A/N: I hope this chapter won't mess up your mind as badly as it did mine.
Giyuu's POV
"You know, I thought you were a girl. What with your long hair, eyelashes, and dainty figure…"
A seventeen-years-old Tengen Uzui sat before me at the breakfast table, slurping down salty miso soup and chugging on random bits of slimy salmon. He ate with his mouth open, spoke in starts and fits, between swallows and gobbles, and took up all the legroom under our side of the table.
The room I found myself in was no less decrepit than the last, with peeling paper walls and a yellowed popcorn ceiling that creaked and shimmied under the weight of itself. The place smelled inexplicably of old wood varnish, and presumably formed part of an apartment block, because there wasn't a minute passed without footsteps clomping across the roof nor the sound of furniture dragging around nor Tengen commenting, with disdain, on either of these things.
"But when I heard your voice, I was shocked! It doesn't suit your face at all. It's deep, but, it's also high. Like you haven't hit puberty yet. Have you? Correct me if I'm wrong. But for real, if you were, were a girl, I'd go for you, just saying…"
A chill ran down my spine like a mallet over a xylophone. It must have shown on my face, because Tengen pulled back and slapped the table and began to laugh like a madman. I held a bowl of soup to my mouth and sipped it ashamedly.
"What are you, anyway?" I asked.
"Hmm? What am I? What do you mean?"
"…You're not a demon slayer, but you're hunting down a demon. Why?"
"Ahh…" Tengen made this strange sigh of realisation. "I'm a shinobi, or, in colloquial terms, a ninja. Well, used to be anyway. I left the life, and now I use my skills to hunt down demons. Because… it's the right thing to do, apparently. That enough?"
"A shinobi? But aren't they all–"
"Gone? No. Well, mostly, yeah. Since the opening of Japan to foreign trade in the mid 1800's, we have fallen into obscurity, but we still exist behind the scenes… in the same form, more or less."
"Does that include assassinations?" I asked. Tengen nodded.
"So… have you ever killed anyone?" I said.
Tengen eyed me, plainly, impassively. "Yes. Many."
"But – away with all this crazy talk…" – Tengen had this habit of moving his hands when he spoke, as if to add a sensible shape to his words that his crazy voice could not – "…finish your food, and we'll get down to business."
As much as I didn't like Tengen and hated that I agreed with him, he was right about the food. It was good, too good. Maybe it was only because of my overwhelming hunger that I saw it as such, and maybe it was because of how I wolfed it down that I'd forgotten to stop and realise the taste. Hinatsuru was a nice lady, I found. Too nice to end up with a guy like this. She kept bringing me more without me asking and acted as the moderate to Tengen's idiocy. Not wanting to stay any longer than I had to, though, I set the bowl on the table, and told him I was done.
"Then go wake up your girly-friend," he said.
My 'girly-friend', Shinobu Kochou, snoozed against the wall behind me, sound as can be and seemingly unfettered by Tengen's antics. I reached over to her with the blunt side of my chopsticks, but was stopped.
"…But feed her the story that we're demon slayers, sent to help you," Tengen said. "And don't try anything funny."
"What?"
"You heard me."
"Yeah, I heard you, but your idea's stupid."
Tengen closed his eyes and shook his head. "Giyuu, your name was? You don't understand your situation right now. While we may be being generously hospitable at the moment, don't think we're not willing to turn you on your ass at any moment, or better yet, straight up kill you. Believe me, I currently see it as the superior option over letting you live. But we're both humans hunting down a demon, are we not? So let's not give in to devilish instinct and go about this the inhumane way. All you need to do is to listen to me, go 'yessiree!' to everything I say, and we'll split ways once this is all over and we'll never see each other again. Well? How's that sound?"
"…What about the demon slayer uniform?" I returned his question with another question, purposely to irritate him.
"I'll say it's in the laundry."
"What if she–"
"Just shut up, man! Do you agree, or not?"
"…"
I scrutinised him for a moment, trying to act as hard as I could. But if I told you I wasn't scared in the slightest, I'd be lying. So I met him with silence, as my pride battled my fear and neither one could override the other to formulate a reply.
"That's a funny way of saying yes, but I'm glad we could come to an agreement!" Tengen said. "Now wake her up. I want her to hear what I'm about to say."
The table was cleared and Tengen came into the room holding a poorly-ordered stack of papers. Shinobu sat silent next to me, oddly complacent with the situation, had been from the moment I woke her up. She bit on Tengen's story without difficulty, and I wondered whether she was just plain stupid or real good at hiding what she thought. Neither did she seem to recognise Hinatsuru as the one who gave her the sedative sweet. To have her self-assuredness, I thought, would be a godsend.
