Few days short of a full month later, Rengoku Ruka went into labor.

Painfully, like any other pregnancy experienced by womankind.

Exhaustively, like any other first-time pregnancy experienced womankind.

It had happened, much to the relief of the midwives, caretakers and everyone else, in broad daylight.

While largely unspoken and kept hushed up throughout, worry had permeated the household since the matriarch's first round of labor-inducing contractions had begun racking her body, right before daybreak cast its first rays of sunlight over gradually awakening land.

No one said it but everyone thought it. Everyone knew it.

Childbirth, while it remained one of humanity's greatest miracles, typically involved blood. Human. Copious.

Demon's favorite food.

As distasteful as it was being made out to be, for a life-changing event as beautiful as the anticipated birth of a son and heir, Rengoku Ruka's labor, like many others before hers, was the equivalent to a feast for demonkind. Surrounded by people who clearly thought and felt so, one need not look at those unsmilingly stern, wizened faces to picture tautened facial features unanimously loosening at once into joyous relief the moment the eldest Rengoku son came along, bawling his enthusiastic greeting from his mother's loving arms to the world as it prepared to draw the blinds on daylight for the day.

While mother and son slept, word was sent out to Rengoku Shinjurō, who had been out on patrol in protection of his family.

While the Flame Hashira hastened back to his residence and wife to assume his long-awaited role as father, detailed records of birth were sent out to the family fortune-teller to assist in the arrangement of a proper, auspicious name for the child.

Meanwhile, Rengoku Ruka awoke, nursed her baby, and waited.

Successfully, for the swift return of her husband, who came blustering through the doorway to the nursing room. "Ruka, are you alright? Are you well? Our boy-"

"-My lord!" The most senior of accompanying caretakers burst out in immediate, scandalized reprimand to see him barge in, with a sweep of battle gear and unbound hair. "You mustn't come in here, unsanitary and dragging in half of the world's dirt in here! You will go get yourself cleaned up this instant!"

Feared as he was amongst demonkind, the Flame Hashira was putty in the interfering hands of the matron. "But my boy…-"

"-will wait for his father to wash up and come back." Called an amused Ruka after her husband's retreating back as he was being turned out of the room.

Between her gently-smiling face and the tatami below, their baby waved tiny fists sleepily.

Within the quarter hour, a properly-attired, weaponless Rengoku Shinjurō flew noisily back into the nursing room, skidding to a stop near his beloved on bent knees. "I washed up! I'm clean now! Can I hold our kid now? Please?"

"Of course." Both women smiled their approval at his beseeching face. "Here you go, my husband." With gentleness that rivaled his eagerness, Ruka carefully eased the sleeping infant from experienced arms into awaiting hands, adjusting his awkward posture with a mother's loving touch to completely accommodate their newborn's softness and vulnerability.

Deep in continuing slumber, the babe barely stirred beyond emitting noises reminiscent of a kitten's mewling, melting Shinjurō's hardened attitude to hear his firstborn whine.

"He… looks so much like me…!" Too tired for actual laughter, Ruka let laughing eyes do the replying instead. "But he has your eyes."

She leant into her husband's side. "He's sleeping, my dear."

"Yes," Nestling his cheek against the top of her head, he tried again. "but what I really meant was the shape of your eyes, Ruka."

"You had complimented me on the shape of my eyes too, towards the end of our first match-making session." Smiling softly at the memory, she joined her husband in cooing at their baby, watching him grimace when she added, "That exact moment was when I stopped thinking of you as a brute, my love."

"…Ruka!" Shinjurō began in dismaying protest, quieting down and reddening from the brief kiss his loving wife suddenly pressed to his cheek. Peering shyly at her out of the corners of embarrassed eyes, he brought up a new topic. "My wife, I know it is tradition for all Rengoku offspring to be formally named through clan fortune-telling but before we do the same for our boy, I will like your opinion on this."

