The Pillow Path (枕小路, Makura no Kōji?) is the third chapter of Mushishi's first volume. Its story was adapted into Episode 4 of the anime series.
Synopsis[]
Ginko returns to check up on a man whom he's treated before, only to find things are much different than when he'd left.
Plot[]
Ginko meets Jin, a man whose dreams are premonitions of the future, and suspects that mushi are at play. The medicine he leaves with Jin is dangerous in large amounts, so he advises him to take small doses when his dreams increase, stressing that balance is the key to controlling them. He promises to return when the medicine is close to running out and leaves the village.
Less than a year later, Ginko returns to Jin's village only to find it seemingly abandoned - its buildings run down from neglect and overgrown with wild plants. When Ginko finds Jin, he's alone and says he's been waiting for him to return. He tells Ginko what happened: how his dreams helped people, but at the same time he couldn't shake off his fear of them. After his dreams increased, he took the medicine as directed by Ginko, but it resulted in him failing to foresee the tsunami that killed his daughter. Heartbroken, he stopped taking the medicine and grieved with his wife, Kinu, over the loss of their only child.
Later, a horrible nightmare pulled him from sleep. He brushed off Kinu's concern, however, saying he didn't feel well. The next day, he watched in horror as his nightmare came true: a blue mold spread from Kinu's fingertips to the rest of her body, which eventually crumbled away. The disease spread to the others in the village, leaving him the sole survivor.
He tells Ginko it was the nightmare that made him realize he had been lied to - the mushi don't give him premonitions but instead make his dreams become a reality. When he demands to know why Ginko lied, he replies that the particular type of mushi affecting him, known as Imenonoawai, is impossible to remove. If he'd been truthful, Ginko adds, Jin wouldn't have been able to live with the shame, to which Jin replies that he would've rather died. Ginko feels guilty for keeping the Mushi's true nature from Jin and promises to do whatever he can to sever the Mushi's connection with him. Since the Imenonoawai can travel between the dream world and reality, Ginko guesses that if he can find them in the dream world, then he can find a way to help Jin.
That night, Ginko hears a loud crash and finds Jin collapsed on the ground, sweating and looking unwell. He's shocked when he finds that Jin took all the medicine, more so when Jin tells him not to help and just let him die.
Later on, as Ginko watches over a sick Jin, the latter starts to dream and talk in his sleep. To Ginko's surprise, Jin answers back when Ginko asks him a question. Then, a loud ringing causes Ginko to falter and Jin's dream connects to reality, with Ginko watching it in a folding screen nearby. The dream version of Jin finds his real-world self asleep, but the folding screen behind his sleeping body starts to blaze with fire. A fire begins to spread from Jin's pillow in the dream world and, to Ginko's horror, the effect is mirrored in reality too.
Ginko manages to drag Jin to safety and runs off to get some water to stop the fire. As Jin stares at the blazing flames, he realizes his dreams came at him through his pillow. In a fit of rage at everything the mushi has cost him, he grabs a nearby sword and slices through the pillow. It bursts open, thick dark liquid spurting out. Before Jin can celebrate, a matching gash appears on his chest and blood erupts from his wound, making him pass out from blood loss.
Ginko manages to bandage Jin's wounds and bring him to a doctor in a neighboring village. When he awakes, he already suspects Ginko knew what would happen. Ginko explains that the Japanese word for "pillow" is formed using the words for "storage place" and "soul." Since that's where the Imenonoawai nest, Ginko figured that if he tried killing the mushi by destroying the pillow, in the end, he would be the one to pay.
Much later, when Ginko makes a stop in his journey to inquire about Jin, he's told by the villagers that Jin started sharpening swords for a living and became quite good at it. However, over time his grief and fear became too much and he eventually took his own life.