Giyuu's POV

Akaza, Upper Moon 3, was impossibly strong. Perhaps the strongest man in the world, once upon a time, when Muzan was ailing and Kokushibou was apathetic and Douma had embarked on his path that was twisted, dark, overgrown…

To eventually meet with my path that was twisted, dark, overgrown.

But returning to the focal point: Akaza was impossibly strong. Stronger than me, and Tanjiro, respectively, maybe even combined. Is that why he lost? Only God knows, and God won't tell us the answer. I only vaguely remember seeing a woman – a little woman – fluttering in and out of his arms like mist, pleading him to come down with her to the world beneath the earth. And he would go.

He would descend to his heaven, anyone else's hell, and be at peace.

But I will never have that satisfaction.

As God above has mandated –

Forever I shall resist.

Forever I shall fight.

Forever I shall die.


But I still have that, don't I?

That one dream.

Not my own, but…

Resonant, as if it was.


"Shinobu Kochou is dead," said the crow. "Shinobu Kochou is dead, killed by Upper Moon Two."

Kneeling before my makeshift fire, I let the pain be warmed away somewhat, and took out the letter. The battle's done, Tanjiro's unconscious over there, and I'm the only one still up, though bloodied. I take the remnants of my sword, and slit the envelope open. It's difficult, because my hand's shaking, but I manage. Folding out the contents, I began to read, and there I am, in that field of white chrysanthemum…


Prologue

February 1912


Shinobu's POV

There's this framed picture I keep on my desk; I'm sure you've seen it before. It's a photo of a toddler at a midsummer picnic, clutching the hand of her older sister and precariously balancing in the other a big slice of melon that she appears to be struggling to fit in the small 'o' of her mouth. That child is me, eight at the time, and the person whose palm I am gripping, my sister Kanae; twelve. Behind me stands a tall, smiling woman in a flowing white dress, her hands planted on my shoulders: this is my mother. My father is the one operating the camera. Written on the corner in faded ink and perfect handwriting is the simple, almost deadpan phrase: "celebrating Shinobu's recovery".

Such was a typical scene in the life of the Kochou family – my family. Although I have no memory of that summer's day, no recollection of whether I managed to get that piece of melon in my mouth, if I ever savoured the juicy reward, I do remember that we had gone on the excursion in order to celebrate the breaking of pneumonic plague that had infected me a few weeks prior and which had shadowed the household in an air of gloom for the duration of my affliction. This is a detail which will strike a chord with you further on – but as for me, the point I'm trying to make now is one of remembrance, or rather, a lack thereof.

'To not remember much', as you already know, is a label that can be applied to my childhood as a whole, and is a feeling you yourself are accustomed to as well. Your sister Tsutako and her apple–eyed fiancé; my sister Kanae and the mother who was forever struggling – at some point, we'd forgotten them all. Perhaps it was the fear of forgetting again which spurred me into writing this letter. Make no mistake, however, this isn't a tale about them. I want to keep their memory alive, yes, and I will do so by immortalising them in pen and paper, but I won't let myself be a slave to sentimentality. I won't let you, either. And in order to do that, we have to go back to the beginning.

To the very, very beginning.

A beginning – quite uncanny of the tale I'm trying to tell.

For every story has to start somewhere, does it not? Judas wasn't always a traitor and David wasn't always king. Likewise, I wasn't always an orphan, wasn't always a demon slayer…

Wasn't always in love with you.

The earliest memories of my life are of being coddled and cosseted by my mother whilst being wafted in the scent of wisteria incense and flowers. I was born on the 24th of February, 1903, right on the doorstep of a new century, by then a time when modernisation and the notion of modernisation had become general all over the world, yet still very much clashed with the ways of old.