Resting her thoughtful gaze ahead, Ruka nodded. "I did think of a name." In ruby red eyes danced flowering apricot trees, swaying their beautifully-laden tree boughs where they rose from soil in the courtyard. "Kyōjurō." Shinjurō followed her line of vision and attention back onto their baby's twitching face, flushed with health not unlike the rosiness of the flower petals swirling around outside.

Touching a callused finger to his eldest son's cheek, Shinjurō fought back hot tears welling up, finding it a battle harder than any of the hardest he had ever had to fight throughout his entire career as a demon slayer.

With a voice hoarse from emotion, he choked, "Rengoku Kyōjurō, our son."

…The boy was ten weeks old when the apricot flowers were still richly abloom.

Clearly, those were not the everyday apricot trees, stubbornly continuing in the heat of blossoming weeks after their supposed expiry, following the inevitable end of springtime.

Watching the oddity unfold alongside the growth of her child, Ruka had her suspicions clarified.

And so, she began to keep a look-out.

For hair and skin whiter than snow.

For an apparition more fairy than demon.

For the girl she had hoped for baby Kyōjurō's older sister,

"…Saki?" She called out on a moonlit night of waiting, in the exact same week baby Kyōjurō was physically able to wrap tiny fingers around larger ones adoring adults extended to him. "Are you there…? You're there, aren't you?"

Answered with rooftop rustling, she stepped in its direction from inside the nursing room, shedding her earlier tentativeness as she moved. "It's you up there, isn't it? You're here. My husband, the Hashira, isn't here. There aren't any demon slayers in my home tonight."

"…Nope." From the eaves hung Shirahara Saki, upside down and peering through the open window into Ruka's delighted face. "Over there," She indicated with narrowed eyes and a disapproving tilt of her chin in the direction of the gently-rocking crib. "That's a demon slayer in the making. Still counts."

"Oh… Saki," Sighing, Ruka crossed the room to the now lightly-rocking crib, bending her body over it and busying herself with its tiny, helpless occupant. Walking slowly back to where Saki still hung, she lifted preoccupied arms from her chest to hold her child out to her staring face, "Are you saying that this little baby here is going to come brandishing a sword after you?"

Gurgling loudly from an animated face, baby Kyōjurō grinned into the shocked face of his fairy big sister.

"Want to hold him?" Ruka briefly stopped her chuckling to generously offer.

"No." Saki righted herself to take a seat on the window sill, a picture of disinterest in contrast to Ruka's invitingness.

Hearing and acting on a completely different reply altogether, she dropped baby Kyōjurō into Saki's empty arms, leaving her to clasp in awkward hands the helpless, little human being by his armpits. "H-Hey! Ruka! What do you think you are doing, leaving him to me? Take him back! Take him back! He's drooling, he's drooling!" She screamed her panic over the top of Kyōjurō's fuzzy little head at his mother, whose enjoyment clearly outweighed the poor girl's predicament and her baby boy's apparent cluelessness.

Completely oblivious, all baby Kyōjurō did was to drool more, fist his tiny hand in unbound wavy hair the color of moonlight, and yank.

Hard.

Strands of gleaming white could be felt parting ways with her aching scalp.

Saki glared petulantly into his toothily-grinning face. "I wonder how annoying you would be when you can talk."

…

Well, she would soon find out, in another few human years.

"Hello, I am Rengoku Kyōjurō! What is your name?"

At the golden-haired child bobbing about on his feet and waving up at her, Shirahara Saki went back to leaning against the stretch of tree trunk where she had been tucked away amidst thick foliage for a good part of the night tonight.

Squeezing her eyes shut in a misguided attempt at peace, she attempted too to ignore the rustling and grunting to break out afresh at the foot of her tree following her lack of response. Still, she kept her eyes tightly shut despite the disturbance grating irritably on the rest of her inhumanly-heightened senses until all fell quiet and she opened them almost immediately to the same brightly-grinning face that had, a moment ago, been staring up at her from the ground below.

"Hello!" Toddler Kyōjurō shoved his face closer to her visibly, increasingly annoyed one. "I am Rengoku Kyōjurō. What is your name?"

