Tender Horns is the third episode of the anime series.
Synopsis[]
Shirasawa, the head of a village, summons Ginko to cure the villagers from hearing problems caused by mushi, and to cure her grandson Maho who has sprouted four horns on his forehead.
Plot[]
Ginko reaches a snowy village deep into the mountain. The Head of the village, Shirasawa, had called him as the villagers had explainable hearing problems. Listening about it, Ginko realizes its Un mushi, a snail-like mushi that eats sound. Using hot water and salt, he manages to remove the Un from the villagers.
Shirasawa then brings Ginko to her grandson, Maho, who also have hearing problems but with different symptoms. Unlike the rest, he is hearing constant loud noises and had grown horns and even if he covers his ears, he hears from the horns. Ginko realizes its the more rare partner of Un, the Ah mushi and tells a story of how people couldn't find cure for it and the infected person dies when the winters ends.
Ginko creates a special smoke that causes the noises to suppress the noises and making Maho hear him. Maho explains that his horns grow when he covered his ears and that his mother also had same illness and she was always covering her ears. One day she covered his ears too, but he couldn't remember what she said. Speaking with Shirosawa, she tells Ginko that little before his mother died, she stopped hearing anything.
The next day, Maho goes out for a walk, but as later starts snowing, Ginko goes to look for him. He finds him in a cave, where Maho decided to wait for the snowing to stop. The sound suddenly disappears and Ginko realizes the cave is filled with Un Mushi, who try to enter his ears. He looks for an Ah mushi and lets it enters his ears. He tells Maho to place his hands on Ginko's ears and moments later, the Ah mushi dissolves and bursts out from his ears. Later Ginko explains that his mother wasn't trying to stop the sounds by covering her ears, but to listen to the sounds he could hear with covered ears. Ginko believes that Ah's weakness is the noise the other creatures make as they live. As the parasite lives in you, the body noise isn't comfortable for him and he tries to erase it and in a year either the parasite dissolves or the host weakens and dies. His mother had realized it and dissolved the Ah, but her body was already too weakened. Maho cover his ears and tries to listen the noise his body produces and manages to dissolve the Ah, making his horns fall. Ginko takes the horns as payment, but leaves the two small ones to Maho to remember.