffering, right?"
But then he realizes if they do the most obvious thing to end her suffering, this old man will immediately cut the horse open and confirm why she died.
He is nervous—very, very nervous, and annoyed that his greatest enemy right now is an old man who talks really loud because his hearing is slipping and not some powerful sorcerer that he is trying to outwit.
Kenjaku can't talk them out of draining the horse's stomach without seeming suspicious, and so he sits with his brother.
Kenichi is ugly crying and begging his horse to stay strong, and this does make him feel guilty, but Kenjaku views it as tough love. He knows what is best for his brother, and Kenichi will be better off once all this horse nonsense is over.
Kenjaku wonders though, what is going to happen if Kenichi finds out both that his horse was poisoned and that he was the one that did it. Having to explain his very nuanced and complex love to his brother after murdering his horse seems like a challenge.
'I'm sorry you had this one thing that made you very happy and I took it away' was a difficult point to make no matter the reason.
The horse continues to rest her head on Kenichi's lap while the old man gives her opium to relax her so he can cut into her and release the contents of her stomach, which reveals the partially digested rice mixture, pungent from digestive fluids and the bitter herb concoction. Since they're keeping the poison detail from the boy as he strokes She-Devil's face and neck, the old man drains the stomach into a big bowl, and then after he finishes stitching it closed, he takes the bowl out to examine the contents.
Michizane is incredibly invested in all of this and while he never would have murdered someone for killing an animal, suddenly times have changed and he has decided he is going to banish whoever poisoned the poor kid's horse from the world of the living.
His father in law pulls him aside privately and reveals a single clue that has been left behind in the horse's stomach.
A human tooth.
She-Devil ate one of one of her poisoner's teeth off the floor before she started feeling sick, and it ended up in her stomach with the poison. They can't tell whose tooth it is, but if a person's tooth ended up in her stomach, that could only mean they lost it in her stall around the time she was poisoned.
"I'm off to go find someone who looks like they got kicked in the mouth by a horse," Michizane says, "There weren't that many people on the grounds last night."
It doesn't seem like it would be a difficult task, and Michizane starts with the stableboys and staff, making them strip down and checking their mouths for injuries or fresh, raw gums. She-Devil is the only horse in his stable that doesn't have shoes since she doesn't live in the city, so if she kicked someone, her hoofprint would be different.
While he searches for whoever he was going to kill for poisoning the horse, Kenjaku sits with his brother, and when the old man left them alone, leaned over and whispered, "They're lying to you."
"What?"
"She-Devil was poisoned and they're covering it up."
Kenichi looks up. "What?!"
"That's why they emptied her belly, to get rid of the evidence. But I recognized that pungent scent. It's an herb that's poisonous to horses."
Kenichi has been sobbing intermittently over the past hour since he arrived and found his horse so ill, and at an age where it's humiliating to cry as a boy, he almost can't bear the idea that someone hurt her again. First, the arrow, now this?
Kenjaku whispers, "Maybe someone doesn't want you here. Maybe they think you don't belong. It could be anyone. Maybe the old man…it seems like you'd need to know about poison and horses. It's impossible to know what goes inside of anyone's mind. You never know what kind of darkness lurks inside the heart of another person.
"Have you ever wondered why he was being so nice to you? He has a high position in this kingdom, and if he just wanted to hang out with a child, he has his grandchildren. Have you ever questioned why he was being so nice to you? For what reason?"
No, Kenichi really wasn't questioned this at all, because he thought they were sharing something they both loved. "We both like horses. I was helping him."
"He probably has a hundred people working for him, so why would he need your help?"
It's really just fascinating to Kenjaku that he can just move things around in this boy's head. While Kenichi had been very happy and optimistic, he's incredibly distressed and questioning everything now.
Kenjaku says, "Once she passes, I think we should leave this place and stay away from it. The people here don't really care about you. Sugawara and Tengen only care about you because you remind them of your mother. People are like that. I care for you because of who you are, no one else."
Kenichi is sure he has never felt so low as he does in this moment, sitting with a dying horse resting her head on his lap, his brother helping him understand that most of the people he knows don't really care about him at all, reminding him that investing his feelings in something like a horse was silly.
Once the sun is up, Kenichi, unwilling to get up and disturb She-Devil, asks Kenjaku to open the wooden window at the back of the stall so the sun can come in.
Kenjaku feels quite full of himself, and like he has insulated himself from the consequences even if they find out he poisoned the horse. If Kenichi doesn't trust anyone here, it doesn't matter what they find out. He feels a little bad for manipulating him, but he can't have Kenichi thinking he killed the horse. Kenichi would stop talking to him forever and most definitely side with these people or go to Nara to be with the others who abandoned him.
But he made a mistake.
A horrible mistake.
A grievous, inescapable error waiting in plain sight, and he doesn't realize it.
When the horse kicked out his teeth, he regrew them using reverse curse technique, and when he looked into the bronze mirror in his room during the night, his mouth looked perfectly normal. That was his reflection on a polished bronze surface that warms the reflection unnaturally, lit by a lantern that casts everything white as slightly yellow.
Kenjaku didn't realize due to these factors that half of his front teeth were snow white like a baby's teeth and the rest were their usual color, stained by forty years of tea.
