Lament of the lamb - Kei Toume

Yaegashi rushes Kazuna to the hospital after he collapses in the throes of another attack. Luckily, it's the hospital where Minase works. After Kazuna recovers his senses, Minase advises him to avoid Yaegashi if he hopes to control his symptoms. Natsuko and Shin arrive in Kazuna's hospital room to find him with Chizuna. They are shocked to learn that, upon his release from the hospital, Kazuna plans to move in with Chizuna. Chizuna tells them that they are no longer responsible for Kazuna and that she and Kazuna will cope with their mutual fate. Later, at Chizuna's home, Kazuna has a dream in which he is murdering Chizuna. She tells him that such dreams are normal, that they represent only his anxieties, and that she often used to have dreams about killing Father. She also reveals how guilty and angry she felt over Father's death, and confesses that, while Father loved her, he was ultimately unable to cope with the loss of his wife and with the demands of caring for Chizuna. Chizuna felt abandoned after his death. But, rather than follow in Father's suicidal footsteps, she resolved to keep living, if only to spite him who left her alone in a strange, unfriendly world.;Kazuna, the next day, goes to pick up his things at Natsuko and Shin's place. There, he and Natsuko have a wrenching argument in which she vents her frustration over Kazuna's secretive behavior and how she feels her efforts to snuff out the past and form a family came to waste. Kazuna retaliates by telling her how false their "family" felt: how he felt obliged to return their good graces but never felt that the affection shown to him was sincere. To him, it was a torturous affectation that they all sustained for the sake of appearances. He's fed up, he tells her, and wants out. Still nursing his rage, Kazuna next confronts Chizuna. What, he demands to know, is the real reason she decided to take responsibility for him? Was she planning on tormenting him just so she could have her revenge on Father, or to simply replace him in her eyes? What was the point in living anyway, he asks, when there was no cure and no hope for one? Chizuna admits that, at first, she thought of Kazuna as Father's replacement but she has since come to genuinely care about him. To prove the point that Kazuna is not bound to her will, she hands him a pill, the kind Father used to kill himself.;If life ever becomes too painful, he is free to take the pill. Kazuna goes to bed, still distraught and unconvinced that life and, for that matter, living with his mysterious sister is a sane answer to his problems.