ACTUALLY it fucks me up soooo bad that like. nekomata is FROM miyagi. like. his connection to miyagi isn't just one out of nostalgia for an old friend it's because he lived there and loved there and called it home it's the fact that he knows the same miyagi ukai does the fact that he wasn't there to watch it change and grow but ukai did it all just makes my heart ACHE because, yeah, he's old now and he lives and breathes tokyo but i bet there were days he used to be so homesick it made him sleepless there were days the skyscrapers of the big city weighed him down like stone there were days when the hole in his heart where the mountains used to beat loud and proud felt so empty and wide and threatened to swallow him whole and the only connection he had left was when ukai NEVER gave up on him and they promised to find each other and defeat each other and god nekoma has always BEEN about connections it's been that way since the BEGINNING it's been that way since nekomata left the small towns shadowed by the mountains behind because he could not, even for a moment, forget the place that forged his blood and bone