Kenichi notes that a bunch of Kenjaku's teeth are very white when the sunlight hits them, but his mind is too clouded to consider the reasons for this. Besides, he doesn't know about the tooth.
At the same time, Kenjaku also doesn't know Sugawara knows She-Devil kicked her poisoner in the mouth.
While Michizane looks for the perpetrator at his estate, Narumi is in Tengen's cavern, neatly folding her clothes.
She has considered Kenjaku's suggestion that she attempt to merge with Master Tengen and believes it is probably the only way to save her. She doesn't know what will happen to her, if she will be successful or not, if she will die or continue living in some other way.
Being a sorcerer is violent and frightening, and most sorcerers fight and kill until they are killed. Narumi was more than willing to accept that fate, because they were spilling blood in the name of a greater world. If Tengen disappeared from the world, all of it would have been for nothing.
To die on one's own terms is a relief.
She had a good life.
It was terrible at first, until Sugawara found her and whisked her and her brother away to his castle. Everything after that was wonderful. She's been happy, and her brother is happy, and the future matters.
Narumi knows all of the people she loves most will be deeply sad and probably confused, and she wants them to understand her decision and not be sad about it, so she places a notes along a table with names written on them.
Inside of these notes includes exactly who gave her the idea, which is Kenjaku's mistake. He believes she won't tell anyone what she's going to do because she doesn't want to be stopped, but he did not consider that she might pass on information about his involvement some other way.
She wraps Playful Cloud in sealing cloth, with a note willing it to Hoshiko Fujiwara, knowing her fiery student will use it to beat men who deserve it, true to its purpose.
Whatever happens, it's okay.
Tengen is naked on the floor in the center of a patterned circle drawn on the floor, and when Narumi enters, it lights up.
She chants, and imagines herself not as a person, but as energy and flesh, separate, an offering to Tengen so that the mission of the Jujutsu Society can continue.
Heart pounding, wondering if this is her final moment, she kneels as she continues chanting, and then lowers her folded hands over Tengen's heart, where they simply disappear into her body.
It's painful, actually. Awfully so, but no one can hear her scream as more and more of her body disappears inside of Tengen. Tengen seems to distort out of shape during this process, but there's no turning back, and so she disappears.
Tengen, who has been trying to fight the changes happening in her body, feels something give, like some power has pushed back the transformation, and in the depths of her, something is there that should not be.
A person?
Narumi?
It's like Narumi is sinking inside of her, and even when Tengen screams, if Narumi says anything back, she cannot hear.
She awakens, screaming Narumi's name, but no one is there.
Tengen doesn't understand what has happened, but she can tell that somehow or another, Narumi is inside of her. She can sense Narumi's cursed energy and flesh merging with hers, and she doesn't know how to stop whatever is happening.
There isn't anyone there, so she is left alone, screaming and confused, practically clawing at her own flesh until she can't sense Narumi as an individual person anymore.
Tengen doesn't understand what has happened?
All she knows is that if Narumi is still inside of her, it means she's not in her own body, living her own life. Is she alive? She is, something in Momo knows she is still alive, and that she is somehow trapped inside of her. Or maybe something worse, because with every second that ticks by, Tengen can't tell what parts of her flesh are hers, and what parts were Narumi's.
Yet, she knows she has been saved.
How terrifying.
How disgusting.
How tragic.
When she manages to get up, she feels so disgusting, more like a monster than ever.
Why is Narumi inside of her?
Narumi was just a little girl when they met, and Tengen watched her grow up, taught her sorcery, watched her become this incredibly huge person in a world that was filled with small-minded, violent men.
There is a change of clothes waiting for her, and she dresses with shaking hands, noticing a letter with her name on it. There are a few letters, to the important people in Narumi's life, and Playful Cloud too.
When she opens it, she finds a sweet letter from Narumi, thanking her for taking care of her and helping her live a happy life. There are proclamations of support for the mission of the Jujutsu Society, and Tengen thinks Narumi failed to understand that she wanted to build a better world for sorcerers because of Narumi.
Narumi dying for that better world was an irony too bitter to swallow.
Tengen reconsiders whether perhaps they should just kill everyone in the world again, and then realizes as she continues reading that there's really only one person that she wants to murder at the moment.
It is clear from her letter that Kenjaku put her up to this.
Tengen has been suspicious of him for ages, and although they've never had much evidence to suggest he was actively committing horrors, she was generally certain he was. She also felt that Kenjaku may have inherited Zhang's bad intentions toward her and Narumi, and she had warned Narumi a thousand times to stay away from him.
Sugawara clearly didn't know about this plot, and if he had, he would have put a stop to it. Momo knew Sugawara would know she would rather die than to suffer whatever this fate was.
Narumi was lightly parented by them, like a little sister who joined their family of fate.
Both of her little sisters are gone.
She will never be able to embrace either of them, or hear their laughter, and Momo almost cannot bear it and yet she must, because in the same way that Narumi chose this fate so that the mission could survive, Momo has to work hard to ensure the Jujutsu Society is successful or her sacrifice would be for nothing.
Momo shrieks, she breaks some of the furniture, she rereads the letter a dozen times, she yells more.
