As he watches her, he comes to realize why she had caught his eye in the first place. He turns from the window to pack his things away in his cloth bag, bows his head in thanks for the meal, then takes his leave.

He greets Oichi by hardly a standard means. Noticing her fixation of the cracks in the pine tree's bark, he plants a hand--tightly wound in white cotton bandages stained with the red of his blood--in the path of Oichi's incessant counting. He seeks to break her concentration, to capture the vacancy of her spirit with the burning ferocity of his own.