7 Seeds vol. 15 [summary]

Beneath the cut is a detailed summary of 7 Seeds vol. 15 by Tamura Yumi. Don’t click through if you don’t want spoilers. Download the raw here.

The volume starts off with a flashback panel of Takashi saying, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I do hate you a little.”

Hana says her dad probably put the knife in her bag because it was his favorite. “Your dad…? Oh, right, you’ve all got parents,” Ryou says. “I can’t understand how that must feel.” Hana interrupts his musings by shouting that the real problem is that Haru was almost killed. If there’s one thing Hana knows about this world is that there are no random thieves and murderers lurking around, so the culprit must be one of them. She’s still sure it’s Ango.

Ango says maybe he was attacked by an animal or just hit his head on something because he wasn’t paying attention. He says there’s nothing they can do to stop unobservant people from dying. “It’s gotta be him,” Haru says, and Hana shouts that of course it is, and for Ango to put his gun away.

Ryou also tells Ango to put the gun down, because there’s something he wants to ask Hana. Ango asks if there’s a problem with the knife and Ryou says he doesn’t know, but he just wants to make sure. He has Ango compare his knife to Hana’s, since his own is a left-handed version. They’re exactly the same, right down to the mark. Hana remembers once asking her dad who the maker of the knife was, since she’d never seen the mark before. Her dad said there were no others like it. Hana noted that there wasn’t a screwdriver or can-opener or anything like that on it, and her dad said probably because they weren’t necessary. She’d never been able to find another like it.

Ryou asks who her dad was, and who she is. He says she’s still green, but she’s clearly had training and he’s noticed the way she acts, her competence and confidence. Nijiko asks if he thinks Hana is the shinigami. Hana has no idea what they’re talking about, and asserts that she’s just an ordinary person. “I’m Sugurono Hana of the Spring Team, that’s all. Just an ordinary high school student.”

Nijiko recognises the name Sugurono and connects it with Takashi, whose full name she saw on the computer one time. Ango is in shock at the thought of Hana’s dad being Takashi. Hana says her dad wasn’t a teacher, and when Ango asks if he had a moustache, she says he must be mistaken. He says, “He’d come up behind you and grab your neck and ask how you’d get out, wouldn’t he!?” but Hana says he wasn’t the type to play games like that at all.

Ango remembers Takashi saying he was going to have a child next year, and is confused, but Ryou reminds him that seventeen years passed after that. Hana still has no idea what was going on, but Nijiko explains that Takashi was a teacher at their institute, one of the main staff for the 7 Seeds Project. Hana says that’s impossible, and while she’s talking about how busy her dad was with work, Ran pulls a photo out of her pocket and asks if this is him.

Hana asks where she got the photo, and Ryou confirms that it’s Takashi, though much older. Ran says it was in the shelter, and Nijiko says that makes sense, as the Takashi in Mark’s journal was their Takashi.

As Hana stares at the photo, remembering when it was taken, Ango starts yelling about how Takashi made them kill Shigeru. He remembers Takashi saying that they were lucky, and that the children who were born now would only live to the age Ango was now. “He was talking about you!” Ango shouts, shaking Hana. “You shouldn’t have come, but he put you in! He put you in with no tests or anything, just because you’re his kid!?” He breaks down crying, saying it’s underhanded.

Hana can’t believe the people in Mark’s journal are her mom and dad; they’re too different to the people she knew. Just as she’s thinking of how many people Takashi killed, Nijiko interrupts her thoughts, asking if she knows Mozunoto Kaname. Hana says she doesn’t know, but then she says, “Me-chan?”

“So you do know him,” Ryou says. “He and Takashi-sensei were close.” Nijiko says Kaname was one of the ringleaders, maybe even more important than Takashi. She asks Hana about him, but Hana says she doesn’t know, that he was only around when she was very small, and she can’t even remember what he looked like. She had forgotten about him until just now.

