"She had no parents or siblings, so she didn't have anyone to turn to~
When I first met her, she'd been beaten so badly that you couldn't even tell what she originally looked like. That should tell you how brutal her husband and mother-in-law were~"
Doma spoke to Inosuke as he twirled the boar mask in his hand. Inosuke stopped in his tracks at his words, feeling as though fragments were surfacing from the depths of his memory. A faint figure appeared in his mind.
"By then, she'd already lost the sight in one eye from the beating, but her face returned to normal once she healed. That beautiful face left quite an impression on me~
And her face looked exactly like yours, only more delicate, with a gentler expression~
Mm-hmm~ There's no mistake. She must have been your mother~"
Doma nodded as though confirming his own conclusion. Looking at Inosuke, he pictured Kotoha's face, which looked exactly like his.
Although a figure faintly surfaced in his mind, it was too blurred for Inosuke to make out. Most of his memories of his early childhood were still of the boar that had raised him.
"I don't have a mother! A boar raised me!! So this has nothing to do with me!"
Inosuke shouted at Doma. He still had no recollection of his birth mother-or, more precisely, he had yet to remember her.
The bloody battle on Mount Natagumo that day had brought him to the brink of death and briefly awakened a memory from infancy, but once he regained consciousness, that memory had gradually faded.
Hearing Inosuke's words, Doma was left rather speechless by the child's foolishness. He opened his iron fan and asked, "Did a boar give birth to you, then? Since you're human, surely you came out of