Private The Wither & The Bloom [Requesting Chikamatsu Clan]

[Chikamatsu Shin]

The Arboretum had never been silent before.

Even in the dead of night, there had always been sound—the whisper of leaves against glass, the soft hum of insects drawn to night-blooming flowers, the distant drip of the irrigation system feeding life into roots that stretched deep beneath Sunagakure's surface. But now, standing in the heart of the sacred garden, Chikamatsu Shin heard nothing. The air itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting for something that would never come.

His fingers trembled as they hovered over the Yurei Orchid.

Six petals. Always six. They had been as constant as the sun, as inevitable as the tide. But now they curled inward, edges browning like paper held too close to flame. The deep blacks and greys that had once marked the bond between Overseer and Inner Court had faded to an ashen pallor, as if the very color had bled out along with the connection that sustained them.

"I'm sorry," Shin whispered, and his voice cracked on the second word. "I'm so sorry."

The orchid didn't answer. Of course it didn't. But for a moment—just a fraction of a heartbeat—he could have sworn he felt five other apologies echoing in the space where his mind used to be crowded with thoughts that weren't entirely his own.

Now there was only him.

Only Shin.

He pressed his palm against the glass enclosure, feeling the coolness seep into his skin. Inside, the orchid's stem had begun to bow under its own weight, unable to support petals that no longer served their purpose. The soil around its roots looked dry despite the moisture gauges reading optimal levels. It wasn't dying from lack of water.

It was dying from lack of them.

"You needed us," he said quietly, more to himself than to the flower. "Just like we needed you. And I—"

His throat closed around the words. What could he say? That he had made the right choice? That dissolving the bond had been necessary? The reasons felt hollow now, standing here in the aftermath. Necessary didn't make it hurt less. Right didn't fill the void in his skull where five other minds had once nested like birds in a shared roost.

The seal on the back of his neck burned faintly. Six petals, all grey now. No blue to mark him as the center. No distinction between Overseer and Court. Just six empty spaces where something sacred had been.

He had given his wrath to his sister. His pride and envy to his daughters. His gluttony to his son. Piece by piece, he had carved away parts of himself to give them life, to make them real, to anchor them in bodies that could breathe and bleed and be.

But this? This was different.

This wasn't sacrifice. This was severance.

Shin's legs gave out. He didn't remember deciding to kneel, but suddenly the cold stone floor bit into his knees and his forehead pressed against the glass. His breath fogged the surface, obscuring the wilting orchid from view.

"I can still feel where you were," he confessed to the silence. "All of you. Like phantom limbs. Like scars that won't stop aching." His fingers curled into fists against the glass. "Seishinko's certainty. Maho's strength. Kayaku's fire. Seikatsu's faith. Kohana's..."

He couldn't finish. Kohana's presence had been the oldest, the deepest. She had lived in his soul since before either of them had names. Twin spirits in one body, and now—

"Now she's alone," Shin breathed, and the words tasted like ash. "For the first time in her entire existence, she's alone. Because of me."

The Arboretum offered no comfort. The plants that had always responded to his presence, that had bloomed brighter when the Inner Court gathered here, now simply existed. Neutral. Indifferent. Unaware that the man kneeling before them was less than he had been a week ago.

Or perhaps more.

He didn't know anymore.

Movement at the edge of his vision. Not footsteps—he hadn't heard footsteps—but a shift in the quality of shadow. The kind of presence that didn't announce itself because it had always been there, woven into the fabric of the space itself.

Shin didn't lift his head. He didn't need to.

"Seishinko," he said quietly. "I thought you weren't coming."

The silence stretched just long enough to be uncomfortable. Then, soft as falling leaves: "I wasn't certain I should."

His jaw tightened. "You have every right to—"

"The Kodama are weeping."

The words cut through his building apology like a blade. Shin finally lifted his head, turning to look at the woman who had once been an extension of his own consciousness. Seishinko stood at the threshold between cultivated garden and wild growth, her pitch black hair catching the artificial sunlight in a way that made her seem less solid than usual. Her crimson eyes—those eyes that saw things others couldn't—were fixed not on him, but on the space around him.

"They've been weeping since the moment it happened," she continued, her voice carrying that distant quality it always did when she spoke of spirits. "The tree spirits, the flower guardians, the small gods of root and leaf. They don't understand severance. They only know growth, connection, symbiosis."

Shin's hands fell to his sides. "They're not the only ones who don't understand."

Seishinko's gaze finally settled on him, and for the first time in a week, he saw her expression rather than simply knowing her feeling. It was strange. Unsettling. Like trying to read a language he had only ever heard spoken aloud.

Her face was pale, perhaps more so than usual. The shadows under her eyes suggested sleepless nights, though whether from meditation or something darker, he couldn't tell. Not anymore. The knowledge that would have been instant, intuitive, was now locked behind the walls of her skull—a fortress he no longer had the key to breach.

"The old oak near the eastern wall," she said instead of responding directly, "it keeps reaching with its roots. Searching for something that used to be there. The night-blooming jasmine won't open anymore—it's waiting for a signal that will never come."

She took a step closer, and Shin noticed the slight hesitation in her movement. Before, they had moved like parts of a single organism, always aware of each other's position in space. Now she had to consciously gauge the distance, had to choose where to place her feet.

"And the ghost orchid..."

She trailed off, but her eyes flicked meaningfully to the wilting Yurei Orchid between them.

"It's dying," Shin finished for her. Not a question. A fact.

"The Kodama say it's grieving."

"Plants don't grieve."

"This one does."

Seishinko moved closer, her footsteps finally audible now that she allowed them to be. The soft rustle of her clothing, the faint displacement of air—these were things he had never noticed before because he had always experienced her from the inside out. Now she was all externals, all surfaces he had to interpret rather than simply know.

She didn't approach the orchid directly, but circled it slowly, like a mourner at a wake.

"It was never just a flower, Shin-sama. You know that. It was a vessel. A living seal. The physical manifestation of a bond that transcended flesh."

"And now that bond is broken."

"Dissolved," Seishinko corrected gently. "Not quite the same thing."

Shin wanted to argue, wanted to insist that the distinction didn't matter, but the words wouldn't come. Instead, he watched as Seishinko completed her circuit and came to stand beside him, both of them looking down at the dying orchid like parents at a child's sickbed.

The silence stretched between them, and for the first time in his life, Shin didn't know what Seishinko was thinking. The woman who had shared his every thought, who had been as familiar to him as his own heartbeat, was now a mystery.

It was terrifying.

"The Kodama ask me questions I cannot answer," she said after a long moment, her voice barely above a whisper. "They want to know if the flower will bloom again. If new petals will grow. If the Overseer will bind new souls to replace the ones that were freed."

Her crimson eyes slid sideways to meet his, and Shin saw something flicker in their depths. Fear? Uncertainty? He couldn't tell. The emotional vocabulary they had once shared was gone, replaced by the crude inadequacy of facial expressions and tone.

"What do I tell them?"

"I don't know."

The admission felt like pulling teeth. As Overseer, he was supposed to have answers. As the center of the Inner Court, he had always had five other perspectives to draw upon, five other minds to help shoulder the burden of decision. Now there was only him, and the weight of that singularity threatened to crush him.

"They also want to know..."

Seishinko hesitated, and Shin felt a chill run down his spine. Seishinko never hesitated. Even now, severed from the bond, that was a fundamental truth he thought he could rely on. But here she was, pausing, choosing her words with a care that suggested she was walking through a minefield.

"They want to know if the orchid is dying because the bond was dissolved, or if the bond was dissolved because the orchid was already dying."

The question hung in the air like smoke, acrid and choking.

Shin's breath caught. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying the Kodama are old. Older than this village. Older than most of the clans that call it home. And they remember things."

Seishinko crouched down, bringing herself level with the orchid's wilting petals. Her movements were graceful, almost ritualistic, and Shin was struck by how small she looked. Had she always been this slight? This delicate? Or had the bond somehow made her seem larger, more substantial?

