To Eigetsu

To Eigetsu (杜 影月 To Eigetsu) is the former Governor of Sa Province and a Physician.

Appearance
Eigetsu has large brown eyes and shoulder length green hair which he ties in a loose ponytail. A large fringe covers his right eye.

When Yougetsu takes over, his ponytail usually snaps open and his eyes take on a reddish glow with slinted pupils. The White Immortal Byakuya actually has white hair (unknow length) and green cat-like eyes with slinted pupils.

Personality & Characteristics
Eigetsu is a shy, intelligent thirteen-year-old boy. He was born as the youngest child of an extremely poor family. In spite of great hardship and humble origins, he quickly becomes a government official at a young age and one of Kou Shuurei's friends.

Yougetsu
Eigetsu does not like to consume alcohol or even smell it, because it literally turns him into another person: Yougetsu, who is brash, arrogant, and an excellent fighter. When Eigetsu first arrives in the capital, Yougetsu takes over; after winning a drinking contest in the Red Light District, he beats up three gang members, steals their money, and spends most of it on premium sake.

Yougetsu is also very intelligent, in a calculating and strategic way. "You" for light, "Ei" for shadow. Yougetsu lives as the light that maintains Eigetsu's shadow (i.e. Eigetsu's existence/life). Although he often refers to Eigetsu as a dim-witted fool, he also looks out for him. For example, thinking that Eigetsu might lose the Exam Token in all the commotion, he gives it for safekeeping to the sake merchant and tells him to deliver it with the expensive sake to the best brothel in the city. Before passing out, Yougetsu also tells Shuuei Ran to take him to the same destination, which is how Eigetsu ended up in Kogaro. Yougetsu is actually the White Immortal Haku Byakuya.

Plot
Due to the civil war, his father tried to kill him in order to save food for the rest of the children. Wounded, Eigetsu (then named Getsu) escaped and collapsed in Seika village. He was then raised by a doctor, Ka Shin, who found him on the brink of death. When Seika village was wiped out by a plague, he was sent to Kai Yu, governor of Koku province, who became his guardian and sponsored him to take the Exams. After Eigetsu passed the Provincial Exams at the age of twelve, his entire community contributed money to send him to take the Imperial Exams. He turns up in Kougaro, Kochou's (蝴蝶) pleasure house, with no memory of how he got there and without his valuable Exam Token.

Eigetsu befriends Shuurei  and becomes the youngest person in history to win the position of Jougen (top score for the year), beating the previous record set by Li Kouyuu. Initially, he is deluged by proposals by ambitious officials who want him to marry their daughters, but he refuses them all and they turn against him as he starts his career, assigning him petty duties like shining their shoes and then "accidentally" kicking him.

When Ryuuki appoints him and Shuurei as the new governors of Sa province, Eigetsu is again the youngest person to ever win that position, as well as one of the first set of co-governors to share such an office. When they enter the province, Eigetsu is captured by the Satsujinzoku along with Kourin, who is pretending to be Shuurei. Eventually they are saved by Seiran, Ensei and Ryuuren (as well as Yougetsu) and finally reunite with Shuurei in the provincial capital.

When Ka Shin found Eigetsu at the age of four, Eigetsu had already died, Yougetsu saved the child's life by giving him half of Ka Shin's life force granting him twenty more years of life, but after that, Eigetsu himself would die and Yougetsu would live on in his body. Later, Ka Shin became gravely ill, so that Eigetsu willingly surrendered ten of those twenty years to Yougetsu in order to extend his foster-father's life. In return for the life given, Eigetsu extracts a promise from Ka Shin, to find the cure for the plague that extinguished Seika village and help him create the medical haven that they dreamed of. For this vision, Eigetsu abandoned his dream of becoming a doctor and took the Exams in hopes of becoming an official, powerful enough to create such a place where medical knowledge could be gathered and not be lost, where any illnesses could be cured if indeed a cure was found anywhere in Saiunkoku.

When Eigetsu has only one month left to live, the Korin county of Sa province is plagued by an epidemic which he recognizes as the same disease that wiped out his native village. He tells Kourin  about his imminent fate and confesses his feelings to her, then sets out by himself for the affected area in the hope of directly helping some people before his death. However, in a village called the Sekiei village, he ran into Hyou Ren disguised as his mentor Ka Shin and gets captured. When Eigetsu's life ended, Yougetsu decides to go dormant with Eigetsu as his host in order to bring Eigetsu back and to let him keep living for yet another fifty years..

Though Eigetsu has a great part in handling the unrest in Sa province, his actions are considered reckless by the central government. He is demoted and is made assistant to his former guardian Kai Yu, the new governor of Sa province.

After being informed of the locust plague in Heki Province, he asks for Kai Yu's permission to go there and help out. Kai Yu lets him go and Eigetsu travels to the province with a team of doctors.