He's a great leader, he's caring, cute, and just.. pookie. He's just pookie. Although I'd like to, I don't draw him a lot (if I do, it's in a doodle style. I've only actually tried to draw him once! Fun fact for you) because it's hard for me, which is weird because I'm a furry...
If I ever figure out a good style, I'd love to draw him more! Especially because him & Tosen are very cute😔....and my sister thinks he's hot, LMFAO
AEIWAM - Some details about whats going on with Komamura. IIRC canon said he was a werewolf, are you doing anything with him?
Me: What IS Komamura's backstory?
Me: *reads backstory and eventual canon fate of Komamura*
Me: Hm.
Me: That's thematically weird and depressing.
Me: I'll just ignore that :)
---
So in An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy, there's ALL KINDS of animal-people and supernatural creatures of varying degrees of anthropomorphic states in the Soul Society! Wolf people! Yokai! Centaurs But Bad! Snake people (sneople)! Mothmen! Whatever the fuck The Philosopher Wax is! Hell, Zaraki Kenpachi was raised by eagles! More nonhuman persons than you can shake a stick at!
They just stay away from the humans because The Humans are TERRIBLE.
...Not as terrible as my immediate family though, The Young Wolf is willing to gamble. he has to leave his home suddenly, in the middle of the night, frightened and injured. Family feuds are bad enough, but a drought year for a large group of apex carnivores and great-grandmother dying and creating a power vacuum? I'm lucky I got out alive! He reasons, tightening the bandages and wincing.
It doesn't look so bad. he lies to himself, looking at his reflection in the where he had finally collapsed from exhaustion and blood loss the previous night and somehow woke up alive this morning. Great-Grandfather did me a favor, trying to bite me in half like that- a tail would just make it even harder to blend in with the humans!
...Clothes would help more though. He sighs.
One man's trash is another's treasure, and that has never been more true than in the case of wolves that want to live with humans. The Young Wolf nearly weeps with joy when he finds the dump- barely-rotted animal carcasses to eat! broken wood for a fire! and clothes! Big enough to fit him! Alright that's definitely a bloodstain with a big, sort of sword-slash-shaped hole in the middle, but nothing a dunk in the river won't solve!
...Or not. Well, at least being covered in mud is less suspicious than being covered in blood? How does this thing even go on anyway? The garment is so confusing, he almost doesn't hear the humans who came to dump something until they are nearly upon him, and realizing they'll panic if they see his face, he grabs a broken basket and jams it over his head.
"Hey!" one of the humans calls out, seeing the movement. "What're you?" An old man peers around the pile at him, curious.
The Young Wolf sputters- he's heard tales of humans before, but this is the first human he's ever actually seen- The stories tell of their strange dark eyes and flattened faces how their fur is so fine they're nearly bald all over, and this man fits the description perfectly. An old woman- he guesses this one is a Woman, because what little fur she has is longer- she appears behind him, equally curious, then smacks the man under the ear.
"You dummy!" She snaps. "That's a monk!"
"Big damn monk!" The man laughs- indeed, even though he's one of the smallest of his people and not even grown, The Young Wolf towers over him- but still, he extends his open hand. Like the stories say, his claws are blunt and pale and the pads of his paws are soft. "What's yer name, venerable?"
"He can't answer that, he's a monk!" the woman snaps, exasperated. "They got- whatchyamacallit- Vows of Silence!"
"Oh, right!" the old man laughs. "Well, wouldn't matter if you could talk anyhow- my Old Lady's deaf as a post and I'm dumb as a rock! Come on, this is no place for a holy man!" he waved.
"Our home is up this way- it isn't much, but it's better than sleeping in Garbage! You stay with us and I'll fix that ratty old robe right up!" She said, grabbing him by the hand-
-
Ba-San looks down at his hand- it feels strange in hers, but it's not the fine gray fur covering his fingers or the rough pads on his palm or the dark nails that taper to claws.
It's that the hand is bleeding, scraped and cut and one of his nails missing like it had been torn off in a fight.
Ba-San is so old that everyone has forgotten her name and they just call her Ba-San, even her husband (who is so old that everyone has forgotten his name and calls him Jii-san, even his wife), and she didn't get this ancient by being an idiot. She glances up at the broken basket she knows got thrown in here by her neighbor not a week ago and sees the large golden eyes inside, staring down at her.
She's also old enough to know what a frightened child looks like, no matter how tall or what species he is.