Her anger at the situation and at the world is almost paralyzing.
She wants to go murder Kenjaku right away, tear his limbs from his body and squish whatever is inside of that stolen body, but she is simply devastated by grief.
At the Sugawara estate, much of the day has gone by and She-Devil is not only alive, but actually, getting better, because she is strong and mean and also because the poison was removed from her stomach.
This presents a problem for Kenjaku, who had spent much of the morning discussing with his younger brother the transactional nature of relationships, and the fact there was no possible way for him to actually know if anyone ever truly cared for him. And besides that, he reminded Kenichi that perhaps he hadn't done anything deserving of love as he was a menace to the Sugawara house and rarely showed anyone the goodwill that he was freely given.
She-Devil surviving is a problem for Kenjaku because not only will his brother continue to keep obsessing over his horse, but he will recognize the old man as her savior for his patient work to help her. The only thing that will change is that She-Devil herself will indicate him as her enemy with her aggression. She didn't need speech in order to communicate the sentiment 'I want to stomp this human in particular.'
Kenjaku needs the horse to die, but he can't just kill her with cursed energy or feed her to one of her cursed spirits. Cursed energy will still tip off Six Eyes. Kenichi won't leave her side and even peed in a bucket just to keep his eyes on her. And he's not sure after the first time if poisoning is a good idea.
The last thing he needs is some non-sorcerer reading his actions like a book he's studied all his life. That was humiliating, and Kenjaku did not like it one bit.
When Rei Sugawara brings Kenichi a rice bowl piled high with pickled vegetables, radishes, and meat, he starts to eat, but is overjoyed when She-Devil's long tongue snakes out to steal pickles from him.
"Oh? She's eating? That's a wonderful sign! Let's see if she'll drink some water," Rei says.
Rei is basically the queen of Akitsushima at this point, so it is absurd to Kenjaku to see her rushing to fetch watch water for a horse, but Michizane and his wife are a former slave and a commoner.
The horse drinks like she has been dying from thirst, and finally, Kenichi decides he will leave her side in order to make her some porridge with sweet beans for her.
Finally alone with the beast, Kenjaku desperately needs to kill her, but there are a lot of people around. There are guards outside because it's still day, and being caught isn't an option.
And maybe most importantly, Kenjaku knows the arrow injury has improved enough that she can get up if she really wants to. Considering she is eating and drinking, it's possible for that for hours, she's just been laying on Kenichi's lap because she likes being treated like a big baby by him, and that if he gets anywhere near her, she will try to murder him again.
When he peers at her over the stall door, she rolls from her side to sit up, snorts, whips her tail, and looks him dead in the eye like she is daring him.
Without cursed energy, his frail, small, middle-aged human body versus giant evil horse is bad math even if the horse is having a very bad day.
Kenjaku doesn't have a way to kill her that won't be found out anyway, so he goes outside to have some fresh air and collect his thoughts.
Sugawara approaches him and says, "I hear She-Devil is doing well."
"She's eating and drinking."
"Excellent! I haven't been able to figure out who did it. I questioned everyone that was here last night and I don't think anyone I talked to could have done it."
Kenjaku feels relieved that the investigation has somehow passed over him because why would he poison the horse?
"That's a shame. I wonder what sick, disgusting motives someone would have to have to poison a kid's horse."
When he utters the word 'disgusting' his teeth are briefly visible in the pinkish flow of sunset and Michizane sees several in front are very white.
Sugawara has one single white tooth on the bottom from accidentally hitting himself in the mouth with Playful Cloud, so he knows the reason some of Kenjaku's teeth are white and they weren't yesterday must be because something bad happened to his teeth during the night, when the horse kicked someone in the mouth.
Kenjaku?!
Kenjaku.
As soon as he thinks about it, Kenjaku was the only person who had a real motive to kill the horse. Earlier, he had approached the issue unsure of why anyone would do it, because on the surface, who had anything to gain?
Kenjaku has seemingly been keeping his youngest brother isolated from other people, preferring to leave him alone than in the care of others. Kenichi has developed an interest that allows him to connect with others and seems to have quite enjoyed working in the stables with his father in law.
Kenichi decided on his own to come to Kyoto, successfully survived the trip, and upon arrival, was acting as an independent agent doing whatever he wanted. He seemed very well and seemed to be emotionally thriving as an individual.
If the thing that was connecting him others was taken away in a manner that stung enough, he might revert back to the emotional state where he relied exclusively on Kenjaku.
Michizane considers how to deal with this situation and realizes that Kenjaku is probably playing all kinds of games with this boy.
In Sugawara's periphery, he senses Kenichi moving around off to one side, carrying ingredients for his horse's special meal. He considers taking the conversation somewhere else, but then decides maybe it would be best to do what he's going to do in front of the kid. If he just tells Kenichi that Kenjaku poisoned his horse, Kenjaku would just lie.
It would be best if Kenichi observes the truth for himself.
Sugawara says, "Actually, there's something I forgot to mention."
"Oh? She-Devil means the world to my brother. I think we should do everything we can to find out what kind of cruel jackass would poison a kid's horse," Kenjaku answers.