"Now the demon we're hunting has been loose for quite a while, and we're not the first squad to have been sent to pursue it," Tengen said, setting the stack down, "we are, however, the one who's the closest to finding it. Here…"
He flipped the topmost paper of the pile and put it on the table. It was a photo of a woman's body strewn to a pole, slack and limp and clearly lifeless, in the same pose as the corpse I had found the previous day. Something trailed from her abdomen and wrapped around her body. Only because I had seen it before could I deduce that it was her guts, but the photo was so grainy that the uninitiated couldn't, which was only good, because I didn't want Shinobu to see.
"This body we found the day before yesterday. As you can see…" – he traced the photo as he spoke – "this woman is quite elaborately dressed, wears a jeweled headpiece, and is barefoot. She was a prostitute, working in this same red-light district. When we'd discovered her, she'd only been dead for a few hours."
"How'd you know that?" I asked.
"—Livor mortis," Shinobu muttered.
Tengen snapped his fingers. "Precisely! When blood settles in the lower portion of the body a few hours after death and causes a discolouration of the skin. If you look closely at the photo, you can see her feet are darker compared to the rest of her body."
I pored over the picture again, and, though hard to perceive, they were indeed darker.
"And how long have you been following this guy?" I asked.
"Two months by now. And you? Wait – lemme guess…" Tengen replied, "barely over a day?"
"…That's right."
"Well, makes sense. If a demon slayer fails to eliminate a target for any reason, there'll be at least a two-day wait until a follow-up team is dispatched or that person is re-dispatched."
- Trivia -
The two-day wait is not due to policy, but comes as a result of the inefficiency
of Demon Slayer higher-ups.
Tengen really was selling the idea that he was a Demon Slayer, because the 'two-day wait' was in fact, a very real thing. At least, back then it was.
"…And why're you telling me this?" I asked.
"Because the victim we found the day beforethis woman – two days before you came along – was a demon slayer. Just like you… or… us."
Tengen turned over the second paper on the pile, and there it was: a lady in familiar black uniform dangling off a pole, guts hanging out and wrung around her. That made three victims so far, and from how Tengen made it sound, there were many more.
"We found this lady downtown, though, strangely enough, the two male squaddies she was grouped with weren't pinned up the way she was. Still dead, though. But this only fits a pattern. All the victims we've found so far that've been mutilated have been women. The fact that they're mostly prostitutes, could indicate… a certain fetish."
"So we've got a pervert on our hands?" I said.
"Maybe. Then it's a pervert on top of a psycho ontopof a mad doctor."
"What? A mad doctor?"
"Near every body we've found so far – or the other way around – we've discovered snakes wrapped around stakes hammered to walls. Moreover, some of them even had bird-wings sown to them. Duck wings, mostly, but sometimes geese's and cranes'. For the demon slayer woman, it was those of her Kasugai crow."
"…Where're you going with this?"
"What I'm saying is that these disemboweled women and snakes hammered to stakes weren't just propped up the way there were to purely shock whoever discovered them, nor are they uncoordinated fits of madness performed on some sick fucker's impulse. The manner the bodies were displayed in are actually meant to represent a certain symbol. Or rather, two. Here…"
Tengen produced a pencil from his sleeve and started scribbling on the flip-side of the photo. After he was done, the paper contained two drawings:
One portraying a single serpent wound around a wooden pole.
And the other showing two snakes intertwined around a similar-looking staff, except this one had a pair of wings attached to the top of it.
"The rod of Asclepius…" Tengen started.
"And the Caduceus." Shinobu finished.
Tengen looked impressed. "That's right. Two internationally recognised symbols of medicine that happen to be oh-so-similar." He turned to Shinobu. "Are you a med student or something?"
She smiled slightly. "Something like that."
"That's the only proof you have it's a doctor doing this? The similarity to those symbols could just be coincidence," I said.
"But that's where you're wrong, Giyuu," Tengen said, "Hinatsuru has a background in basic medicine, and she saw that the stitching connecting the wings to the snakes were very well done. She also saw that the way the women were… disemboweled… didn't actually result in all that much blood loss, which is why we can still observe livor mortis in this photo. I'd say it takes someone with a good amount of anatomical knowledge – and the composure to use it – to pull that off."
"Then what about yesterday? The whole floor was soaked with blood."
For the first time, Tengen looked unsure of himself. "I don't know… the killings've been getting sloppier and sloppier. Bloodier and bloodier. Now even the police are starting to notice. And you know how useless they are." He snarled the word, as if spitting on it.
