The amazing and wonderful @azttore did the story-boarding and I did the lining and the coloring for this comic! This was another contribution for our Pink Blood fanzine! Which, you should check out if you haven't already! Please read it, I'm on my hands and knees -> orz
I feel defensive for liking Kahak LMAO. he's so cringe.
he does however haunt the narrative by the ambiguity his position in the group brings, by not escaping his family's curse yet bringing about change in both his family' situation and in Fushi's perspective, by being enough to make Fushi not immediately bristle to the thought of Hayase's bllodline, by being the one Hayase descendant we saw Fushi ever transform into. He's by admission not smart enough to be a knocker's ally, yet his last move is to outsmart both Fushi's enemies and the knocker. He's both remembered in a worse light by those who lived with him and in a better light by Fushi who couldn't trust him yet feels responsible for his suicide. Also his character design, as all Hayase's reencarnations do, rocks
yet. YET. This is all neatly wrapped inside a cringe yandere-in-training who doesn't like Fushi's friends and his every word is tailored to make you feel embarrassed. He's like 17, learned all he knows about love from books and after he lent those for Fushi to read, made a marriage proposal. How do I even come back from this.
hey dont click if you haven’t read/watched this far yet
Anyways, the way Kahak literally sacrificed himself via boiling metal was sad, but it’s even more depressing when you realize the only reason he probably killed himself in such an elaborate way was so the knocker couldn’t use any scrap of his body at all. He went out knowing that there’d be nothing left of him for the Knocker to even use.
And also, him choosing the boiling metal as a way to die is really bleak because the boiling metal was the worst things that Fushi ever experienced. Kahak probably blamed himself really bad for everything that had happened, and at that point it wasn’t safe for him to go back to Fushi and try to explain.
He spent the entire arc trying to be useful and to help Fushi, but all he ended up doing was hurting the one person he loved in the worst way possible. So he decided he’d die by getting rid of his OWN form completely, like he did to Fushi. Since he’s in the metal, there’d just be no trace of him. He’d be a bunch of ash