"They remember the last time the Yurei Orchid bloomed. And the time before that. They remember Overseers who bound their Courts so tightly that when one died, all six fell. They remember..."

She reached out, not quite touching the glass, her fingers hovering a breath away. In the refracted light, her hand looked almost translucent, as if she herself were fading along with the flower.

"They remember the Overseer who tried to hold on too long."

Shin's stomach dropped. "You think I—"

"I think the Kodama don't deal in blame," Seishinko interrupted, still not looking at him. "They only observe patterns. Growth and decay. Bloom and wither. And they've been observing you, Shin-sama. Observing us."

She finally turned her head, and the full weight of her crimson gaze fell upon him. Those eyes that saw spirits, that peered into realms beyond mortal comprehension, now studied him as if he were a specimen under glass.

"The bond was beautiful—six souls in perfect harmony—but beauty doesn't mean sustainability."

"We were strong," Shin insisted, but even as he said it, he heard the defensiveness in his own voice. The desperate need to justify what had been, to prove that the loss meant something.

"We were."

Seishinko stood, the movement slow and deliberate. She turned to face him fully, and Shin found himself taking an involuntary step back. Not from fear, but from the sudden, overwhelming awareness that he was looking at a stranger who wore a familiar face.

"But strength that cannot bend will eventually break. And the orchid..."

She gestured to the wilting flower with a hand that trembled slightly. Shin had never seen Seishinko's hands tremble before.

"The orchid knew."

The implication settled over Shin like a burial shroud. The orchid had known. The sacred flower that chose the Overseer, that granted the power to bind souls and create the Inner Court, had somehow known that the bond had run its course. That continuing would have led to something worse than dissolution.

"Then why does it hurt so much?"

The question came out smaller than he intended, almost childlike. Shin hated the vulnerability in his own voice, hated that he was asking questions instead of providing answers. But Seishinko had always been his connection to the spiritual, to the unseen forces that governed their world. If anyone would understand the ache that had taken root in his chest, it would be her.

Seishinko's expression finally softened, and for just a moment, she looked less like the eerie spirit-medium and more like the woman who had once shared his every thought. The corner of her mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but something adjacent to sympathy.

"Because love hurts when it changes shape," she said quietly. "Even when the change is necessary."

"Was it?" The question burst from Shin before he could stop it. "Necessary? Or was I just... afraid?"

It was the question that had haunted him for seven days and seven nights. The one he had been avoiding by throwing himself into paperwork, into medical research, into anything that would keep his mind occupied and away from the gaping wound where the Inner Court used to be.

Was dissolution the right choice? Or had he simply been too weak to carry the weight any longer?

Seishinko tilted her head, studying him with those unsettling crimson eyes. For a long moment, she said nothing, and Shin felt the weight of her silence like a physical thing. Finally, she spoke, and her voice carried a strange mixture of sadness and certainty.

"The Kodama don't speak in terms of right and wrong. They speak in terms of what is. And what is, Shin-sama, is that we are standing here—separate, alive, and grieving. That is the reality we inhabit now."

"That's not an answer."

"No," Seishinko agreed, and this time she did smile—a small, sad curve of lips that didn't reach her eyes. "It's not. But it's the only one I have."

She moved toward the exit, her form already beginning to blur at the edges in that way she had when she was preparing to slip between the physical and spiritual. But she paused at the threshold, glancing back over her shoulder.

The artificial sunlight caught in her hair, turning it into fragmented blue like a raven's feather, and for a moment Shin was struck by how ethereal she looked. How otherworldly. Had she always been this way? Or was the absence of the bond making him see her differently—not as an extension of himself, but as a person wholly separate and distinct?

"The Kodama have one more message, Shin-sama."

Shin straightened, some instinct making him stand at attention. Even dissolved, even severed, there was still protocol. Still duty. "What is it?"

"They say: even in death, the orchid feeds the soil. Even in endings, there is nourishment for what comes next."

Her crimson eyes gleamed in the artificial light, and for just a moment, Shin could have sworn he saw something move behind them—shadows that didn't belong to her, shapes that existed in dimensions his mortal eyes couldn't quite perceive.

"The flower is dying, Shin-sama. But the root... the root remains."

Before Shin could ask what she meant, before he could demand clarification or beg her to stay just a little longer, Seishinko was gone. Not walking away—simply gone, as if she had never been there at all. Only the faint scent of incense and old wood remained, lingering in the air like a ghost.

Shin was alone again.

He turned back to the Yurei Orchid, to the six grey petals curling inward like hands closing for the last time. The glass case felt colder now, or perhaps that was just his imagination. Perhaps everything felt colder without five other souls warming the edges of his consciousness.

"The root remains," he whispered to the orchid, to the Kodama, to the ghost of the bond that had defined him for so long.

And in the silence that followed, he could have sworn he felt—just for a heartbeat—five quiet agreements.

Then nothing.

Just the sound of his own breathing.

Just the distant hum of the Arboretum's climate control.

Just Shin.

He didn't know how long he knelt there, staring at the dying flower. Time felt slippery without the constant background awareness of five other perspectives marking its passage. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. The Arboretum's artificial sun didn't set, didn't move, offered no natural rhythm to anchor himself to.

But eventually, inevitably, he heard footsteps.

Real footsteps this time. Heavy and deliberate, the kind that announced their approach rather than concealing it. The stride was confident, measured, and achingly familiar in a way that made Shin's chest tighten.

"Overseer."

The voice was deep, resonant, carrying the weight of ritual and tradition. It was the voice Seikatsu used for ceremonies, for official clan business, for moments when personal feelings had to be set aside in favor of duty.

Shin didn't turn around. He wasn't sure he could face another one of them. Not yet. Not when the wound was still so raw.

"Seikatsu," he acknowledged quietly. "You didn't need to come."

"Didn't I?"

The question hung in the air, and Shin finally forced himself to look over his shoulder. Seikatsu stood at the entrance to the sacred grove, his muscular frame backlit by the softer light of the main Arboretum. He wore his formal robes—the ones marked with the symbols of his role as head priest of the clan—and his expression was carefully neutral.

But his eyes...

His eyes betrayed him.

They were red-rimmed and tired, the eyes of a man who had spent too many nights wrestling with questions that had no answers. And in them, Shin saw a reflection of his own grief—raw and unfiltered and utterly human.

"The orchid is dying," Seikatsu observed, his gaze shifting to the wilting flower. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"And we..." He trailed off, then corrected himself with visible effort. "And I can do nothing to prevent it."

The slip in pronouns was telling. They were all still adjusting, still learning how to think in singular terms after so long existing as a collective. Shin wondered if it would ever feel natural, or if they would spend the rest of their lives catching themselves, correcting themselves, mourning the loss of that plural identity.

"No," Shin agreed softly. "We can't."

Seikatsu stepped forward, his movements slow and deliberate. He came to stand beside Shin, and together they looked down at the dying orchid—two men where once there had been one mind.

The silence between them was heavy with unspoken words.

"Seishinko came to see you," Seikatsu said finally. It wasn't a question, but there was something in his tone—a need for confirmation, for connection, for proof that he wasn't as isolated as he felt.

"She did."

"And?"

"And she told me the Kodama are weeping." Shin's voice was flat, drained of emotion. He had nothing left to give. "That the orchid is grieving. That even in death, there is nourishment for what comes next."

He felt rather than saw Seikatsu's reaction—a slight stiffening of posture, a subtle shift in breathing. These were the small tells he was learning to read now that he could no longer simply know what the others were feeling.

"Cryptic as always," Seikatsu muttered, and there was the faintest edge of something in his voice. Frustration? Bitterness? "The spirits speak in riddles, and we're left to interpret meaning from the wreckage."

Shin glanced up at him, surprised by the sharpness in the priest's tone. Seikatsu had always been the one to find meaning in suffering, to frame pain as divine purpose. To hear him speak with such naked resentment was jarring.

"You're angry," Shin observed.

"Aren't you?"