Sugawara reaches into his robes and pulls out the tooth, saying, "She-Devil apparently gave whoever it was a hard time. Knocked out some of their teeth and ate at least one. I've been talking to everyone who was here, looking for someone missing one of their front teeth."
Kenjaku isn't missing any of his teeth, so while this makes his heart beat a little faster, he isn't afraid.
Then, Sugawara pulls his bottom lip down, revealing a single tooth that is blindingly white compared to the others. "Did you know that if you regrow your teeth, they won't match the others?"
Kenjaku's soul feels like it is about to leave his body as he realizes that Sugawara figured out what he had done.
Kenichi continues peeking around the corner at them, still confused.
Sugawara says, "I'd bet my life to you right now that if I knock all your teeth out, I'll find one that's the same size and shape as this one, because you're the one that poisoned the horse."
Of course he was right, but Kenjaku instinctively denied it, taking a step back. "That's ridiculous. Why would I do that?"
"Then open your mouth."
Kenjaku wonders if he's really going to burn his bridges with Sugawara over a horse. A horse! Then again, Ayame's life was also ruined by the horse that threw her off the mountain. Perhaps he acted too hastily and shouldn't have done this at Sugawara's home, or maybe he didn't act hastily enough and should have dealt with the horse much earlier because he never liked She-Devil.
Sugawara is, of course, right.
There is a tooth like the one he's holding in Kenjaku's mouth, and he's caught. There's nothing he can say to Sugawara that will explain the situation away.
So Kenjaku laughs, because it's all so absurd.
"You caught me! Solved the great mystery! You, the most powerful man in the land, spent a whole day of your life, investigating a trifling matter involving a horse, and now you've won! I did it! I poisoned the horse! What now, oh great lord?"
Michizane really doesn't know what he's going to do about it. Killing a powerful sorcerer over a horse seems trifling, but he has done it for less important reasons. When he thought some random person did it earlier, he was fully prepared to end them.
Kenichi heard his brother loud and clear, laughing about poisoning the horse.
And he really just can't understand why someone who cares about him would do something like that? He doesn't really want to hear anymore, and so he just pushes it out of his mind like he didn't hear it and goes back to his mission. The fact that his brother betrayed him and tried to take away the thing that made him feel happy and free is something he just doesn't want to think about.
He turns to go back to what he was doing, leaving the two sorcerers standing in the courtyard.
Kenjaku asks, "What are you going to do about it? He'll never believe you. You're not going to kill me over a horse."
Michizane really doesn't want to kill him because he isn't a random person, but now that he can see Kenjaku is probably as deranged as Tengen thinks.
Someone has been experimenting on people by forcing them to consume parts of living cursed spirits, and Tengen believed before she went to sleep that Kenjaku was the most likely culprit.
Kenjaku possesses the same capability Zhang did to cause a massive catastrophe. Since he lacks any sort of loyalty to any faction that has good intentions to anyone, that power is dangerous to the both Sugawara's goals and those of the Jujutsu Society.
Most of his power comes from Yamata No Orochi, so Sugawara considers his choices.
He feels like he will probably eventually regret not killing Kenjaku as Kenjaku stands there with his smug little expression, knowing damn well that he will get more consideration than anyone else.
Then, Sugawara says, "From now on, you're not the one who is going to take care of Kenichi."
"And who will take care of him?"
"You don't need to be concerned about that."
All of this is incredibly unpleasant for Kenjaku; getting caught, being confronted…the idea that he is at Sugawara's mercy is hell. Destroying his relationship with Sugawara over a horse is a massive misstep. He's not really sure what's going to happen next, but he can tell that something is certainly going to happen.
Kenjaku is confident that Sugawara is not going to kill him, but he will do something.
Being punished like a child? Insulting!
And yet, terrifying.
This is the most dangerous person living probably anywhere in the world. If all the sorcerers in all the lands were arranged by their power, he would probably sit so far above them on his golden throne.
Michizane says, "I will give you two choices, and only two. You can fight me as an equal, and we'll curse each other until one of us dies, and if you survive, you can do whatever you want. Or you can give up your dragon peacefully and leave this place in one piece."
"What do you mean…give it up?"
"Summon it and tell it not to fight, and then I'll exorcise it."
Yamata No Orochi is his most powerful curse and the difference between it and his other spirits is almost like the difference between Sugawara and other sorcerers. It rose a long time ago, and the sorcerers of that age were not able to kill it by any means due to its constant regeneration, so they sealed it away.
And now it belonged to him. Even being as young as he was—only Kenichi's current age—when he gained it, doing so instantly made him one of the powers of this world.
Kenjaku says, "That punishment doesn't fit the crime. It's not fair."
"Have you ever in your life seen anything in this world that was fair? Besides, you ride around on that thing, and it seems to make you happy, so in a way, it's the same thing."
It's humiliating, and degrading, being a man in his twenties, with so much power he could probably kill anyone except this man, and yet Sugawara seeks to discipline him.
Being caught in a lie and being confronted about it is shameful, and maybe even more embarrassing is the fact that Sugawara isn't even asking why he did it.
"Don't you want to know why?"
Sugawara says, "I don't really care, but I could probably very accurately outline your reasons. You're not the mastermind you think you are."
