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."
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."
