Week 8 Synopses
Episode 15 and 16 Synopses
Episode 15 (“The Fabricated Spring”): In the dead of winter, a boy is walking through the thick snow when he sees, of all things, a butterfly. he follows it to discover, pushing up through the snow, a little patch of bright flowers, budding trees, and busy squirrels: spring?
Ginko is also wandering through the snow, but he finds no such wonders; only a small house containing a sleeping boy and his sister, who agrees to put him up for the night. The woman’s name is Suzu; the boy is Miharu. The next morning Ginko leaves very early, before Suzu awakes, but Miharu is already up and about—and, to Ginko’s shock, poking at some Mushi in a tree. Ginko captures the wayward boy and hauls him back to his sister, who is less than please. She reveals that Miharu was not always able to see Mushi; until three years ago, in fact, he was a normal bratty little boy who liked animals. But that winter he vanished in the middle of a huge snowstorm, and although the villagers helped Miharu search for her brother they were unable to locate him: Miharu was alone. However, when spring came, he simply wandered back—a miracle? Apparently not, for since then every year he has disappeared and been found on the edge of the village, sleeping. He always has with him a bag of wild plants that don’t bloom in the winter, which he very sternly cautions Suzu not to open outside of the house. Although Suzu knows he’s just trying to help her get through the winter on their scant food supply, she is understandably concerned about this odd behavior.
Ginko says that the culprit is probably an Usobuki or “false bloom,” a flower-like Mushi that attaches to trees and lets off a special smell which awakens plants and animals in hibernation. It then sucks the life out of those creatures, leaving them nearly dead until spring reawakens them—or so Ginko assumes. He’s never heard about anything waking up again after an Usobuki fed on it, but Miharu seems to be (relatively) undamaged by his yearly expedition. Suzu asks him to stay and teach Miharu about which Mushi he should avoid, and Ginko says that he’ll stay until his presence begins to unbalance the mountain. Suzu seems very pleased, but Ginko quickly figures out that he’s gotten the raw end of the deal: Miharu’s absolutely crazy about Mushi, and it’ll all Ginko can do to keep the little brat under control. On what looks to be the last day of his stay Suzu runs down to the village for food and asks Ginko to watch Miharu, a task at which he fails miserably. (It didn’t work in the third episode, either: Ginko is simply not built to be a babysitter.) Miharu runs off, and after searching all day Ginko finally finds him in the snow, asleep, clutching that bag of flowers. When Ginko opens it, a single butterfly leaps out and flitters into the darkening sky.
Although Suzu protests that “Miharu will miss you when he wakes up,” the level of Mushi has become such that Ginko truly must leave. He comes back almost a year later, in the hopes of finding Miharu’s fabricated spring, but his reception by Suzu is unexpected: she burst into tears, and tells him that Miharu never woke up. Something’s gone wrong. Ginko’s only chance now is to find the Usobuki and try to figure out what was different about Miharu’s situation this year; when he promises he will do so, Suzu takes his arm and silently embraces it. But Ginko only looks away, and shoulders his pack, and makes for the mountain.
It takes him much searching, but find the fabricated spring he does, and he instantly understands why Miharu seeks it out each year. It’s beautiful, sweet-smelling, almost paradisiacal; yet when Ginko has been searching for the Usobuki itself for a while (there are many flowers on the tree; the Mushi is well-hidden) he finds that the sweet smell becomes overpowering and sees that the plants have begun to wither. Around him squirrels drop from the trees, and Ginko suddenly realizes that his own body temperature is falling fast. The only things not affected are the butterflies. Ah—Ginko’s figured it out, but too late, too late. As he drops to the ground and begins his long sleep, the butterflies gather around his body.
Mizu finds him, and, for her, all is lost. In his clothing she discovers a small wooden tube, which contains two invisible yet sweetly-smelling butterflies…
Ginko awakens: it’s Spring. Next to him Miharu is also stirring, and a weeping Suzu is embracing her brother. The problem, of course, was the butterfly: when Spring comes it releases its fragrance again and awakens the Usobuki’s drowsing victims. When Ginko let it out of Miharu’s bag he inadvertently kept him from waking up. After he has made Miharu promise not to go near the false spring anymore, Ginko resumes his journey. He does not say farewell to Suzu, for to a man doomed to travel a siren Spring and a welcoming home can be equally tempting, and equally dangerous.
