Here's where we get Ban's life history. Get the hankies ready, kids. So, he tells Ginji, he came (back) to Japan when he was 8 to live with Maria. "I didn't know anything." Ban says, "I was just a chibi back then." (so cute!) His father was half German, his mother all Japanese. "So you're a quarter!" Ginji says "This is the first time you've talked about stuff like this..." Indeed. Then he starts going on about how being the only hier to the Evil Eye connects him to the "natural enemy" of witches, the "Voodooists" (a wierd word written over in katakana but it's kanji read "black magic" and another one I can't find). It seems their aim is to get Ban (or something?). So in Europe, he was a fugitive. Anyway, since the witch hunts of the Middle Ages these natural enemies had had a devastating power. It seems the enemy had found the witches, who had then fled their homes and villages and led a "wandering existence". It appears they are still doing this, and this is the life Ban was leading. When he could, he studied magic. It was essential to his survival, he tells Ginji. Such a life was hard, poor dear Ban says.  From his fight to survive he learned how to fight as well as studying lots of stuff like chemistry and medicine. So when he returned to Japan, Ban was glad. He got a sort of freedom, he says. Back in Japan, he ran away from Maria's. It wasn't easy surviving alone. He fought to live. Now this part is tragic. "I was living for nothing but earning food to live" Ban says, "Really nothing more". And he looks like he's gonna cry. Next panel and Ginji looks like he's gonna cry too. (Oh I'm going to cry now you bastards!) It goes on. "It was lonely," Ban says, much to my distress, "I thought about returning to Maria's. At night when there was nobody there my body would shiver, but I had to endure it..." 

 

Now Ginji goes into a bit of empathic-angst saying how he too was lonely and lived everyday with fighting, not knowing what was to come..."I didn't believe in people in this world," Ban goes on. Living was all chance, theft, the need to dominate. At that time, he thought there were no good people in the world.  Then Yamato came along. And asked him to go with him and his little sister, Himiko. Yamato asked Ban to look after Himiko. And so, Ban says "They were the first people I could truly call friends." Right about here I was having angst overload. But it goes on. We jump to Ban watching Yamato and Himiko making Poison Perfume. Yamato tells us there are over 200 kinds, but really you can only carry 7 at once. He goes on that making the poison perfumes is their "art" of catalysis (jutsu- anyone got a better translation for that? And does the word catalysis even exist?). Ban gets a bad feeling. Ban's grandmother and Maria had told him that their enemy used this "art".  And so Yamato's 28th birthday draws near, and Ban's bad feelings take shape.  We see Yamato having a bad dream. Yamato says Ban is the only one he can talk to about this, that he has to promise not to say anything to Himiko. He asks Ban if he knows what the Voodoo children are. And yes, it seems Ban's oh so elusive grandmother said something about them. Apparently, they are their natural enemies' "trump card".  Then she goes off on one about love and hate being both the reflection and the opposite of each other. This is the strongest weapon of the enemy, this is the curse (it all becomes clear at the end of the chapter what she's on. Other than crack). "What will awaken at that time I don't know," Yamato tells Ban, "But it is a certainty that something will happen as we are the Voodoo Children". And when will something happen? For men when they turn 28, for girls when they turn 17. And so, on the night of Yamato's 28th birthday we see him and Ban in a house in snowy woods. Himiko has been sent away. Yamato goes on about how he hopes Himiko will be alright, and that everything he has done (for her) will not be in vain. Tension mounts. Ban shouts, demanding Yamato tells him what will awaken. But Yamato doesn't know. Yamato continues to angst about how he is to be torn apart from the one thing he loves in the world and then someone appears at the door. What Yamato calls "The mirror of myself". And indeed, it's another Yamato at the door.