By the time I came to, my family was already wealthy. The first recollection I have of my father is of a slender young man, clearly of the diligent sort, with sparkling purple eyes, slick black hair which was always combed back in a style, and a beautiful mouth which contained a voice warmer than the balmiest summer's day. He was a pharmacist by trade, and had made his fortune compounding medicine for aristocrats around the nation. Western medicine, ironically. It was through this that he met my mother: the sick daughter of a widowed, expiring nobleman who appeared not too far from death's door himself.

The story goes that the electricity between them was almost instant. Both objectively and subjectively speaking, it's easy to see why: my mother was a woman of utmost pedigree, remarkably down-to-earth considering her background, and it was perhaps this balance combined with her gorgeous appearance that made her so attractive. Though she never left her hometown, she was a worldly person. My father often told us children how her pink eyes glimmered when he recounted his travels to her, and how they dulled whenever the conversation managed to weave its way back to the topic of her sickliness, and the way it relegated her to the confines of a cloistered estate. That I never got to see that side of her – she occupied the role of the stern parent in contrast to the relative way our father spoiled us – made no difference to me, and I loved her all the same.

In any case; cue the meeting, picture the scenario, and one can imagine what happens next: the girl recovers, her dad dies, and in a flurry of youth, leaps into my father's arms and marries him. They moved down to Shikoku and settled in the city of Gunchū, opening a practice as was my father's dream, conceiving Kanae a short while later, and me a few years after that.

We had our residence constructed quite-a-ways from the town centre, in a valley of maple and wisteria trees which oscillated between a rich orange in the autumn and a pastel purple in the spring. The slope which our house sat upon could have passed for one of the prettiest in Japan, and owing to the nature of the countryside, teemed with all manners of flora and critters and anything else children have a natural fondness for. Our home was sheltered to the north by a tall mountain, which gave way to other jagged spurs that formed a ring around our homestead and that would become blanketed with snow in the winter.

Our house was built in a modest fashion – a result of my father's residual humility as he grew up poor – with plain wooden beams that overlapped over each other, filled in with white walls and topped with a pointed adobe roof, making it look almost cartoonish. The interior my mother proclaimed as her domain. She furnished the hallways in exotic tiles, stones and woods, with glistening marbles and rich mahoganies. Rooms were populated with complicated appliances and outlandish furniture, most of them having been imported from abroad. I remember especially fondly a blue porcelain stove that was an heirloom from my maternal grandfather. It was so tall and wide that it nearly filled the entire room it was stored in, and painted on its sides were pictures of monkeys, tigers, and foxes. Sometimes I would close my eyes and imagine myself among them, very much like how Mowgli befriended and mingled with the animals of the Seoni rainforest.

My days I mostly spent wandering in and out of the halls of the estate and the garden, clutching to Kanae's side. When I was born, and I saw the inquisitive pink eyes staring down at me in the half-light of the bedroom, solitary from the cooing of the adults, I found in them an instant endearment. For the entirety of my childhood, and a good part of my adolescence, my older sister had been my best friend. The gap in our ages made little difference to me for we were both children in a world of adults, and, since in those days all girls were kept sheltered in their homes, my youthful sense of propriety helped solidify that.

Much of the time, my father was away working from home, leaving us children alone under the prying eyes of our mother, who more often than not wasn't prying enough to keep us in one place. As is with most children, we were mischievous. Sometimes we would run around the house and toss marbles at each other and imagine that we were having a war. Kanae, with her long arms, was always the superior thrower. I, however, could throw the superior tantrum. After being hit at some point in a match, I would tumble to the ground – purposely dramatic – and pretend to cry. Partly out of inherent gentleness and partly out of fear of incurring mother's wrath, Kanae would rush to me and begin hugging me or kissing me or anything else she could think of to comfort a bawling child, which is when I would strike: a marble, hidden behind my back and traveling at a frightening speed, would hit right between her two eyes and she would go crashing to the floor: "Gotcha!". In retrospect, my strategy was a very evil one, and it only worked time and time again because more often than not, I wasn't feigning tears.

