WARNING: The following contains spoilers for To Your Eternity Episode 19, “Wandering Rage,” now streaming on Crunchyroll.
The penultimate episode of To Your Eternity's first season bids farewell to Jananda Island, putting Fushi on a new path. Despite being the one begging Fushi to leave the island, Tonari makes a choice that shows her maturity as well as her newfound hope. Fushi-obsessed fanatic Hayase makes one last desperate claim to the immortal being but fails, resulting in a fate that may be worse than death.
If there's one thing that Hayase and the Nokkers have in common, it's their unnatural obsession with Fushi. The Nokkers are dead-set on tracking Fushi wherever he is, seeking to steal his vessels as a way to stop him from preserving the world. However, Hayase seems to mistake her obsession for love. When a stray Nokker attaches itself to Hayase and starts pulsing like a second heart, we get a short glimpse of how formidable and frightening the two would be if they ever teamed up.
Surprisingly, Hayase is disgusted by the Nokker. She scolds it for trying to "take Fushi by brute force" rather than through "kindness." She wrenches the Nokker from her arm but doesn't kill it before it skitters off. When she sees Tonari and Sandel, Hayase gets ready to kill Tonari -- but Fushi, in Oniguma's form, crushes her before she can do so.
Now in Gugu's form, Fushi sets the entire corpse pit on fire, burning every Nokker in sight except three: Oopa, Mia and Uroy. None of the characters can bear to do the unthinkable and kill them, even though they know the three of them are long gone. Tonari sinks into a dark spiral of guilt and self-hatred, believing that she is the reason her friends died. Suddenly, Hayase knocks out Sandel and has a drugged Tonari hanging precariously above the burning pit. If she lets go, Tonari will burn alive.
Hayase offers Fushi a deal: she'll kill Uroy, Mia and Oopa to preserve Fushi's purity in exchange for sparing Tonari. Tonari wakes up and locks eyes with Fushi. She shakes her head imperceptibly, begging him to not kill her friends. To make the choice easier for him, she grabs Hayase as she pushes off the ledge, seemingly dragging the two of them straight to their deaths. Although Tonari does this to spare Fushi, it's apparent that she no longer has the will to live.
Fushi grabs the two of them in time and the three land safely on the other side of the pit. Fushi injects Hayase with the Western Morning Glory and ties her up. Tonari steels herself to kill Uroy, Oopa and Mia, but Fushi takes this burden away from her and walks forward to meet the remaining Nokkers. Slowly, Jananda returns to some semblance of normalcy, with much of the focus turning to care for the injured. Tonari and Sandel choose to remain on Jananda, hoping that they can start changing things for the better. On the day that Fushi leaves Jananda with Hayase, Tonari promises that she'll find Fushi again and sends Ligard to help guide him.
Eventually, Hayase wakes up and is initially delighted, believing that Fushi has had a change of heart. She claims that she has been in love with Fushi since she first saw him, much to Fushi's disgust. She even offers to have sex with him, telling him that she could "teach [him] love." Fushi immediately shoves her off but this doesn't faze her at all. If sex is out of the question, the next best thing is for him to kill her.
Because of Fushi's abilities, he can take her form, and to Hayase, this is the ultimate form of union. Repulsed, Fushi duplicates a boat and steps onto the copy, pushing off from Hayase, who still remains tied up. Fushi quietly warns her to never come near him again and that he hates her. As Hayase watches Fushi drift away, she hears something crawling into her boat: it's the stray Nokker that had escaped earlier.
Just as the Nokker attacks Hayase, the soundtrack changes into the same one that was heard in Episode 1 of To Your Eternity when Fushi first transformed into Joaan; music that once signaled the start of a new adventure, but which now sounds much more sinister in this context, promising danger ahead.
