lover
To put it simply, these two complete each other. Out of all the other people around them, it's only these two that can each truly appreciate what the other has gone through in their life. Both of them have strained relationships with their fathers (though I think Rimudo's "strain" is a bit worse than Takiko's) and have both felt true despair and what it means to be completely alone in the world. While it's depressing that a pair with this many issues would form, it's not like they got together so they could lick each other's wounds. It's actually the opposite -- the two of them support each other during the hard times and become each others' pillar of strength. While it's true that opposites attract, people have to be similar on a basic level or they won't get along. Miaka and Tamahome were both energetic, fun-loving people and so they got along well. Likewise, Rimudo and Takiko are both very lonely and it's this loneliness that drew the two together. If Takiko herself had not been shunned by her father, there would have been no way she could understand how Rimudo felt. He, too, would know that she could never understand him, thus anything she'd try to say in consolation would feel like a cold comfort. So while it's sad, Rimudo could only accept Takiko because he could trust in her words.
Certainly, the two of them got off to a rather rocky start. Takiko had just been taken to Hokkan and was still suffering from her mother's death and her first love Oosugi's rejection to her declaration of her feelings. Rimudo, too, was still grappling with how he felt about his life and destiny and then -- just like that, the priestess he'd always resented suddenly appeared in his life. All he wanted was to get away from her and all she wanted was to go home. And yet, from the very beginning, before the two even realized that they were priestess and seishi, there was a connection between them. Even after Rimudo had been whisked away by Soruen and started to begin a "new life" in Kutou, he couldn't stop thinking about the girl who had saved his life (or tried to, at the very least). Though he and Soruen had come up with a new name for him to use in Kutou, when the Crown Prince Hakei asked him for his name, Rimudo found himself saying "Taki", much to his own surprise later. Takiko, too, couldn't stop thinking about him, even though she was annoyed that he had abandoned her like that.
Rimudo was rude to Takiko because he didn't want to be a seishi -- didn't want her to be a priestess. Later on, when finally confessing his love for her, he said that at that moment, he was only a man named Rimudo and she was only a woman named Takiko. In a sense, considering that he was only a seishi when in female form, the him that loved Takiko as a woman and the her that served Takiko as a seishi really were separate entities.
It's Takiko who saves Rimudo again when he is distraught by Soruen's death, but then it's Rimudo who tries to save Takiko from her fate of being devoured by Genbu by cruelly sending her home. In her absence, however, he is much like Tamahome after Miaka went home for a time -- listless and catatonic whenever her name is mentioned. She returns, much to his surprise and, he begrudgingly has to admit, his delight. The latest chapter ends with him asking her to become his wife then and there -- to do the deed, basically. The problem is, a priestess has to be pure to summon the god and then the bigger problem is: Takiko is dying of tuberculosis. What awaits these two and their relationship will simply have to wait for subsequent chapters.
« (