He is a friend, however, and a member of the Tribe (a secret society of people with supernatural skills) he has come to train Takeo (who is of the Kikuta branch of the Tribe). Takeo is not fooled by these tricks, but Shigeru's guards are.

Soon after, a visitor arrives he has the ability to be in two places at once, and can make himself look young or old. Shigeru has decided to adopt Takeo as his son. He kills himself with a poison pill to prevent being captured. He wakes Shigeru, and they are able to repel the assassin.

Thanks to his super hearing, Takeo hears an assassin scaling the wall of Shigeru's home. He begins to develop super human hearing he witnesses the affair between Shigeru and Lady Maruyama (the woman Iida wants to marry so he can get her lands). During their journey back to Hagi, Shigeru's home, Tomasu (now known as Takeo) stops talking. Tomasu's savior is Shigeru Otori, a beloved Lord of the Otori lands. Two Tohan men follow him, but he is stopped by a stranger in the woods who kills one of the men, and cuts an arm off the other. He flees into the woods, hoping others have also fled. He surprises the Tohan (Iida's men), and is able to avoid Iida's blade and even dismount him. After returning from a trip out in the woods across the mountain one day, Tomasu finds his village on fire. Iida, a powerful warlord, has been finding such villages and destroying them. Tomasu was raised by his mother in a Hidden (a religious sect that worships a single god that forbids killing, and judges each man equally, regardless of rank) mountain village called Mino.

The nightingale floor