She makes a show of squinting at his hand. "Why, your nails are FILTHY! You can wash up at the well out back too." She pats his hand.
"Of course! That's right!" Jii-san laughs. "Like I said- I got gravel for brains! He can sleep in Sajin's bed- Sajin is our Boy, but he's long since left home. It'll be good to have a young person around again!" he says, taking the boy's other hand.
He follows, stumbling awkwardly in the badly-tied robe and like he's been injured, but if he leaves paw-prints behind him, they don't remark upon it.
-
After about a month, the boy has something to confess.
And something to ask.
Ba-San and Jii-San have been kind to him- they let him into their home and fed him and Ba-San didn't fix his robe so much as make an entirely new one "appropriate for a Monk", and Jii-san found a pair of old work gloves for him "so you can do your Good Works without losing another nail". Ba-San always gives him her soup-bones "I don't have the teeth to chew them anymore" and Jii-san always moves over so they can both sleep in the sun-patch that appears in the middle of their home every afternoon.
He's tried to repay them how he can- he's tall enough to fix the holes in the roof of their one-room shack standing flat-footed on the floor, and he carries water from the well every day to wash the stone steps outside and re-painted the red gate out front and every morning he makes them breakfast to wake them up and every night he rubs their tired necks and shoulders.
"Mmm-rr." he tries at breakfast, and they both look up, but it's hard enough practicing human words in the woods behind the shack to the birds, let alone now, at the table with the two people he cares most about in the world.
"You say something, Venerable?" Jii-san asks. "Don't worry- I won't tattle to the abbot on you-" he teases.
"Shush!" Ba-san barks at him. "What is it?"
He sighs, and tries again, focusing on the sounds. "mMnoddamunk."
The two look at each other, then turn back to him and place a hand on each of his.
"...Sorta figur'd the first when you didn't recognize the shrine." Nods Jii-san. "-But that's alright. You take good care of us."
"...Sort of figured the second when I saw your hand on the day we met." Nods Ba-San. "-But that's alright. You're a good person, which is a very different thing than being a Good Human."
The Boy stares at them, stunned, then cringes, embarrassed. Of course! They're old, not stupid. "Aiyee- r-r-r MN! Aiyee LLied." he apologizes, stumbling over the difficult consonant in the middle, determined to conquer it.
"I didn't hear any lies, did you, Jii-san?" asks Ba-san.
"I didn't hear nothin' and my ears even work!" he grins, ears perking up.
The Boy sighs, still exasperated with their antics but mostly relieved.
...Then something Jii-san said caught up with him, and he frowns.
"Aiyee- Aye haffa..." Another tricky consonant. "Aye needa assk ssmmng." he changed tracks. L was enough of a battle for one day, Q and his frustrating wife U could wait.
"Whadday wanna know, Venerable?" Jii-san asked, and Ba-san frowned, turning her ear out behind their home, already suspecting his questions.
He held up two fingers and they nodded, waiting. He'd gotten very good at numbers and pointing already, and until today, that had carried the conversation. "sssHrrine?" he asked.
Jii-san frowned. "...what's your second question?"
"th-Therre'ss ah- Grrrave?" he pointed out behind the shrine, to where a stone stood, with what he now recognized as marks signifying a name carved into it. "wHo?"
Ba-San and Jii-san looked at each other, distraught for some time before Ba-San finally turned back to him, both hands on his.
"...Venerable," She finally spoke. "You had to run away from home in a hurry, didn't you?"
The boy nods.
"-And Jii-san and I were the first people you met that weren't you family, right?" She continues.
He nods again. She purses her lips, agitated.
"Jii-San." She finally speaks. "I think we ought to show him Sajin."
Jii-san sighs and nods, agreeing with her, and stands up. At the back of the house, there is a little cabinet with two boxes they never open, and something covered by a black cloth. Jii-san opens the cabinet and takes out the thing covered by the black cloth, pulling the cloth aside and bringing the thing to the table. It's a flat rectangle, and on it is a drawing of a very strange creature.
It's face is almost perfectly circular, and it's body covered in clothes, like how Humans dress, including a funny hat. What the boy can see of the creature is perfectly smooth and hairless and the same color as not-quite-ripe peaches. It has a long mane of straight dark gray hair growing from the top of its head, and a beard a bit like a billy-goat's
"This is Sajin," Says Jii-san, voice wavering a bit. "He wasn't our son- you can tell, we're not related by blood- but he was Our Boy. He took care of us, like you do now."