The question was direct, challenging, and it stripped away the careful formality that Seikatsu usually wrapped himself in. Beneath the priest's robes, beneath the title and the duty, was just a man—confused, hurting, and desperately trying to make sense of a world that had fundamentally shifted beneath his feet.

"I don't know what I am anymore," Shin admitted quietly. "I used to be so certain. About everything. About my purpose, my place, my identity. But now..."

He gestured helplessly at the dying orchid, at the grey petals on his neck, at the vast emptiness in his mind where five other souls used to reside.

"Now I'm just... this. Whatever this is."

Seikatsu was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working as if chewing on words he wasn't sure he wanted to speak. Finally, he sighed—a deep, bone-weary sound that spoke of exhaustion that went far beyond the physical.

"In scripture," he said slowly, "we are taught that sacrifice purifies the soul. That in letting go of what we hold most dear, we become closer to the divine, to become closer to Mother Suna."

He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was rougher, stripped of its usual priestly authority.

"But the scriptures never mention what it feels like to be the sacrifice. To be the thing that's let go of."

Shin felt something crack in his chest—a fissure in the careful control he'd been maintaining for the past week. "Seikatsu—"

"I keep reaching for you," the priest interrupted, and there was a rawness in his confession that made Shin's throat tighten. "For all of you. I'll be in the middle of a prayer, or conducting a ceremony, and I'll think—'Shin would know what to do here. Kayaku would have a better way to phrase this. Maho would see the tactical angle I'm missing.'"

He turned to face Shin fully, and the pain in his eyes was almost unbearable to witness.

"And then I remember. You're not there anymore. None of you are. There's just... me. Just this singular, insufficient, alone version of myself, fumbling through rituals I used to perform with absolute certainty."

"You were never insufficient," Shin said firmly, but Seikatsu shook his head.

"Wasn't I? Weren't we all? That's why the bond existed in the first place, isn't it? Because one perspective, one mind, one soul wasn't enough. The Overseer needed the Court. The Court needed each other. We were incomplete without the collective."

He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound.

"And now we're expected to just... what? Function as separate entities? Pretend that we haven't spent years—decades for some of us—existing as part of something greater than ourselves?"

Shin wanted to argue, wanted to offer comfort or reassurance or something, but the words wouldn't come. Because Seikatsu was right. The bond had made them more than they were individually. It had elevated them, expanded them, given them access to strengths and perspectives they could never have achieved alone.

And now all of that was gone.

"I don't have answers," Shin said finally, the admission tasting like defeat. "I wish I did. I wish I could tell you that this was all part of some grand plan, that the dissolution was necessary and meaningful and that we'll all emerge stronger for it. But I can't. Because I don't know if that's true."

He looked down at the wilting orchid, at the physical manifestation of everything they had lost.

"All I know is that the orchid is dying. The bond is severed. And we have to figure out how to live with that, whether we feel ready or not."

Seikatsu followed his gaze to the flower, and for a long moment, neither of them spoke. The Arboretum hummed quietly around them—life continuing on, indifferent to the private grief unfolding in its sacred heart.

"The root remains," Seikatsu said suddenly, his voice thoughtful. "That's what Seishinko told you, wasn't it? That even in death, the orchid feeds the soil. Even in endings, there is nourishment for what comes next."

"Yes."

"Then perhaps..." The priest paused, choosing his words carefully. "Perhaps the question isn't whether we're complete or incomplete, sufficient or insufficient. Perhaps the question is: what grows from the root we've been given?"

Shin looked up at him sharply, surprised by the shift in Seikatsu's tone. The bitterness had faded, replaced by something that might have been the first tentative shoots of understanding.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the orchid is dying, yes. The bond is severed. But we are still here." Seikatsu gestured between them, then outward, toward the rest of the Arboretum where the other members of the dissolved Court existed in their own private grief. "Separate, alone, insufficient maybe—but alive. Still standing. Still capable of choice."

He met Shin's eyes, and there was a fragile determination in his gaze.

"The root remains, Shin-sama. And from roots, new things grow. Perhaps not the same as what was before. Perhaps not as grand or as powerful. But something. And isn't that what our clan has always done? Taken what others would call endings and coaxed life from them?"

Shin felt something shift in his chest—not healing, not yet, but perhaps the very first, tentative beginning of it. The crack that Seikatsu's confession had opened was still there, still raw, but through it, he could feel something else. Not the six-fold awareness of the bond, but something simpler and perhaps more profound.

Connection. Singular and imperfect, but real.

"You really think we can do that?" Shin asked, and he hated how uncertain he sounded. How young. "Learn to be... this? Whatever we are now?"

Seikatsu was quiet for a moment, then he did something Shin didn't expect. He reached out and placed a hand on Shin's shoulder—a simple gesture, but one that carried weight precisely because it was chosen. Not compelled by the bond, not an automatic expression of their shared consciousness, but a deliberate act of comfort from one person to another.

"I think we don't have a choice," the priest said honestly. "But if we must learn to be individuals again, then at least we can learn together. Separately, but... together. If that makes any sense."

"It doesn't," Shin said, but he found himself smiling slightly despite everything. "But somehow, that makes it perfect."

They stood there for a moment longer, two men beside a dying flower, neither of them certain what came next but at least no longer facing it entirely alone.

Finally, Seikatsu squeezed Shin's shoulder once, then let his hand fall.

"I should go," he said quietly. "There are rituals to perform. Prayers to say. The clan still needs its priest, even if he feels like he's stumbling through the motions."

"Seikatsu," Shin called as the priest turned to leave. "Thank you. For coming. For... all of it."

The priest paused, glancing back with an expression that was equal parts wry and weary.

"Don't thank me yet, Overseer. We still have to figure out how to face the others. And something tells me that conversation is going to be significantly more difficult."

"The others?"

"Maho. Kayaku." Seikatsu's expression darkened slightly. "Kohana. They're all dealing with this in their own ways, and not all of those ways are... healthy. Or quiet."

 

[Chikamatsu Suisen]

The innersanctum of the Arboretum was supposed to be off-limits.

Suisen knew that. He'd been told that like a hundred times by the Kankoshi nurses, their dead-eyed stares somehow getting even deader when they repeated the rules. "The sacred grove is restricted. Only clan elders. Only the Overseer. Only people doing important spirit stuff." Blah blah blah.

But the thing was, Suisen had woken up this morning with that weird tight feeling in his chest. Not like when he ate too much ramen—which was a great feeling actually and he'd do it again—but like when you hold your breath too long underwater and everything starts getting all fuzzy and panicky. Except he wasn't holding his breath. He was just lying in his bed in the small quarters the Arboretum staff had set up for him, staring at the ceiling, feeling like something somewhere was wrong.

And it wasn't fair! He couldn't even ask anyone about it because everyone who might know was either gone or too busy or acting all weird and sad lately. The whole clan had been acting weird ever since... well. Since dad.

Suisen's chest did that squeezy thing again and he shook his head rapidly, his blonde hair whipping around. Nope. Not thinking about that. Not today. Today he was going to figure out why his insides felt like they were tied in knots, and if that meant breaking some dumb rule about the sacred grove, then so be it!

He moved through the Arboretum quietly—well, quietly for him, which meant only stepping on like two crunchy leaves instead of all of them. The tight feeling got worse the closer he got to the sacred grove, like invisible hands squeezing around his ribs. But he could also hear voices now. Familiar voices.

Papa's voice.

Suisen's red eyes went wide and he practically bounced forward, all attempts at stealth forgotten. Papa was here! Papa would know what this weird feeling was! Papa always knew stuff!

"Papa!"

The word burst out of him before he even fully entered the grove, and then he was there, skidding to a stop at the edge of the sacred space, taking in the scene with confused eyes that tried really hard to make sense of what they were seeing.

Papa was kneeling. Papa never knelt unless he was doing doctor stuff or talking to little kids, and there weren't any little kids here except Suisen. And there was someone else too—Seikatsu-san, the head priest guy who always wore those fancy robes and talked about divine stuff that made Suisen's brain hurt.