It's not as if we were always up to nonsense, however. My parents stocked a bookcase in the lounge that towered high to the ceiling. Often, I would take a seat on some pillows and Kanae would fetch a step ladder – she'd trace her finger over the books' spines and say their names out to me, and when I picked one, we'd spend the whole day going through it, often at a snail's pace, for neither of us were particularly talented in literature. As you might've already inferred, a favourite of mine was The Jungle Book. I was fascinated with the exotic setting of the Indian jungle, of talking tigers, empathic troop horses, and prideful pythons. It was perhaps this singular book which fueled my latent interest in the world outside Japan, an interest you know so well. That, and something else…

Though as much as I make it sound, we weren't the sole inhabitants of the estate. My parents discovered, rather haphazardly, that my mother was incapable of nursing Kanae when she first came to, and so subsequently employed a wet nurse for a major part of her infancy – so major, in fact, that the period of her stay overlapped with my being born, and she simultaneously became my wet nurse as well. Her name was Eréndira; a mysterious, soft-willed lady with shimmering blonde hair and emerald eyes.

Eréndira lived with us on the homestead, in her own separate room of the house, and both Kanae and I spent a good portion of our childhoods around her. She was young when we first employed her – around seventeen, eighteen – and due to her awkward age she straddled the curious boundary between doting mother and charitable older sister. Maybe this is partly why, when we out grew the habit of nursing and become more aware of her unusual mystique, we were attracted to her so. Although we had no explicit reason to think so, we always knew that Eréndira wasn't from here. She grew up alongside us with the widest eyes and palest hair out of anyone we knew, and her improper Japanese was flavoured with a foreign zing. Our childish intuition was proven correct when one day she inadvertently revealed that she was from Portugal: the land of castella, Fado, and peri-peri chicken, as our encyclopedia told us. I was instantly intrigued.

When asked about herself, however, she would defer my questions with this: "My heart is in Japan, my body belongs to Asia, and my name to Portugal. I will say no more." And indeed she would say no more. Though despite this, she was more than willing to share stories of her native Portugal.

She described it as a mountainous land, rich in culture and artistry, where the cork trees outnumbered men; where dense towns straddled the valleys and pulsed under the Mediterranean sun. The land of eternal daytime, white masonry, and pointed brick rooves, where people freely took siestas on their balconies at midday whilst basking in the view of a glazing-blue sea; people of all kinds, for their country had been the country of the Phoenician, the Roman, the Visigoth, the Moor, and the Christian.

I was absolutely fascinated with her description, and saw Portugal as a kind of heaven. Not that I didn't like Japan, but because I'd stayed there my whole life, in the same town, in the same house, rarely going out, and I was beginning to tire of it. But my fantastic impression was quickly dampened. "It got bad," Eréndira would say, "that's why I left." Bad in what way, she never specified. Perhaps I should have known from the beginning that it was a white lie, meant to discourage my growing infatuation with the outside world. But since I didn't, I was swayed from the Portuguese dream, and to this day a part of me still wonders if what Eréndira said is true. The void Portugal left, however, soon rose above its humble country origins, and soon I found myself yearning to see the wide world in its entirety.

After we were in no need of a wet nurse anymore, Eréndira was given another job as an assistant in my father's practice, and all seemed well. I never really did get the full picture as to how she ended up in Japan, and never will. The nanny who we cherished so much is now dead – and has been for over a decade. Her departure left Kanae and I heartbroken, and in the gap year between that and the departure of everyone else we chose not to speak of her.

Until one day we did.

"Country deputy came by yesterday."

It was a bleak February morning, and during breakfast, that I looked up from our perfectly square chabudai table that supported a mosaic of perfectly arranged dishes, and met my father's words.

"He said an opening's appeared in a private school not too far from here, and that it's about time you go."

School – an alien term to me at the time. Something I'd only read about and never seen for myself. Oh – that's right. Kanae went to one. But what from she told me, it didn't seem the most idyllic place.

"…Why should I?" I replied.