Aramaki tells Ran she should have given Hana the photo right away, but Ran says she was watching and waiting. She tells Hana that her dad was probably the one who sent them all here. Hana doesn’t respond, and after a while, Ryou suggests they go back. As they leave, Ango glares at Hana like he wants to kill her.

Haru tells Ango that they may have managed to change the subject, but that if he’s going to attack him again, to come at him head on, not hit him from behind. Ango glares at Haru, but Ryou stops him from doing anything. Ran says to Nijiko that she wants to know more about this shinigami thing.

Hana’s feet are heavy, like she’s walking through a swamp. She doesn’t know what her parents did, but she now knows Summer A is telling the truth. The photo is real, and she remembers when it was taken. She realises that as she was reading Mark’s journal, she was reading about her parents’ last days. Before, she had felt like her parents were alive and safe in some other world, but now she knows they’re dead.

As Ryou walks, he remembers Takashi telling him Ryou should have killed him when he had the chance. He says in the future he’d better not make the same mistake. In the present, Ryou says he won’t make that mistake again.

When they get back, Hana rereads Mark’s journal over and over, searching for Takashi’s name. She wishes she could go back to the shelter and look at her parents’ room. She thinks about the things Takashi did to the people in the shelter and to Summer A and wishes she could say “my dad’s not that sort of person”, but she can’t anymore. She realises she knows nothing about her mom or dad, that they were lying to her. She rummages in her bag, hoping to find a secret message from her parents, but all she finds is the necklace from the shelter, which she now realises probably really is her mom’s.

Ran comes in and says ever since she found the photo she’s been watching Hana, convinced Hana knew something. She asks if Hana heard anything about where to go or what to do, but Hana says no. Ran says if she remembers anything to tell her.

Hana thought she and Ran had gotten close, but now it’s clear Ran was just keeping an eye on her. She wonders what the others think of her. She remembers Ran and Aramaki saying how much they hate the people who sent them here.

Haru realises that’s why Arashi got in. He’d wondered at the coincidence, but now knows that Hana’s dad put him in for her. Hana asks if he thinks that’s unfair, but he just said that’s how adults are, and it’s not Hana’s fault anyway. Hana wonders if Arashi knows anything.

Aramaki and Ryou are making dinner together. Aramaki says regardless of what Hana’s dad did, Hana herself had nothing to do with it. Ryou says if everyone thought that way, there would have been no wars or terrorism.

Ango has a fever. He dreams of being sick together with Shigeru when they were kids. They both had a fever, and Shigeru ejaculated for the first time and was scared that this meant he was going to get kicked out. Ango explains it’s just what they learned from Takashi recently, that they’re going through puberty.

When Ango wakes up in the present, Ayu is leaning over him saying his fever’s gone down. He says he was dreaming about Shigeru and Takashi, which makes Ayu comment on the fact that Hana turned out to be Takashi’s daughter. She doesn’t blame Hana, which surprises Ango, but Ayu says if she was told that she was responsible for something her parents did, she wouldn’t know what to do. Ango insists that Hana got in through cheating, but Ayu just tells him to calm down and rest.

He grabs her hand, then her face, and pulls her down on top of him. She yells at him to stop and pulls away, saying that just because she let him comfort her that night under the full moon doesn’t mean he can do whatever he wants now.

Ryou comes in when she leaves, and Ango asks him if he and Nijiko are sleeping together. Ryou says they tried it once, but it must have hurt for Nijiko, because she slapped him in the middle of it and said she never wanted to do it again. Ryou then asks if Ango did anything to Ayu, but Ango says no. Ryou tells him he should be careful, that it’s too risky for anyone to get pregnant. He says they don’t know whether Kurumi will be able to give birth safely or not, and that since only women can give birth, if all the women die, it’s all over. Then he says he’s relieved Ango is thinking about things as trivial as that and tells him to go to sleep. Afterwards Ryou tells Nijiko that he told Ango about their experiment of having sex, but she says it doesn’t matter, it was just an experiment.