But what made Suisen's stomach drop, what made that tight squeezy feeling suddenly make horrible, terrible sense, was the flower behind the glass.

The Yurei Orchid looked... wrong. Suisen had seen it plenty of times during his year living here—it was impossible not to notice the big fancy flower everyone treated like it was made of gold or something. But it had always been pretty before, with its six perfect petals in all their colors.

Now the petals looked brown. Curled up. Like when you leave vegetables out too long and they get all gross and shriveled.

"Papa?" Suisen's voice came out smaller this time, uncertain. "What's... what's wrong with the flower?"

 

[Chikamatsu Kohana]

I could feel it before I even reached the sacred grove.

That tight, suffocating wrongness in my chest where Shin's thoughts used to be. Where his consciousness had lived alongside mine for thirty-one years—every breath, every heartbeat, every fucking secret we'd shared because there were no secrets when you lived inside someone else's head.

Now there was just silence.

Empty. Cold. Wrong.

My boots hit the stone paths harder than necessary as I moved through the Arboretum. The seals etched across this synthetic body pulsed with warning—spiritual, physical, and natural energies all screaming at me that something fundamental had broken. But I already knew that. I'd known it the moment I woke up in this homunculus body, alone in my own head for the first time in my entire existence, and realized what he'd done.

He'd thrown me out.

My hand found Caliburnus's pommel and squeezed until my knuckles went white. The replica armor—our sensei's armor, the one we'd worn together when I controlled his body—felt heavy and wrong on shoulders that were mine alone now. Everything about this body felt wrong. Too separate. Too solid. Too real.

I stopped at the threshold of the sacred grove and the sight that greeted me made something hot and vicious coil in my gut.

Shin. Kneeling. Like some pathetic supplicant mourning at a shrine.

And that fucking flower. The Yurei Orchid with its six grey petals curled inward like it had given up. Like it was dying because we weren't enough to sustain it anymore.

"The orchid is dying because the bond that sustained it no longer exists," I said, my voice cutting through whatever question the kid—Suisen, the homunculus boy carrying a piece of Shin's soul—had been asking.

I stepped into the sacred grove, my gaze fixed on the wilting flower behind its glass case. Six petals. Six souls. All bound together through the Overseer in some sacred fucking connection that was supposed to mean something. That was supposed to be eternal.

Except Shin had decided it wasn't.

"It's grieving," I continued, still not looking at him directly because if I looked at him I might do something I'd regret. "Six petals for six souls, all bound together through the Overseer. When the binding dissolved, the orchid lost its purpose."

My jaw clenched so hard I felt my teeth grind. The seals on my skin flared hot in response to the fury building in my chest—the fury that had always been mine to carry when Shin needed to stay calm and diplomatic and controlled.

"Just like the rest of us."

The words came out sharp and bitter because that's exactly what they were. Bitter. Like poison on my tongue.

"Suisen," I said, finally acknowledging the boy because at least he hadn't asked for this. "You shouldn't be here. This area is restricted."

But even as I said it, I knew why he'd come. The homunculi could feel things others couldn't—the disturbances in the carefully maintained balance of energies that kept our synthetic forms stable. If I'd felt the orchid dying from wherever I'd been trying to lose myself in weapons training, then of course he'd felt it too.

He lived here. In the middle of all this.

And finally—because I couldn't avoid it forever, because this was why I'd come—I forced myself to look at Shin.

At my brother who wasn't my brother anymore. At the man who'd carried me inside his consciousness for three decades and then decided I was expendable. At the Overseer who'd dissolved the bond and shoved me into this body like discarded baggage because apparently keeping us together was too hard.

"You look like shit," I said flatly.

My hand tightened on Caliburnus until the leather of the pommel creaked under my grip.

"But I guess that's what happens when you rip out parts of your soul and throw them away."

The words hung in the air, sharp and accusing. I wanted him to flinch. Wanted him to acknowledge what he'd done—not just to the orchid, not just to the Court, but to me. His twin. His shadow. The part of him that had died before either of us had names and somehow latched on anyway because we were supposed to be together.

"So what now?" I asked, and the fury in my voice was impossible to miss. "The orchid's dying. The bond's severed. You finally got what you wanted—all of us out of your head so you could be alone."

I took a step closer, my boots hitting the stone with deliberate force.

"How's that working out for you?"

 

[Chikamatsu Shin]

"Suisen—"

Shin's voice came out rougher than he intended, scraped raw from days of silence and grief. He started to rise from his kneeling position, his legs protesting the movement after however long he'd been frozen there. His hand reached toward the boy automatically, some instinct to comfort, to explain, to make this easier somehow.

But Kohana's voice cut through the air like a blade, and Shin's hand fell back to his side.

The accusations hung between them—sharp, bitter, true. Every word landed like a physical blow, and Shin felt something in his chest crack wider. She was right. Of course she was right. He had thrown her out. Had severed the bond. Had taken the part of himself that had lived alongside him since before either of them had names and shoved it into a separate body because he couldn't risk—

His jaw clenched. The memory of Wei's drugs coursing through his system, the way the chemicals had wormed into his mind and found the pathways of the bond, made his skin crawl even now.

"Kohana," he started, but his throat closed around whatever excuse or explanation or apology he'd been trying to form.

What could he say? That he'd felt the corruption spreading through their connection like poison in shared veins? That he'd realized with growing horror that Wei's mind-altering concoctions weren't just affecting him—they were learning the shape of the bond itself, finding routes to reach the others through their shared consciousness? That every moment they stayed connected was another moment those chemicals could map the pathways between their souls?

Would any of that matter to the woman standing before him, fury radiating from every line of her body, demanding to know why he'd discarded her?

"I didn't want—" He tried again, but the words tangled in his throat. Didn't want to lose you. Didn't want to be alone. Didn't want any of this.

"It wasn't safe. The bond, it was—"

"Suisen, I'm sorry you had to—"

He was failing. Fragmenting. Trying to address both of them at once and succeeding at neither, his thoughts scattered in a way they never would have been when six minds worked together to shoulder the burden.

At the edge of the sacred grove, Shin could sense them—Seishinko's eerie stillness blending with the shadows, her crimson eyes watching everything with that unsettling awareness that saw beyond the physical. And Seikatsu, still present despite his earlier departure, his priestly robes making soft sounds as he shifted his weight. Both of them waiting. Witnessing. Unable to leave even though part of them probably wanted to.

Four of the six. Only Kayaku and Maho were still absent, and Shin felt that absence like a missing tooth—present in its void, impossible to ignore.

But before Shin could pull together something resembling coherence, new movement drew his attention.

Maho.

The veteran warrior stepped into the sacred grove with the kind of presence that commanded immediate attention. Her golden hair was pulled back in its practical braid, her tactical garments showing signs of recent training. But it was her eyes—those sharp, piercing blue eyes that had seen decades of combat—that fixed on Kohana with an intensity that made the air feel heavier.

She moved with deliberate purpose, closing the distance between herself and Kohana in three strides, and suddenly she was there, directly in the younger woman's space, her height and presence forcing Kohana to either hold her ground or back down.

"Step back," Maho said, her voice low and controlled but carrying an edge sharp enough to cut. "Now."

It wasn't a suggestion.

Shin watched, frozen, as Maho positioned herself between him and Kohana like a living shield. The veteran's posture was deceptively relaxed, but anyone with combat training could read the coiled readiness in her stance. She was prepared to move, to intervene, to protect.

"I understand you're angry," Maho continued, her gaze never leaving Kohana's face. "I understand you're hurt. We all are. But you will not stand in this sacred space and berate the Overseer while he's already on his knees."

Her tone shifted, gaining a harder edge.

"You want to know why he severed the bond? Fine. Ask. But you will show some goddamn respect while you do it, or you can take your fury somewhere else until you've remembered that sometimes hard choices aren't about wanting—they're about survival."

