So, a couple more data points, leaving me more confused than ever:
Kagami’s dream in Chapter 4: we see her as a young girl wandering and calling out for her mother. Nearby are the sounds of battle, and she comes across a bloody body, which is face down but clearly of a dark-haired person (surprisingly uncommon in this story).
Kagami and Indou, a 3rd-year and a 1st-year, can’t be very different in age.
In Chapter 1, Kagami reacts strongly to the name of the place that Indou says she is from.
The aunt Indou is writing to in Chapter 5 certainly appears to be Kagami’s mother—same hair and shape of the face, and she lives in a large, well-kept traditional house.
Miharu is in search of a light-haired officer she met as a child, who in her memory is wearing the same kind of braided uniform that Indou’s dark-haired mother is wearing in Kagami’s memory. (The suggestion is that the officer was Kagami’s mother, of course.)
An aunt instructed Indou in what lessons she needed to qualify for the academy, which had to have taken place just prior to when we meet her, but when we do, Indou seems almost completely feral. If Kagami’s mother had taken in Shinobu when Kagami went off to the academy, Indou almost certainly wouldn't have been so raggedy and unused to civilized amenities like beds with no patches.
So while all along I thought that the beloved aunt was the same person who raised Shinobu, that seems like it can’t be true. What works with the timeline is:
Shinobu’s parents are killed, and she is raised in poverty by someone. She is sometimes visited by her mother’s old compatriot, Kagami’s mother, who pulls strings to get Shinobu into the academy and gives her the minimal lessons she’ll need to qualify for admission.
What I can’t see is Shinobu having absolutely no knowledge of her parents at the same time Kagami seems to have known Shinobu’s mother when Kagami was a cadet, which must have been in the previous couple of years. So Kagami’s acquaintance with Shinobu’s mother (and the gift of the ribbons) had to have been when Kagami was considerably younger than I had previously thought.
EDIT: We also have no idea why Kagami and her mother are estranged, although I expect we’ll find out soon.
last edited at Jun 16, 2019 12:44PM
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