No such luck on my end. The curse I have in mind has just tightened its grip, and it threatens to never let go. This one isn't the result of a single intelligence like Naraku, but a couple of generations of malevolent political intentions. It would almost be more comforting if they were those of demons too, but no, just men, trying to compel poorer men to serve them in perpetual poverty forever more, and compel women to reproduce an impoverished workforce.
It's the curse of our moment that we all have to watch the horrible business play out, bit by bit, and fight tooth and nail against these designs where we can.
Inuyasha vows to slay her, so her crimes stop right here. Meanwhile Kagome and Miroku observe the vampire creatures drawing tighter together in the sky. Abi scoffs, informing them that this means they've collected all the blood from the castle. She says she would have expected a lot more resistance from a castle associated with Naraku, and draws the conclusion that it was just a regular old castle after all. Or, at the very least, it was something Naraku could afford to lose.
Kagome is a confused sort of skeptical, thinking on sensing that Shikon shard here and the implication that it was Kohaku, probably on Naraku's orders. But she doesn't challenge this idea out loud, and Abi is already turned away to fly off, announcing she's withdrawing today and that her hanyou foe below gets to live a little longer. How generous. Flabbergasted, Inuyasha haltingly says that she must be joking, but casts one last glower over her shoulder to tell him to shut it, because her one and only priority is delivering the human blood she gathered to her nest.
Oh come on, man, you knew that wasn't going to work.
Abi recedes into the sky, nothing but a shimmer of bubble and distant shapes flapping through the air, and Inuyasha curses in his perennial irritation. Kagome notices that the Shikon fragment she sensed before has also disappeared, and after a narrow sky transition panel, we cut to Sango brooding over the corpses of the people her brother killed, his name echoing through her head. When the gang runs up to her, calling her name, she gives looks up to give them a pained expression.
Sango quietly informs them that it was Kohaku's doing. Kagome takes a moment to think on Sango before asking her, hesitantly, if Kohaku has left again, despite the fact that she's already noted that Kohaku's Shikon shard has disappeared from her purview. Sango confirms that he has, but she couldn't follow him, fighting back tears. Miroku says her name, but I don't think there's anything he can say, because she's lost in dwelling on how much blood Kohaku had on him when she saw him with his sickle raised over the lady of the castle. She isn't sure how she would save Kohaku's heart, even if she were able to take him back from Naraku.
No doubt years of intensive therapy would help a little, but that isn't exactly available in this time and place...
Narrow sky transition panel!
Girl, does he look like he's up for a chat?
Kagura presses in on her specific suspicions, asking if THAT baby was at the castle. She's wondering if Naraku was keeping the infant at a human castle, and moreover, what for. She's sure that the baby is significant for Naraku, the goodness knows she's got plenty of evidence for that in the last incident. She asks Kohaku if he wasn't told anything, like WHAT that infant is.
After a pause waiting for an answer from a silent Kohaku, Kagura scoffs that he's always so reticent, warning him that if he continues to just follow Naraku's orders obediently, his Shikon fragment will be removed eventually and he'll be killed. Presumably after his usefulness has worn out. At last, Kohaku mumbles that he doesn't care if he dies, causing Kagura a dumbfounded gape.
It IS enough to drive anyone to nihilism. Once again, he goes over this newly recovered memory of killing his father and comrades with his own hands, and even injured his big sister too. He thinks he should have died on that day, and this isn't just dramatic hyperbole on his part - we're shown again how both he and Sango were laying stacked in a pool of blood, with many weapons sticking out of them at every angle. But, Kohaku remembers that the next time he opened his eyes after that, he saw a looming figure of HIM.
Awww, look at him offering to ease the pain he himself caused. How GENEROUS.
Kohaku hunches, gripping his sickle hard as he thinks about that EVERYTHING he remembers, and Naraku himself, and a close up on his determined profile emphasizes that he's committed to having his revenge, even if they kill each other. Oh honey, as much of a badass as you are, I don't think you'll come CLOSE to killing Naraku as he's killing you. Not a chance.