From the shadows, Seishinko's voice drifted through the sacred grove like smoke, carrying that distant quality it always did when she spoke of things others couldn't see. "Survival. Yes. The Kodama understand survival. They understand sacrifice."

She moved forward slightly, her form seeming to blur at the edges as if she existed partially in another realm. "But they also understand corruption. They've been restless since the dissolution—not grieving the loss of the bond, but agitated by something else. Something that touched the orchid before it began to wither."

Seikatsu's voice cut through with priestly authority, sharp and grounded in a way that contrasted with Seishinko's ethereal tone. "The spirits may sense corruption, but let us not forget the divine order. Mother Suna's teachings are clear—sacrifice must have purpose, must follow ritual, must be sanctioned by proper authority."

His blue eyes fixed on Shin with something that might have been accusation or might have been concern—it was hard to tell now that they couldn't share thoughts.

"You dissolved the bond without consulting the Court. Without ritual. Without prayer or guidance from the divine."

"And yet the Kodama do not condemn the choice," Seishinko countered quietly, her crimson gaze sliding sideways to meet Seikatsu's. "They recognize necessity when they see it. The spirits are not bound by your formal worship, Priest. They see what is, not what should be according to scripture."

"What is and what should be are not always in opposition," Seikatsu replied, his jaw tightening. "But they require balance. The formal and the wild. The structured and the chaotic. We've always represented that balance in the Court—"

"Until the Court was severed," Seishinko finished, and there was something almost like sadness in her voice. "Now we're all just fragments trying to remember how to be whole."

Shin felt something twist in his chest. "Maho, it's alright—"

"It's not alright," Maho interrupted without looking back at him. "Nothing about this is alright. But tearing each other apart in front of the dying orchid isn't going to fix it."

She took a breath, her shoulders settling slightly, though she didn't move from her protective position.

"The bond is severed. The orchid is dying. We're all learning how to exist as individuals instead of parts of a whole. And it's hard. For all of us." Her voice softened fractionally, though the steel remained underneath. "But we're still the Inner Court. Still the Chikamatsu. And we don't turn on our own when we don't have all the facts."

"Then perhaps," Seikatsu said, moving closer to the group with deliberate steps, "we should hear those facts. Together. As we should have from the beginning."

His gaze swept across the assembled Court—Maho standing guard like the warrior she'd always been by choice, Kohana radiating fury born from necessity, Seishinko haunting the edges like a ghost between worlds. Five of six present. The absence of the sixth hung heavy in the air.

"Whatever the reason, we deserve to understand. All of us—those of us here, at least. This affects the entire Court."

"The Kodama agree," Seishinko added quietly. "They've been asking questions I cannot answer. About corruption. About infection. About things that move through bonds like poison through shared blood."

Her crimson eyes fixed on Shin with an intensity that made him feel exposed.

"They want to know what you were protecting us from, Shin-sama. What you saw that made you willing to kill the orchid to save us."

Shin finally managed to stand, his legs unsteady beneath him. He moved to Maho's side, one hand touching her shoulder gently. "She has every right to be angry," he said quietly. "I made the choice. I dissolved the bond without warning. I... I put her in that body without explaining why."

His gaze finally lifted to meet Kohana's directly, and the weight of something darker than guilt shadowed his blue eyes.

"You're right. I threw you out. I threw all of you out because—" His voice dropped lower, and for the first time, there was fear underneath the exhaustion. "Because Wei's corruption was learning the pathways. His drugs, his chemicals—they weren't just affecting me."

He gestured at the space between them, at the invisible connection that no longer existed.

"The bond made us stronger. Made us whole. But it also made us vulnerable in ways I didn't understand until it was almost too late." His hands clenched into fists at his sides. "Every time those mind-altering compounds coursed through my system, every time Wei's concoctions tested the boundaries of my consciousness, I could feel them getting closer to the rest of you. Learning the shape of our connection. Finding pathways through our shared minds."

"Chemical corruption," Seikatsu breathed, his priestly training making the connection immediately. "Mother Suna warns of such things—toxins that don't just poison the body, but the soul itself. And through a bond like ours..."

"It would spread," Seishinko finished softly. "The Kodama have seen it before, in their ancient memories. Shared consciousness is beautiful, but it carries no immunity. What infects one, infects all."

Her voice gained an edge.

"Wei was a merchant of madness. His drugs didn't just alter perception—they rewrote the pathways of thought itself. And in a mind connected to five others..."

Shin's voice cracked as he continued. "If I'd kept the bond intact, Wei's corruption wouldn't have stopped with me. It would have used our connection as a highway to reach all five of you. You would have felt your minds changing, felt the chemicals rewriting your thoughts, and there would have been nothing any of us could do to stop it."

He looked at Kohana—at his twin, his shadow, the fury he'd carried inside himself for three decades—and the pain in his expression was unbearable.

"So yes. I threw you out. I severed the bond and shoved you into that body because losing you—losing all of you—to separation was better than watching Wei's poison turn us all into something we weren't. Something controlled by chemicals and madness instead of our own wills."

His hand fell back to his side, and he looked so much smaller than the Overseer should. So much more human and breakable and terrified.

"I'm sorry, Kohana. I'm sorry, Suisen." His gaze swept to include the boy who'd witnessed all of this, then moved outward to encompass Seishinko in her shadows, Seikatsu with his priestly gravity, Maho standing guard. "I'm sorry to all of you—to those of you here, and to Kayaku wherever she is. But I couldn't let that man's greed and his toxic compounds use our bond as a weapon. I couldn't let him turn the most sacred connection we had into a vector for his corrupting influence."

The Arboretum's artificial sun cast long shadows across the sacred grove, illuminating the dying flower, the fractured Court—incomplete without its sixth member—and the man who had broken them all trying to save them.

"The orchid is dying because I chose your minds—your free will—over our bond. And I'd make the same choice again, even knowing it would break us all."

"Then you made the right choice," Maho said firmly, her warrior's pragmatism cutting through the emotional weight. "A hard choice. A painful choice. But the right one."

"The right choice made without proper ritual or divine consultation," Seikatsu muttered, though his tone had softened. "Mother Suna teaches that even necessary sacrifices must be sanctified—"

"The Kodama care nothing for your sanctification," Seishinko interrupted quietly. "They care that we survived. That the corruption was contained. That is its own form of sacred."

The two representatives of Chikamatsu spirituality—formal and wild, structured and chaotic—stared at each other across the sacred grove, neither willing to concede but both recognizing truth in the other's words.

Just as they always had.

Just as they always would, even severed from the bond that had once made their disagreements feel like internal debates rather than external conflicts.

 

[Chikamatsu Suisen]

But then another voice cut through the air—sharp and angry and so full of hurt that it made Suisen's chest tighten. He turned to see Aunt Kohana stepping into the sacred grove, and the fury radiating off her was almost tangible.

She was confronting Shin. Actually confronting him. Using words like "threw me out" and "discarded" and Suisen felt his stomach twist because he'd never heard anyone talk to his father like that before. Not with that much raw pain underneath the anger.

Then Maho-san appeared and positioned herself between them like a physical barrier, and suddenly the sacred grove was filling with people—Seishinko-san materializing from the shadows in that unsettling way she had, Seikatsu-san speaking with priestly authority about rituals and divine order. The air felt heavy with tension, with words that carried decades of shared history Suisen couldn't fully understand.

And Papa looked... broken.

Suisen had seen his father tired before. Had seen him stressed during his time as Kazekage, had watched him work long hours in the medical facility. But this was different. This was someone who looked like they'd been carrying an impossible weight and had finally collapsed under it.

The explanations came in fragments—Wei, corruption, mind-altering drugs spreading through the bond. Suisen's enhanced homunculus mind pieced it together quickly, processing information faster than his apparent age suggested. The bond had been a vulnerability. A pathway that could have been exploited to control or corrupt all six members of the Inner Court simultaneously.

Shin had severed the connection to save them.

