As Michikatsu walked down an alleyway, he felt the sensation of being watched creeping up on him, and turned around to see if anyone was following his footsteps. When he saw that nobody was behind him, he sighed. "I need to calm down…" He then continued walking down the alleyway, only to then hear footsteps behind him. As he turned around, he became annoyed, and called out, "Okay, whoever's there, come on out! Stop fucking with me!"
Sure enough, he got an answer when the second demon of the trio sprung out from the darkness and tackled him to the ground, trying to grab at his sword. "Give me it! Give me it! Give me your sword, human!"
"Hell no!" Michikatsu struggled with him as the two tumbled around on the ground, with him keeping a tight grip despite the demon's attempts to take the sword away from him. "Let go of my sword!"
"Fuck you!" The demon then kicked Michikatsu in an attempt to get him to let go, but he refused. Finally, after more struggling, Michikatsu ripped the sword away from him, causing the demon to yell, "Come on!"
Michikatsu replied in disgust, "No way!" He then slashed off one of the demon's arms to push him back, causing the demon to scream in pain before his wounds healed and his arm began to grow back.
"My arm! Damn it, that fucking hurts!"
"Now it's my turn," Michikatsu replied before declaring his next attack with, "Breath of the Moon, First Form: Dark Moon, Evening Palace!" As a human, this attack consisted of a fast-moving horizontal slash, which managed to decapitate the demon swiftly and with ease. As his head fell to the ground, Michikatsu looked around and said to himself in frustration, "Damn it, I got too close to being killed!" When he began to walk out of the alleyway, thoughts stirred in his head of how close he came to dying, fueling his rage at himself and at others for managing to be better than him. He thought to himself, "Why am I not improving? I'm doing everything I can! Why am I hitting a brick wall?!"
…
Meanwhile, Yoriichi was already locked in a heated battle with the leader of the trio, who also was the strongest of the three demons. Yoriichi had suffered a few cuts so far as the demon he was fighting possessed the ability to rip off parts of his skin to form sharp projectiles like needles. As Yoriichi deflected many of the needles with his sword, he told the demon, "You just don't give up, don't you?"
"Of course not," the demon replied. "Why would I when I'm at such an advantage?! You're the one on the defensive, Tsugikuni Yoriichi!"
"Breath of the Sun, Seventh Form: Beneficent Radiance!" Yoriichi then jumped into the air and attacked the demon from above, cutting off both of his arms and slashing him across the back, injuring him severely. As he landed back on his feet, Yoriichi told him, "That hurt, didn't it?"
"Fucking human!" The demon ran a bit as his arms began to grow back, hoping to buy time before Yoriichi attacked him again. "Get back!"
Yoriichi instead readied his sword for another attack. "Breath of the Sun, Twelfth Form: Flame Dance!" Yoriichi then ran up to the demon and delivered a vertical slash down his body starting from his neck down before making a horizontal slash across his neck, decapitating the demon and killing him. As the demon's body fell to the ground and withered away, Yoriichi said to himself, "I wonder if there are any more…"
Then, Toshihiko came running from afar, yelling out to Yoriichi, "Tsugikuni-san! Tsugikuni-san!"
"Sasaki-kun!" Yoriichi then asked him, "Did you kill a demon?"
"Yeah," he replied as he caught up to him. "There's three of them! That's what the demon told me before I killed him."
"I already killed one," Yoriichi replied. "Which means the third is still out there. Hopefully my brother took care of that third one."
"By the way," Toshihiko then asked. "Did you get to use that arquebus?"
"Unfortunately, no," he replied as he pulled it off of his back and showed it to him. "But I can demonstrate how to fire it if you want."
Toshihiko shrugged. "Sure, why not?"
"Okay…" Yoriichi then pulled out a wooden apostle carrying gunpowder and a white rope. "This is a bit complicated to load, but once it is, it's devastating. It can go right through most armor."
"Really?!"
"Yeah," Yoriichi replied before he also pulled out a small fire piston and told Toshihiko, "Hold the match rope." As he held it, Yoriichi lit the match on fire with the fire piston before putting the latter away and holding the former with his left hand. "This rope burns very slowly, so it gives me time to load the arquebus."
"Fascinating…"
Toshihiko watched in anticipation as Yoriichi then loaded the gunpowder in, followed by a small metal ball from the end of the barrel before he rammed it down with a ram rod. He then blew on the match rope to keep it going before he placed it onto the gun's flash pan and then aimed it at a tree about fifty feet away. "Now, watch this."
With a single pull of a trigger and a loud blast, Yoriichi fired the metal ball into the tree, striking it with ease. Toshihiko was amazed, telling him, "That arque-whatever will change warfare in Japan forever."
"It already is," Yoriichi replied as he set the gun down. "Samurai in quite a few areas are already issuing these guns to their ashigaru. The Amago clan just crushed the Kikkawa clan earlier this year with these weapons. Maybe if they get smaller and get easier and faster to load, we could use them on demons. It wouldn't be difficult to make the miniature metal balls these things fire out of nichirin, after all."
"What about poisoning those metal balls?"
