Previous: Holding Karikiri at gunpoint, Shinpei told him that Karikiri escaped and ordered Negoro to grab Ushio's body and kill Dr. Hishigata. He then gave another photo to Karikiri and told him to look at it saying that when Negoro scanned Dr. Hishigata's memories he learned of its existence in a safe. However, Seidou had given the safe to Tokiko to bury without telling her its contents which Negoro and Shide wanted to destroy. It was a picture of Shide's previous now dead body, a baby and Haine taken by Dr. Hishigata's father forty years ago.
Through the previous loops, the statue of Hiruko-sama in the old clinic gave Shinpei the idea that the clinic and shrine may be connected and everyone theorized that could mean that Shide was Karikiri due to him being the head priest of the shrine dedicated to Hiruko-sama, the mother of shadows. Nagumo speculated Shide could be human since he never transforms and instead his form seems to be armor that hides his identity which would mean it would be someone they all knew. This is when the plan to lure to gather allies, lure the enemy to the gym and capture and convert Shadow Mio was conceived and when Nagumo's theory was further solidified by a human hand in Shide's armor. As also explained by Seidou, the Hishigatas and Karikiris used to be one branch until Hiruko's arrival, at which point Shidehiko's went into the religious order and took on Haine's family name of Karikiri. He conceived a child with Haine that turned out to be, in essence, a clone of himself which set an idea in him. He had Haine copy and implant his memories into the child upon death and repeated this process every time he died. This is how Shinpei went into the meeting knowing that Karikiri was Shide and that he'd been alive for over three hundred years.
>Worth reading? I think it is. There's a two cour anime adaptation coming in April.
>Is this a harem? Not really. There's something of a small love triangle between Shinpei and his two childhood friends (Ushio and her younger sister Mio) but at the same time Shinpei is in love with Ushio from the start and vice versa and Shinpei never once views Mio as anything other than a surrogate little sister so it's just one-sided.
There's another thing surrounding Mio where Shinpei's friend Sou is in love with her but she only views him as a friend and likewise Sou's sister/Mio's best friend Tokiko is in love with her but never actually says anything about it to h