"What makes you say that?"
"You started an unnecessary contest of wit with an evil horse and the evil horse won."
The cloth around Michizane's eyes falls down around his neck, and he looks down at Kenjaku with Six Eyes, observing the other sorcerer is so angry that he is shaking.
He crosses his fingers like he is about to throw his domain expansion and uses them to tap Kenjaku on the nose. "What is your choice?"
"This is madness!" Kenjaku exclaims.
"Yes, but is it as mad as poisoning your baby brother's horse because you're mad that he likes her so much? I am not going to change my mind, so give up the monster or get ready to fight. I'm also not feeling particularly patient. You've wasted enough of my time."
Kenjaku knows that he will absolutely die if he fights. Even right here at Sugawara's home, where his children are nearby, the lord has no fear because even if Kenjaku let all his curses out at once, he could contain the chaos with his domain expansion. And certainly, if he even attempted to place the little Sugawara dragons in harm's way, he would be killed.
The only way to walk away from this situation is to sacrifice most of his power and his place as one of the most powerful sorcerers of this era. There's nothing else. No other options, and even when he walks away from that, the fallout from this incident is going to continue to cost him dearly.
He doesn't have a choice.
It's not really about the horse, but then again, Kenjaku didn't poison the horse just because of the horse. In the same way Kenjaku wanted to limit Kenichi's future, Sugawara intends to limit his. While Kenjaku was concerned about what Kenichi would do in the future, the same is true for Sugawara as trust has eroded and suspicion has grown.
Sugawara doesn't ask him what he's been doing when and Kenichi are apart, or make accusations, like the answers don't even matter to him.
Kenjaku puts his hand out and summons the monster Yamata No Orochi, whose flames burned Nara, who made him one of the greatest, who had carried him all these years into adulthood.
Yamata No Orochi is a terrifying beast, a curse bigger than curses were known to be, more powerful than any other, capable of endlessly regeneration, with fireballs that could end human civilization. The mere existence of this monster, and the inability of sorcerers to exorcise it at the time it was born, stopped humans from building cities for almost a century.
The best anyone could do, even together, was to seal it away.
Sugawara eliminated it with one Hollow Purple and it simply…vanished. While he stood flat-footed on the ground, not particularly needing to exert himself. It was terrifying, really.
Most of Kenjaku's power—gone.
"Now, leave here, and don't return. Don't let us catch you doing anything you're not supposed to. Consider this your last and only warning," Sugawara warns.
Kenjaku always viewed Sugawara as being simple until he was crossed and then he was simply a source of endless, effortless destruction. Being forced to understand that everyone else is also constantly calculating is perhaps a critical but expensive lesson.
Sugawara watches Kenjaku walk backwards away from him.
In places where the Jujutsu Society found 'messes' where someone had possibly been doing experiments on humans using cursed spirit flesh, many of the people had been poisoned, perhaps as part of the experiment.
The fact that someone with a power like Yamata No Orochi was traveling with enough poison to kill a horse is highly suspect and lends enormous amounts of believability to Tengen's theory that Kenjaku was the one doing those things.
Kenjaku couldn't see that he left these footprints behind until that very moment and then starts to wonder about his riskier gambit. Did he leave anything behind for Tengen and Sugawara to find out he tricked Narumi? What if she told someone else besides them, or wrote it down in her journal, or somehow, when she combined with Tengen, had the ability to communicate with her?
Killing strangers, poisoning a horse…minor offenses in the grand scheme of the world. If Narumi dies or otherwise changes in some horrific manner and they think he is responsible, they will kill him. She is family to them, and the beloved captain of the Jujutsu Society. Everyone will come out for him if they find out something bad happened to her because of him.
His first attempts at manipulating the behavior of others, which seemed so successful even a day before, now seem foolish and he is genuinely scared that he is going to be hunted and killed by those who would have preferred to maintain good relations with him for as long as possible.
Kenjaku wonders if he can go to the Jujutsu Society and talk Narumi out of trying to merge with Tengen, but he hasn't seen her all day, and wonders if that means he's too late. Kenjaku very clearly understands that Sugawara doesn't want him to go over there, and he doesn't want to be cornered by him again.
Maybe he can convince his brother to sneak out with him?
Six Eyes are still fixed on him, suggesting that he better not take one more step toward the stable.
Kenjaku feels so frustrated that he wonders if his body simply might burst; he walks away, having ruined relationships with the ruling power of this era, and possibly, the leader of the Jujutsu Society is going to want to kill him soon.
And so, he flees from Kyoto alone, without even collecting his things, on the back of a different, weaker flying cursed spirit.
No dragon.
No Kenichi.
Afraid.
As he sails above the trees in the forests outside the city, he wonders what his mistakes were. In his mind, he tries to document each and every misstep.
When he comes down from feeling high on his own pride, he realizes it is more likely than not that Tengen will find out what he did to Narumi, and she isn't a fool. She will understand what happened.
There won't be a warning or a negotiation or anything like that.
He'll just die, and there's not anything he can do to stop that. Even if he still had his dragon—and he doesn't—there was never any mathematical way for him to climb the wall that was Michizane Sugawara.
