As mushi go, these are relatively harmless. They coexist with each other; Un eat sound and Ah eat silence, but the Un are far more numerous than the Ah. Often when winter has killed off their normal food sources, as animals hibernate and snow muffles the smallest sounds, they will move closer to human habitation, in order to feed off the sounds there.
A nest of Un.
Occasionally, they will even invade the body of a human or other animals, taking over one ear in order to get even more sound.
An Un moving into a human ear.
This doesn't hurt the human, but it does make them go (temporarily) deaf in one ear due to the Un eating all the sound the human would normally hear. It can be chased out by salt sprinkled around the home or saltwater poured into the ear; salt affects them like a normal slug or snail. Once the Un is gone, the human host immediately regains their hearing in the affected ear.
Ah, however, are a different story. Because they eat silence, a human body is not a comfortable home for them. When they do invade one in an attempt to get enough to eat, the human will sprout four horns on their forehead.
Ah horns.
These appear to be some kind of way to let the humans hear the mushi world. Letting the human hear more things would seem to be the opposite of the mushi's aim, but the mushi is using the sounds to overwhelm the human. The struggle for dominance between mushi and human seems to take about a year. If the human hasn't managed to get free of the mushi in that time, they are overwhelmed by the mushi's influence and they die.
The solution seems to be a relatively simple one--put your hands over your ears. But there's a trick to it. If you do it to try and shut out the sounds, it doesn't appear to work. You have to listen for a very specific sound--the small rumblings that your own body makes, as blood pumps and muscles shift. If you can hear it, and overwhelm the mushi, it will leave you.
Un and Ah
As mushi go, these are relatively harmless. They coexist with each other; Un eat sound and Ah eat silence, but the Un are far more numerous than the Ah. Often when winter has killed off their normal food sources, as animals hibernate and snow muffles the smallest sounds, they will move closer to human habitation, in order to feed off the sounds there.
A nest of Un.
Occasionally, they will even invade the body of a human or other animals, taking over one ear in order to get even more sound.
An Un moving into a human ear.
This doesn't hurt the human, but it does make them go (temporarily) deaf in one ear due to the Un eating all the sound the human would normally hear. It can be chased out by salt sprinkled around the home or saltwater poured into the ear; salt affects them like a normal slug or snail. Once the Un is gone, the human host immediately regains their hearing in the affected ear.
Ah, however, are a different story. Because they eat silence, a human body is not a comfortable home for them. When they do invade one in an attempt to get enough to eat, the human will sprout four horns on their forehead.
Ah horns.
These appear to be some kind of way to let the humans hear the mushi world. Letting the human hear more things would seem to be the opposite of the mushi's aim, but the mushi is using the sounds to overwhelm the human. The struggle for dominance between mushi and human seems to take about a year. If the human hasn't managed to get free of the mushi in that time, they are overwhelmed by the mushi's influence and they die.
The solution seems to be a relatively simple one--put your hands over your ears. But there's a trick to it. If you do it to try and shut out the sounds, it doesn't appear to work. You have to listen for a very specific sound--the small rumblings that your own body makes, as blood pumps and muscles shift. If you can hear it, and overwhelm the mushi, it will leave you.
Ginko accepting Ah.
And Ah leaving him.