You ever lie awake at night, hours after you were supposed to go to sleep, and dwell obsessively over something stupid, harmful, or even trivial you did in the past? Seems to be a pretty common phenomenon with a lot of people, including myself. And it doesn't even have to be a recent thing - there's things I STILL think about from when I was a kid that it's unlikely anyone else who witnessed it at the time even remembers. Sure, it was embarrassing or otherwise pretty questionable, but I don't see why my brain has clung to it like some life raft of humility, when I could easily use that space for a few more vocabulary words in Spanish. Often, there's just no justification for holding onto the memory of those incidents.
Of course, SOMETIMES a deed is horrible enough that it makes some sense to haunt the person who did it...
If you had "short flashback to tragic inciting incident" on your bingo card, feel free to mark that off now. She remembers the heads flying back when Kohaku fell for Naraku's trap and took out all his exterminator comrades, including their own father. She includes her own injury, Kohaku's sickle in the back, almost like an afterthought.
Her characterization of Kohaku's lack of memory of the event is a REFUSAL, and perhaps that's partly true, but damn, wouldn't it be nice if I could just REFUSE to remember certain things, lol. Sango acknowledges that while Kohaku has no memory, Naraku is using him, but she also can't deny that Kohaku is the only brother, the only FAMILY, she has. She mentally begs him not to commit any more sins.
Elsewhere in the castle grounds, "birds" are being shredded midair. The castle guards comment on how the numbers of the vampire creatures have diminished somewhat, and implore their Oku-Gata-sama to endure this just a little longer. One of her female warriors flanking her expresses her relief, and one of the maids asks with hope if this means they're saved. Kohaku stares straight ahead, face shadowed as the lady of the castle tells him that it's ALL thanks to him rescuing them. She marvels about how the child in her arms, still snoozing away in his abnormal way, hasn't been injured in the slightest. The castle guards look around, praising Kohaku for the excellent work he did despite being just a kid, and promising him a reward later. It's just the kind of recognition ANYONE would be proud to get, a dream come true for an orphan kid who just wants a family and a place to belong.
So you KNOW it just can't last. Cue the panel with the blood spatter across it.
So much for Sango's hopes that Kohaku doesn't commit any more sins...
Kohaku, stony-faced, catches his sickle again, and the lady of the castle cringes back, stuttering Kohaku's name in disbelief. One of her maids immediately starts ushering her away from the murderous child, while another guard asks Kohaku what he's doing, also stuttering. Kohaku doesn't answer, his head only filled with the command to take the baby and kill all those around him.
Not that he doesn't question the order. He asks the voice in his head why he has to kill these people. He also doesn't receive an answer, just a more insistent order to kill them anyway. His will overridden, Kohaku slashes at the men in front of him, slicing them cleanly into pieces. The female warriors behind start to spring into action, cursing him and assuming that he's gone nutty in the last few seconds. They also get Kohaku's sickle to the throat before they can even begin to resist.
He continues to swing that sickle around on its chain, head bowed, dispassionate, slicing heads and faces without mercy. It isn't long before there is a crescent of bodies littering the ground behind him as he advances on the dwindling group huddled around the lady of the castle. One of the maids shrieks in terror, but he's still focused within, wondering about the nasty feeling he has right now. Yet again, the order to kill those around him and take the baby echoes in his head.
So, Kohaku proceeds to slice through the one remaining female warrior and the lady's maids. They all collapse dead around the lady of the castle, clinging to the child she THINKS is her son. She asks Kohaku why, stuttering, while he approaches her with the sickle raised over his head, listless and unresponsive. It's only at this point that Sango comes flying onto the scene on Kirara.
So much for those pleas for him not to do anything else vile.
Kohaku looks over his shoulder at her, and he's got enough awareness to identify Sango as that person that he can't forget. Menawhile, she looks down at the ground and all those corpses he created, balking at the blood covering the ground and his face. All that blood is in fact probably what tips her off to the fact that the "BIRDS" weren't the ones that did it. She's landed and dismounted Kirara, approaching Kohaku in a shocked daze, and he's turned fully to her.
