By this point in Mao, we pretty much know where the major players stand in the big picture. Mao, Hyakka, Kamon good (though a scoundrel). Hakubi, Shiranui, Yurako bad (but conflicted). Natsuno has always been kind of the “which of these is not like the others” onmyouji. She works with the good guys when it suits her but she never seemed to fit neatly into their ranks. Kamon, who probably knows more about – well, everything – than anybody else clearly never trusted her. And it always felt like she was keeping a lot close to the vest.

Any time earth magic is involved, it’s natural to assume Natsuno is too. Mao is dealing with the fact that he injured both Hyakka and Nanoka while he was beasting under the needle’s control. Hyakka worries that she might have broken ribs, but Mao notes that he checked her while she was unconscious. She’s naturally horrified at this, but oddly calm once she learns Hyakka and Ootoya were sent from the room. There’s not much time to dwell on that, though, as another mystery lands in Dr. Mao’s lap.

It seems a patient at a nearby hospital has been sneaking out every night, and returns covered in mud. He never eats the hospital food but doesn’t wither away. Team Mao stakes out his room and follows him to a graveyard, where he gorges himself on grave dirt and then pukes out some sort of evil energy. Mao identifies this as a curse – though the type mystifies him. And even though he does, he assumes Natsuno is responsible. That’s interesting in herself but when she shows up – which was the point of the whole exercise as it turns out – her denials seem very genuine.

This man was rumored to the murderer of a spiritual healer, and when Mao and Natsuno do a spirit summoning on him, the man’s spirit confirms this. He says he passed on his duty to the killer – a contract he made with an earth sorcerer to lure Natsuno to him and spray her with a certain dirt on a specific date. The spirit’s mouth disappears before it can identify whose the mysterious sorcerer was, and Natsuno claims to have no idea. But she’s hiding something, probably multiple somethings. Among them the fact that something summoned her 100 years earlier, with a promise of a reunion in a century.

Putting all this together with Kamon’s theory that Natsuno was not, in fact, one of the five summoned to the Goshikidou, it seems very likely that it’s these showers of dirt keeping Natsuno alive. And that they have to happen every 100 years. The question is who is behind them, and why – and the likely answer seems that it’s the fifth summoned sorcerer. I’m not sure we can ID them based on what we know and who we’ve met up to this point – the interesting question is whether Natsuno can – but they’re likely going to be a very important player in the story going forward.