No. 6 – Episode 4

Shion’s mother, Karan, has received Nezumi’s message about Shion being safe and having escaped to the west district. Her response?

Yep, it’s strangely written directions to Latch Bill, a newspaper, that has someone working for it with “an interesting connection to No. 6”. On their way through a market to get to latch bill, a prostitute forcibly tries to get Shion to “have some fun” with her, she also doesn‘t seem to care that there‘s a dead body about three feet away from them, because a “pick-up team“ is on the way. Nezumi stops her, but she still wants payment for kissing Shion, Nezumi pays her by kissing her, apparently not realizing why she wants money in the first place.

As it turns out, the prostitute had what I can only assume to be homosexual bodyguards, who say that if Nezumi provides them with “a little service”, they’ll let his earlier payment slide. Nezumi gets into a fight with them and runs away into a west district city with Shion.

When they get to Latch Bill, they meet the former reporter, Rikiga, who recognises Nezumi, calling him Eve, as Nezumi works as an actor with a stage name, and Rikiga is a big fan of his work. Could he really not have thought of a better stage name than “Eve”?

Rikiga knows Shion’s mother from when she was still a student and she went to visit him about an article he had written on No. 6, as he has always been suspicious of the city and was searching for information on it. Rikiga is also a bit of a dick, he’s been “pimping out girls to No. 6 officials”, and lives in luxury off the money he makes from that, he then gives Nezumi an interesting offer…

This annoys Shion to no end, and he goes a bit crazy, attacking Rikiga for insulting Nezumi, and finding it strange that Nezumi isn’t angry about what he said. Nezumi sees a photo on the floor that says “taken with the founding members” on the back of it, taking particular note of one man in the picture. They don’t explain who that man is yet, I’m going to guess it’s a relative or someone who was close to Nezumi at one point, as Nezumi seems to be upset about this photo for a while after seeing it.

After a short argument about Shion wanting to know more about Nezumi (he doesn’t learn anything), a dog arrives at their door, with work from Dogkeeper, who uses Shion to clean her dogs. Dogkeeper tells Shion that she was raised by a dog, Nezumi insults her mother, calling her “a filthy mutt”, which greatly offends Dogkeeper. We learn that Shion has named all of Nezumi’s rats, and Dogkeeper explains that Nezumi normally shows very little emotion, a far cry from his irritability around Shion.

A while later, Dogkeeper comes to get revenge for Nezumi’s earlier insult, knowing that Nezumi now has something to protect, despite Nezumi’s own creed that “the one with something to protect always loses”, and that Nezumi wouldn’t be able to kill her even though he has the opportunity, she later flees when Shion shows up. Shion explains that he wants to live in the west district because he finds himself drawn to Nezumi.

Another solid episode from my favourite show of the season, with more character development and less emphasis on the larger plot, hell, the wasps weren’t mentioned at all this week, and it looks like next week will have more focus on Safu. I’m eager to see how this develops.