That's a complicated subject. Depending on the conditions around the development of a person's heart, and the conditions surrounding it when crisis strikes, it can react to stimuli in very different ways to a neighbor's. For instance, some people respond to the suffering of others halfway across the world with compassion and an attempt to help, while others respond with indifference. Some see violence enacted upon their community members and stand in the way, others JOIN IN on the violence. The rest cower and stick their heads in the sand, making excuses as to why the violence is DESERVED by the people experiencing it, and soothing themselves with the lie that they're doing everything right so it could never happen to them.
It's a massive misfortune to have to see just exactly which of your fellow humans fall into which camp.
Inuyasha makes those around him lucky, though.
A little distance behind him, Kagome floating on Shippou's balloon back notes as well that she's sensing a single Shikon shard, and concludes it's Kohaku. She urges Shippou to hurry, who's still sweating pretty hardcore from the effort of holding her aloft.
At the rat origin site, Miroku is yelling Sango's name, horrified at the mound of rats that have formed around where she and her brother were just a moment before. But thankfully, a scraped up Kirara rises out of the swarm of rodents, lifting Sango out of them as well by the straps across her back. She, in turn, has her arms around Kohaku, holding his unconscious form tightly as it hangs limp. It's but a moment of triumph, though.
Miroku is struggling to get to them, knocking the rats off him as they crawl up his robe, freaking out because he can't use his Kazaana without sucking up Sango and Kohaku as well. Not to mention, he is not holding the rats off himself, and is quickly being overwhelmed as well, a few of the little creatures having climbed up to his shoulders and now leaping for his head.
Inuyasha arrives at last and calls out to both Miroku and Sango, rats still clinging to his legs even as he's leaping out of the horde. Suddenly, an arrow flies from... somewhere, and hits the barrier around the discarded rat-box. A flare of light surges around the object at the impact.
Miroku urges Inuyasha to smash that nuisance of a box, since the barrier has been removed on it, as he's just a tad weighed down by the legion of vermin. Inuyasha flies past him and brings Tessaiga down on the zushi in record time, shattering the box. The multitudes of rats do what ALL truly dead youkai in this comic do: they dissolve into thin air, which still seems to leave Miroku in mild shock. It's understandable, his brain is probably just about as rumpled and torn as his rat-nibbled clothes at the moment.
Meanwhile, Shippou draws Kagome's attention to the rats disappearing below them, which must be a relief to him given it means he can finally touch down and doesn't have to carry people five times his size anymore. Kagome declares that the zushi has been broken, then is shocked at the appearance of a trio of figures on a nearby cliff, two short and one taller.
As Shippou pops back into his own form nearby and Kagome runs to catch up with Inuyasha and Miroku, Inuyasha stares up at where Kikyou is perched, saying her name softly. She turns to walk away, but she's still occupying Inuyasha's thoughts immediately afterward, as always.
His focus on her is snapped when Miroku indicates Sango, though, who is still lying on the ground with Kohaku, both unconscious it seems. They're surprisingly WHOLE, considering how long the rats were gnawing on their flesh. Of course, it's difficult to say just how long all that business took, so maybe it was a shorter amount of time than I think.
Anyway, Kohaku is the first to open his eyes, and sits up to find that he's partly constrained by his sister's body laying on top of him. He notes that she's covered in wounds, and that it's all because of him. I'm still DESPERATE to know where the line is for him when it's not worth it anymore.
Sango is opening her eyes now too.
Whoops, lingered a little too long.
Sango haltingly asks Kohaku if he's okay, reaching out to cup his cheek in her hand. Kohaku lets this gesture linger for a moment, looking a bit regretful as he regards his sister. Then he jumps back onto his haunches out of her range, poor Sango making a shocked noise and then calling out to him in despair. The atmosphere swirls behind him and the Saimyoushou reappear at his back, Miroku identifying them as though this is the first he's seen of them so far. I don't know, maybe it IS the first time he's noticed they're there, considering his focus has been monopolized by those rats until now.
Hakudoushi's head starts interrogating Kohaku about who that woman is down there and why she protected him, like it's any of HIS business. After a short pause, Kohaku claims he doesn't know, acknowledging silently that Hakudoushi was watching the whole scene. Creeper. Kohaku looks down at Sango sitting staring up at him from the ground again, not wanting her to be in any more dangerous situations like this one, so he resolves even harder to defeat Naraku ASAP. Yeah kid, I don't think you have any control over the scheduling here.