Suisen's red eyes moved between the assembled Court members. Maho standing guard with veteran discipline. Kohana radiating barely-contained fury. Seikatsu and Seishinko representing their opposing yet complementary spiritual traditions. And Papa, kneeling before the dying orchid, apologizing to them all.

"So let me make sure I understand this correctly," Suisen said, his voice cutting through the tension with unexpected steadiness.

He stepped further into the sacred grove, his gaze moving from person to person.

"The bond—the thing that connected all six of you—was being mapped by Wei's chemical compounds. Those drugs weren't just affecting Father's mind, they were learning the pathways between all of your consciousnesses."

He looked at the wilting orchid.

"And the orchid is dying because it was sustained by that connection. When Father dissolved the bond to prevent the corruption from spreading, the flower lost its purpose."

Suisen's hands clenched at his sides. As a homunculus carrying a fragment of Shin's soul, he understood synthetic existence in ways the others couldn't. He knew what it meant to be created with seals to contain power, to have your very existence carefully balanced between different forms of energy.

"I get it," he said quietly, looking at Kohana specifically. "Being thrown into a separate body without warning, without explanation—it feels like betrayal. Like you were discarded instead of saved."

His voice gained an edge.

"But I also know what it's like to be created as a failsafe. To exist because someone made an impossible choice between bad options and worse ones."

He gestured at the seals visible on his own skin.

"These seals? They're not just for show. They're keeping my spiritual energy from overwhelming my physical form. Without them, I'd burn up—consume myself from the inside out like Sora did."

Suisen's red eyes met his father's blue ones directly.

"Father made you a body. Gave you seals to keep you stable. Severed the bond before Wei's corruption could reach you through it."

He turned back to Kohana.

"Yeah, it sucked. Yeah, he should have explained. But he saved your mind. Your free will. Your ability to stand here and be pissed at him instead of being a puppet controlled by chemical dependency."

The boy's jaw tightened.

"So maybe he made the wrong choice about how he did it. But I don't think he made the wrong choice about what needed to happen."

Suisen looked around at the assembled Court—at the mirrors and opposites that made up the Inner Circle. Warriors by choice and necessity. Formal worship and wild spirits. All of them fractured but still standing.

"The orchid is dying. The bond is severed. We can't change that now." His voice was firm despite his youth. "But we're still here. Still the Chikamatsu Clan. And we can either tear each other apart over choices that can't be undone, or we can figure out what comes next."

He paused, then added with the blunt honesty that came from being barely a year old in existence:

"Also, where the hell is Kayaku? Seems like we're having a whole Court meeting and we're missing someone."

 

[Chikamatsu Kohana]

The kid's words hit me like a physical blow, and for a moment—just a moment—I almost wavered.

Almost.

But then the fury that had been simmering in my chest since I woke up in this synthetic body, alone in my own head for the first time in three decades, roared back to life with a vengeance.

"Figure out what comes next?" I repeated, my voice sharp enough to cut. "We're not the Inner Court anymore, Suisen. There is no 'what comes next' for something that doesn't exist."

My hand tightened on Caliburnus until I felt the leather of the grip creak under my fingers. The seals on my skin pulsed hot in response to the surge of emotion threatening to destabilize this carefully balanced homunculus body.

"And he's not the Overseer."

I turned my gaze from the boy to Shin, and the words came out cold. Clinical. The kind of brutal honesty I'd always delivered when we were connected and he needed to hear truth instead of comfort.

"Look at him. Really look at him."

I gestured at my twin—at the man who wore my face but had thrown me away like I was expendable.

"No Yurei Orchid seal. No bond connecting him to five other souls. No title of Kazekage, that was stripped away by Michino. No position as Sennin, gone and handed to Akkuma on a silver platter. And now? Now he's lost the one thing that actually mattered. The thing that made him the Overseer in the first place."

My voice gained an edge sharp enough to draw blood.

"I was there, Suisen. I was there when he took on that seal. When the orchid chose him and granted him the power to bind our souls together. That seal wasn't just decorative—it was the source of his authority. His strength. His right to lead the clan."

I took a step forward, and Maho shifted slightly but I ignored her. My focus was entirely on Shin.

"Without the bond, without the seal's power flowing through him, he's not the Overseer. He's just a medic. A skilled one, sure. But just a man. A weak man who couldn't handle the weight he was given, so he broke us all to make his burden lighter."

The words tasted like poison on my tongue, but I couldn't stop them. Thirty-one years of being his fury, his shadow, his protector—and for what? To be discarded the moment things got difficult?

"You want to know why I'm angry?" I looked at Suisen, at his earnest red eyes trying so hard to make sense of adult complications. "I'm angry because I spent my entire existence inside his head. I was his wrath when he needed to stay diplomatic. His sword when his gentle hands couldn't do what needed to be done. I protected him. Fought for him..."

"Killed for him."

My jaw clenched so hard I felt my teeth grind.

"And the moment he faced something he couldn't handle alone, instead of trusting us—instead of letting the Court shoulder the burden together the way we were designed to—he panicked. He severed the bond. Shoved us all into separate bodies and told himself it was mercy instead of cowardice."

I turned back to Shin, and the hurt underneath my fury finally broke through.

"You talk about saving our free will. Our minds. But you know what you actually saved? Yourself. You were terrified of what Wei's corruption would do to you, so you cut us loose before we could be dragged down with you."

The accusation hung in the air, sharp and bitter.

"And now you're not even the Overseer anymore. You're just Chikamatsu Shin—half a soul in a whole body, waiting to die because you gave away your wrath to me, your gluttony to Suisen, your envy to Kasai, and your pride to Sora—who may I remind you died because you fucked up your formula so now your Pride lives in Hayate Tadashi and you ripped a piece of me out too which now rests in young Ayame. You carved yourself into pieces and distributed them like party favors, and for what?"

I gestured at the dying orchid.

"The flower is dead. The Court is dissolved. You've got no titles left to strip away. You're nothing."

The words came out harsher than I intended, but I couldn't take them back. Didn't want to take them back. Because standing here, looking at the man who had been everything to me—twin, brother, host, home—I realized the terrible truth.

Without the bond, without the seal, without the Court...

He was just a man.

And I didn't know how to be anything other than his fury.

"So don't talk to me about what comes next," I said quietly, and the exhaustion in my voice surprised even me. "There is no next. There's just... this. Whatever this is."

I looked around at the assembled Court—at Maho still standing guard over nothing, at Seishinko haunting the edges like always, at Seikatsu with his useless prayers, at Suisen trying so hard to make sense of something that had no sense to be made.

"We're fragments pretending to be whole. And he's the one who broke us... all of us."

 

[Chikamatsu Shin]

"You're right."

Shin's voice came out quieter than he intended, scraped raw and exhausted. He didn't try to stand from where Maho had positioned herself between him and Kohana. Didn't try to reclaim authority he no longer possessed. He just... spoke. Honest and broken in a way the Overseer never would have been.

"I was terrified. I am terrified." His blue eyes met Kohana's crimson ones directly, unflinching despite the accusations she'd leveled at him. "Every moment those chemicals coursed through my system, every time Wei's compounds mapped another pathway in my consciousness, I felt them getting closer to the rest of you. Felt the corruption learning the shape of our bond like a disease searching for new hosts."

His hands clenched at his sides, knuckles white.

"So yes. I was afraid. Afraid of what would happen if I waited too long. Afraid of watching Wei's madness spread through our connection and turn all six of us into puppets controlled by chemical dependency. Afraid of—"

His voice cracked.

"Afraid of losing you. All of you. Not just to separation, but to something worse. Something that would have destroyed who we were from the inside out."

He took a shaky breath.

"But being afraid doesn't mean I was wrong about the threat, Kohana. It just means I'm human. Flawed. Incomplete." His gaze dropped to the dying orchid between them. "And you're right about that too. I am incomplete. I gave away my wrath to you. My pride to Sor. My envy to Kasai. My gluttony to Suisen. Piece by piece, I carved myself into fragments to give you all life."

"So no. I'm not the Overseer anymore. I'm not Kazekage. Not Sennin. I'm just—"

CRACK.

