Sealing

**Sealing** (封印術, *Fūin jutsu*?) is the ability to restrict or block someone's Gift.

## Description

Sealing is the power to place a seal on an individual, effectively restricting or blocking their Gift. It prevents the individual to use their supernatural powers and conceal their abilities from detection. The seal is placed using a key that could be as huge as a tree, and remains effective even after the demise of the individual who originally cast it.

Sealing Gifts can also be achieved by attaching a talisman to the person's back while reciting an incantation.

## History

After Sumi Usuba married Shinichi Saimori in an arranged loveless marriage, their daughter Miyo Saimori was born. With her Telepathy ability, Sumi discovered that her daughter had the Gift of the Dream-Sight, the most powerful Gift of all and something the Saimoris were hungering after. Fearing that Miyo’s abilities would be exploited, she sealed daughter's powers away as soon as she was born and pretended she didn't have any.

The seal caused her husband to think that Miyo was Giftless and rejected his daughter ever since he discovered that. The Emperor, who was behind the arranged marriage of Sumi and Shinichi, was also tricked into thinking that Miyo doesn't possess the Gift of Dream-Sight that he feared so much. Sumi's family, the Usuba family, was under the impression that Miyo might have powers, but Sumi's seal tricked them into thinking otherwise.

Shortly after her marriage, a cherry blossom tree is planted in the largest of the inner courtyards of the Saimori mansion. Sumi used the tree as the key to the seal. After Sumi passed away from illness, when Miyo was two years old, the cherry blossom tree withered a year after her death, and had been cut down. However, the stump had never been removed. That particular courtyard could be accessed only from Miyo’s original room and her mother’s. No one besides the servants who tidied it sporadically had set foot there in many years, not even a gardener. The stump had since died and turned gray. The more time elapsed after the death of the woman who cast the seal, the more the seal deteriorated.

## Plot

After Miyo departed from the Saimori estate to the Kiyoka's house for her arranged marriage with Kiyoka Kudou, she has a dream about the cherry blossom tree in courtyard of the Saimori Mansion. In it, her mother was standing beside it and was almost the same age as Miyo now. She was looking at Miyo, trying to tell her something, but Miyo was too far to hear her words. Sumi seemed to be repeating something with urgency, but none of it reached Miyo’s ears. Then her dream switches to a scene that happened in the past, Shinichi is angrily shouting at Sumi about Miyo being Giftless. After her father walked away, Sumi tells Miyo to forgive her for being a good-for-nothing mother, and telling her that in just a few years’ time, something will happen but is cut off.

When Miyo is kidnapped and being held at the Saimori estate, Kiyoka comes to her rescue and the residence is burned as a result of a fight between Kiyoka and Minoru Tatsuishi. Miyo has another dream about the cherry blossom tree during her recover. In the dream, her mother is standing beside the tree and beckoning her daughter to come closer. When Miyo heard another voice calling her name, she says goodbye to her mother, even though Sumi continued gesturing for her to come closer, but Miyo headed in the other direction.

After waking up, Miyo hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the dream and felt compelled to visit the place. She went back there to where her mother's tree had once stood in the ruins of the Saimori estate. She finds that it is burned to charcoal but still recognizable. As she squatted next to the stump, she slowly reached out for it and brushed it with her fingertips. The old, thick stump crumbled at her touch, as if made of sand. Something else happened simultaneously. Miyo felt a sharp pain in her head, like an electric shock. It lasted for only a split second, so she didn’t cry out, and when it was gone, she doubted whether it had even happened. She’d jerked her hand away from the stump in surprise, flexed her fingers, and made a fist, thinking that the pain must have been from her earlier injuries.

What in fact happened is that when Miyo departed from the boundaries of the Saimori estate, the seal eventually disappeared altogether. The seal on her abilities broke, and the Emperor also became aware of the Gift she possessed.

After Miyo had learned Sumi was responsible for sealing her Gift, she’d been mired in mixed feelings. Sumi's actions had a detrimental impact on Miyo's social standing after her passing, and Miyo's challenging childhood experiences were a result of her mother's decisions. As a result, Miyo finds it difficult to forgive Sumi. Miyo have to do is unseal her mother’s powers, to awake her Gift that would lead to end the Emperor's tyranny.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5  Novel, Volume 2 Chapter 3
2. ↑  Novel, Volume 3 Chapter 3
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 2
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1  Novel, Volume 2 Chapter 5
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 5
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1  Anime, Episode 11
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1  Novel, Volume 1 Chapter 1
8. ↑  Anime, Episode 10