"He was Our Boy." nods Ba-San, on the verge of tears. "Then he was Our Man. And then he was Our Old Man, and then-" She stopped, and began to cry in earnest. "-And then he left home, and we buried his body out behind the shrine, and marked his grave, as Humans do."
The boy continued to stare at Sajin's portrait. "...Sajin." he whispered, and the name didn't fight him at all. "...Ihff- if Sajin iss Yumann-?" he looked up at his friends. "Whattrrre You?"
Ba-San beckons him and Jii-san back to the cabinet, and puts her hand on one of The Boxes They Never Open. Jii-San puts his hand on the other, and together, the open the lids just a tiny bit for The Boy to see inside.
He gasps and steps back in horror- the things in the boxes are very much like the skulls he's seen of his people before, but the noses are all smooshed like they didn't grow right, and the eyes are too large and-
-And they're just the right size each to belong to Ba-San and Jii-San.
"We are Koma, Guardian Dogs, and this is our shrine." Says Jii-san, closing the lid on his box as Ba-san closed hers, and placing the drawing of Sajin back on the shelf above them. "We wear clothes and speak like humans because we once took Names, a very long time ago, and thus we are People and we act like People." He explained.
"Nnames?" the boy asks.
"A Name is... a sort of contract, that the humans made up." Says Ba-San, locking the cabinet back up. "Humans can live together in such huge packs and crowded cities because they have Rules- you're not allowed to kill other people except in self-defense. You're not allowed to take food someone else caught. Nobody is allowed to kill a child for any reason, things like that. If you take a Name, it's like saying- 'I am this Person! And I agree to abide by the rules of being a person!', and you have to follow the rules, but everyone else has to follow the rules for you too, because you have a Name. So Humans can live very close to each other, because they all have an understanding that nobody is going to violate those rules."
"It's not just humans that can take names- long ago, some wolves decided to take names, and those wolves became Dogs, that live with humans. They were our ancestors, and like our ancestors, we took Names, and we obeyed the rules, and for that, we were fed and allowed to sleep inside and given soup-bones and let to sleep in the sun-patch, but most of all, we were Loved." Said Jii-san.
"-And just the same, we Loved Sajin. He was Our Boy. And We were His Dogs." Said Ba-san, bursting into tears again. Jii-san held her, tears running down his face as well.
Ba-san cried into Jii-san's shoulder for a long time, and The Boy Who Was A Wolf That Wanted To Live Among The Humans sat in silence, thinking.
"...Cour-could Aye- take a nName?" He asks, slowly.
"You'd have to take two, and learn all the rules-" Nodded Jii-san. "But yes. Anyone who can talk can take a name. And you've been talking my tail off!" he wagged.
"Two?" the boy asked. He didn't need to use his fingers this time.
"Humans have two names- one is the name of that specific human, and one is the name of their family or the place they came from or what they did, as a sort of... Introduction. Humans are very big on introducing themselves and all their friends- though I suppose it makes sense, what with them having names to introduce themselves with."
"You can be a Komamura!" Jii-san said, wagging excitedly. "Ba-san and Jii-san are Koma, and we are your Ba-San and Jii-San, so you must be part of our family, so that makes you Mura, a relative- so you're a Koma-mura!" he nodded.
"Humans also give their children names of revered ancestors, to honor the ancestor, and protect the child." Added Ba-san. "You do Sajin's chores, you sleep in Sajin's bed, you take care of Sajin's Dogs... You must be Sajin!"
"That's your name, if you want it- Komamura Sajin!" Said Jii-san.
The Boy stared at them for a long time, completely still, until they realized that, for the first time since they'd known him, the scarred nub on his backside was wagging too.
"Thank you." Said Sajin, tears streaming down his face too.
--
Many months later, a Monk* leaves the little shrine to Ba-san and Jii-san at the edge of the dump. He leaves his home in no particular rush- if anything, he's lingering- in the middle of a bright morning, hale and with joy in his heart. He waves to his Ba-san and Jii-san as he heads down the road, promising to come back and visit.
"Look at that." says Ba-San. "Our Boy is leaving home again."
"I know," Says Jii-san. "-but this time it'll be alright."
Made a Volume Cover for Sajin Komamura. It takes place in-between Volumes 12 and 13, hence the Volume Number being 12.5, and envisions Komamura fighting Chad. You can read it here > Chad Deserved Better During Soul Society Arc
