Harano's guess wasn't without basis.
He hadn't thought about it carefully before, but the sudden incident made him realize that Ah Song and Ningning both counted as orphaned girls. Ah Song's father died, her mother remarried, and she had a falling out with everyone at Hosokawa Castle—she really was a lone seedling. As for the Kinoshita family, all the male heirs were dead, leaving only Ningning and her sister, which was only a slight improvement over Ah Song's lot, and they still had Asano Nagasuke to rely on.