"The law says every child has to go," he said. "I reckon we've been keeping you out for too long, what with your sickness last year and all that. And it's the same one Kanae's going to, as well. Besides; you're nine now. I think it's about time you ought to. Your mother too."

My mother, who had finished breakfast quite some time ago and had returned to the loom in the corner of the room, stopped the dancing motion of her fingers that manipulated the yarn.

"Not ought to. Must," she corrected my father, before facing me. "Education's important for kids. Especially for their future. Especially in these times."

"But ma," I said, "you never went to school."

"—That's because I couldn't. But you can. So you should, just like Kanae."

I looked helplessly at my sister, and she turned away from me. My father cleared his throat and leaned his back towards the ground.

"Your mother's right," he continued. "These days… well… I don't know. Something's in the air. Japan – the whole world – isn't how it used to be. Back in my time, things used to be simpler. But I'm not saying it was better. Your ma, when she talks about not going to school, it wasn't because of her sickliness or her not being smart enough or anything like that, but because she was a girl. And by the time she could, it was too late. Nowadays, its different. Anybody can get a proper education. You might not know this, but…" – his speech faltered for a moment – "I never went to school either. Or rather, I couldn't. Too poor for it. And as a result, I had to toil my entire life to get where I am now." He lifted his hand from under the table, and stroked my face briefly. "I don't want that to happen to Kanae and you. These days, if you di–"

"Miyata." my mother warned.

"No, um… 'go away', the government will find any reason to take your stuff, your money, everything, or at least a good part of it. Maybe not right now, but in the future. Neither am I saying anything is going to happen to us, but at some point, you know…" the words died on his lips. Silence persisted for a while, and seeing my father so quiet, I almost felt sorry for him.

My mother's hands froze as he said it.

"Do I… really have to go?"

"Yes, of course."

"And Eréndira? What would she want?"

"Eréndira?" my father repeated, falling silent for a moment, before smiling for the first time that morning. "Eréndira would want you to go too."

And so, it was decided. The next day my father went to enroll me in the school, and came back with a hamper containing a big, bombastic letter of acceptance emblazoned with the title: Shikoku International School. I remember not feeling particularly sad, nor happy – just a slight anxiety – that half of my days from then on were to be dedicated to learning things I didn't especially wish to learn, but Kanae was there to reassure me. "It's not so bad," she said, "you'll meet new friends, and have plenty of fun in break time. And also, I'll be there with you."


On the 27th of February, 1912, Kanae and I were plucked from bed at an hour when darkness still befell the sky and ridden in a carriage through a town which I had never seen before so early in the morning. The thick winter clothes I had been stuffed in weighed me down like a cast, and the scent of drying tuna and kelp (Gunchū was a fishing town) was alien to my tentative nose. We arrived at the campus when the head of the sun was just beginning to peak above the horizon. For several moments the carriage stood still in the parking lot, and I stared unmoving at the vast complex of buildings. Never before had I seen something so intimidating. The structures populating the campus were colourless, hard and vertical. Between them was a sea of concrete, broken up only by occasional patches of dying garden, reflecting the colour of the bleak sky and upholding on it a formless motley of children that dawdled in-between each other. In the early moments following dawn, the shadows cut by the buildings of the school seemed long and clean.

Kanae got off the carriage and helped me down, bags following soon after. My mother repeated something she said earlier and kissed me on the cheek. My father did the same, but said this: "Don't bring home a boyfriend!" – my mother hit the back of his head – "Just kidding…"

With a heavy heart I bid my parents farewell, and stood still as I watched the charcoal-black carriage disappear down the street, the realisation dawning upon me only then that I was truly, truly alone.

Only that I wasn't.

