We see Byakuren after she's picked up Toramaru. She looks about 18 years old at this point. "You're not like this" is something I blurted out when I was staying somewhere and witnessed a cat I'd thought looked really sweet attack another. I remember feeling really bothered that animals are so hard to read. This is the sort of image I have of Hata no Kawakatsu right now, but I'm still exploring how to draw them in the future. I feel like depicting them as expressionless might be a bit hard to believe...

Wanting to see her smile, Miko tries to make Byakuren happy. Byakuren is visiting her dream, but is crying and afraid that they'll become unable to meet each other. The ship they're on shakes and sways as the collapsed bodies pile up. Miko's ears hear what Byakuren most desires. "What matter is a sin in a dream," Miko thinks as she undresses and discards her clothes in front of her... or that's the dream I was planning on squeezing in, but had to discard it due to time constraints. I think there are readers whose impression of the endgame would've been distorted by this, so in the end I feel like I was better off leaving it out. Although, this comic itself was inspired by the legend of the monk Shinran's oracular dream of fornication, so I was definitely planning on including something like this when I started drawing this. I'll do it somewhere else eventually.