The sound of Maho's fist connecting with Kohana's face cut through Shin's words like a blade through silk.

It happened so fast that Shin's mind—singular now, without five other perspectives to process simultaneously—couldn't track the movement until it was already complete. One moment Maho was standing beside him, tense but controlled. The next, her arm had snapped forward with the kind of precision that came from decades of combat training, and her knuckles had found Kohana's mouth with devastating accuracy.

"Enough."

Maho's voice was cold. Controlled. The voice of a veteran warrior who had made a tactical decision and executed it without hesitation.

"You don't get to stand in this sacred space and call him a coward. You don't get to reduce everything he sacrificed to save us into weakness."

From the shadows at the edge of the sacred grove, Seishinko's reaction was immediate and unmistakable.

She smiled.

Not the distant, ethereal expression she usually wore when speaking of spirits and Kodama. This was sharp. Personal. Satisfied. Her lips curved upward as she bit down on her bottom lip, and the movement exposed the elongated canines that marked her vampiric nature—fangs that gleamed in the artificial sunlight like promises of violence.

The spirit-medium's crimson eyes glittered with something that might have been amusement or might have been vindication, and she made no move to intervene. If anything, she looked like she was enjoying the show.

"Violence?! In the sacred grove?!"

Seikatsu's voice cracked with priestly horror as he stepped forward, his formal robes swirling around him. His blue eyes were wide with shock and righteous indignation.

"Maho, this is blasphemy! Mother Suna's teachings are explicit—the sacred spaces are sanctuaries! Places of contemplation and ritual, not... not brawling!"

He moved as if to position himself between the two women, but Seishinko's hand shot out and caught his arm, holding him in place with surprising strength for someone so ethereal.

Her smile never wavered.

"Maho, stop—"

Shin's command came out weaker than he intended, his voice still raw from confession. He pushed himself to his feet, legs unsteady beneath him, and reached for Maho's arm.

"That's enough. Stand down."

But Maho didn't stop.

She shrugged off Shin's grip with the same casual ease she might dismiss an insect, her attention entirely focused on Kohana. Her stance shifted—weight balanced, hands ready, every line of her body radiating the coiled readiness of a warrior who had decided diplomacy was over.

"You want to talk about what he is now?" Maho's voice was steady, controlled, dangerous. "Fine. He's not the Overseer. He's not Kazekage. He's not Sennin. He's a man who made an impossible choice to save the people he loved, and he's been drowning in guilt ever since."

She took a step forward, and there was threat in the movement.

"But you? You're so busy being angry that you can't see past your own hurt. You were his wrath, Kohana. His fury. His sword. And now that you're in your own body, in your own mind, all you can do is be that wrath. Turn it on him because he's the only target left."

Shin tried again, grabbing Maho's shoulder with both hands this time, trying to physically pull her back. "Maho, I'm ordering you to—"

The veteran warrior pushed him.

Not hard. Not violent. But firm enough that Shin stumbled backward, his weakened body unable to maintain balance. He caught himself against the glass case housing the dying Yurei Orchid, and the humiliation of it—of being unable to restrain one of his own Court members, of being pushed aside like he was inconsequential—burned in his chest.

"With respect, Shin-sama," Maho said without looking back at him, her gaze still locked on Kohana, "you're not my Overseer anymore. You dissolved that bond yourself. So you don't get to order me to stand down when someone is tearing you apart for making the choice that saved all of our minds."

"This is unacceptable!" Seikatsu's voice rose with genuine distress as he struggled against Seishinko's grip. "The sacred grove is being desecrated! We should be in prayer, in contemplation, seeking Mother Suna's guidance for—"

"The sacred grove has seen worse," Seishinko interrupted quietly, her fanged smile still in place as she held the priest back with ease. Her crimson eyes never left the scene unfolding before them. "And sometimes truth requires blood before it requires prayer."

The tension in the sacred grove had shifted from verbal confrontation to something far more dangerous. The air felt heavy, charged with the potential for real violence—not the controlled sparring of training, but the raw, unfiltered aggression of people who had been broken and didn't know how else to express their pain.

Shin remained against the glass case, one hand pressed to the surface as if the dying orchid could somehow lend him strength he no longer possessed. His Court—his former Court—was fracturing right in front of him, and he was powerless to stop it.

He couldn't command them. Couldn't restrain them. Couldn't even make them listen.

All he could do was watch as Maho squared off against Kohana, as Seishinko held Seikatsu back with that satisfied smile still playing at her lips, as the sacred space that was supposed to represent their unity became the stage for their complete dissolution.

"Please," Shin whispered, and he hated how small his voice sounded. How powerless. "Please don't do this. Not here. Not like this."

But no one was listening to him anymore.

The Yurei Orchid's petals curled tighter behind the glass, as if the flower itself was trying to retreat from the violence unfolding in its sacred space. And Shin, pressed against the case like a man clinging to the wreckage of something that used to be whole, could only watch as everything he'd tried to save tore itself apart anyway.

 

[Chikamatsu Suisen]

Suisen had seen a lot of weird stuff in his short year of existence.

He'd watched his father work miracles in the medical facility, pulling people back from the edge of death with techniques that seemed more like art than science. He'd felt the strange pull of the Yurei Orchid's energy whenever he came near the sacred grove. He'd even experienced the unsettling sensation of carrying a fragment of someone else's soul inside his own synthetic body.

But watching Aunt Maho deck Auntie Kohana in the face while Seikatsu-Sama had a religious crisis and Seishinko-Sama smiled like she was watching her favorite show?

That was new.

"Okay, so we're doing this now," Suisen said, his voice cutting through the tension with the kind of blunt honesty that came from being barely a year old and not having learned proper social filters yet. "We're just... throwing punches in the sacred grove. Cool. Cool cool cool."

His red eyes tracked between the assembled Court members—Maho squared off and ready for a fight, Kohana presumably reacting to getting hit, he couldn't see her reaction from his angle but he could feel the energy shift, Seishinko holding Seikatsu back like she was physically preventing him from ruining her entertainment, and Shin pressed against the orchid case looking like he'd just watched his entire world collapse.

Again.

"You know what? I'm just gonna say it." Suisen took a step forward, his hands spreading in a gesture that was half exasperation and half genuine confusion. "This is exactly why the bond needed to be severed."

He pointed at Maho and Kohana.

"You two are about to brawl in a sacred space over whether Father made the right choice. Uncle Seikatsu is having a breakdown about blasphemy. Aunt Seishinko looks like she's two seconds away from selling tickets to this fight. And Father—"

His voice caught slightly as he looked at his father.

"Fathdr can't even get you to listen to him anymore. He tried to order you to stand down, Aunt Maho, and you literally pushed him aside. Because you're right—he's not the Overseer anymore. The bond is gone. The authority that came with it is gone."

Suisen's jaw tightened, and the seals on his skin pulsed faintly with agitation.

"But you want to know what I see? I see six people—well, five here and one missing—who spent so long being parts of a whole that none of you know how to be individuals. Auntie Kohana doesn't know how to be anything except Papa's wrath, so she turns it on him. Aunt Maho doesn't know how to protect him without the bond telling her when he needs it, so she overcompensates with violence. Uncle Seikatsu clings to ritual because structure is all he has left. Aunt Seishinko..."

He looked at the spirit-medium with her fanged smile.

"Actually, I think you're just enjoying the chaos. Which, fair. But still."

He turned back to address all of them.

"The orchid is dying because the connection that sustained it is gone. Wei's corruption was spreading through that connection like poison through veins, and Papa cut it off before it could reach all of you. Yeah, it hurt. Yeah, it was sudden. Yeah, he should have explained better."

His voice gained an edge.

"But standing here tearing each other apart isn't going to bring the bond back. It's not going to save the orchid. And it's sure as hell not going to help any of you figure out who you are now that you're not parts of a collective consciousness."

Suisen looked at Kohana directly, even though he couldn't see her full reaction.

