Tearjerker / Inter Nos

• Natsuki's discovery of her amputated leg. She wakes from fever, feeling a terrible itch in her left leg. She reaches to scratch, only to find nothing there. Her scream rouses everyone nearby.
• Rather than resume her old habit of touching Shizuru's face in the morning, Natsuki begins feeling the stump of her ruined leg, puffs of air from her nostrils indicating her grief. Shizuru kneels beside her and gingerly kisses the stump, each kiss eliciting fresh sobs, until, relieved that Natsuki is still loved by Shizuru, she cries no more after that.
• When Shizuru is becoming overprotective of Natsuki, nearly treating her like an invalid, Natsuki snaps slapping her for it. The fact that Natsuki immediately withdraws her hand, looking as shocked as Shizuru, causes Shizuru to have a Jerkass Realization.
• Throughout the story, much is made of the fact that Shizuru is Himean and Natsuki is Otomeian. What this means, in practical purposes, is that Natsuki is looked down upon by the higher-ranking members of the Himean Senate who have never even met her, because, "The lowest servant of Hime is greater the the king of a foreign nation." It is true that outsiders can earn Himean citizenship for valor in combat (which Natsuki has certainly shown) or by being adopted by a patrician family (which Chikane has offered to do, finding herself as fond of Natsuki as her late sister Suou was.) but the thought, grounded in the real aspect of the historical setting, that the two have to go through such measures just to be able to be together is tragic.