The Sakai family's rehearsal dinner unfolds like a masterclass in aristocratic denial. Servants glide across tatami mats while pretending not to notice how Lord Yoshikuni's sake cup refills itself with the enthusiastic persistence of a gambling addict at a rigged pachinko machine. Lady Mizue attacks the seating arrangement with the tactical precision of a general organizing troops for battle, while poor Kayo trembles beside her like a leaf in a typhoon. "No, no, NO. You useless girl! The Tanaka family cannot sit facing west—their daughter once sneezed on our ancestor's portrait!" She snatches the name cards from Kayo's hands, reshuffling them and inadvertently forming a perfect cat's paw pattern that nobody mentions. Young Master Masashi raises his cup to toast his impending doom—er, marriage—when a haunting shamisen melody drifts from his empty chambers. Everyone politely pretends this is normal, as one does when one's mansion is clearly haunted but acknowledging it would be such a social faux pas. Lord Yoshikuni, mid-boast about his newest sword acquisition, suddenly doubles over. "Just wedding jitters," someone murmurs, as he vomits what appears to be—upon unnecessarily close inspection—a hairball containing suspicious black fur. Odajima bursts through the shoji doors, face white as winter rice. "There's a man in the garden with eyes like melted gold," he gasps, his hand trembling on his sword hilt. "He was writing your names in the dirt." The room falls silent. A single chopstick snaps. Behind Masashi, visible only to him, a slender shadow with twitching ears leans forward and whispers, "They all deserve what's coming, nya." The shadow's breath smells of sweet orange and old blood, its words vibrating with promises of exquisite vengeance.