Ango tells Hana she has to dig the well all by herself to make up for what her dad did. She wonders if her dad never thought that she’d meet Summer A or thought about what would happen if she did. She wishes her parents had told her something, or had let her and Arashi go to the shelter instead. She wishes Arashi were here so she could talk about her parents with him. Her dad never seemed to like Arashi, and when her mom said that’s just how fathers are, Hana had been kind of surprised that her dad would have such ordinary emotions.

Sakuya comes and says he’ll dig the well for a while, but Ango yells at him to let Hana do it alone. Sakuya notes that Arashi seems to hate Hana, and Hana says it’s because they think she cheated to get here. Sakuya says none of the rest of them know how they were chosen, either, so it could have all been their parents’ connections, too, and that being here isn’t any great thing anyway. Hana thanks him.

Someone pulls the ladder up while Hana is down there digging, but she’s able to climb up herself. She accuses Ango of trying to trap her down there, but he just says it’s still light and she should keep digging.

Ango comes in while Hana is showering and tells her they’re going to take down the shower and limit baths as well. She screams at him to get out, but he just calmly leaves and says he’s going to turn off the water.

It stops raining and things begin to dry up. No matter how many wells they dig, no water comes up. Ango is always watching Hana and she can sense him getting more and more frustrated. She feels like he could kill her with his eyes.

She decides to leave the camp because she’s scared of him. Besides, if she leaves, the water will last longer for the others. She asks Haru if he wants to go with her, and says she’s leaving the next morning if he does. She wonders what she should say to Aramaki, and then as she walks by him, he says, “You weren’t going to invite me?”

He says he knows she’s been avoiding him, and asks if it’s because of what he said about hating whoever chose him. He says he’s been thinking about it and even if it was her dad, her dad didn’t do it maliciously, and that whether her dad was right or wrong, he gave his life for the cause. Aramaki says that for fifteen years he was filled with hate, but that disappeared when he met Hana, and that he doesn’t hate her parents. He asks her not to hate them, too. He apologises for not saying anything before.

Haru shows up and says he’ll go with Hana, and that Momota will probably come, too. He says they should search for Fujiko and the others. Aramaki says that if they head south they should be able to find water, and Haru says they should leave tomorrow at dawn.

Hana goes to dig the well some more, and Ango asks if she’s running away. She says yes, that will be better for both of them. He grabs her and says he won’t let her leave, that she’ll have to work here and pay with her body until she dies. She yells at him to stop, and says that she wants to ask about her dad, but that it’s no use talking to him, so she’s leaving, and to just leave her alone, all the while thinking that she’s just making it worse.

He stares at her in silence, then grabs her and drags her into the bath hut. He throws her down on the floor and says she has to pay. She thinks he’s going to kill her, but then he rips open her shirt, and she realises he’s going to rape her instead. She screams for him to stop, but he easily overpowers her and strips her. She has a flashback to one time when she was attacked by a group of boys and nearly raped, but Arashi rescued her.

Ango has her pinned. He tells her to blame her father and she says, “Don’t think you can hurt me like this. Don’t think you can control me!” She screams loudly for him to stop and just then Ayu walks in and sees them. She says Ryou told her that Ango might kill Hana and to stop him, “But it looks like I needn’t have worried.”

Ango seems shocked that Ryou would have done something like that, and Hana uses that distraction to get away from him, grab her clothes, and run out of the hut. Once she’s gone, Ayu says she didn’t know Ango knew how to hurt a woman like that, and then adds, “Don’t turn into a dirty old man, Ango. You’ll make me want to kill you.” He grabs her and kisses her, then dashes out, leaving her in shock.

Away from the hut, Hana fumbles with her clothes. She’s missing some buttons and will have to go back and look for them. She says “damn it!” over and over, while mentally telling herself not to cry, that nothing bad really happened, that he can’t do anything to her.

She has another flashback to the time Arashi rescued her. Arashi got in trouble for beating up four boys, but then Hana’s dad came and was impressed with Arashi’s skills. He used his connections to get Arashi off the hook with little punishment. When Hana asks him about it, he just says the boys were sent to an institution because they’d been in trouble. Hana says she had confronted them about whatever they’d been doing, and that’s why they’d attacked her. Her dad says a sense of justice is a good thing, but that she should learn to be clever and be more concerned with protecting herself.