Kanae had since left my side and entered the company of two similarly-aged, not so similar-looking girls. Among the vast crowds of faceless people I naturally felt the incentive to join them. Upon approaching them, I observed their appearances. They were both brunettes; thin with small bellies and arms which dangled from their sockets like noodles, but one was shorter (still taller than me), and seemed better footed against the wind that was now beginning to blow. Both of them were in poor and severe winter clothes. Something told me that they were siblings, and I was proven right when Kanae snatched me by my shoulders and introduced me: "this is my sister, Shinobu. Shinobu, these are the Hideki sisters. My friends. Say hi."

Friends?

Up until that point I was under the impression that I was her only friend.

"…Hi," I murmured, looking down.

"Ooohhh, she's quite the cutie, isn't she?" the taller one said.

"Yeah… look how nice her hair is. And her skin. And her eyelashes. Oh, oh, how old is she?" the shorter one said.

Kanae nodded, as if taking pride in me. "Nine," she answered, and they gawked a bit.

"Nine? But she looks…"

"…so little." the other one finished. By then I was under the belief that traveling the world was an experience reserved only for the strong and able (an inferred notion, since most of my worldly knowledge then was acquired from dramatised ancient accounts of explorers, voyages, and lands), so to call me weak or anything close to that I took as the gravest of insults.

Sensing my annoyance, Kanae waved them silent, and soon the conversation drifted to other topics. For the most part I stayed out of it, tuning in occasionally. From what I could discern they talked about petty, uninteresting things, and I received the subtle impression that Kanae wasn't too into the chat either. Disinterested as I may sound, though, one segment did stand out to me:

"…and that's how he ended up like that. Oh, oh, by the way, did you hear about the fire in Matsuyama a few days ago?"

Matsuyama being the town bordering Gunchū to the north.

"Hasn't everyone?"

"But there's been some new details released about it. Apparently, it was… um…"

"Arson."

"Yeah, arson! You know, when people set things on fire on purpose."

"You're lying. Liarrrrrr!"

"No, it's true. Swear!"

"But then who'd do something like that?"

"I dunno. From what I heard, the place belonged to some rich old lady and whoever burned it down just got sick of her. Or wanted revenge for something. Or was just a psycho. Or–"

"There seem to be a lotta crazy people running around these days…"

"My parents keep telling me to be careful. That everyone's becoming – what's that word they use? – fanatics. Slaves of the state. Zombies. Or that's at least how the government wants you to be. And that schools nowadays are a trap – meant to indoctrinate kids."

'Government' – I had come to view it as quite the intimidating word. At least, that's how everyone around me used it.

"What's that mean?"

"—My parents also. But I've heard them saying that's why they're sending us to an international school. That it's because it's one of the few places free from the system."

"…What system?"

"You know, the way things work. Everyone nowadays has to be totally loyal to the emperor – that Mutsuhito* guy – and they teach you that in school. Also stuff like boys should be soldiers and to be anything but is disgraceful. And those who don't comply are forced to."

*A/N: Emperor Meiji's personal name. 'Emperor Meiji', though it is his most well-known title, is a posthumous name, so using it would be historically inaccurate, since he only died July of that year.

"But back to the fire. Some people said they saw someone enter the house right before it started. Keep in mind, this was in the middle of the night."

"But that could mean anything. Maybe it wasn't arson and he just forgot to put out a candle or something? Some people are given too much credit for their intelligence…"

"I don't know. My parents were the ones who told me and I didn't ask 'em."

Though I stopped listening then, the conversation lingered with me for some time after that, and only later would I understand the significance of it.

Their talk was cut short when the rampant clanging of a bell split the air and the loitering crowds suddenly started flocking into the buildings. To see something previously aimless so swiftly gain direction bewildered me. Kanae gasped, as if realising something. "That's your cue to go," she said. "I'll show you to your classroom." And she yanked my hand and we disappeared into the crowd.

The interior of the school smelled of musk and old carpet and was far too crowded for comfort. For almost everyone was taller than me, as we slid through the gaps between people it felt as if I was trespassing in the domain of giants. Though none of them paid any mind to me, it always felt like I was being watched, as if they had eyes on the bottom of their chins, and instinctively I gripped Kanae's hand harder, and pleaded her to walk a little faster.