But whatever makes you feel better.
Yet another narrow sky transition panel later, the Inuyasha crew is all gathered around a despondent Sango while she sits at the roots of a tree, Miroku sitting next to her. He acknowledges that it's probably painful for her, but he asks her to tell them all that she saw, because with the presence of Kohaku, it's looking like the castle had a connection to Naraku after all, despite Princess Abi's inexpert opinion. She tells them of Kohaku holding his sickle up to slay a woman holding a baby when she arrived, and the word "baby" is repeated by Inuyasha in question. Sango's memory of it is somewhat fuzzy, no doubt because she was far more focused on her brother at the time, but she's suddenly surprised when she realizes something about the appearance of the infant that she didn't clock before.
Yet another narrow sky transition panel takes us back to that precarious little hut perched on a remote wooded mountainside, where Hakudoushi is lounging in the dark, listening to the buzzing of a single Saimyoushou hovering next to him. He looks over to the window when Kagura and Kohaku are visible on the former's feather outside it, and he looks distinctly displeased. Don't know why - maybe he's just a little peeved to have his solitude interrupted.
Kohaku spots Hakudoushi too when he stands within in the hut, and his cautious puzzlement catches Kagura's attention, who asks if he doesn't know who that is. Well, you have been the ONLY one to interact with him so far. She tells Kohaku that this is the other half of the baby he was with. For me, this would just bring up MORE questions, but Kohaku is still in moody silence as Kagura seems to have an epiphany. She wonders why it was that the baby was divided in two in the first place, as if she wasn't THERE when it happened.
But it's dawning on her that the one half was hidden in a human castle. She touches down on the floor of the hut, watching Hakudoushi's hair whip around his face in the force of her wind, and realizes that he doesn't have a heart. Well, we already knew that was true metaphorically, so I suppose she's talking in literal terms now. She concludes that the baby has Hakudoushi's heart, but she immediately amends this assessment to a far more consequential one.
I don't know if this is the greatest working hypothesis.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It appears that Kohaku has gone from being a mindless puppet of Naraku to being a... mindFUL puppet of Naraku. Even when I read this manga for the first time, it was clear to me that he was going to have to commit a whole hell of a lot more atrocities to maintain his cover before he even got SOMEWHAT close to Naraku in order to take a shot, but there's always a trade-off. Remembering what he's already done while under the influence of Naraku and acknowledging that it was with his own hands might actually be an asset to him in his goal, ironically. Taking responsibility for these actions, though they are not at the core something he did consciously, may steel his mind to doing what's necessary in the meantime. And if all the innocents he has to hurt and kill were going to die whether he does it or one of his own cohorts, he may as well be the one to do it.
It's a pretty shitty position to be in, but he's not screaming in mental anguish anymore, so I guess that's progress.
I'm not sure if I see the logic with Kagura's conclusion that the infant is actually Naraku's heart. She just jumps from assuming Naraku had PLANNED the split in the baby before, to the fact that Hakudoushi was the half that didn't contain the baby's heart, to the shaky declaration that this is really Naraku's heart. It's an extremely dubious line of thought. Sure, Naraku seems to be making an effort to conceal the little thing, but he could be doing that for any number of reasons. For instance, Hakudoushi seems to be Naraku's main pair of jackboots on the ground, and it would ensure that Hakudoushi can't get mortally injured in the field if they keep his heart out of direct harm's way. I feel like, if the heart was actually NARAKU'S, he wouldn't have put it in Kagura's hands to begin with straight out of Mt. Hakurei, he wouldn't have given it any task that might even remotely lead to it getting split in half like it was, and he wouldn't have put it in the hands of random human nobles. He's not really exhibiting the level of caution that I would associate with a guy protecting his very life.
But this assumption that the infant is Naraku's heart is going to become pretty much unanimous before long. I'm sure it'll definitely prove to be accurate. /s
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