The team turns for home as winter closes in, a pouch full of collected seeds and one friend fewer than they set out with. The plan, such as it is, is to hand the seeds back to the Crow Witch and ask her to set things right. They learn her story first. She was an ordinary crow until the Tengu of her mountain chose her to become an immortal karasu-tengu, and she has spent decades since doing thankless work for the towns on its slopes, living forever at the cost of working forever, with no way to rise any higher. Kabocha, who left the team in episode nine and met the witch on the road home, ambushes them in Furumi using everything she knows about their weaknesses. Kabu refuses to fight her. He tells her she's his best friend, Matsu tells her what she means to all of them, and it reaches her: she shatters the seed fragment in her own hand. Her recruit gone, the witch runs. When the team finally hands her the seeds and asks her to lift the curse on Kabu's head, she tells them she can't. The magic on the sunflower was a spell someone else gave her, and she won't say who. She sends them up the mountain toward Madarao instead, and disappears.
OPEN THE BEAT SHEET ▼
- 1The team turns for home as winter closes in, carrying the seeds they've collected and missing Kabocha.
- 2The Crow Witch's story comes out: she was an ordinary crow until the Tengu of her mountain made her an immortal karasu-tengu, and she has spent decades doing thankless work for its towns with no hope of rising any higher.
- 3TURNING POINT — Kabocha, turned by the Crow Witch, ambushes the team in Furumi using her intimate knowledge of every weakness.
- 4TURNING POINT — Kabu refuses to fight her directly. His restraint is the hardest choice he's made all season.
- 5CRISIS — Kabu tells her she's his best friend, and Matsu tells her what she means to all of them. It reaches her. She shatters the seed splinter in her own hand.
- 6TURNING POINT — Her recruit gone, the witch runs. When the team brings her the seeds and asks her to lift the curse on Kabu's head, she admits she can't: the magic on the sunflower was a spell someone else gave her, and she won't say who.
- 7CRISIS — She points them up the mountain instead, toward Madarao, and disappears. One final climb remains.
SUPPORTING CASTCrow Witch (full arc revealed)▼
ART DIRECTION — Furumi at night: the village square empty, crows roosting on every surface. In the center, Kabocha faces the team — her silhouette wrong, edges sharp where they should be soft. The Crow Witch is visible in the background, watching from the treeline. The scene has the staging of a Western standoff: three heroes, one friend who is currently an enemy, one enemy who is briefly on the right side.
Returning to Furumi means returning to the Nagano mountain foothills — but a version that has been waiting in stillness. The village that began the story as dying-but-alive is now genuinely haunted: its original blight replaced by a deeper silence, crows where there were people. In Japanese folklore, Tengu are mountain spirits most strongly associated with alpine terrain — the Japan Alps, the dense forests of Shinshu, the remote high passes of Nagano Prefecture. Tengu exist on a strict ladder, from the great long-nosed lords of the peaks down to the crow-tengu who do their work among humans, and that hierarchy reflects the rigid structures of the Edo period that shaped these myths. The Crow Witch's origins map directly onto this geography: a spirit of the mountain, working in the lowland towns at the bottom of a ladder she has never been allowed to climb.