Perhaps there was a small chance Narumi wouldn't do merge, but there was an even larger chance she already had.
Kenjaku tries to game out the chances that they find out or don't find out, and what happens then. They both know Zhang's cursed energy well enough that he will not be able to hide from them if he stays on Akitsushima.
He considers fleeing to a different island because Ayame remained lost to them for years, but she didn't have enough cursed energy of her own for either of them to focus on.
Sugawara once told him in friendlier times that Zhang's body was visible from very far away to Six Eyes because it registers as a single dot where thousands of cursed spirits are located. When he went to the continent to murder Zhang's family, Sugawara just appeared there and has never explained how or why, and perhaps out of his enormous fear of his wrath, assumes it was a trick of Six Eyes and not information Sugawara gained through investigation.
Kenjaku is terrified he will be murdered, paranoid about what the abilities of people he knowingly risked making into enemies, angry that he was chastened, bitter that his greatest source of power has been taken from him, mad at his little brother because Kenjaku wants to blame Kenichi for all of this.
If Kenichi hadn't come to Kyoto, none of this would have happened, and they would be at home in their hideout doing what they've always done.
Kenjaku has his own dreams, the same as Sugawara and Tengen. Tengen looks into the future and sees a great society of sorcerers who help humanity instead of ruining lives constantly. Sugawara sees a peaceful Akitsushima where people live in an orderly, peaceful world, and not one torn apart by murder and war.
When Kenjaku looks into the future, he sees a better human, and he feels like this is the ultimate vision. The other two wanted to build castles out of imperfect people, but he wanted to pursue something beyond that. Sorcerers were in his eyes sort of a transitional state: better than a basic human but still lacking in so many ways.
If humans became more perfect, more powerful, more fused with cursed energy, what would even happen?
The years of not knowing what he wanted to do or not understanding his purpose are over and Kenjaku knows deep within himself that this pursuit of betterment, of the true fusion of cursed energy and humanity, is his true purpose.
He can't pursue that goal if he's dead.
When Tengen catches up to him an hour later, wielding Playful Cloud, a weapon she intends to beat him to death with, all she finds is Zhang's body, discarded unceremoniously on the side of the road, skull open and empty.
Since she had to find him by looking for Zhang's cursed energy, the fact she doesn't know whose body he is in effectively makes him invisible to her. She knows it'll be the same for Six Eyes too; he has successfully disappeared, probably by stealing the body of some traveler.
Kenjaku watches from far away from his new body and decides that his plan definitely worked. It's impossible to guess exactly how it all went without getting close or being able to ask questions. Whether Narumi is dead or trapped inside of Tengen somehow, it's clear something permanent and very unfortunate happened to her and that Tengen knows he was the cause of this.
A huge victory amidst staggering losses.
But also, more losses.
Kenjaku perhaps did not consider that all of his siblings lived with Sugawara, and they all knew and loved Narumi. Hoshiko was her student, and Kenshin maybe had a weird little boy crush on her when he was growing up despite how much older she was. Kenichi wasn't as close to her, but explaining the situation to him would be difficult.
The oldest, Kenshin, is adept at avoiding political conflict that will interfere with the future of the Fujiwara clan, and since they'd all grown more distant over the past couple of years, Kenjaku doesn't believe they would ever side with him—or keep his new identity or location a secret.
Hoshiko especially was very close with Narumi and Tengen, and peeling apart powerful women in close alliance was basically an impossibility. If he forced her to choose, he doesn't think she would have the same loyalty to him that he had to them.
It seems a bit unfair that after saving their lives and helping to care for them all along, Kenjaku had no doubts that they'd be more loyal to people who didn't even share blood with them. Then again, his own mother lived in Nara with them, and he hadn't spoken to her in over a year.
They would probably argue that they're working toward a brighter future, but that's just the future of the Jujutsu Society and a unified Akitsushima government. If Kenjaku told them about his much loftier goals, they would not support his methods. If a little blood was split in the name of progress, how was that any different than all the blood that was spilled creating Sugawara's kingdom or in the creation of the Jujutsu Society?
Was it only wrong to kill when he was the one doing it?
Kenjaku actually feels a little betrayed even though his current circumstance was caused by experimenting on humans in secret, deciding to kill his brother's horse over fears he might make other friends, and convincing Narumi, a person his siblings knew and cared for, to do something that might actually be worse than suicide.
Now people want to murder him, and he is confident that no one in his family would take his side, support him, and some of them might even tip off his enemies if they knew.
In effect, he has been banished from his prior life, and he actually feels quite betrayed by all of this despite also understanding that he caused all of it to happen.
Kenjaku knows that he made mistakes and will have to pay for those mistakes. Losing Yamata No Orochi and Cursed Spirit Manipulation as a whole is such a grievous error. He doesn't even know how he can ever recover from it, because if Tengen is truly the key to everything, he can't turn the lock and open the door to the glorious future without the ability to control her.
Cursed Spirit Manipulation was probably the only way to do that. Zhang didn't come from a sorcery family, so it's not like he had siblings who might have had it.
