This article contains spoilers from To Your Eternity Season 2, episode 4, “The Young Man Who Can See”, currently streaming onCrunchyroll.
Summoned, the Beholder easily offers up the information: he will grant Fushi freedom. Bon thanks the Beholder but comments on Fushi’s willingness to trust someone who throws around words like freedom, but maybe that explains why Fushilooks so dead inside. Bon recommends learning how to smile, making friends, or taking a lover to help Fushi’s attitude. Before taking his leave, Bon warns Fushi to not run away because Bon will find him no matter where he goes or what shape he takes.
The next morning, Fushi gets to pick a horse from the royal stables as a gift from Prince Bon, even though he points out that he can turn into one if he really needs to. Fushi and Bon’s little sister hear him scream and find Bon staring forlornly at an embroidered handkerchief that has landed in a pile of filth. Fushi offers to go get it, but is beaten to the punch bya servant of the castle digging it out of the muck without hesitation.
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Familiar Faces
By episode four ofTo Your Eternityseason two, “The Young Man Who Can See”, Fushi is ready to leave the kingdom of Uralis before the Nokkers come and start killing people. Prince Bon agrees to accompany Fushi on his travels as long as he gets to be associated with the immortal. He makes a proclamation to the people that, after having met Fushi, he is not a heretic, but a hero in need of friends and cooperation.
Worried about Nokkers coming to attack the castle, Fushi decided to sleep outside, Prince Bon hot on his heels, ordering the Uralis builders to make Fushi a small house. For a lack of anything better to do, Fushi starts making bricks for the builders while answering Bon’s questions about his powers. He can’t make pure fire or water, he can’t make anything bigger than himself just yet, things he’s never seen before, and he can’t make living things.These are the few limitations to Fushi’s abilities, and Bon then asks the important question of once Fushi is done understanding and preserving all of creation, how does the Beholder plan on rewarding him?
The servant, called Todo, talks to Fushi as he cleans the handkerchief. Todo is also going on the expedition with Fushi and Bon and has a charming and sunny demeanor. He is completely startled by the pattern on the clean hankie, even asking Fushi for clarification that this was what the prince has lost.Fushi, an empath, feels an emotion drift from Todoand asks of Todo is in love with Prince Bon, to which Todo gets flustered, claims he couldn’t like him because he’s a boy, and runs away, leaving a very confused Fushi in his wake.
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Later, when Fushi is trying and failing to ride his new horse, Kahaku approaches and tries to help. Seeing an opportunity, Fushi point-blank asks Kahaku is two men can fall in love. The Guardian stutters but says yes, it can happen. Back on all of Hayase’s descendants favorite subject, Kahaku does not hesitate to ask if Fushi is attracted to men or women.Fushi is flippant about his response and says girls simply because he’s usually in the form of a boy, but Kahaku argues for men while blushing. Fushi is not really interested, and Kahaku wishes him luck in finding a lover, quietly pining away.
The next day, the group leaves for the expedition. Fushi, out of Parona’s form and once again as his default, sits next to Prince Bon, Kahaku and the Guardians behind him, and a small army of Bon’s retainers in the back.As confetti falls and the crowd cheers, Bon tells Fushi once more to smile. They leave the city with the disapproving glares of the Church of Bennett.
The episode then dedicates itself to Bon’s backstory, a far more complicated affair than one would expect.Bon has always as been able to see ghosts; he’s friends with multiple. There is a man who offers him sword fighting lessons, another in the kitchen who tells him what’s in the food, and a woman who will sit at his bedside and tell him stories about an immortal boy named Fushi. She claims that Fushi is special just like Bon, and one day, Bon needs to find him. She tells him he’s special because he can share his gift.
Because of his powers, people in the castle are extremely concerned for him, his mother especially. When Bon believes he has fallen in love with a pretty servant girl who wasembroidering a handkerchief, his mother worries even more and appears to arrange a private exorcism for him.
What Bon Saw
Bon lies tied to his bed, bleeding into a bowl for the entire night. When he wakes up, that same handkerchief is left on his blanket. That same night, Bon’s three ghost friends visit him, and the woman - who is revealed to be the ghost of Tonari - tells him to find Fushi. He is always being followed by a bird and the largest showed anyone has ever seen. Bon asks Tonari who she is,and she smiles and tells him to come meet her one day. She leaves that night.
Fifteen years later, Bon accidently finds his father’s will and learns that the throne is passing over him to go to his younger brother. Bon’s frivolities versus his brother’s philanthropy seems to be the real deal-breaker, not Bon’s powers, but Bon figures if he could capture the immortal Fushi, then his father will have to make him king.
He goes on an expedition to find him, roaming from city to city. Todo asks the prince how they could possibly find one shape-shifter in hiding, and Bon petulantly states Fushi has to be nearby because he saw a bird flying over the city - Tonari’s pet owl. Finally, Bon sees the huge ghost of the bear covered in thorns marching behind a mundane looking girl. Bon sits up as sees Fushi if Parona’s form, unknowingly being followed by the ghosts of March, Gugu, and Tonari. The latter looks at Bon with a smile and says, “Hey, you came.”
This is an incredibly lighthearted and comforting episode forTo Your Eternity,providing justification for all the grief Fushi has been through. His friends haven’t left him after all this time.
