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.
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