Undead Murder Farce – 11 – In the Doghouse

Following another unsettling monochromatic flashback involving werewolves convict and execute a pregnant woman via Giant Jenga, back in the present the Royce agents report they were unable to track the golden werewolf. That said, the villagers now have their culprit in Alma, so the chief tells Aya how to find the Forest of Fangs. They’ll be accompanied by the agents.

Shizuku wakes up in bed with a naked woman and a red wolf. A third werewolf, Nora, introduces herself, and how she found Shizuku frozen from the falls, and had the other two (Kaya and Vera) warm her up. Nora doesn’t suspect her of being “the culprit” because her rifle isn’t a shotgun.

When Shizuku asks what culprit she’s referring to, she learns that the werewolf village has experienced the same number of mysterious murders of young women, each four months apart and killed in the same manner. Shizuku tells them about Aya, but Nora says she needs to leave the village immediately.

To prevent the male werewolves from finding Shizuku, Vera and Kaya try to sneak her out in a hay-filled cart, but one of the wheels breaks, and Shizuku has to improvise. Showing of her acrobatics and skill without a rifle, she manages to fight off a number of werewolves before she’s surrounded.

The same elder from the flashback, Granny Nagi, the village elder, places Shizuku on the same Jenga tower she did the pregnant woman and asks a series of questions. Every lie is a plank removed, but Nagi assumes Shizuku is lying about everything.

Then a single gunshot rings out, and they bring Shizuku with them as they investigate the source, only to find Nora, whom the elder seemed to be quite fond of and who was about to become a priestess, has been killed. Shizuku offers to help, and shows that she’s learned a thing or two about sleuthing from being around Aya.

She’s able to deduce that Nora wasn’t killed where her corpse lies (there’s no blood splatter), she was likely in the river (she’s wet) and put on her cloak (which is dry) before being killed, and there was also a second shot (but they only heard one). After that, Shizuku runs out of gas—she’s not really a detective, after all—and once more invokes the ire of her wolfy captors.

Aya and Tsuguru can’t get to her soon enough, but while on their way through the arduous Forest of Fangs, which consists of great fang-shaped mountains they must traverse, their journey is rudely interrupted by the arrival of Victor, Moriarty’s brute strength muscle. Perhaps while the Royce agents fight him Tsuguru can slink away with Aya? Shizuku isn’t going to remain un-executed forever!

My Happy Marriage – 11 – The Burdens of Blood

Miyo’s grandfather Yoshino tells her how the Usudas became mired in debt they couldn’t hope to repay, and one day the Saimoris offered to assume all that debt, in exchange for Sumi marrying into their family. Not seeing any other way to stave off the family’s ruin, Sumi went against her father’s wishes and arranged the engagement.

After that, Yoshino became completely estranged from her daughter, but the backstory picks up when he takes Miyo to the blooming sakura tree and tells her to place her hand on the bark. When she does, her Dream-Sight is unsealed, and she learns what happened after her mother married.

Shortly after Sumi had Miyo, she became aware of two things: If the Saimoris found out her daughter had Dream-Sight, they’d never stop exploiting her, and she didn’t have long to live (she was ill before she married). So Sumi sealed away Miyo’s gift, so that when the proper time came, it would be her choice whether to use it.

As Miyo rests and processes all that she saw with her gift, we see Kiyoka fighting the grotesqueries in the woods with his subordinates. Honestly his men don’t seem like they’re good for much except bait, at least compared to his frighteningly powerful gifts.

When Miyo wakes up the next morning, it isn’t a sudden awakening after a nightmare. She had no nightmares. But she still can’t feel truly at ease as long as she’s in a gilded cage far from her danna-sama’s side. I’m so glad that she remains adamant, even in the face of a pushy Arata, that all she wants is to see him again—if only to apologize.

Arata insists that it’s his duty to protect her, if she would just let him. He later refers to the two of them as alike in their status as “empty shells”, not considering that Miyo isn’t an empty shell; at least not since meeting Kiyoka, Yurie, and Hazuki.

My inkling that Kiyoka would be better off facing the grotesqueries alone is reinforced when one of them rushes Godou, and Kiyoka has to push him out of the way to save him. In the process, he is touched by the grotesquerie, and the miasma causes him to collapse. I’m not sure he would have made as reckless a move if Miyo was waiting for him back home.

Yoshino may be keeping Miyo away from Kiyoka, but he at least assumes responsibility for what happened to Miyo up until then, and expresses his regret that he didn’t make different choices regarding his daughter that could have prevented both her and Miyo’s suffering.

It doesn’t really change the fact that he did what he did, and that presently he’s probably fine with Arata eventually marrying Miyo, his cousin, per the Usuda way. But unlike the awful Saimoris, at least he’s trying to show a modicum of compassion and empathy.

Their exchanges also serve to underscore just how foreign the concept of “family” is to Miyo. Before meeting Kiyoka, the only person in the world who gave a shit about her was her mother, who left her far too soon.

Yoshino tries to explain to her that the members of a family may not always get along, or may at times disappoint, but the bonds of blood never shatter, and a family shares its burdens rather than let one member bear them all.

But when Arata informs Yoshino* that Kiyoka was struck down by the grotesqueries, Miyo insists she has to go to him. Even when Arata tells her that the Usudas struck a deal with the Emperor himself promising to keep her away from anyone supernaturally gifted, she won’t take no for an answer.

Perhaps seeing his daughter’s stubbornness in Miyo, and once again demonstrating he has a heart, Yoshino lets Miyo go to see Kiyoka. Arata escorts her, and she rushes to her fiancé’s bedside and breathes a sigh of relief when she feels his pulse.

That said, no one knows if or when he’ll wake up, which makes Miyo the only person who can do something. Specifically, she may be able to speak to him and even wake him up, by using her newly unsealed Dream-Sight. Just as her mother had hoped, she’s choosing to use it for her own reasons.

*Arata almost makes it a point to tell his grandfather about Kiyoka in earshot of Miyo. I’m not sure why, since at this point his primary duty is to keep her right where she is … Did he honestly think she’d hear that news and not want to immediately go to Kiyoka? … Arata could have lied and said Kiyoka died. Or he could have simply kept Miyo in the dark about Kiyoka altogether … Perhaps Arata did what he did because a part of him didn’t want to deny her free will, just as he had been denied his all his life? In any case, both he and his grandfather make for far more layered, complex characters than the cartoonishly evil half-sister and stepmother.