Kenjaku now remembers that he orphaned Zhang's baby and abandoned it in some village up north. That kid is about thirteen now, and while it's unlikely that he might have Cursed Spirit Manipulation simply because powerful techniques usually don't hit back-to-back in a bloodline, he might have a child with the technique someday.
For the first time, he fully understands the wisdom of his Kamo clan cousins who understood that Sugawara was so powerful that the best plan for dealing with his existence was to simply avoid coming into direct conflict with it. But it was those idiots that turned him from someone who was cautious to someone who would proactively murder people that might cause problems.
While Tengen is preoccupied with sealing Zhang's body in hopes the cursed spirits don't escape from it, he leaves and considers his future with all the lessons he's learned.
At the Sugawara Estate, Kenichi has fed his horse and is quite happy that she ate well, drank lots of water, and is sitting up.
He still doesn't want to think about anything except that.
Sugawara intended to go talk to him, but instead, he's sitting out on the cold steps in front of his home with Tengen, who looks like she'd cry until she died if she had any tears left after losing Ayame.
Michizane can't help the stinging in his eyes, or the tears that follow over the fact the spirited kid he brought home was…not really dead, but also not alive in any sense. She couldn't speak, pursue her own dreams, live her own life. It was actually really disturbing because they didn't know what was really going on in there.
Tengen had hoped that maybe with Six Eyes, Michizane would be able to separate them, but even their souls seem to be bound together in a way they could never be pulled apart again.
This is the second time that someone very close to them has decided to chosen to end their own life because they felt it was the best thing they could possibly do for everyone else, and they just feel like with all the power they have that at least the people they care about should be safe.
There is a part of Michizane that wants to mumble that maybe Kenjaku didn't purposefully put her up to it, but he knows the truth.
He wonders how many times in their lives they will sit together and grieve.
Tengen's mind has wandered to a scarier place; someday she will sit alone because he is the one that she is grieving. The wrinkles on his face are a reminder that age is wearing his body down slowly. At the middle of his life, going forward, his body is going to slowly decline as they continue their journey into the future.
Momo doesn't know his children as well as she should, but she knows everyone she cares about is just going to leave her. She doesn't want to feel the sting when his precious little white-haired babies die too.
Somehow, having Narumi inside of her makes her feel more alone than ever. More alone, more depressed, more like a hellish creature, and less like a human being.
Michizane regretted letting Kenjaku go, because they had no idea where he was. With his ability, as long as they didn't know whose body he was in, he could get close. And he believed they hadn't seen the last of him.
When it got late, Tengen went back to the Jujutsu Society, and he made his way to the stable, where Kenichi was laying on the stable floor, resting his head on the horse.
"You know I'm going to drag you in the house if you try to sleep in the stable," he says.
Kenichi answers, "After what happened last night, I'm not leaving."
"I know you overheard me talking to Kenjaku, so you know the person who did that isn't here."
"Did you kill him?" Kenichi asks.
Sugawara says, "I didn't."
He sits down on a wooden stool and says, "A lot stuff has happened today. You know Narumi, and I think you liked her, right?"
"She is fierce. Sometimes she visits Kenjaku and me wherever we are. I think they like each other a lot."
"She is no longer with us."
"Dead?"
"Yes."
It's a lie, but he doesn't really want people to find out what Tengen has become.
He frowns. "Did someone kill her?"
"It's complicated, but in a sense, Kenjaku is responsible. He talked her into doing something that caused her give up her own life."
"Why would he do that?"
"I don't know."
"I thought he cared for her."
Kenichi's basic understanding, because he's seen Kenjaku and Narumi kiss and she sleeps in the same bed as him is that they care for each other. Like Sugawara and his wife care for each other, but then again, it's not quite like that.
Understanding Kenjaku used a woman's body and then threw away her life made him think of the man he thought was his father, the man who killed his mother. It wasn't like he didn't understand that men like that existed; he'd spent all these years thinking about it.
Even though he has questions, he doesn't want answers.
He wonders where any of this leaves him?
He was staying with Kenjaku, and now what? He doesn't want to stay with someone who poisoned his horse, someone who would take his joy away from him for whatever reason, someone who slept with a woman and threw her life away like garbage like his mother was thrown away.
The Sugawara family isn't related to him in any sort of way, and at least within the confines of his own mind, he thinks he is only welcome here because Michizane once loved his mother when he was very young.
He and Kenjaku just naturally got on because they were both…different. Kenshin and Hoshiko are popular and friendly, they have allies. They're nice to look at, and that makes kind of a big difference if you're a twelve-year-old with too many of this and too much of that.
They weren't really that much older than him anyway.
This wasn't how it was supposed to be, since they had their life and he and Kenjaku had their adventures too. Why did it have to end? Maybe if he could just make his way back to Kenjaku, they could talk, and Kenichi would promise to do better.
No, that's not right.
Kenichi is angry.
Sugawara watches the twelve-year-old as he seems to move through his emotions. He would attempt to hug him, but he knows Kenichi wouldn't like it.
"Do you know where my brother is?"
"If I did, I'd kill him. He switched bodies, so we don't know how to find him. And if you do, you should distance yourself from him. He is changing, and the things that matter to him now aren't the things that mattered before. Kenjaku is dangerous."