She wonders if that was what made her dad change his mind about Arashi and include him in the Summer B team. She thinks about him telling her to be clever and feels like she hasn’t changed at all. She thinks about how Aramaki told her not to hate her parents, but it’s their fault this happened to her, and Arashi’s not here to comfort her.

Just then Aramaki shows up and asks her what happened. She wants him to hold her, but knows she shouldn’t want that from him. So she just says she was slacking off because digging was hard. Aramaki says they should leave tonight rather than in the morning.

Hana starts packing. She wants to do it quietly so Ango doesn’t find out and stop her. Kurumi notices Hana’s arm is hurt and assumes it’s from digging the well. She and Akane talk with Hana and reassure her they’re not mad about her dad. In fact, Kurumi says they’re a little envious, since they have no idea what happened to their families. Plus Hana has a photo of her parents now. Karita says Hana’s parents were heroic, raising her to survive like this. Akio tells Hana not to worry about Ran, and that he thinks Ran likes Hana.

Tears fill Hana’s eyes. She wishes she could protect them all. She thinks it would be best for them all to get away from Summer A, but at the same time, it’s safest for Kurumi to stay and give birth here. She goes out and tells Ryuusei to protect Kurumi. She remembers an old movie she saw about a post-apocalyptic world where the few women who were left had no free will and were just kept as sex slaves for the men, and made to bear their children. She tells Ryuusei that right now Kurumi is the only one who can have sex without fear of getting pregnant, and that he needs to protect her from whatever anyone, especially Summer A, might do.

She also goes and tells Karita to watch out for Ango and to protect the women. Karita says he is, and that he hasn’t forgotten what happened to Izayoi. Sakuya also says he’s keeping an eye on them. She then asks Sakuya about the word “aoarashi”, which she remembers her dad saying in connection with Arashi. He tells her it’s a summer word meaning the wind when the leaves are fresh, which often shows up in haiku. Hearing that, she knows for sure that her dad is the one who put Arashi in Summer B.

Akane and Gengorou are storing stuff in the caves. Akane points out that there are dead aquatic animals around, which the bats have been feeding on, and that it probably means there’s water further down in the caves.

Hana and Momota are packing and plan to leave secretly in the night. However, just then Ryou comes in and tells her that they’re going to look for water in the caves and that she should come along.

They all go to explore the caves. As Gengorou is talking about the caves and the bats and how there might be water down there, Hana is remembering what Ango did to her, and swearing she won’t forget, even if Ango acts like nothing happened. She says if she were to stab him in the back right now, he’d deserve it, but she won’t, because she’s not like them. She decides she’ll help look for water, for the Autumn team’s sake, and then leave secretly and never see Summer A again.

Gengorou leads them to the hole and Ryou tells Hana to get ready to descend. He tells Ango that Ango doesn’t need to go down with them, and when Ango protests, says, rather ominously, to leave it to him. Hana is relieved that Ango’s not going. Nijiko says she’ll go, too, and while Hana isn’t thrilled about going with Ryou, she feels a little better with another woman going along.

Before they descend, Ran remembers she was going to ask Nijiko about the shinigami, and Nijiko says she’s not really sure exactly what it means, but they heard their teachers saying one of the teams should have a shinigami on it. Ran says she can guess, that it would be someone to kill them if need be, to eliminate those who are found to be unsuitable or to kill them all if the world is unlivable. She says there was no one like that on their team, or else they’d all be dead already, and that it’s probably Summer B. Hana immediately thinks of Mozu.

Ryou prepares to go down into the crevice, and tells Hana to follow when he gives the signal. Aramaki tells her she doesn’t have to go if she doesn’t want to, and she is touched that he’s worried about her, but tells him it’s okay.

