#the fact the three of them come from Isozuki is cool tho

[vice-like]

I was re-reading the first few chapters from the natsume manga and I noticed something on chapters 8 and 12 I really want to share

Isozuki forest is the place Akagane and Asagi come from as they mention in "Asagi's Koto" (chapter 8), in chapter 12 ("A Chick Hatches") Isozuki is mentioned again

The rat coming from Isozuki is not the only coincidence he has with Asagi in particular though, the wound he has on his left eye is kinda similar to the wounds left by the symptoms of Asagi's disease

The fact that he has bandages all over his body also raises lots of questions: does he also have Asagi's disease? If so then is Isozuki having some type of epidemic? Was Midorikawa sensei planning to have a storyline more closely related to Isozuki but decided to drop it? Or is this supposed to be implied and open-ended anyway?

Of course this is mostly a theory, the rat youkai's wound also looks like burn marks and I might just be reading too much into it but there's one other thing that makes this theory interesting

When Natsume asks why he wants the egg, he answers this:

"Elixir of perpetual youth", could this be interpreted, in the context of Asagi's disease, as some form of cure or treatment? Is this why they want it?

The rat also says the egg is for "his lord" and as mentioned on chapter 8, the god of Isozuki forest is Lord Mibu, the one Asagi always played the lute for

Is "his lord" Mibu? And going one step further: is Lord Mibu also ill? Is that why he needs the Tatsumi egg? It could also be that he just wants to eat some rare meat lol

Anyways just wanted to share this because I always get excited when noticing new details in stories I like and also because this got me intrigued, specially when I remembered Midorikawa sensei mentioned in more than one afterword that she has a lot of unused storylines