Year of the Boar, Seventh Month, Day 16.

Gods, give me strength. I so badly want a pipe. I think about the acrid smoke rasping down my throat as I inhale and just imagining the feel of filling my lungs makes me feel a little lightheaded... I am more lucid now than I have been in many years but I am not really free of the weed at all. I suppose that it is the nature of an addict to become fixated upon what one has given up... There was a time when it would not have concerned me to admit that I am an addict... I wonder how it is that it concerns me now... I have been thinking a great deal in the past few days and it has occurred to me to consider the fact that I have been a puppet. Broken Rampart said I was a slave to the weed but it seems to me that Ituski used the opium to control me; to render me insensible.
I have spent this morning asking myself why that should be... In her place, I might have used my position to destroy the House and yet she made do with simply keeping me incapable. I cannot help but wonder why... Shigeru, too had his chance; he subdued me and though he had numerous chances to turn me, to crush me... he simply chose to bed me. Nothing makes sense to me. Is it possible that the two of them could have been working together at some sort of plot...? To what end, I cannot imagine. This is the kind of puzzle that Broken Rampart would have the skills to solve - he and Nanami but neither of them are here and there has been no word from either of them... I can only hope that Nanami returns within the next few days, Atsuko's maids are very sweet and excellent at their jobs but ... none of them are Nanami...