"And you're saying that the snakes and dead women were both propped up to represent the same symbol? This… 'rod of Asclepius' and 'Caduceus'?" I asked.
"The dead women and snakes without wings are for the Asclepius rod. The snakes with wings are for the Caduceus. But the distinction doesn't really matter. They both mean the same thing. And they both point to the killer being a doctor," Tengen replied.
"What if it's just someone who happens to have a good amount of medical know–"
"–Just calm down, man. Relaaax. You're way too jittery about all of this, and you ask too many questions. All you need to know is that this guy we're chasing is a doctor who happens to be a serial killer who happens to be a demon and who for some reason, doesn't eat his prey. Oh, yeah, did I mention that? It's strange, isn't it? Despite being a demon, this guy doesn't eat the people he kills."
"…I thought the whole point of this discussion was to inform us?" I replied.
"Yes, but you're beginning to annoy me." And he began to re-pack and re-set the papers.
…Asshole.
But there's one more glaring question…
"Fine then. But who's to say that this isn't just a normal serial killer? A human one, I mean," I asked. "So far it's all just mutilation and disemboweling and wrapping people's guts around them. Any human can do that. And now you've said that this guy doesn't eat his victims. So? How do you know he's a demon?"
And for a long time, Tengen was silent.
"…I just know," he murmured. The words sounded more directed to himself than me.
"Know wha–"
"Know him."
"You know who?" I repeated.
Immediately after I said this, Tengen snapped out of his trance and looked at me nervously.
"No, no, I mean…" he sputtered. "W-well, we demon slayers got sent after him. So he must be a demon. It's just that he's a weird one."
"Huh…" I muttered.
Just then, Hinatsuru burst into the room and slid a platter of food in front of Shinobu. 'That's right,' I realised, 'she hasn't eaten yet'. But later on, I couldn't help but wonder if her barging into our presence was a coordinated action, meant to relieve pressure on Tengen. He did, after all, take the chance and changed the topic of conversation, so I'm guessing it was.
Him and Shinobu were locked in some deep conversation about their favourite foods before, in the corner of my eye, Youma appeared for the first time that breakfast. He stood with his arms crossed over each other, and watched Tengen with a wary expression. I still hadn't forgiven him for putting me in that last situation, but now it seemed any attempts to voice my anger would not reach him. He looked stuck in his own world, as he usually did when in profound thought, and after a few more whiles of observation, he met my gaze, pulled on his sleeve, and melted back into the wall.
A signal!
I recognised that motion. It was a request to talk – used in situations where just telepathy wouldn't be enough.
What he wanted to tell me that I didn't already know, I could not pinpoint. But perhaps because Youma was so happy-go-lucky all the time, I couldn't find it in myself to refuse any request of his, no matter how big or small. Deep inside, I was afraid of angering him, even if I had never seen him so. Luckily, my chance to fulfil his request came then.
"…and that's why I like tempura. Woah, how long've we been talking about this? So, uh… back to the topic I guess," Tengen said. "As I've said before, we've got a lead. A clinic, located in the town harbour, catering to traditional medicine."
"A clinic?" Shinobu repeated.
"I forgot to mention this, but the snakes we keep finding aren't of a species that inhabit this area. They're Albino Ratsnakes, from South East Asia. Apparently, there's a cult around here that imports them to boil and drink as tea or something, for the reason of preserving youth. Anyway, that clinic is the only shop in this area which stocks that breed of snake. It also correlates with our assumption of the killer being someone well-versed in medical knowledge. So that's the place we want to check out. Maybe we'll look up that cult while we're at it, too…"
"And you want us to tag along for the ride?" I said.
"Why not? Power in numbers and all that. And I don't think you're in any position to refuse," Tengen replied.
I hated him because he was not wrong.
"Then let's go!" Shinobu cried, getting restless. "Let's murder this fool!"
"Hold your horses… or whatever you have down there," Tengen said. "We'll go at twelve. Now it's… about seven. I needa open up shop."
She blinked. "Shop? What shop?"
"Did you know? I design clothes part time. Real flamboyant pieces, I'm telling ya. Meant to leave an impression on people. As well as some more modest ones, too. And I sell these clothes in a shop we run downstairs. Hey…"
A dangerous idea was approaching.
"Why don't you accompany me? Girls your age always want to dress stylishly. I bet I've got something for you. Let's see… you're not that big, but you're still young, so you'll need something that'll still fit you in the future…"
Tengen talked passionately about fashion, fashion design, and fashion application. Shinobu listened with an equal amount of enthusiasm. Eventually, she agreed to head downstairs – where the shop was located – and I ran down and stopped them in the apartment hallway.
"What about me?" I called.