She responded to his enthusiasm with a veil of vines, dropping it heavily between them with no more than crisp rustling and a very obvious roll of unnaturally green eyes.

It did nothing to deter him, however.

"…Hello!" His voice seemed nearer to her the last time she heard it repeat, just as shrilly, "I am Rengoku Kyōjurō…"

It was definitely nearer. Nearing…

"What is your name?" He pressed eagerly, latching tiny hands onto the bough underneath his bottom as he carefully inched his way towards the only other occupant in the tree, who seemed just as eager to keep away from him. "Do I call you 'Big Sister'?"

"…What does your mother say?"

"She says that she'd love it if I could." Leaning his head from side to side, he stubbornly attempted to peer past the gently-swaying tendrils of vine at her face but they were constantly moving, even though wind tonight was bleak. "Big Sister? I will call you that then." His tiny, staring face continued to dodge Saki's attempts at blocking him out. "My name is Rengoku Kyōjurō-"

"-Yes, I heard." Saki droned through the vine curtain. Gods. This kid was louder than his hair was bright. "Now, go away."

"I can't go away. I came out here to see you." The fleeting glimpses he had been steadily collecting of her disinterested face barely amounted to half of a full look. "And I haven't seen you yet. I want to see you but I can't-"

"-How did you know that I was here?" She interrupted the child's rambling with a question that, quickly enough, had her feeling like he had been anticipating it all along.

"The apricots!" Kyōjurō beamed. "I saw them blooming away from my room! I came out, and they were everywhere!" Raising a small hand to the overhanging clusters of silky flowers, pretty in varying shades of pink, he stared up in awed appreciation. "My mother told me that you made our oldest trees bloom apricot flowers when I was born. She told me that these flowers meant you, Big Sister."

"…Did she now?"

"All the time!" Seeing her face turn briefly to regard his through the lightly-undulating veil of vines, his childish grinning lit up anew. "So, I learnt to look out for your flowers!"

Saki narrowed disapproving eyes beneath furrowing brows. "It's late. It's nearly midnight. Did you sneak out here, all by yourself?"

"Nope!" Chin up in self-justification, Kyōjurō shook his head once, so hard, it sent blonde hair flying. "I didn't sneak out. I walked right out!"

"Walking out without your mother knowing is the same as sneaking out."

"But my mother knew!"

…Ruka?

Furtively, she peered at young Kyōjurō's face and seemed to glimpse the woman's recklessness in facial features that bore little to no physical resemblance to hers.

"…My mother knows about you coming by, even though she doesn't always know when. She also always knows whenever I come out here, and she always lets me."

"Well, she shouldn't." Turning her head away, she refocused her newly-severe gaze ahead in spite of the child's attempts at recapturing her attention. "It is late. There is danger out. There are demons out." Her eyes slid over to his golden ones, now solemn. "You are a Rengoku, you should know about them."

"I do." His speaking voice was low, but only as low as a child's voice could get in a situation that had proven itself many times over to overwhelm even adults. "I know all about demons." Now that the surrounding curtain of vines had stopped trying to block him out, he was able to poke his face through to stare at the older woman's unsmiling one. "I know you are one too, Big Sister."

Letting the vines fall loosely around his head where he had stuck it, Saki held Kyōjurō's gaze, wondering and wide-eyed with innocence, in a long look, which appeared to briefly deepen before she snapped her jaw at him in a display of mock aggression.

"You don't look delicious enough to eat." She grinned mischievously at his startled face, one of stunningly few throughout their interactions. "So, no worries, no demon's going to eat you. No demon's going to want to, least of all, me."

"But you don't eat humans anyway." He shrugged small shoulders, with energy telltale of potential for growth. "Fairies don't eat humans, least of all, one my fairy big sister went out of her way to save."

Kyōjurō grinned, one of the blindingly many since popping up at the foot of Saki's tree.

Saki frowned.

