On the eve of Marika’s departure, the household gathered at the gates to see her off. Only her father was notably absent, unable to rise from his bed. But Marika had said her goodbyes to him privately, before.

At the front of the farewell party, Kagome stood with Yahiko at her side. She hadn’t spoken to him since that night in his room, and she didn’t speak to him now. Instead, she watched as Marika made ready to leave her home behind her. The wagons were loaded to the brim, crammed full of smuggled treasures disguised in oil barrels and rice sacks. The greater part of the Tatsumi clan’s wealth was going with her, and Kagome was glad Marika’s fiancé had sent an armed escort to supplement her own.

The carriage doors opened, and Marika’s maids filed in. At last, she and her retinue were ready to depart. But there was one yet who remained unhorsed.

At a glance from Kagome, a servant bowed and hastened away. A minute later, a pair of soldiers approached with a fine saddled steed in tow. The horse was familiar. Even before it was reined to a stop before Yahiko, his dark eyes cut to Kagome in mingled shock and betrayal.

“No!” he cried. “You can’t send me away!—you can’t!” When she turned her face from him, he grasped at her sleeve. “Mother…”

Kagome’s expression hardened. Sternly, she shook him off.

“I’m not your mother,” she reminded him. “Now get up on that horse. You’re going with your sister, and you’ll do as she says from here on out.”

Yahiko quailed. When the soldier holding the reins prompted him with a brisk, “Yahiko-sama,” he shot the man a glare and turned to bolt from the yard—but the other soldier grabbed hold of him before he could.

“No!” he yelled again, struggling in the man’s unyielding grip. “This is my castle—I won’t leave it! I won’t!”

Standing at the door of her carriage, Marika called out, softly yet firmly, “Tie him to his horse.”

“Hai, milady!” the soldier with the reins called back, as he released them to aid his companion.

Together, the two men wrestled the thrashing, shouting boy up onto the back of his idly grazing horse. They held him fast as a servant bound him to the saddle with ropes that had been made ready beforehand. Red-faced and sobbing in his fury, Yahiko continued to thrash and shout, hurling vicious curses at Kagome and Marika both.

“Be quiet now,” Marika said calmly as he paused for breath, “or you’ll be gagged as well.”

It seemed the indignity of being tied to his saddle was humiliation enough. Sullenly and wretchedly, Yahiko fell silent. Shooting one last seething look at Kagome, he hung his head, as his horse was led away to join with the rest.

And so Koshirou’s children passed through the gate, and left Tatsumi castle behind for safe harbor elsewhere. Out from under Kagome’s shadow, Yahiko had a chance now of growing straight where he’d begun to grow twisted. Whether he would ever return to claim his inheritance would be for him to decide, and for him to undertake, when he was able and of age to do so.

Seeing them go, Kagome sighed, feeling as though a weight had been lifted from her. Her debt to Mayuri had been repaid. It was a feeling of burden removed that came back on her in full crushing force—when through the dispersing farewell party, she glimpsed a particular attendant hurrying toward her. As the woman bowed low to catch her breath, Kagome’s stole from her chest.

“Kagome-sama…Natsuko-dono,” the maidservant panted out, “…she is awake.”

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi