Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou 10: Intruder Alert!

Natsume meets a youkai who wants to take over his home....
EPISODE 10: Temporary Home
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Nyanko-sensei has a dream of Reiko that time when she asked him to fight her just for the heck of it. But the dream is interrupted when something startles him. Nyanko-sensei scans his surroundings but sees nothing out of the ordinary. Just then, an orange fruit drops on his head. Natsume soon follows, apologizing. Predictably, Nyanko-sensei is pissed off but before he could completely blow his top, Natsume senses youkai presence nearby. Suddenly, an axe flies by, missing them by only a few inches. This incident causes Natsume to think that once again a youkai is after him.
Coming home from school the next day, Natsume meets Shigeru-san and ends up walking with him. They make some small talk but it's painfully obvious that Natsume is out of his element with this one. Then, he notices strange-looking footsteps on the ground, leading towards the house. Once at the gate, he likewise sees graffitti in the shape of a humanoid. The stranger thing about it is that even Shigeru-san can see it. He wonders again if this has something to do with the axe incident in the woods. When Nyanko-sensei arrives later, he goes to show him the graffitti only to discover that it's gone. Nyanko-sensei then informs him that some youkai do like to draw but others aren't content with simple doodles and like to leave markings that ordinary humans can see, as if to say "I'm here!"
Just then, Touko-san utters a cry, prompting both Natsume and Nyanko-sensei to run towards her. They discover that Touko-san is alright but that her vegetable garden has been trashed. Upon closer look, Natsume sees those strange-looking footsteps once more. That evening, the youkai walks over to a sleeping Natsume, saying over and over, "I found you." Natsume wakes up then in time to see the youkai make a run for it. He starts to chase after it but is stopped by Shigeru-san in the hallway. Shigeru-san asks him if he is the one he heard running about in the second floor. While Natsume tries to come up with an excuse, Shigeru-san decides that the footsteps are too light for it to be Natsume. He wonders if it is the cat and Natsume, recognizing a rare opportunity when he sees one, quickly apologizes in behalf of Nyanko-sensei. Shigeru-san then says that this incident reminds him of his childhood when his house seemed to be cursed by something and how it all stopped when a "beautiful but slightly odd girl" visited it.
Natsume can't help but wonder if the girl that Shigeru-san talked about is Reiko. So the next day, he goes to his room to ask him more about this girl. Shigeru-san says that it was so long ago so he could not remember what the girl looked like or what her name was, but he told him about how Reiko helped him once. Shigeru-san had seen the girl around and knew that she had no parents. There were all sorts of nasty rumors about her, including how she put curses on people. Boys in their neighborhood threw stones at her but Reiko would just smile and wouldn't let them bully her. As days passed, he noticed that she was always alone. He often saw her standing by a large tree, talking to herself, or swinging a broom around with the wind swirling strangely around her. Because she was always alone, Shigeru-san felt compelled to talk to her every time he saw her.
One day, Shigeru-san noticed a graffitti near the gates to his house and ever since that mark appeared, all kinds of unfortunate things happened and his family started getting sick. When he told Reiko about this, she proposed to visit his house when his parents weren't home. There, Reiko did something that Shigeru-san did not understand: she completely trashed the entire second floor. After apologizing, she left and since then, the strange occurrences inside the house stopped. But Reiko became even more remote until Shigeru-san only seldom saw her. The rumors about her continued but Shigeru-san believed that she was a kind person.
Later that day, Natsume is hanging out in his room thinking about Shigeru-san's story when he is visited again by the youkai. Now that he knows Reiko also liked this house when she was still alive, he resolves to protect it. So he runs after the youkai only to find it waiting for him in the hallway. Nyanko-sensei warns him not to follow the youkai but merely to chase it out. However, when he turns the corner, he sees Natsume about to be eaten by the youkai. While inside the youkai's mouth, Natsume gets a vision of Reiko and finds out what she did in order to get rid of it. After Nyanko-sensei saves him and drags him back to the safety of his room, he quickly gets to work on stopping the youkai once and for all.
Nyanko-sensei says that the youkai is one that likes to crash into other people's homes and disturb it in order to chase the occupants out. He deduces that this youkai must have tried to do this with Shigeru-san's house a long time ago but Reiko stopped it. Now, the youkai wants revenge and mistakes Natsume for Reiko. Natsume says that Reiko wanted to protect this house because it is where the boy she likes lives. He also notes that Reiko says "the boy she likes" and not merely her "friend." Now, it's Natsume turn to protect this. At that moment, the youkai enters his room but this time Natsume is prepared. The youkai steps into his trap and is exterminated. But in the process, the entire room, including the windows and walls are destroyed.
Shigeru-san comes around to ask him about the noise and is shocked to see the state of Natsume's room. Looking at it, he is again reminded of that time with Reiko. Natsume apologizes and says that he will pay for everything. While saying this, Natsume realizes that once again he is building up lies to cover for his youkai-related activities. In restrospect, he wonders if this is the reason why Reiko ran away that time, because she did not want to lie to the people she loved. Shigeru-san, however, is more understanding than Reiko gave him credit for. Instead of getting angry at Natsume, he says that he (Natsume) lives in that house now so he doesn't have to pay for anything. With that, he gives Natsume a pat on the head.

COMMENTS:

Excellent episode! I really like these Reiko episodes, rare as they are. She's a fascinating character, that's why, and it's always a delight to see different facets of her personality as told from the point of view of those who knew her. But what makes this episode truly brilliant is that for the first time, we are seeing Reiko from the point of view of a human. Shigeru-san, of all people. Which makes me kind of wonder about Natsume's relationship with the Fujiwaras. All along I was under the impression that they are his distant relatives. But if Shigeru-san doesn't know of Natsume's relation to Reiko, then it must be that they're not even related. Or maybe, the connection is with Touko-san and Shigeru-san just happened to know Reiko a long time ago, without knowing that she was Touko-san's relative. What an interesting twist.