We walked only for a short while before we stopped again. To Kanae's beckon, I looked up. We stood at the end of the hallway, and before us was a shutter with a plaque attached to it that read: Class 2A – Grade 3. Rampant chattering shook the room from the inside, and through the paper walls I could see silhouettes merging madly in and out of each other, oscillating between human figures and shapeless blots. The sight of it inexplicably brought to mind the phrase 'Monkey House'. If only I had Mowgli by my side to help tame it.

"Hoo… their teacher must hate 'em. I know I would," Kanae said. She turned to me. "Well? Got butterflies in your throat? A knot in your stomach?"

Kanae was spot on. And her improper taunting certainly didn't help it.

"I was the same, believe me. But it really isn't so bad. People here are nice… should be, at least. Just go with the flow and eventually you'll wash up alongside some treasure…" – I had no idea how that allegory was supposed to make me feel better – "too bad the principal is an asshole. But you won't see him often, so no worries."

It was the first time in my nine years of life that I'd heard anyone swear, though strangely enough, it only upped my respect for Kanae. Most explorers had foul mouths, after all. For a moment I forgot my anxiety, but in the next instant, the shutter sifted open, I felt two hands grip my shoulder, and I was pushed inside. When I turned around, I saw Kanae waving at me, nefarious smile plastered over her pretty face and lips mouthing something incomprehensible. Then she grabbed the door and slammed it closed and suddenly I was all alone in the Monkey House, with no Mowgli to accompany me, no dear sister whose side I could hide behind.

I scoured the room for anything familiar. True to imagination, the classroom was akin to a zoo. What looked like a homeroom for fifteen was filled with over thirty. Children sped in-between desks and ducked behind chairs, throwing papers and pens and planes and anything else they could get their oily hands on, and those that weren't clot into groups that stood in the corners and kept to themselves. Neither of the groups noticed me when I came in, and thankfully, I spotted a chair in a relatively devoid side of the room, and I slid in unobserved.

Thus began my first day of my school.

An uneventful first day, for the most part.

Aside from the fact, of course, that there wasn't a second.

I sifted through my classes with neither pleasure nor distress, and did my school work conscientiously; I wasn't the only new face, apparently, and it was due to this that my teachers took little notice of me. I learned things I hadn't known before, of course, but this only meant to me that I might've went through the next day as well as the previous.

Break came. The splitting bell shook the air once again, and suddenly everyone was up from their seats and spilling out the classroom. It was only a matter of time before it was empty. Empty, or so I thought.

One boy had entered the room.

He had sand coloured hair –

Eyes of green jade –

Kept his hands in his pockets –

And was a few years older than me, around Kanae's age.

"Wanna know something?" he said, out of the blue. "The city of Dejima was up until 1854, the only place in Japan where trade with Portugal was allowed to happen. The Netherlands and China, too…"

"What're you telling me this for?" I asked, wary. I slinked a bit into my seat.

"You stare a lot at the map…" – he pointed to the atlas on the wall – "…I don't know. I just thought you might be interested."

He took his hands out of his pockets, and came closer to me. He said his name was Roman de Acosta, a half-Portuguese, half-Chinese expatriate, that, for reasons unknown, had managed to find himself in Japan. I told him my name, and he had this to offer:

"Shinobu, huh? That's nice. Reminds me of vampires, but the good kind, of course."


Roman de Acosta was never my friend, but for that half of a day we spent together, he came pretty close to being. He reminded me inexplicably of someone, both in appearance and manner, and after a while of deliberation I determined it to be Eréndira. He led me around the school grounds and explained to me what this room contained, what that building was for, what that woman taught, where that kid came from, and so on, so forth. He seemed to be plenty knowledgeable of how things worked around here, but when I asked him how long he'd been here, I'd learned he was new as well. "Common ground between us," he commented. "Though I'm sure you'll find there's much more."