Of course. Of course, Ruka would have told her child all about that night of the Forest of the Undying. She had probably done so in the form of bedtime stories. They were probably chock full of content, adventurous and embellished to the last detail. She was most likely a heroine in them, and more fairy than demon, she abruptly realized from the awe shining in the boy's admiring face.

"…Brat."

"…Nope!" He insisted. "I am Rengoku Kyōjurō! And I still haven't gotten your name, Big Sister!"

"Stick to that."

"But why, when I can call you by your real name?" He scooted closer. "Tell me your real name, Big Sister."

"Go ask your mother instead."

"But why, when I am asking you here?" Before she could stop him, the child was already warming the spot of roughened bark right beside her, much to her consternation. "Get away from me-"

"-We should learn each other's names so that we can call each other by name and be closer!" As if he wasn't already so.

"I'm a demon whereas you're a human." Reaching a long, unnaturally pale finger over, she prodded kid Kyōjurō in his shoulder. "As such, there's no need for us to be calling each other by name and getting any… closer than this."

"Must there be a need?" He pouted.

"To keep you away, yes." She kept up the poking, the jabbing, the pushing.

Her continuous attempts at repelling the human child went nowhere, with him bouncing back each time and snuggling closer, more exuberant and clingier than before, and it was making her seriously consider throwing him off the tree altogether.

Oblivious, Kyōjurō clutched onto the very arm Saki had, just mere seconds ago, contemplated using to catapult him right out of her tree, enthusiastically chirping, "My mother always did say that need was nothing without reason."

"Oh, I have a reason. It's a good one. It's called, 'Leave the scary demon alone before she changes her mind and chomps down on you'. And when you finally do," She moved her finger from his shoulder to his forehead, grin widening to see his eyes cross to focus on the uncomfortably-sharp fingernail that protruded from the same fingertip. "You won't have need to know her name."

Kyōjurō's pout deepened. "…You really don't want to tell me your name?"

Saki's frowned loosened. "…You really want to know?" He nodded fervently, leaning in when she did, hair the color of moonlight falling over a shoulder to brush its ombre tips against his cheek. "I will tell you if you can show me how you will learn it." Watching as confusion creased his facial features, she was about to sit back in childish triumph when his brilliantly-smiling face suddenly swung up to her smugly-grinning one.

"I shall marry you!"

Green eyes the shade of young jade blinked, widened, then bulged inside eye sockets too small to contain her shock.

"…What?" She breathed more than gasped.

"Yes!" Exhilarated, toddler Kyōjurō cried to stunned, demon Saki. "I'll marry you! You'll have to tell me your name then, for you won't be my fairy big sister, but my fairy bride!"

Dwarfed by his enthusiasm, Saki found herself backing down even as she protested, "You, Rengoku brat, are clearly out of your tiny little mind. Don't be going around thinking and saying such absurdities."

"I'm not going to marry you now! After all, I'm only seven years old! Wait till I'm older, then it won't be absurd for me to marry you!" He puffed up in self-importance, with his crown of blonde spikes and upbeat demeanor making her feel as though it was the sun itself shining at her, without fear of crumbling into ashes in the minute.

"Kid!"

"Gah!"

Kyōjurō's squeal of pain thinned into a drawn-out, high-pitched squeak that again irritated Saki's enhanced hearing when she grabbed him forcefully by his visibly-flushed face, fingers pinching into but not piercing the tender flesh where they stretched his cheeks.

"I'm a demon!"

"I know!"

"You're a human!"

"I know!" His tinier, weaker self physically struggled against her adult, stronger one, managing to pull free of her grasp only after she had relaxed it. "But that's great, isn't it? It means that you won't grow old. You can stay young and pretty while I grow up!" Reaching into her lap, he took her larger hand in his smaller one as he smiled up at her with the vigor of a thousand suns. "Will you wait? I won't take long. I'd be fifteen, all grown up and calling you by name before you know it." Leaning close, he let the smiling widen into grinning, which warmed her face to see it despite incredulity marring what she refused to admit was blushing.