August 1, 1913
"So she ain't talkin' to ya anymore?" James had been told by Giyu of the incident from the 29th while the two met up after a mission with Kyojuro. "I can kinda see why. Normally, girls don't do that sorta thing so suddenly to someone they ain't married to."
"Yeah," Giyu agreed. "I wonder why exactly she did that."
"Wait," James immediately interrupted him. "You… You wonder why?"
"I mean," he shrugged. "I don't know. I just don't know."
James sighed and wiped his face in disbelief. "Jesus Christ… Has she ever told ya anythin' like 'I care about y'all' or somethin' that implies she likes you?"
"Likes me? I mean, she's my comrade."
"No, no no… I mean, does she like you as more than a friend?"
"Well," Giyu pondered to himself. "She did tell me one day that the moon was beautiful as we went to a mission together. When I asked her why she said that, she got a bit annoyed and looked away."
"The moon is beautiful?" James immediately recognized what he was talking about due to the books he had read on the trip to Japan. "Tomioka… Have you heard of Soseki Natsume?"
"Who?"
"He's an author and a poet," James explained. "He came up with that phrase as a way to tell people they loved each other. If Shinobu is saying that to you, try to figure out what she's really trying to say based on what I told you."
Giyu paused to think to himself for a half-minute before returning to reality to answer James. "Sorry, man. I'm stumped."
James immediately stood up. "I gotta step outta the room. I can't fuckin' believe this." He chuckled to himself as he stepped out. Once he was out of the room and closed the door, he screamed in frustration before laughing heavily, amused and also deeply annoyed by how dense Giyu truly was. "This can't be fuckin' real," he thought to himself. "There's no way he's this fuckin' dense. I gotta be dreamin'."
"Are you okay out there?"
"I'm fine, Tomioka!" He then stepped back in. "I'm fine… It's just… You can be too dense for your own good sometimes. I'm tellin' you, she loves you."
Giyu paused as the revelation fully hit him. "Love… Loves me?" He was at a loss for words, perplexed as to why Shinobu would love someone like him. "Loving someone like me," he thought to himself. "Who would subject themselves to that?"
"Yeah," James nodded. "It's easy to see once y'all think 'bout it."
"Fuck," Giyu muttered to himself. "Why… My only question is what she sees in me. Seriously, what?"
James sighed, realizing he was once again dealing with some extreme self-loathing, though not to the near-suicidal levels Obanai possessed. "Oh my God, not this shit again… Look, Tomioka, I already went through this nonsense with Iguro, and I don't really feel like puttin' myself through that again, so I'll let y'all solve this by yourself."
"Wait, I-" Giyu's attempt to keep the conversation going failed once James walked out of the room. He was now left alone to sift through his mind and find an answer for his own feelings for Shinobu. "What did he mean by 'this nonsense'?"
…
August 2, 1913
As Shinobu wrote down a combat report late at night after returning from a mission, Kanao walked in and asked her, "Shinobu-sama, are… Are you alright?"
Surprised to hear the question come from her, she turned around in her chair and faced her, replying, "Yeah, I'm fine. What's going on, Kanao?"
The latter then sighed before taking out her coin and flipping it. Once it landed on tails, she continued the conversation, telling her, "Shinobu-sama, I don't believe that. You've been quiet since yesterday. Did something happen?"
"What makes you think that nonsense?" Shinobu tried to deny anything was wrong. "What do you think is wrong?"
"Well," Kanao inferred. "You were kinda weird after you gave Tomioka-sama his haircu-"
"Nothing happened," Shinobu immediately interrupted her with, raising Kanao's suspicions.
"I never asked you if anything happened," Kanao pointed out before flipping her coin again. Once it landed on heads, she asked her, "Did he do something to you?"
Shinobu paused for half a minute as she gathered her thoughts. "I… Well… No, he didn't do anything. It was me…"
"You did?"
The former then took a deep breath. "Kanao, you need to promise me that whatever I say in this room never leaves it under any circumstances." Kanao immediately nodded silently. "I… I kissed Tomioka-san while I gave him his haircut."
"You did what?!"
"Something just came over me," Shinobu replied, guilty over what she did. "I just… Something in my heart told me to do it, and I did it. Why… I don't know. I just… I keep thinking about him. Being so close to him like that, so intimate… It just drove me mad. I overstepped my boundaries and forced myself on someone who probably doesn't even think of me that way."
Kanao paused, taking it all in. "I… See…"
"I'm sorry I'm ranting about this so much," Shinobu apologized to her. "It's just that I've never thought of myself as someone who would be attractive enough to become someone's wife. I always said that my sister got the better half of my parents' looks. I don't think he feels the same way about me at all, and I don't blame him."