"You?" Tengen repeated. "I dunno. Do anything. Just make yourself scarce. But be back by twelve."
Cold as his words were, the proposition was fine by me.
Thus, the pair disappeared into a sea of Tengen-designed clothes, Hinatsuru following soon after. I thanked her for the food, but I didn't dare look inside the store, and instead took the chance to head outside.
Though it was only morning, the city of Hiroshima was burst open by sunlight. Rays of light jangled against the sandy road parallel to the apartment building, so bright they seemed to bleach the colour out of my eyes. It was hotter than even yesterday, and in the heat the ground wobbled from afar and the paint on walls sizzled and my body felt heavy like a wet, dirty rag. The neighbourhood was like any other in the red-light district, except now neon crimson was replaced with blinding white and this in itself seemed surreal. Splintering wooden houses and shops lined the pavement, and inside the shade of them people sat doing nothing. Tengen's building, in particular, stood out like a sore thumb, with its spotless four-story concrete body that gleamed in the sun. Aside from the barking of invisible dogs, the place was eerily quiet, and I felt as if I did not belong there.
Behind the apartment building was a small forest that stretched for a while into the distance. I took off for it, determining there to be the best compromise between shade and privacy. Under the jewel-green canopy I rested against a rock, careful not to put pressure onto my still-heaving head, and I listened for a moment to the birds singing and the wind winding through the trees…
Until another noise came from behind me.
A human noise.
Or was it demon?
"No time to rest, Giyuu. Get up and get to training."
Youma.
Forever the motivator.
"You wanted to talk?" I said, hand over my eyes to block the sun.
"Only after we have a sparring session."
This time his voice came from over me. I looked through my fingers and met the emerald eyes above me. Youma was grinning, as was his stock expression, but a more malevolent one than usual, this time.
"I'm tired," I protested.
"No such thing as tired, Giyuu. Just lazy," Youma rebuked. "Don't you wanna rank up? Beat the rest of the people in Kanoe?"
Kanoe – rank four out of ten in the Demon Slayers.
Not that I'd ever cared much for titles, but…
"Where do I stand, again?" I asked.
Youma pondered for a moment. "You're currently the number three ranked Kanoe, if I remember correctly. You used to be number two, but after last assignment's fiasco, you dropped down a place."
"Oh, okay… who're above me?"
"Um… the number one, I think, is still that guy we keep hearing about. The one who talks too loud and has red-and-orange hair and the father who's a Hashira. Number two… I can't remember his name, except that it starts with an 'm'. What was it? Chika? Masa? Kumeno? But this number four guy seems strong too. Just last week, he was ranked twenty-seventh out of all Kanoe. Now he's fourth. Apparently, he keeps a snake around his neck that helps him fight."
- Trivia -
Every week a performance report is sent out to all demon slayers via their Kasugai crows, detailing individual placements in a rank, number of demons killed, etcetera. Also acts as a medium to relay announcements.
"Bleh… a snake. After this I'd say I've had enough of snakes for a while," I said.
And then, a sudden change in topic.
"So, lost your competitive edge, Giyuu Tomioka? Want me to sharpen it back?" Youma
jeered.
"What's that mean–"
"I sense it innately. You've no desire to be better. And it's been like this since your last assignment. You're officially downtrodden, boy."
"No, not real–"
Something jut into my ribs, and instinctively my body curled into a ball to cover them. Youma – he knew how ticklish I was there. He danced in place, juggling in and out of taunting and fighting pose, and I eyed him bitterly through the grass.
"Well? Ready now? Your heart's full of misery and your wallet's full of nothing. I understand. But at least you have your fists!"
How could I resist such an offer? My reluctance evaporated, and I stood up and squared my hands and dug my feet into the ground. Youma did the same.
But then –
"That's one," he said, throwing up a finger.
"Huh–"
"Mistake number one."
And in an almost imperceptibly monumental movement, Youma closed the gap between us, arm poised for an uppercut. I braced my jaw, and tried to clamp my elbows together to shield it, but he maneuvered around them, like a snake through a maze, and soon…
Soon nothing.
The inevitable strike never came. Youma stood there wordlessly, fist under my chin, staring cruelly into my eyes. Then his expression softened and he tapped my chest with his knuckle.
"Mistake number one – never open a fight standing still," Youma said, wagging his hand. "You're too stiff, Giyuu. No wonder Tengen beat you so easily."
I snapped. Knowing me, Youma pranced out of reach and cupped his hands around his lips.
"Let go of your ego, Giyuu!" he called. "A man's biggest enemy is always himself. Once he overcomes that, everything else comes easily. Relatively." Then he got back into stance.
"Now, come."
