My memories of my father are largely good - he's a fun-loving guy who is always looking out for opportunities at entertainment. When I was growing up, he had his own auto repair shop, because cars are just something he seems to intrinsically understand. If I'm not remembering spending my Fridays in that dusty, dirty shop (until we moved to the city, my rural school operated Monday-Thursday from 8am to 4pm with the notion that kids would be helping their parents with their rural work on Fridays), I'm recalling him racing dirt bikes and making funny voices and flatulent noises with his mouth. Now that he's on the older side, he's not racing those bikes anymore, but he still enjoys his street bikes and general outings to festivals and the like. Super chill guy, for the most part, so I try to remember HIM when I need to calm the fuck down all my compounding anxieties.
Kagome confirms that she can sense a Shikon shard, and deduces that Kohaku is nearby. Inuyasha says that it's not just Kohaku, but a couple of other humans he can smell ahead too. Oh, so his nose has dropped its weird bias from the last chapter then? Miroku asks aloud if Kohaku is with someone else, while Sango remains silent and surly. A drop of sweat on her forehead. No doubt she's concerned about a repeat performance of the castle, even if on a smaller scale.
A narrow sky transition panel brings us back to the small house, where Kohaku and Daichi's dad are still sound asleep under their common bedclothes, the space Daichi left separating them. A close-up of Kohaku's sleeping face, brows a little drawn down, indicates the next panel is from inside his dream. A man is looking over his shoulder and shouting that someone got hurt because they weren't paying attention, and demanding they go away, because they're in the way.
He's striding toward them in the next panel, Sango identifying him over her shoulder with a mild statement of fact. Stepping up into the room, their father asks brusquely how Kohaku's injury is, and Sango informs him it's only a graze. He sternly takes Kohaku's bandaged arm into his hands and briefly examines it, stiff and detached as he says that's good. Classic embarrassment from losing one's cool a moment ago.
Sango is somewhat brazen when she tells her father that he doesn't have to HIDE coming to see his son. He responds that he has to set an example in front of the others. An example of authoritative parenting, I guess? He looks at Kohaku and asks if he understands, clarifying that he doesn't hate him and he's not angry with him. Smiling, Kohaku affirms that he gets it.
In the present, a voice in the darkness asks what's wrong, if he can't sleep. Kohaku looks over to where Daichi's dad is leaning his chin on the heel of his hand, propped on an elbow. Even though he didn't get and answer to his previous questions, he follows up with another about whether his wound hurts. Before an actual conversation can be had, Daichi's dad hums as he perceives a shadow passes into the room. Now he's asking his son what's wrong, because Daichi's standing there at their feet, his sickle raised.
Gaping in alarm, Kohaku lunges forward, knocking back an attempted blow on the dad by the possessed Daichi. As Daichi teeters backward, Kohaku silently identifies the possession issue, barking at Daichi's dad to stay back when the man calls to his son in confusion, leaning forward.
Daichi leaps forward for another attack, but is intercepted by Kohaku again, sickle against sickle. Kohaku pushes Daichi back and over, swiping the possessed boy's weapon out of his hand with his own, and taking it firmly in hand so it can't be snatched back, at least not easily. Daichi lays on the straw strewn floor, wide eyes staring out blindly, and his father hurries toward him with a horrified shout. He leans over the boy and stares at that strange pattern around his left eye, though Kohaku tries to warn him about Daichi's ongoing condition.
Apparently, a cleaver has been just left on the floor, conveniently in reach of the youkai controlling Daichi.
A horrible memory flashes before Kohaku: his father and others beheaded and stabbed by his own sickle, blood flying. Tears spring into his wide eyes, a too-late scream to his father locked in his head.
Meanwhile, Daichi's dad has fallen back, hand hovering over his wound, stuttering his son's name. It seems to be all he can say, really. The youkai possessing Daichi raises the cleaver again. Kohaku comes out of his PTSD flashback just in time to stammer a command to stop and leap forward to intercept the blow once again.
