Episode 44: Susanoo's Sorrow That Blights the Earth

[Prologue] The Echoing, Grotesque Cry of Birth

Between heaven and earth, a bizarre sound was echoing.

It was neither the howl of a beast nor the roar of a raging tempest.

It was the violent, agonizing cry of a fully grown, giant man, squeezed from the very bottom of his stomach like a newborn baby.

"OOOOOOHH...! AAAAAAHH!"

Takehaya Susanoo-no-Mikoto.

The fierce god who was supposed to be entrusted with the governance of the vast ocean by his father, Izanagi, had now completely abandoned his mission.

He lay face down on the rocky shore of a desolate beach, covered in mud, clawing at the earth with both hands as he wept and screamed.

"Mother...! Why, why do I not have a mother?!"

The gaping hole of emptiness in his heart—the pain of "not knowing a mother"—had already completely swallowed his pride as the ruler of the sea and his divine reason.

Starved for affection and tormented by a maddening loneliness, Susanoo wailed without caring about appearances, solely seeking the "unseen mother" who was supposed to embrace him, if only just once.

However, a god's lamentation does not end as a mere outburst of emotion.

The tears and sorrow shed by one of the Three Noble Children began to ripple through nature as a terrifying wave of a "curse" that eroded the world itself from the inside out.

[Chapter 1] The Deadly Poison Dropped by Tears

Drip, drop.

Massive tears spilled endlessly from Susanoo's giant eyes.

The moment those tears hit the sandy beach beneath his feet, they hissed eerily; the white sand instantly discolored to black, transforming into foul-smelling mud.

His sorrow was far too pure and far too powerful, and thus, to the world, it had become a lethal dose of deadly poison—a miasma.

"Hic, sob... WAAAAHHHH!"

As he took a deep breath and let out another maddened wail, the aura of his sorrow spread in all directions as an invisible, intense shockwave.

It was like an invisible winter storm rapidly stealing the temperature of the world.

Every time Susanoo's despair shook the air, the "life force" was scraped clean from the surrounding space.

The seabirds that had been flying around him suddenly lost the strength to flap their wings in mid-air, plummeting like stones onto the sandy beach.

The small fish swimming in the shallows, unable to endure the rapidly muddying and rotting water, exposed their white bellies and floated to the surface one after another.

Behind what seemed at first glance to be the almost comical sight of a grown man scrunching his face and bawling, a hellish scene was unfolding in which the life of nature was silently trampled and killed off.

[Chapter 2] The Green Mountains Wither

Susanoo's cries rode the wind, crossing the beach and reaching deep into Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni (the earthly realm), to the mountains covered in lush greenery.

It was the height of summer, and the green trees were brimming with life force.

But the moment the wave of Susanoo's sorrow caressed the mountainside, the scenery of the forest completely changed.

Crack, snap!

Giant camphor and cedar trees cracked with dry, screaming sounds, as if their moisture was being rapidly sucked out from within.

The fresh, verdant leaves instantly lost their hydration, curling into brown, unseasonable dead leaves that danced across the mountains like a blizzard.

The flowers and grass deeply rooted in the earth shriveled and turned black as if doused with boiling water, crumbling away like ash.

"The green mountains wither into barren peaks"—this desperate catastrophe, which would later be passed down in myth, was not brought about by fire or blades.

It was the result of the "unfulfilled thirst for love" harbored by a single god surpassing physical limits and stealing the life force from plants across the world.

The beasts living in the forest, terrified by the sudden transformation into a forest of death, tried to flee from their dens, but the moment they inhaled the poisoned wind, their lungs burned, and they collapsed on the spot, frothing at the mouth one after another.

[Chapter 3] The Collapse of the Abandoned Ocean

It was not only the land. A fatal collapse had also visited the vast ocean that Susanoo was originally supposed to govern.

Because its ruler, Susanoo, completely abandoned his duties, turning his back and crying out, "I don't care about a sea like this," the energy of the ocean completely stagnated and began to rot.

"Uuu... AAAAAAHHH!!"

Susanoo threw a tantrum, slamming his fists into the sandy beach.

As if responding to that vibration, the sea lost its pristine blue, transforming into dark, viscous water like foul sludge.

The waves stopped moving as if dead, and even the ebb and flow of the tide—the very breathing of the world—came to a halt.

The corals that nurtured life in the deep sea bleached and shattered, and giant whales, their breathing blocked by the murky water, agonizingly raised their heads above the surface before dying, washing ashore on the coast in countless numbers.

It was not the work of evil spirits.

It was a catastrophe caused by one who carried the blood of the god who created the world, struggling to handle his immensely powerful force and his childishly immature, pure heart.

The tears Susanoo shed were not a merciful rain that moistened all creation, but a rain of death that melted and rotted everything in the world.

[Chapter 4] Unreachable Screams, Deepening Madness

The surrounding mountains had withered completely, the sea was dead, and the corpses of animals littered the ground so thickly there was no place to step.

Susanoo himself realized that the tears he shed and the cries he wailed were bringing terrifying destruction to the world.

In the corner of his tear-blurred vision, he could see lives extinguishing one after another.

However, he could not stop crying. No, he had no intention of stopping.

(I don't care... I don't care what happens to a world like this anymore!!)

In Susanoo's heart, his own sorrow reigned as something far heavier and more absolute than any sense of responsibility toward the world.

(A world without Mother. A world where no one will embrace me. A world where only Sister and Brother are loved, and I alone tremble in loneliness... what value is there for greenery to thrive and life to flourish in such a place?!)

His loneliness eventually replaced itself with fierce hatred and self-pity.

He was so hurt and suffering so much, so why did the world try to be beautiful?

Why did other lives try to happily sing the praises of existence while leaving him behind?

The anger at that absurdity drove Susanoo's sorrow into an even deeper madness.

"WAAAAHHHH!! I'm going! I will abandon this country and go to Ne-no-Katasu-Kuni where Mother is!!"

His blood-curdling scream echoed vainly across the withered earth.

He was no longer a fierce god with a magnificent physique. He was merely a giant baby whose toys had been taken away, breaking things at random just to get his mother's attention, doing nothing but crying and screaming.

[Chapter 5] The Gaze from the Heavens

The destruction caused by Susanoo's madness did not stop at eroding the nature of Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni.

The pitch-black miasma radiating from him and the ear-piercing cries that shook heaven and earth began to dye even the sea of clouds in the faraway Takamagahara an ominous gray.

And there was no way the creator of the world, his father Izanagi, would fail to notice this catastrophe.

"...That fool."

Looking down from the heavenly realm, Izanagi's eyes lit up with deep disappointment and an undeniable, fierce fire of anger.

The beautiful world he had put his heart and soul into creating—risking his life to escape from the Underworld—was being ruthlessly destroyed by his own son, simply by "crying and wailing."
Furthermore, Amaterasu Omikami, seated on the throne of Takamagahara, felt a faint shudder at the rampage, her heart aching at the intense negative emotions released by her brother.

"The world is breaking, unable to endure Susanoo's sorrow..."

The overly pure sorrow seeking a mother had devoured the life of nature, and finally began to threaten even the absolute order of the gods.

Before the withered mountains and the dead sea, Susanoo's lamentation would not stop.

The moment the father god's lightning-like anger would strike down was fast approaching.

(KAMIYO Episode 44: Susanoo's Sorrow That Blights the Earth - End)

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