Ran gives Hana a small flashlight that charges by turning a handle, so it doesn’t need batteries. She tells her she found it in the Ryuuguu Shelter, though not in her parents’ room. Hana is moved by this. Then Aramaki gives her a bag with nuts and medicine, just in case.

Just then Ryou calls for her to come down. “Roger!” she calls out, while muttering, “I said don’t order me around!” She tells the others she’ll be back, and that she’ll find water.

After they’ve gone down, Gengorou and Aramaki plan to light a fire and make dinner, while Ango says he’s going to explore another cavern alone. Ran says she votes for Ango as the shinigami.

Hana is suspicious about Ryou, but remembers that Ayu said it was Ryou who told her to come and stop Ango, so right now she’s more worried about Ango popping out of a crevice somewhere than of Ryou. Then Ryou says he wants to talk about Takashi.

Meanwhile, Koruri and Haru are playing music together. They’re playing a song called Tulip and she says she’s only seen pictures of tulips. He says he’ll take her to see them, and then they try to figure out where that might be. He suggest Holland, saying he saw a bunch at Huis Ten Bosch, a Dutch-themed amusement park in Nagasaki. “Nagasaki,” she says, and then at the same time they both say, “is something I’ve/you’ve only seen pictures of.”

He then tells her he’s leaving with Hana that night and asks if she’ll keep it a secret. She asks him if he’ll fly with her. The sun goes down as they’re flying and she says it’s too bad there’s no lights to look down on. He tells her to just imagine it.

Back to Hana. Ryou tells her that Takashi came when they were thirteen and was assigned to teach them martial arts, knives, climbing, etc. Hana can’t imagine it. She also can’t imagine him coming up and attacking people by surprise to test them the way Ryou says he did. Ryou says he didn’t dislike him.

They come to a cliff that drops off sharply, too deep for the light to reach the bottom. Ryou tells Hana to go down first to take a look, then says, “Can you do it?” She accepts his challenge.

Meanwhile around the first, Aramaki wonders if Hana and the others are okay. Ango is still gone and Ran has gone back to camp. As Aramaki sits with his dogs, Gengorou asks him if he’s ever had to kill any of his dogs, then reveals that he killed the tiger he’d raised since childhood because it got rabies and he wanted to put it out of its misery. Aramaki says he once had to put down a dog who was drowning in its own blood due to an injury. He says he doesn’t regret it, that that’s what the dog wanted, too. However, Gengorou questions that, wondering if it really wanted to keep living, and asking if he had the right to kill it.

Aramaki remembers Gengorou saying he wasn’t qualified to like animals. He then says he doesn’t know, but that’s what he thought at the time. Gengorou says all the dog knows is that it was killed. Aramaki is silent for a moment then says he doesn’t believe the tiger curses Gengorou for what he did, but also doesn’t believe the tiger is grateful, because animals don’t think that way. They just live and then die when it’s their time to die. He says they have no way of knowing what the animals want, so they have to make the decision themselves.

He says it’s about love, and if Gengorou did all he could and there was no option but to kill the tiger, then he did the right thing and shouldn’t regret it. Gengorou cries at his speech.

As Koruri and Haru head back to camp, he asks her if she’ll go with him and Hana, but before she answers, the story switches back to Hana. Ryou calls down to Hana to ask about the situation. She says it’s just a straight cliff, not crevices or outcroppings, and that the rope won’t be long enough to reach the bottom.

Up above, Ryou pulls out his knife. Hana calls his name and he tells her about their final exam, how Takashi attacked him and told Ryou to kill him, but Ryou couldn’t do it. He says that’s why Shigeru died. As he cuts Hana’s rope, he says that Takashi told him he had made a mistake in not killing him and he shouldn’t make the same mistake in the future. “I won’t make that mistake again,” he says, sawing through the rope. “Sorry, Hana, but you have to die.”

He says she’ll keep Ango unbalanced if she stays. She says he stopped Ango from killing her, and he says he did it because he doesn’t want Ango to kill anyone else, that Ango couldn’t bear it. “But I can handle it. This is my job,” he says. “I won’t let Ango kill you or Haru.” That’s when Hana realises he’s the one who tried to kill Haru. As the rope breaks, his last words to her are, “I won’t let you hurt Ango anymore.” He tells her to go to the same place Shigeru went, and face the same darkness.