He told me about this room in the school that was all garden, that nobody else knew about and in which he often spent recess in with his other friends, playing and chatting and doing what all kids do. I didn't find the prospect of meeting them very appealing; but he was so insistent that I join them I could not refuse. He took me down a few hallways and stopped in the middle of another. He pointed to the door before us and said: "This is it. Here's the place."

Opening it, he revealed a rich garden, carved out of a six tatami-mat sized section of the earth, made up of a green terrace that upheld a bountiful selection of flora – an uncanny sight for February – that had a river of white sand weaving through the grass, and a maple tree in the middle that was just starting to turn green. It was warm in there, and the verdant outcrop had an open ceiling and was surrounded by wooden walls. Roman bent down and pinched a grain of sand, and said someone lived on the school premises and that this was supposed to be their zen garden.

Two boys leaned against the tree trunk. One was tall and skinny and strict-looking, the other friendlier in appearance and built closer to the ground.

"Uriel. Santaniel," Roman said. "I've brought her."

The way he said it sounded real ominous to me. Roman sat me down on the grass and asked me something, still standing.

"Tell me, Shinobu, you ever wanted to travel the world?"

I nodded.

"I thought so. She always told me how you did," he replied. "Well, me too. Used to, anyway. Then I wisened up. Saw the world for what it really is. See, on the other side of the sea… is the enemy. Fiends. Slavers. Killers…"

"That's not true," I said. "There're plenty of good people."

He didn't look surprised at my interruption, and asked me if I had ever met someone from the outside.

"I have," I replied. "A lady from Portugal. She was real nice."

"And what was her name?" he asked.

"Eréndira…"

"And her surname?"

"I never asked."

Roman folded his arms and looked to the sky, at nothing.

"Strange," he replied. "I also happened to know an Eréndira."

Silence set in. Roman and the two boys made no move, and I wondered, when the bell rang to indicate the end of break, if then was my cue to leave. As I tried to stand from the grass, however, he stopped me.

"This country is the land of the infidel. It is no better than the rest. But I wonder…" – and Roman looked down and pointed at me – "if the enemy is both here and out there, where does one go to be safe?"

He stepped forward…

"The answer is nowhere. They will go nowhere because they can go nowhere. Therefore, the only thing they can do…"

…and caressed my cheek.

"Is to kill the enemy."

And he pulled his hand into a fist and slammed it into my stomach. Then came another, and another. I don't – and can't – recall the pain of the blows, but I remember that I tried instinctively to cover myself with my hands, and that this instinct didn't help, and before I knew it I was splayed over the ground, arms purple, legs numb, arms around my stomach as if to prevent the guts from falling out.

One of my eyes was swelled close, and I saw through the other Roman bend down and reach out to me, barely far enough that he couldn't touch me. The two other boys had left their place and stood behind him.

"If I told you I was sorry, then I'd be lying," he said, voice muffled through my puffed ears, "but you're the final enemy, so I'll leave you for last. The revenge calls for it."

Then the two boys filtered out of my vision, and eventually he did too.

Laying there in the sand as I did, my body became stiff and cold, as if slowly solidifying, and it refused to respond to me. I wondered then how – and if – I would ever get back to class, and home, and it was then the childish and completely irrational thought entered my head that I was going to die.

"–You're in the middle of the Sanzu River. That means you're neither dead or alive."

Then there was something astute that jerked me from limbo.

A voice. A boyish voice. My first instinct told me that it was Roman's, but the other told me it was somebody else's. Was it one of his guy-friends? I couldn't make myself roll over to look. I felt hands come on my shoulders and push me on my back anyway; but whoever did it tried their best to be gentle, and it left me in no more pain than I was before it. Then I saw in the daylight the clear blue eyes, the shimmering dark hair, the quiet dignity of the boy who stood above me and whom held in his hands the dark red haori I would come to associate with him so dearly.

And what's he called?

"My name is Giyuu Tomioka…

…I'll stay with you until you die."