Yoriichi nodded. "Yeah, that wouldn't be a bad idea."
Michikatsu then ran up to them, telling the two, "I killed one of them! Did you two find any other demons? I heard a loud bang over here!"
"We already killed the other two," Yoriichi replied to him. "I was just showing my arquebus off to Sasaki-kun after I killed the demon I fought. I fired a ball to show him how it worked. Anyway, there were only three demons here, so we're all set to go back."
"That's good," Michikatsu replied as he sheathed his sword. "Let's head back once we give word to our crows about the mission."
Sure enough, Yoriichi's crow flew down and landed on the ground before the three of them, asking the trio, "How was the mission? Was it completed?"
"The mission was successful," Yoriichi told the crow. "We killed all three demons with no casualties on our side. Tell the Oyakata-same of our victory."
"Understood! Understood!" The crow then flew off into the night, racing to tell Shiro of the success of the mission.
…
Soon after midnight, Michikatsu returned home, with Tenko staying up and waiting for him. As he looked around with a candle, he saw Tenko waiting for him in the front room and asked her, "Are the kids asleep?"
"Yeah," she replied. "So, um, how did it go?"
"It went okay," he told her as he put his sword away. "Just okay, that's all."
Seeing that he most likely did not want to talk about it anymore, Tenko nodded and asked him, "So, another thing… How do you feel about this?"
"This? What are you talking about?"
"Us," Tenko replied. "We're living together, but not as husband and wife or even as lovers. Doesn't it feel awkward?"
"We've only been doing this for like a day and a half and you're already bringing this up?"
"I'm sorry," she replied as she twirled her hair with her right hand out of nervousness. "I just want to know if you're really okay with this. I know we split up on not the greatest circumstances, Michikatsu, but I want to put that in the past for our kids."
Michikatsu nodded. "I do, too. What happened between us doesn't matter at this point. I just want our children to see their father again. You heard what your one son said, right?"
"Yeah, and it hurt. It really fucking hurt to hear my own son wonder if I was his father." Michikatsu took a deep breath and wiped his eyes. "That stung. It made me realize how much I fucked up, Tenko." As the two continued their conversation, Michikatsu began to find himself eyeing up his ex-wife's body, perplexing him initially as he thought, "Wait… Why am I staring at my ex-wife? I thought I was done feeling this for her. It's like there's this feeling inside me telling me to take her now. It's… I don't think it's romantic. No… It's animalistic. Purely sexual."
Meanwhile, Tenko continued. "Yeah… I feel bad in a way, even though I can't blame myself. Maybe with me staying here for a bit, we can at least start off as friends again. I'd love to be friends with you and have you in the kids' lives, even if we aren't… If we aren't in love anymore."
Michikatsu could tell that she was a bit reluctant to say that they did not love each other anymore, also noticing that she was blushing a bit. "I can't shake this feeling," he thought to himself. "It's like my mind is telling me to not do this, but another part of me needs to."
"The kids went to bed well," Tenko continued. "No protests. They're really fascinated by your work as a demon slayer, Michi."
"Michi?" Michikatsu had not heard Tenko call him by that nickname since they broke up six years ago and he left her.
"Fine, I said it." Tenko sighed. "I just can't help it, okay?"
"Tenko."
"The two of us can be normal functioning adults living together without any romantic connection. I'm sure of it." Her tone of voice indicated she was trying to convince herself more than anyone else.
"Tenko."
"We won't need to do anything involving intimacy, okay? If anything, I'm just a renter, and you're the property owner. Of course, with the kids, you're much more than that, but I gue-"
"Tenko!"
Michikatsu then suddenly wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, which greatly surprised Tenko for a brief moment. When he split from her lips, Tenko asked him, "What the fuck was that for?!"
"I can't hold it in anymore," he replied.
Tenko did not reply to him with words, instead reaching in for a kiss herself after pausing for a few seconds to decide what she would do next. Within a few more seconds, Tenko was pinned to the floor as Michikatsu began to slowly strip her of her clothes and reach under them to feel up her chest. "Aaah… Michi…"
"I'm not holding back, Tenko." He then began to remove his own clothes as Tenko slipped out of her's, the two continuing to kiss as they did.
"Ah… Michikatsu, fuck me…"
"Of course."
"Fuck, your hands feel so good… You always were nice to me in bed, you know."
Michikatsu gave a faint smile as he slipped out of the last of his clothes, soon followed by Tenko. What happened next was a passionate lovemaking session, though the two of them largely had sex not out of true love, but merely out of sexual desire for each other as well as a way to relieve each other's stress and frustrations they had built up over the past six years, though it was clear the two did still harbor some romantic feelings for each other. Michikatsu once again saw Tenko as not just the mother of his children and his ex-wife, but also as a woman, and Tenko the same towards Michikatsu as a man.
Once it was over, the two fell asleep in the front room, not even bothering to go into a proper bedroom as Michikatsu kissed Tenko on the forehead. She told him, "That felt good. That felt really good."
Michikatsu replied, "We can make this a regular thing if you want."
Tenko smiled as she curled up beside him. "That would be nice."