"You're angry because you feel discarded. I get that. I'm a homunculus—I literally exist because someone decided to create me for a specific purpose. But you know what? Being created with a purpose doesn't mean that's all you are. You're not just his wrath anymore, Aunt Kohana. You're you. And yeah, that's scary and new and probably feels wrong because it's not what you're used to."

He gestured at the wilting orchid.

"But the root remains. That's what Aunt Seishinko said earlier, right? Even in death, the orchid feeds the soil. Even in endings, there's nourishment for what comes next."

His red eyes moved to Maho.

"You don't need the bond to protect him, Aunt Maho. You just need to choose to do it. That's what being an individual means—making choices that are yours, not compelled by some mystical connection."

Then to Seikatsu.

"And Uncle Seikatsu? Sometimes the sacred gets messy. Sometimes truth is bloody and loud and doesn't follow proper ritual. Maybe Mother Suna understands that better than your scriptures do."

And finally, to his father.

"Father... you look like you're waiting for permission to fall apart. Like you think you don't deserve to grieve because you're the one who made the choice."

Suisen's voice softened slightly.

"But you're allowed to hurt too. You're allowed to miss the bond. You're allowed to be terrified that you made the wrong choice even if you're pretty sure you didn't. You gave away pieces of your soul to create us—your homunculi, your children. You severed the bond to save the Court. You've been carving yourself into smaller and smaller pieces trying to save everyone."

He took a breath.

"But who's saving you?"

The question hung in the air, and Suisen suddenly felt very aware that he was a year-old homunculus boy lecturing a group of adults who had decades—in some cases centuries—more experience than him.

"Look, I don't have all the answers. I'm literally a baby by any reasonable standard. But I know what it's like to be created from fragments and expected to be whole. And I know that standing here fighting each other while the orchid dies isn't helping anyone."

He looked around at all of them—the fractured Court, the dying flower, the sacred space that had become a battlefield.

"So maybe instead of punching each other or having religious crises or enjoying the drama, we could... I don't know. Actually talk about what happens next? About who you are now that the bond is gone? About how we're supposed to function as a clan when our foundation just got ripped out from under us? Hell maybe the Orchid will bloom again for a new Overseer"

His hands dropped to his sides.

"Or we can keep fighting. That's cool too. I'll just... stand over here by the dying magical flower and wait for someone to remember I'm still a kid and probably shouldn't be watching all this."

Despite the sarcasm coating his words, there was genuine hurt underneath. Suisen had come to the sacred grove because he felt something wrong—that tight, suffocating sensation in his chest that he now recognized as the orchid's death throes. He'd hoped to find answers, or at least comfort.

Instead, he'd walked into a family falling apart in real-time, and nobody seemed to know how to stop it.

"For what it's worth," he added quietly, looking at the wilting Yurei Orchid behind its glass case, "I think Papa made the right choice. It was a terrible choice. A painful choice. But sometimes the right thing and the easy thing aren't the same."

His red eyes—so much like Kohana's, carrying that same intensity—swept across the assembled Court one more time.

"And I think if you can't figure out how to be separate people who still care about each other, then maybe the bond dying was just the first casualty. Maybe the whole clan is next."

 

[Chikamatsu Kohana]

The impact of Maho's fist barely registered.

I'd felt worse. Done worse. Been worse. Physical pain was nothing compared to the gaping void in my skull where Shin's thoughts used to live, where his consciousness had nested beside mine for thirty-one fucking years before he decided I was expendable.

I tasted copper. My lip was split—I could feel the warmth trickling down my chin. But I didn't move. Didn't flinch. Just stood there and let Maho's words wash over me like I was supposed to feel ashamed for speaking truth.

"You done?"

My voice came out flat. Cold. The kind of tone I used to use when Shin needed someone eliminated quietly and I'd handle it without hesitation because that's what I was. What I am.

His wrath. His fury. His sword.

Except now I'm supposed to be something else. Someone else. And I don't know how to be anything except what I was created for.

My hand tightened on Caliburnus's pommel, and I felt the familiar weight of the blade respond to my anger. The demonic steel pulsed with heat—that same heat I'd discovered in the training room all those years ago when I'd poured every ounce of my hatred into manifestation. When I'd finally proven I was strong enough to exist on my own.

And then Shin took that away too.

"Hit me again if it makes you feel better, Maho," I said, my crimson eyes never leaving hers. "But don't stand there and lecture me about what he sacrificed when you don't know what it's like."

I took a step forward, closing the distance she'd created, and I saw her weight shift. Good. Let her be ready. Let her think I'm the threat here.

"You chose to be a warrior. Seishinko chose to commune with spirits. Seikatsu chose his priesthood. Even Suisen—" I glanced at the boy, "—he was created with purpose, but he was given life. Given a body. Given the chance to exist as himself."

My jaw clenched, and I felt the seals on my synthetic skin flare hot with barely contained fury.

"But me? I didn't choose anything. I died before we were born. I spent thirty-one years as a ghost trapped inside his head, screaming into darkness that no one could hear, existing only when he allowed it. Training with our sensei only when he manifested me. Fighting his battles. Carrying his rage because he was too gentle, too diplomatic, too fucking controlled to do what needed to be done."

The words came out sharper than I intended, but I couldn't stop them now. They'd been building for a week—no, for decades. For my entire existence.

"And just when I finally—finally—learned how to manifest myself, learned how to make my blade real, learned how to exist without constantly draining his chakra..."

My voice cracked, and I hated myself for it.

"...he shoved me into this body without warning. Without explanation. Without even asking if this was what I wanted."

I looked past Maho to where Shin stood pressed against the orchid case, looking broken and small and nothing like the Overseer who used to share my every thought.

"You talk about corruption. About Wei's drugs mapping the pathways of the bond. About protecting our minds, our free will." I let out a bitter laugh. "But what free will did I have, Maho? What choice did I get? He felt something dangerous and he panicked. Made the decision for all of us because that's what the Overseer does—decides things alone and expects everyone else to fall in line."

Suisen's words echoed in my head—that maybe I didn't know how to be anything except Shin's wrath. And the kid was right. Of course he was right. But that didn't make it hurt less.

"I spent thirty-one years existing as part of him. Every secret he held. Every dark thought he couldn't voice. Every violent impulse he suppressed. I was there for all of it. I knew him better than he knew himself because I lived inside his goddamn consciousness."

My hand finally released Caliburnus's pommel, and I wiped the blood from my split lip with the back of my hand.

"And now there's just... silence. Empty space where his thoughts used to be. And I'm supposed to what? Be grateful? Thank him for saving me from corruption by throwing me into a body I didn't ask for and leaving me to figure out who I am when I've never been just me?"

I looked at Seishinko still holding Seikatsu back with that satisfied smile on her face. At the priest struggling against her grip, horrified by the violence in his sacred space. At Suisen trying so hard to make sense of adult complications. At Maho standing guard over a man who wasn't the Overseer anymore.

"The root remains," I repeated Seishinko's words bitterly.

"Fine. But what grows from a root that was severed without warning? What kind of tree grows from trauma and abandonment and being told you should be grateful your free will was saved when you never had any to begin with?"

I took a breath, and the seals on my skin finally started to cool. The anger was still there—it would always be there, that's what I was—but underneath it was something worse.

Fear.

"I don't know how to be Kohana without Shin," I admitted quietly, and the vulnerability in my own voice made me want to vomit. "I don't know how to exist as just myself when myself was defined by being his shadow. His fury. His wrath."

My crimson eyes finally met Shin's across the sacred grove.

"You were terrified of losing us to Wei's corruption. Fine. I believe you. But you know what terrifies me?"

My voice dropped to almost a whisper.

"That I'll spend the rest of this synthetic life trying to figure out who I am without you, and I'll realize there's nothing there. That without the bond, without your thoughts beside mine, I'm just... empty. An echo of rage with no purpose."

I turned away from all of them, my hand finding Caliburnus again like an anchor.

"So yeah. I'm angry. I'm furious. Because at least fury is something I know how to be."