7 Seeds vol. 22 ch. 116 [summary]

Well, the scanlation of this chapter is already out, so I don’t know how much a summary is really needed, but since I already did the rest of the volume, I wanted to finish it up for completion’s sake, if nothing else. And volume 23 will be out in just a couple weeks, so there’s that to look forward to!

Beneath the cut is a detailed summary of 7 Seeds vol. 22, chapter 116 by Tamura Yumi. Don’t click through if you don’t want spoilers. Download the raw here.

Aramaki and Ayu finally reach the ocean. Aramaki calls his dogs to him and has them sniff Hana’s shoe one more time and sends them off to find her.

Ayu asks if he really thinks Hana is still alive and he says since he didn’t see the body, he believes there’s a possibility. Though he admits maybe he’s just hoping against hope.

There’s still time before the sun goes down, so they decide to look around for food. Ayu suggests diving, but Aramaki admits he can’t swim, which shocks her.

She can’t believe someone who can’t even swim was able to come to the future, and for a moment she understands why Ango was so pissed off. But then she realises that despite that, Aramaki was still able to survive alone for fifteen years. She wonders if her teachers were wrong, and it’s not only skills that determine survival, but something else as well.

Aramaki apologises and says he wanted to ask Ayu to teach him to swim, and she says she will. She says he needs to know how to swim just in case, and then adds that her own life might depend on it. She can’t relax knowing her partner doesn’t have the same skills.

Once they’re in the water, she asks if he can put his face in the water and if he can at least float. “Probably…” he says, and she tells him to try.

He proceeds to flail and splash as if he’s drowning and she just looks on in horror. “Even dogs can swim!”

“Sorry, I’m just scared,” he says. “I get scared when my feet can’t touch the ground!”

She asks if it would be less scary if he held her hand, and he does much better like that. He’s even able to open his eyes underwater.

But then he gets so entranced with the view, she has to ask if he’s still alive, he’s got his head under there so long. XD He comes up splashing and sputtering and says it’s not that scary when she’s holding his hands. She’s impressed with how long he can hold his breath.

They continue to practice and she notes that he’s a quick study. He manages to swim a little and then just as they’re about to try once more, she steps on some sort of spiny thing. She dips under the water to check it out and he dashes to her rescue, swimming underwater to reach her.

He says he’s glad he could put his newly learned skills to use, but she just tells him it was completely unnecessary…and that he lost his shorts in the process.

The dogs bring his shorts back, but he’s dying of embarrassment. He’s also impressed with how unembarrassed she was, but the truth is, she was kind of surprised. She was used to seeing the boys naked when they were kids, but not so much a grown man. She reflects that she didn’t mind behind held while he was naked.

That night as they’re making dinner, she tells him he’s surprisingly cute, which makes him drop the pot of shrimp he was holding. She says she thought he was calm and reserved, but that’s not true at all. He says that because he spent the last fifteen years alone, his body grew up, but inside he hasn’t matured at all. He remembers that even before all this, people used to call him cute a lot, and so had Mitsuru. It feels nostalgic.

Ayu interrupts his thoughts by saying that one day she will probably have a child and would like him to be the father, which makes him drop the shrimp again. She says she wants the best genes, and he has the best she’s seen. He says she can’t base her decision on that, and she says then what should she base it on? He says it’s something she should talk about with the one she loves.

She asks what he means, and he realises that being raised the way she was, she never had a family. He asks if her teachers are the ones who taught her to think that way and she says yes. He says they’re terrible for doing that. He says it’s disrespectful to her, to both of them.

She apologises and says she had meant it as a compliment, that she would choose him. He says he’s not explaining it well, and then says that if she meets someone who is important to her, who she doesn’t want to be apart from, who she wants to sleep with without reservations, then that’s the person she should choose.

She asks him if he loves Hana that way. He says it’s probably a little different, and that Hana has someone else who loves her like that. He then apologises and says he can’t really talk, since he’s never truly been in love himself.

The next morning, the dogs find something in the water. It’s Aramaki’s handkerchief that he sent down the river after Hana fell in. Then another dog comes up with a shoe, which he recognises as Hana’s.

He looks out to the sea and wonders if Hana’s body washed up here as well.

His knees buckle, but just before he falls, Ayu grabs his arm. She points out the remains of a fire, one that’s been buried afterwards, by someone who clearly knows what they’re doing. There are clam shells as well.

“Someone was here,” she says. “It might not have been Hana, but the probability that it was her is high. She probably washed up here alive.”

At Ayu’s words, Aramaki begins to cry. Ayu reaches out to him, when all of a sudden the dogs begin to bark.

“What is it?” Aramaki asks. “Do you smell Hana?”

The dogs keep barking and race down the beach. “Let’s follow them, Ayu-san! Maybe we’ll find her!”

Meanwhile, Hana and the girls are puzzled by the growing number of mushrooms. The keep finding more and more, but still don’t really think anything of it, though Hana does have a vague feeling that only one type of mushroom usually grows on the same tree, whereas here there are many types growing together.

However, when they wake the next morning, they realise something is wrong. The horse is trembling. The usually noisy animals are all quiet. And the air just feels different.

They decide to take a look around, and that’s when they realise that this is not natural. There are mushrooms everywhere.