Daichi's dad haltingly asks WHY his son is doing this, and Kohaku twists to shout at him that Daichi is just being controlled. Again, he remembers throwing his own sickle into his father's throat, but Daichi is looking blankly up at him and he manages to keep his focus on the current question at hand, asking himself what he can possibly do to drive the youkai from the boy's body.
Certain that this is the youkai trying to flee the scene, he throws the weighted end of his sickle and chain, and it wraps around the boy's ankle, yanking him back to the ground. Before the possessed Daichi can get back up to either run or attack again, Kohaku straddles him to hold him in place. But his sickle is still held up and visible, to the Inuyasha group bursting onto the scene from the trees. Sango sees Kohaku holding a boy down with his sickle raised and understandably calls out to him in panic. Kohaku looks up at her, identifying her in his head but uttering no more than a noise of surprise in reply.
Sango swings Hiraikotsu from across her chest, demanding Kohaku let go of the boy, and Kohaku jumps back out of the giant boomerang's way with a grunt, off of Daichi.
Sango gapes in disbelief, Kagome calling out to her about the child and Miroku finishes her trailing statement that the child is possessed by the Hitoukon. Daichi jerks upward into the air, his father crawling forward, yelling after him. He calls to the strangers around him to please save his son. When Inuyasha lurches forward after Daichi, Shippou asks from Kagome's shoulder what's going on, but Inuyasha just answers with a scoff. He says that they should just try to grab the brat, and he'll drag the youkai out of the little shit himself. Inuyasha appears to be closing in on Daichi anyway, but Sango urges him not to get violent from Kirara's back, warning that he won't be able to extract the Hitoukon by force.
This puts Kohaku in the mind that his sister knows how to get rid of the youkai.
Suddenly, Kohaku declares that he's going to save Daichi, running off himself. Kagome is shocked, in disbelief over Kohaku actually seeming to express an autonomous thought.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The way Daichi moves under possession is exactly the same as a victim of Yura would have allllll the way at the beginning of this manga, but as nice as the reminder is, I'm not much of a fan. It made sense with Yura, what with the way she used her hair as strings to pull and yank limbs like puppetry. The theme of this hitoukon youkai is WAY off of that kind of movement, so it doesn't make any sense. I understand Daichi has to move in that way to make him more difficult to catch, but it's really awkward when the idea at the base of this is grass roots rather than something that could more easily and believably be used as puppet strings.
That aside, I feel like Kohaku's PTSD and his guilt around the memories surrounding his father are deep and sincere in their portrayal. It was to be expected that he might start seeing some parallels when Daichi injured his father, but his reminiscences start long before that moment. The young boy carrying a sickle just like himself and his father seem to have struck a chord, even though they don't seem to resemble each other in personality much. Given Kohaku's memory of his father being rather harsh with him for appearance's sake only to apologize later, Daichi's father seems much more laid back and chill in comparison. Regardless, it's only natural that Kohaku would think back on his own interactions with his father while he's accepting the hospitality of a father and son. It is, after all, one of Kohaku's defining characteristics lately that he committed patricide under some unique circumstances that he's still trying to work through mentally. ANY father and son would do the trick, but there's got to be something about hanging out with them and even sleeping next to them that would trigger a few sensitive memories.
It's sad to me that her suspicions of Kohaku run so deep at this point that she can't even feel proper relief when it's clear he's not to blame for a particular tragedy in the works. I understand WHY, mind you - it's still an open question to her why Kohaku would be here in the first place, so she can't know for sure if he's in some way responsible, and I suppose in a certain way he IS. But it shows just how little faith she has now that he might at some time be coaxed back from Naraku's influence that she moves from shock that he's actually fighting off an attack rather than the attacker straight to thinking that he and Naraku are probably the cause of this whole mess to begin with. Won't even allow herself the slightest HOPE that Kohaku is innocent this time.
