Well, I know better than to start screaming in the middle of an enemy castle that I want to rescue a princess from, that's for sure. Nobunaga, on the other hand, right after identifying the castle he's in as one that has been corrupted by a youkai and worrying about Tsuyu's marital situation, shouts at the top of his lungs that he's here to save her as he runs around looking for her among the passed-out bodies of castle denizens. Guess the sleeping guards is why he thinks it's A-Okay, but I would be quiet simply for the fact that I wouldn't want whatever sent them to bed so early to find and do the same to me.
Nobunaga sees a woman's legs curled up on the floor and assumes them to be the princess's. He runs to her side, propping her up as he begs her to hang in there, but is shocked by what he sees. The woman he's picked up has an old wrinkled face, and he drops her back to the floor in shock. He wonders what the monsters of the castle have done to her aloud, but Kagome asks for his attention over her shoulder. She's sitting in front of Tsuyu curled up on the floor, asking if she's actually the princess the flummoxed Nobunaga is looking for. He looks pretty embarrassed for jumping the gun like that.
Myouga hops on and over Kagome's shoulder, complimenting Tsuyu on her beauty and saying it's his duty to wake her. Do those two things have anything in common? Is he only obligated to wake up pretty girls? Myouga's a weirdo.
He does his job, though and sticks his straw-mouth into her face, which Tsuyu groans at immediately. She lifts her hand, flattens Myouga against her cheek, and opens her disoriented eyes as Myouga's little body flutters to the floor. Nobunaga kneels next to her and she sits up, asking him why he's there.
He's astounded that she remembers him, but she wonders aloud how she could forget. After a small speechless moment, Nobunaga launches into a spiel about how he's so grateful and he was sure that she would forget about a youngest son of a retainer like him, with an exasperated Inuyasha and intrigued Kagome looking on. Tsuyu says that he'll always be a trusted childhood friend to her.
Tears spring to Tsuyu's eyes while she wishes she could go back to that uncomplicated time. Nobunaga looks devastated that she's crying, and Inuyasha glares at his back for unknown reasons. Tsuyu begins to explain what happened; that soon after she arrived to be married, her fiance collapsed by the pond and developed a high fever. After that both his personality and figure changed to the point that it was almost as if he became a different creature altogether. As if that could ever happen, lol! Haha... hm.
Tsuyu asks Nobunaga what she should do, and he raises a fist to remark that they should go back to Takeda with his friends. Because the rumors of the lord's madness reached all the way back there, he was ordered to take Tsuyu back home if they were true. She asks if he's really at the castle on orders, but he leans forward, fist still raised to his heart, saying that he would still have come even if he hadn't been ordered.
Inuyasha, tired of watching this fiasco of a love confession, tells Nobunaga to take the princess and get out, because they're just in the way. Nobunaga asks what Inuyasha is planning to do, and he says he and Kagome have some business to take care of as they stand and he raises his claws with a grin. He senses, by smell I'm sure, the lord shuffling down the hallway, grunting out his odd chuckle and muttering about trespassers.
He grunt-chuckles again when he comes upon them, telling them they can't escape. Nobunaga stutters while Tsuyu identifies the lord, and the lord himself sticks the tip of an odd tongue out between his mummy bandages. He aims the long projectile tongue at Inuyasha, who jumps into the air and out of the way in time for it to shatter the door behind him instead.
Inuyasha slashes down with his claws, demanding that the bastard show himself. The bandages rips away to reveal a visage that makes everyone gasp in horror, especially Tsuyu, looking a bit ill as her hand lifts over her mouth.
Kagome catches a glint of something shining in the demon frog's breast as he grunt-chuckles; a shard of the Shikon no Tama. Inuyasha scoffs, saying that the frog looks like a weakling even with the jewel. Myouga warns him not to be careless though, because the frog is actually a 300-year-old demon called Tsukumo no Gama, against which normal methods aren't sufficient. That is his actual NAME?? His parents must have hated him! Inuyasha leaps forward anyway, shouting that he'll take Tsukumo out with one strike. Tsukumo no Gama balloons out his cheeks in response.
Through the cloud of miasma he produced, Tsukumo no Gama emerges next to Nobunaga protecting his nose and mouth with a sleeve, and holding the still unconscious Tsuyu. Tsukumo calls lovingly to her, but Nobunaga pulls out his sword, pointing it at the giant frog, warning him to step the fuck off. Tsukumo no Gama calls him a fool for being a human and getting in his way as he's sticking out his long tongue again. It punches right through Nobunaga's shoulder and launches him straight to the floor.
Kagome calls his name in concern, with his monkey clinging to her sleeve. Meanwhile, Tsukumo no Gama lopes away with Tsuyu slung over his goofy shoulder. Nobunaga attempts to push himself up, shouting after Tsuyu, and Kagome runs over to try and restrain him from moving in his injured state. He says that he has to go, even if it costs him his life, because he has to save her.
Kagome can't help but marvel out loud about the level of love Nobunaga really has for Tsuyu. He gulps and asks her how she knows about his crush, and she asks if he was really trying to hide it. He was about to confess before, so I'm guessing he wasn't trying to conceal it so much as he assumed no one would know if he didn't say anything. Good on him, too, because I hate when people expect you to just read their fucking minds instead.
Inuyasha, bro, cool your balls, man. You fell on your face coughing, but you don't even look injured. Leave the anger and indignation to the person who's actually entitled to it, will you?
Meanwhile...
Alright, enough over-analysis of shit that doesn't actually matter. What did I think of this chapter overall? Classic tale of a guy-in-love-with-girl-who-sees-him-as-just-a-friend. Some would call that a story of the friendzone, for short, but fuck that term. It's not actually a good description for this situation, because talk of the "friendzone" usually comes with complaints from the spurned protagonist about how he was so nice and his love interest should be OBLIGATED to give him sex for all his effort in being so nice. Given that Nobunaga has assumed that Tsuyu wouldn't even register his feelings for her until he told her, chances are he doesn't think in terms of his actions meant to communicate attraction being spurned.
Furthermore, I mentioned in the last chapter that the relationship between Tsuyu and her lord started with a mutual attraction, and it was only his behavior after he "fell ill" that he seemed dangerous and unappealing to her. She came to the castle under the impression that she was coming to the castle to marry someone she LIKED. This information didn't actually have to be dropped, because she could have been there against her will from the beginning and it wouldn't have made a difference to the story. The story tells us that Tsuyu has interest in the lord and not in Nobunaga because while Nobunaga is in a very understandable situation, Tsuyu's preference isn't to be ignored. Her feelings are just as important here, and her feelings will become more understood later when we get to hear from the lord himself.
Inuyasha's disdain for the interaction between Nobunaga and Tsuyu is also interesting, because he not only dismisses it as stupid, but he's shown to be glaring at Nobunaga when he was talking to Tsuyu about leaving for her home again. He sees Nobunaga going to all this trouble to get her back, and isn't looking well on it. As far as I can see, there's no overt parallels between this situation and one that will be revealed later in the story, and Inuyasha doesn't try to advise Nobunaga or discourage him in any way, but it was an interesting expression for Inuyasha to be making.
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