Episode 16 (“The Daybreak Snake”): Ginko is crossing a wide river in Sakura season, on one of the nicest days he’s ever seen: it’s such a glorious morning that he and his follow ferryee can do nothing but chat about how lazy people are on days as beautiful as this. The other man says that his wife becomes incredibly forgetful—indeed, the other morning she forgot their child at the marketplace! Ginko asks if she has trouble sleeping, but the man says no, she snores very loudly (at which point Ginko tries to sell him some anti-snoring snake oil. I mean, “medicine”). When Ginko steps off the boat, however, the ferryboy lifts his hat and tells the Mushishi that his mother is experiencing all the symptoms Ginko described. When the boy (Kaji) opens the door of his house they find his mother on top of a barrel, swiping with a broom at a “strange creature.” This turns out to be a crab—Sayo, the mother, has forgotten all about crabs.
She also mistakenly identifies Ginko as one of Kaji’s friends (which provokes an exasperated “no, mom, this is someone you’re meeting for the first time”). As she cooks dinner, Kaji tells Ginko that although his mother’s always been forgetful, it’s gotten exponentially worse since the last spring. One day he brought her home some dango, her favorite snack, and she claimed with great certainty that she had never heard of such a food before. Her memory quickly deteriorated after that, in bizarre ways: she forgot about all of the kimonos she had with prints (the plain ones she remembered). She forgot about sneezes, and was quite shocked when Kaji had to blow his nose. At a family party she forgot all of her relatives who lived on the other side of the river—even her younger sister. Furthermore she stays awake almost all the time, working at her loom, and never takes naps under the cherry tree like she used to.
At dinner Ginko is grateful to see that she at least hasn’t forgotten how to cook: she makes an excellent meal and sets out one extra place, an old tradition (she says) that will guarantee a safe return for her traveling husband. Odd, Ginko thinks, that she hasn’t forgotten him. Kaji’s father seems to be a sore point between his mother and he; he thinks that they are being neglected but Sayo is sure that he’s just diligently working to feed his family. Kaji leaves the room in exasperation at his mother’s blindness, and Sayo tells Ginko that her husband is a kind man in the same mold as herself, and that whenever she works at her loom she thinks about him so that she won’t forget. She knows that Kaji asked Ginko to come help her, and she wants to be helped: she is terrified that one day she will forget her husband and child and, what’s worse, forget that she has forgotten. That night Kaji draws up a list of everything his mother’s forgotten (the list includes such items as “sparrow,” “lightning,” “snail,” “watermelon,” and “bucket”) and Ginko tries to find the pattern. They also decide to spy on her all night to see if anything happens. When morning comes and the first light hits her, Sayo does fall asleep for a few seconds, and when she gets up and goes to make breakfast Ginko is shocked to see that her shadow nonchalantly stays behind. Soon it transforms into a shadow the shape of a snake, and crawls out through the open door.
At breakfast Ginko announces that the Mushi responsible for Sayo’s condition is a Kagedama, a shadowlike Mushi that hide out in old trees and enters people’s ears while they sleep. It eats memories, and procreates by sending out smaller shadows while the victim is unconscious. Ginko explains that we file away our memories like drawers in a chest, and the Kagedama generally removes entire drawers; that’s why Sayo forgets things the way she does. However, things that are thought about every day are too protected for Kagedama to take. Unfortunately there’s not really any cure: the only thing that can destroy a Kagedama is direct, strong sunlight, and there’s no way to shine a light into your brain. All Ginko can do is recommend that Sayo thinks about the things she doesn’t want to forget, and promise that he will return. In response Sayo says that she and Kaji will take a trip: they’ll go to the city in the west, which her husband often talks about, and try to find him.
A year later (lots of time passing in these episodes; I suppose that some of the other cases have happened during these travels) Ginko returns to find the two healthy and well. Kaji tells him that they found his father, but the experience wasn’t pleasant for Sayo: he was living with a different wife, and even had a new son. He seemed very happy. Sayo grabbed her son’s hand and began to walk, silently, back to her house. On the way home she didn’t eat or sleep, didn’t do anything but walk away, and finally she collapsed from exhaustion. After that she slept for several days, until on the final morning Kaji awakened to see an enormous Kagedama leaving her body: it’s the original, and it has eaten everything it can eat. It turns out that Sayo had forgotten about everything except her son, her house, and how to cook and weave—the bare essentials. She had also forgotten her husband… a blessing in disguise, it seems. Old habits die hard, though: although she’s busily making new memories she still sleeps very little, and she still weaves all night.
And she still, without quite knowing why, puts out one extra bowl at each meal.