Smart lady. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow her to get completely away from the danger. While Sango and Kohaku stare each other down, emotionally turbulent to complete listlessness, the lady of the castle runs down the stairs out of the castle. At the bottom she meets Kanna for the second time, who wordlessly holds up her mirror and she has just time enough for a horrified expression as her spirit is pulled out of her.
Kagura flies overhead, arriving a bit late for someone following behind the instigator of this whole incident. She spots Kanna below, standing in front of the collapsed Oku-Gata-sama, surprised to find out that THIS is where she disappeared to, implying they haven't seen each other for a minute. She watches Kanna kneel in front of the empty lady of the castle and take a bundle from her arms, cradling it, Kagura humming in question. It's not long before she can identify the swaddling in Kanna's grasp.
A few Saimyoushou fly up to Kagura as she's observing the reclamation of the smallest of her siblings, and she translates a few of their buzzes as a command to go pick up Kohaku. Before going anywhere, she turns to look back down at the spot where she saw Kanna, and notes in some bitterness that the darn girl has already disappeared. All that remains is the lady of the castle's body.
Meanwhile, Sango and Kohaku are still just standing there staring at one another. Sango looks on the verge of tears when she asks a question she already knows the answer to - if Kohaku has done it AGAIN. Kohaku ponders this word in question himself, hesitantly wondering what she means by it. Suddenly, a vision of men in suits much like the one Sango is wearing with their heads and blood flying flashes across his otherwise blank mind.
In his own memory, he watches as the figure stumbling from his sickle in her back turn and reveal the face of the woman currently in front of him. The current Sango calls his name again in question as he sweats and gapes at her.
A gust of wind whips up around Sango from below, and after it dies down, she looks up and sees Kagura on her feather, and Kohaku kneeling next to her. She yells his name, and he looks over his shoulder at her, fully aware. He recalls that he killed his father and fellow exterminators with the same hand stained with the blood of the castle's staff now.
He... seems to be handling this well. I think.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? This chapter is always heartbreaking to me. No one in this chapter deserved the horrible shit that happened to them. The castle staff were brave, capable, and just trying to protect each other and the lady of the castle. The lady herself was just a woman who had been tricked into thinking she was the mother of a LITERAL monster and got her soul sucked out of her for it. Sango has just been trying to reclaim Kohaku from Naraku this entire time, and had to be confronted with the realities of what Kohaku being under Naraku's thumb means about the terrible deeds he commits in that position.
And then there's Kohaku. As fucked-up as it is, he probably gets the BEST deal out of this chapter's events, but that doesn't mean it's a GOOD deal. He has to be confronted with the hard fact that Naraku is forcing him to kill perfectly innocent people, and it isn't even the first time this has happened. Who knows if he remembers that time where he killed and booby-trapped an entire village to try and trap Inuyasha and company! But having these two memories active in his head at the same time, understanding that though he was not in control, his own hands performed the motions that killed/hurt so many people he cared about, is undoubtedly an agonizing thing to have to live with. Sure, he didn't have autonomy when he did those things, but how do you parse that in your head? How do you not still blame yourself for not fighting for autonomy HARDER? Especially when he HAS overridden Naraku's will before when it comes to Sango and Kagome? It's just gotta be a living fucking nightmare.
I love how the saimyoushou tell Kagura to go and pick up Kohaku, distracting her from Kanna just long enough so she doesn't know where Kanna got to. Very sneaky way to make sure she STILL can't find that baby. You know that if Kohaku had succeeded in killing the lady of the castle and taking the baby himself, Kagura wouldn't have been the one to pick his ass up. He doesn't want her anywhere NEAR his infant, lol.
The point is, this was psychological torture for damn near all these characters, JUST in time for the end of spooky season. I hope everyone else's Halloween was far less traumatic and they had a little fun if they celebrated! <insert jack o' lantern emoji here>