Nijiko wonders if Ryou is the shinigami.

The next chapter backtracks a bit, with Hana thinking about how Ryou she’s always found Ryou disconcerting. He didn’t fly into a rage like Ango, but sometimes he did turn violent. However, his eyes were still calm, so she wonders if maybe it was just a pose. Ango is easy to understand, but Ryou is just disconcerting. So she knew when he brought up Takashi that she needed to be on guard.

When he gets out his knife, she sees a glint up above and recognises it for what it is. She swings back and forth on her rope, hoping that she can reach the cliff face before it breaks. She manages to get her hook onto an outcropping, but her hand slides off and she falls, the hook hitting her in the head on her way down.

Meanwhile, back up on the top of the cliff, Ryou prepares to go down after Hana, so as to give the impression that he attempted to do all he could to save her. However, Nijiko thinks his real motive is to finish Hana off if he finds her still alive.

As he descends, he finds the place where Hana’s hook broke off part of the rock. He figures that she swung her rope to try and get to safety, and says he doesn’t dislike that about her. But in the end she fell, so he climbs back up. He tells Nijiko that he couldn’t see her anywhere, so she must have fallen to the bottom.

Hana wakes up in the pitch dark, hurt but alive. She finds her flashlight and with it on, realises what a precarious situation she’s in. She can’t climb up, and if Ryou is still up above and sees her light, he might come back down to finish the job, so her only choice is to crawl through he small crevice.

Haru and Koruri join Gengorou and Aramaki. Koruri is quiet, thinking about Haru’s request that she go with him. Then Nijiko and Ryou show up and tell them that Hana fell. Ryou says he tried to save her, but there was nothing he could do, however, Aramaki is immediately suspicious. He wants to go look for Hana, and Gengorou and the others agree. Nijiko is silent through it all. Haru reassures Aramaki that Hana wouldn’t die that easily. When they get to the edge, Aramaki starts shouting for Hana.

However, Hana is deep within the crevice. She’s having trouble breathing and hopes there’s not some sort of natural gas leak. Then her flashlight dies on her. She doesn’t have any replacement batteries, but she does have the light Ran gave her, so she’s not worried.

Except that when she reaches for it in her pack, it’s gone. She’s now all alone in the pitch dark, desperately trying to get the flashlight to come back on. She starts to panic, but hears her dad’s voice telling her to calm down, and manages to get a hold of herself. She reminds herself she has a lighter. She flicks it on, but she has no tinder or anything to make a torch. She decides to go back and search for Ran’s flashlight. It should be easy enough to find, as it’s a one-way passage and the light is yellow. She just hopes it didn’t fall down the cliff.

As she’s making her way back, she thinks of how she wanted to explore caves as a child, but now she never wants to see another one again. Suddenly she thinks she hears someone calling her name. She recognises Aramaki and Haru’s voices. She sees a faint light, but then suddenly there’s a rockslide. She calls out to them, but the way back is now blocked.

The only good thing is that as she’s looking around at her new surroundings, she sees Ran’s light. She grabs it and turns the handle until it lights up, illuminating the cave she’s now in.

Back up top, Gengorou says he heard something crumbling down below, and that it’s dangerous to search any further. As the others prepare to leave, Aramaki says he’ll stay in hopes that Hana will climb back up. He says he’ll send down a lantern, because it must be scary down there in the dark.

Hana is unsure which way to go now, there are so many tunnels branching off from the cave she’s in. She figures it must be the middle of the night, so it would be best to wait til morning in case some light filters down. She tries to calm herself down, telling herself she has light, and a little food and water. She thinks about how in the shelter she had Aramaki and Izayoi and the dogs, so it wasn’t scary, but now she’s all alone.

She falls asleep and dreams about swimming with Arashi, and when she wakes up, she realises she can hear water running.