Kenichi has only ever known him in Zhang's body, so the idea that he has a completely different appearance is so odd to him, but he remembers that many other people knew him when he was in the other body.
Where is he supposed to go?
What is he supposed to do?
"You're obviously welcome to live here. If you want to go stay in Nara, that's fine too. I'm sure Kenshin and Hoshiko would love to see you. They were kind of disappointed that you decided not to winter with them in the city."
Kenichi says, "Was that an option?"
"They said they invited you. Maybe a miscommunication."
"Probably not," the boy answers, his eyes suddenly begin to open with the kind of dark understanding that only an adult can possess.
Sugawara asks, "Do you want me to send word to Nara that you're here? I know you want to stay until She-Devil improves. I bet they'd come visit."
Kenichi thinks about it for a minute and looks down with a rather sad expression.
Everyone seems to agree that his mother was the kindest and most wonderful person, and the older he gets, the more he views himself as an anchor that pulled her down to the bottom the sea until she finally drowned.
How could she have wanted to drown?
Maybe she was just too weak to cut the rope and let him drown instead. As beautiful as she was, if she wasn't looking after a deformed child, she probably could have had a better life. Maybe even convinced the boss to let her leave the island, or at least survived long enough to be rescued, but none of those things happened.
She never again saw her other children or her sister or anyone else who cared about her because he caused her to sink into her grave, without dignity or hope or any happiness on her own.
Of course she didn't want that.
Who would?
Kenichi can't imagine that anyone else was happy with that outcome either. If the gods asked everyone if they wished his mother had lived but lost both of her twins, they certainly would all say yes.
"I don't want to bother Kenshin and Hoshiko."
Kenichi isn't in a mood to say much beyond this, and he isn't going to go sleep in a room in the house, so Michizane sits quietly with him.
He brings tea and snacks, for the boy and his horse, an offering unto She-Devil as Kenichi watches over her and she seems to be looking after him too.
Sugawara thinks Kenjaku poisoned the horse in part because of how well Kenichi seemed to be doing. He had been having a good time, motivated and curious, getting on well with others, playing and learning.
Now he seemed like he had retreated back behind his scars, so even though the horse didn't die, Kenjaku seemingly accomplished the goal of shattering his brother's emotional wellbeing. Suddenly, he doesn't want to talk or be with anyone anymore, and now he's angry and hurt.
Sugawara nods off while he sits with him; the stable is colder than the house, but warm enough that it's not so bad with warm winter clothes and blankets. When he wakes up, horse and boy are both sound asleep, so he fixes the blankets around both of them, only to be kicked in the shin by the horse as she pretends to be asleep.
She goes back toward the house, limping at first as he heals the injury.
For a few days, Kenichi tries to go back to the way he was, but it's like the whole world has suddenly become less colorful and dull, and the things he'd been enjoying only a few days earlier no longer bring him even passing joy. He's not interested in anything, and he spends all his time wondering why everyone is being nice to him and concludes that they are either doing it because of his mother or because they feel sorry for him.
It makes him feel awkward and uncomfortable, and he doesn't want to feel awkward and uncomfortable.
This is all Kenjaku's fault, he's sure.
He was having fun!
Now he's miserable.
He doesn't want to stay in Kyoto.
He doesn't want to go to Nara.
On the fourth night after the poisoning, he lays awake trying to figure out what anything means, and he's just tired of thinking, really.
He decides he'll go out and get some fresh air, look up at the stars for a while, clear his mind, but when he opens the stall door, She-Devil gets up and very rudely pushes it open and walks out.
She-Devil kicks the stall door for a horse she doesn't like as she makes her way toward the stable door and then follows him out into the grassy area just outside. She walks around a bit, and then runs a little, kicking her feet up in the air.
He sits on the fence and watches her stretch and trot about in the grass. Since she survived an arrow and poison back to back, seeing her being silly and happy again reminds him of how wonderful he feels when they're out adventuring together.
When she approaches him, it seems like she is inviting him to ride, but he doesn't have a saddle for her because he had to abandon it on the side of the road when she was shot with the arrow. He's never ridden her bareback because she constantly tries to launch him off her back into the sun, but things seem different now, so he pulls himself up on her back.
They walk around the little field for a few minutes, and then he asks, "Are you ready for an adventure?"
He always said this before they set off together, and She-Devil responds by turning, picking up speed, and leaping over the fence around the stable area onto the stone courtyard, where her heavy hooves were impossibly loud in the quiet winter night.
She races, faster and faster and faster, headed straight for the tall gate guarding the estate.
Kenichi feels happy again.
He doesn't need anyone to love him, or to love anyone else. All he needs is to feel the wind in his hair, and the freedom to adventure as he sees fit.
The night guards hear the commotion but hardly have a chance to respond.
She-Devil leaps over the impossibly tall wall and into historical records about this age, some of which claimed she was a winged shikigami who carried a calamity upon her back and would suffer no other rider.
When all is said and done, in a decade when missionaries from the west travel to their little island, they will tell the locals that in the end times, Death will come riding on a white horse.
The villagers they meet will tell them that on Akitsushima, Death rides a black horse that races through the night, and even the sound of her footsteps is a death sentence, because by the time an innocent hears them, it is already too late to run.