Byakko no Miko: Suzuno
Oosugi
Suzuno Oosugi was the second miko to
enter the "Shi Jin ten Chi Sho" to become the Byakko no Miko. About sixty
to seventy years previous from the time Miaka and Yui became mikos,
Suzuno was the second miko who traveled into the book world to summon the
animal god, Byakko.
Suzuno found the "Shi
Jin Ten Chi Sho" when the very first miko's, the Genbu no Miko Takiko Okuda,
father gave the book to her father for safe keeping after he, Einosuke
Okuda, discovered that the animal god absorbs the mikos with weak wills.
Takao Oosugi tried to keep the book away from prying eyes because of his
friend's warning but Suzuno found the book and got drawn into the story
becoming involved with the Byakko seishi and white tiger god, Byakko. Suzuno
ended up in Sailo, the country in the west; there she became the second
Miko, Byakko No Miko. All of this happened between sixty-five and seventy
years our time but ninety years in the book’s time before Miaka’s
story begins.
The Byakko Seishi describes Suzuno
as quiet, gentle, kind and friendly. She was loved by all her seishi and
became good friends with them like Miaka did with her seishi. She was tall
and slender, with blue eyes and brown hair, which she wore in two long
braids. During her service as a miko, Suzuno fell in love with Tatara,
one of her Seishi. Both loved each other dearly and Suzuno wished for the
two of them to be together but Byakko could not grant that wish because
when a god was called, the Miko’s duty was over and she had to return to
her world. Suzuno and Tatara were forced to separate, but they vowed to
forever love each other, and be together again someday in the future, in
death.
After the summoning of Byakko, Suzuno
was not absorbed like her friend, Takiko, because Suzuno’s will was strengthened
by her love for Tatara, and her determination to be with him in the future.
During the ceremony to call Byakko, Suzuno held a silver mirror in her
hands and Byakko appeared, this mirror was infused with power and became
the second Shinzaho. Suzuno entrusted it to Tatara, as a memento of her
love for him. When Suzuno returned, her father had the "Shi Jin Ten Chi
Sho" locked away from the public, in the National Library's Important Documents
Reference Room, where later Miaka and Yui find it.
During Miaka and Yui's adventures
in the book, Suzuno is still alive in the modern world but she is very
aged and close to death. Though Suzuno never married, she did adopt children.
Her adopted grandson, Toki, is the person who looks after her in her old
age. Toki never believed her tales of being absorbed into a book, and becoming
Byakko No Miko but Keisuke and Tetsuya come to visit Suzuno, seeking answers,
bringing the "Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho" with them.
In the meantime, within the book,
Tatara is exhausted and dying from battling the Seiryuu seishi so Keisuke
and Tetsuya read Tatara’s final words to the elderly Suzuno, as Tatara
speaks of his undying love for her, and dies. Knowing that their love had
lasted and their vow had been fulfilled, Suzuno dies at the same moment
in the real world. Suddenly a light causes Tetsuya, Keisuke, and Toki to
look outside and they see the young Tatara's spirit beckoning Suzuno. Suzuno’s
spirit arises from the body of the dead old lady, looking as she did when
she was Byakko No Miko. Suzuno then runs out to be with her beloved Tatara,
reunited at last.