Sango yells Kohaku's name as he recedes into the sky, clearly anguished. Miroku and Kagome look on at her forlorn and defeated posture with pity. A horizon with a sun low in the sky over the distant wooded hills shows some time has passed, and Kagome and Inuyasha are shown sitting at a campfire outside a forest hut. Shippou stands a little ways away, staring at the hut, wondering aloud how Sango is doing, because she got chewed up pretty badly by the rats. Hope she didn't come down with PLAGUE. Inuyasha snaps a twig, saying that Sango's tough for a human, so her BODY will probably be fine. Kagome follows this up with the observation that the biggest issue for Sango will probably be how shocked she was to see that Kohaku had been involved with the rat plot. As usual, it's the trauma that lingers.
Inside the hut, Miroku is sitting with the dregs of a first aid kit beside Sango, who lays on her side facing away from him. He asks if her wounds are ailing her too much, and she takes a moment to respond, with the answer to a somewhat DIFFERENT question. Though not THAT different.
... Fair.
Miroku says her name, and she continues elaborating on her position, not only that there were many villages wiped out by the rats but Kohaku killed a lot of people at the castle with the "birds" as well. Even if these things were orders from Naraku, she emphasizes that what Kohaku has done must NEVER be forgiven.
Or, rather, that's what she understands in her mind. She recalls a feeling like her chest being crushed when Kohaku was being attacked by the rats. What's more, when she saw that he was okay, she felt relief from the bottom of her heart.
... Also fair.
After saying Sango's name again, Miroku tells her this is a GOOD thing, and that she doesn't have to force herself to hate her brother. Sango hangs her head, still struggling to take some kind of responsible, moral stance on the matter by implying in a halting way that she'll have to behave differently from now on. Miroku recognizes her attempts to blame herself for not hating Kohaku, so asks her if she REGRETS protecting Kohaku. She answers that she doesn't exactly KNOW if she does or not, but, clenching the hand she's leaning on into a fist, says she thinks she'd regret it MORE if she didn't protect him. Again, Miroku assures her that this is good, and asserts that this is how people's hearts are. Sango agrees, thanking Miroku in her mind.
Of course, he'd be in personal trouble if people weren't able to acknowledge the shitty things one has done but love them anyway. XD
A narrow sky transition panel takes us to Kikyou wandering among one of the obliterated villages in the path of the rats, observing a barren waste scattered with skeletons of humans and animals. Her little child shikigami march ahead of her without much regard for any of this, but she's silently fuming about how Naraku did all this just to draw her out.
She kneels next to a body of water while the shikigami hold her bow and arrows, and cuts a lock of her hair with a small knife. Kikyou then winds the lock of hair around with a tie and hands it over to the shikigami, instructing them to fly around with it.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? RT has a multitude of strengths and weaknesses as a storyteller, but I think one of her strengths is not shying away from the complexities of human emotions. Sango's struggle here is very realistic, and it forces the reader to consider how they would feel if a beloved family member committed an atrocity. As much as we like to believe our morals and ethics are inflexible when it comes to certain things, it's against our natures as social animals to turn against people close to us. I poke fun at Miroku here for his personal interest in not being hated for his shitty behavior, but he's right: no matter how horrible a loved-one's actions are, there is some part of us that rebels against abandoning them. There's also a part of us that feels responsible for their actions, like if we had loved them better, or differently, this wouldn't have happened. Sango's pain comes through as not just understandable, but acute and encompassing; you can almost FEEL her heart breaking.
There's not much more to say about Kohaku's side of things, because he hasn't really done anything new here. He's sticking to his guns, still resolved to get close enough to Naraku's heart to smother it with a pillow or something. The only thing that's really changed is that seeing Sango hurt because of a plot he had a hand in, he's wanting to speed things up a bit. I don't know how he thinks he's going to manage that, since his whole plan revolves around just letting Naraku order him close to the infant. Also, though there's no outright textual evidence for this in Kohaku's thoughts or dialog, I get the feeling that he's stuck in this sunk-cost fallacy where he's convinced he's so deep in, he may as well see his plan through to the end.
In any case, one thing's for certain: if Sango ever finds out that Kohaku has been doing horrible things consciously, outside of Naraku's influence, her anxiety around loving him anyway is just likely to increase.
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