"Okay," Kanao replied before smiling and walking out of the room. "Have a good night, Shinobu-sama." Once she shut the door, her smile faded away, and she thought to herself, "Why must she sell herself so short?"
…
August 3, 1913
Late at night, Enmu and Patrick boarded a train together as part of an experiment to see how to conduct their train attacks later on in September. Both had submitted fake names to board the train, which would take them from Yokohama to Nagoya. The time was 8 PM, and once they were past the city and in a more remote area, they could begin their attack. Before they did, however, they had to do something else.
Patrick told Enmu as the two sat down in a seat, "I'll get ready."
Then, an attendant walked over to them and asked, "Tickets, please."
As Enmu handed him their tickets, he told him, "Have a nice night, sir." Unbeknownst to the attendant, Enmu had secretly wiped a small bit of his blood on the ticket, and now that the attendant touched it, he was linked to him and his sleep induction/dream invasion powers. Enmu told Patrick as he walked away, "I'll let him create his own dream instead of using an architect. I doubt he has a weaponized subconsciousness, so we'll be safe when we enter."
Around 8:30, thirty minutes after the attendant collected their ticket, Enmu quietly snapped his fingers and grabbed a hold of Patrick's arm. The two of them then began to slowly and methodically count backwards together. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…" Once they both reached the number one, they closed their eyes and fell asleep instantly.
When the two closed and then opened their eyes inside the dream world, they awoke to find they were now in a daytime setting in a bustling rural town marketplace. Patrick told Enmu, "Well, this seems like a nice place."
"Indeed," Enmu replied. "Let's fuck it up a bit." The two of them then pulled out Type 38 rifles that were commonly used by the Imperial Japanese Army at the time and aimed them at the crowds, stunning the people within them before they opened fire. The rifles they used were based on real rifles they had seen that another American demon had stolen after a raid on a small army outpost. As they cut down several people in the crowds, Enmu shouted, "Why must you all run?!"
"Please," begged a woman as she fell to the ground. "Don't shoot me! Don't fucking shoot me!"
"Too late," Patrick replied before drawing a revolver and shooting her twice in the chest, killing her instantly. "You're not real, anyway." He then emptied the revolver out into the fleeing crowd, knocking down two more people with four shots.
"You really are a great shot," Enmu complimented him. "Experience in the War of Northern Aggression must have taught you some great methods."
"Fighting those fucking Yankees sure did," Patrick agreed. "I wasn't made a Brigadier General for nothing, after all!"
Then, a man's voice behind them shouted, "Who are you two?!" As they turned around, they found themselves face to face with the same train attendant, this time dressed in normal non-work clothes. "Why did you infiltrate my dream?!"
"Because we could," Enmu explained to him before he reloaded his rifle with another clip and shot him twice. "Allow me to tell you that if I kill you with this rifle, you won't wake up. Normally, if one dies in a dream, they wake up like normal, but as for you, my friend, that won't happen sadly." He chuckled as he then shot him a third time in the head, killing him inside the dream and splattering his brains all over the ground. "Because those who I kill not only die, but lose their Spiritual Core!"
"So," Patrick asked him. "Is that it?"
"Now we just gotta make a Kick Event to get ourselves outta here," Enmu replied. "Or allow ourselves to get killed, since this man's subconscious is bound to start attacking us now." Indeed, the crowd which had once fled was now returning with a variety of clubs and blades as they angrily marched towards the two demons. "We don't have much of a purpose staying here, so we might as well just let it happen."
"Die, you monsters!" A man from the crowd then walked up to Patrick and stabbed him several times, killing him inside the dream before the man did the same to Enmu. "Die, die, die!"
Once both of them woke up, the two took several deep breaths before looking around and checking the time. It was now 8:32 PM, even though they had spent eight minutes inside the attendant's dream. Patrick told Enmu, "I know where that attendant is sleeping for the night. When his colleagues wake up tomorrow morning, they'll be in for a Hell of a surprise when they find his dead body. So, when are we attacking?"
"Probably in another hour or so," Enmu replied as he wiped his eyes and yawned. "You said a few of your men were waiting at the next stop, right?"
"Yeah," he replied with a nod. "Once they get on, we can take control of this train."
"You know," Enmu said to him as he looked out of the window at the moon. "The moon looks nice tonight. We picked a good night to experiment."
"No kidding," he agreed with a nod. "Victory will be our's under the pale blue light of the moon." He then pulled out a small coin and looked at its tails side, noticing two deep scratches on it. "And with that, I know for a fact we're no longer dreaming. Have you set a Totem yet?"
"Indeed," Patrick replied, pulling out a musket ball and then rubbing it with his fingers. "If I'm in a dream, this musket ball will multiply into two musket balls when I rub it with my fingers."
Enmu smiled. "How unique. Mine is more tame. This coin has two scratches on the tails side in reality, but in a dream, it has no scratches."
