🌌 Episode 9: Star-Crossed in Aiseki

The Tanabata Festival turns Aiseki (逢関) into pure magic. Paper wishes sway from bamboo, dyed streamers shimmer overhead, and lanterns glow like stars caught on the ground. At first it feels like a dream — until the gang meets Lady Musubi, the town’s famed matchmaker, whose “perfect pairs” may not be as perfect as they seem.

When a grand wedding is announced, the bride Orihime swears her groom must be bewitched. The team dives in to investigate, only to find themselves swept into Musubi’s matchmaking web. Matsu is suddenly the town’s most eligible bachelor, Ume gets caught in a love spell, and Kabu becomes the unwilling center of a midsummer-night mess.

And through it all, Kabocha simmers. Everyone keeps chalking up their wins to luck. No one sees the plans she’s been holding together behind the curtain.

🎋 Journey Journal: Sendai

We built Aiseki from Sendai, home to Japan’s biggest Tanabata Festival. The city transforms into a sea of color every summer: towering bamboo poles dressed in paper streamers, arches of wishes rippling in the wind. There’s something electric about walking those streets, history and joy colliding in every gust. That energy gave us the backdrop for a story about love, fate, and the quiet work that holds people together.

🎶 Starry Nights and Shattered Bonds

The heart of the episode is the duet “Starry Nights.” Kabu and Kabocha sing from opposite corners of the town, their voices brushing the same melody but never quite meeting. It’s tender, heartbreaking, and the moment they both realize how far apart they’ve drifted.

Kabu, caught up in Musubi’s spells, stumbles through awkward stargazing with Ume and advice-seeking from Kabocha. It ends in a brutal fight:

• Kabu insists things always work out.
• Kabocha snaps back: “They work out because I make them work.”
• And then the deepest cut: “The only reason I keep you around is because you’re the only one who can touch the seeds.”

Kabu is stunned. Kabocha walks away into the forest, leaving the team fractured.

👹 The Matchmaker’s Curse

When the wedding begins, Musubi reveals her true face — a shiso demon feeding on contracts and commitments. Love spells twist villagers into strangers, and even Orihime herself falls under the curse.

The heroes flounder without Kabocha’s guidance. Just as the matchmaker seems unstoppable, Kabu resists the spell — refusing to take a kiss from Ume, knowing it wouldn’t be her choice. That act of respect breaks the chain. One by one, villagers are freed. Orihime and Hikoboshi reunite.

But the team is battered. It’s only Kinoko’s dramatic, Gandalf-style entrance from the woods that turns the tide and lets Kabu harvest the cursed seed.

🌱 Why it Matters

Episode 9 is a turning point. It’s about love, yes — but more than that, it’s about credit, burnout, and the cost of being unseen. Kabocha finally cracks under the weight of always being the planner. Her departure isn’t betrayal. It’s exhaustion. And without her, the others realize just how much of their “luck” was her work all along.

For Kabu, this is the moment he learns love can’t be forced, and respect matters more than romance. For Matsu, it’s proof that his feelings for Kabocha are real. And for Ume, it’s a reminder that she isn’t a prize to be won.

The Tanabata sky hangs heavy over them all — wishes tied to bamboo, some fulfilled, some broken.