So we sparred, just like we did so many times before and on so many different occasions.
As a matter of fact, it was Youma who taught me how to fight.
'Kiku no Ken' was what he called it – the style of the Chrysanthemum Fist (菊の拳); an offshoot of a branch of martial arts that originated in ancient China. He had learned it in his youth and in turn, taught it to me. We would practice it often in private and he would also use this time to impart his wisdom to me. It seems if one lives for over a hundred years, they rack up quite a lot of it. They were life lessons, mostly. Moral messages told in the form of miscellaneous tales of good and evil. Not the most exciting topic for conversation, but it was Youma's favourite. Though he spoke rarely of the past and himself, and too much of the future and me, through these sessions I learned more of his character than I suspect I would've been able to any way else.
In the severe days I spent under Sakonji Urokodaki's tutelage he taught me two things: the physiology of the demon enemy, and to hate them unconditionally. I adopted the former without difficulty, but could never fathom the latter. That I had no memory of a woman who I'd taken up training specifically to avenge, may have had something to do with it. But it was Youma who could not bring himself to hate demons; and it was Youma who instilled in me these same feelings. I often got the impression that if he and Urokodaki met each other, they would butt heads – and that if they did, I'd know which side to take.
But sometimes I take to wondering where it all started.
Supposedly, I had known Youma for most of my life, since childhood. Way before I met Shinobu and Urokodaki; way before I was a demon slayer or even training to become one. For a good while, of course, I didn't know that. I met him through Tsutako and to forget her meant to forget him. Though I never felt as if there was a void left by his departure – an empty man-sized pocket of memory in my head where he should have been, like how it was with Tsutako – there must've been a point where he'd stopped being just distant, dreamlike and dream-present Youma, and became something much more.
Perhaps – it was the day he appeared for the first time in the waking world.
A day – that feels as if nine lifetimes has passed between then and now.
Fujikasane Mountain
July 1913
I am thirteen years old, budding and naïve and perhaps too arrogant for my own good, final selection had come and swept me off my feet and by the looks of it, I had passed and was well on my way to becoming a full-time demon slayer.
I wasn't sure, though. I had awoken in a strange room, brain warping, a cutting vertical noise rising in my head, unable to see through one eye. I'd been dressed down into a set of pajamas, red haori folded cleanly next to my futon, and I looked at my hands and saw that they were clean and bandaged.
The slight scent of wisteria occupied the cabin. It was dark in there, but in the half-light glowing through the paper wall at the far edge of the room, I could see silhouettes merging in and out of each other on the other side, oscillating between human figures and shapeless blots. Soft murmurs accompanied them. To the left of me was a shutter that shone purple from the outside, and intuitively, I looked to it to try and locate where I was.
I attempted to stand, but only then I noticed that my legs were lame, and my knees buckled and I toppled to the floor. So I crawled; crawled with my arms. Pushing the screen open, an outdoor balcony of some sort was revealed. I heaved myself over the railing and looked down: below me, splitting through an opaque canopy of wisteria trees, stood the Final Selection premises. The head of the sun sticked just above the horizon, and in the morning-light the marble grounds shimmered and the mountain on which it sat upon became rimmed with a pale gold.
I noticed a few people dawdling on the grounds, incrementing in number periodically as another one, or two, would appear from under the purple canopy, all looking quite exhausted, yet all appearing quite relieved to be there. Were they participants? Had the test ended? If so, why was I up here, and them down there? I looked at myself and began to feel a bit anxious. I tried to recall the last thing I remembered, but my memory was blurred, and hurried, and emblazoned with gold-and-green and nothing recognisable.
Though before I could give it more thought, a knock came on the door. Without thinking, I dragged myself back into bed and pretended to have just woken up.
"Come in," I said.
The shutter slid open, and somebody – couldn't see who, couldn't make out their features, was too dark to – stepped in. The arrival was accompanied by a cry from the other room, something like 'Morinaga-san!' and 'that's against the rules!' but the door was shut closed before I could make anything of it, and soon silence was general again, and we were left isolated and still from the rest of the world.
The shape of the silhouette was obviously that of a man's, though that, however, was the only thing surely discernable about him. He was of average height and build and wore a sword by his waist, but he was not dressed in demon slaying garb, nor did he carry the air of one who fought on a day-to-day basis. Yet, despite his unassuming appearance, his presence took up the entire room.
He leaned a bit, and then spoke: "Are you Giyuu Tomioka?" He had a bleak voice, monotonously intelligent sounding.
"Yes… that's me," I answered.
"Then rejoice, for you have passed Final Selection."
I tried not to smile, tried not to let my excitement show in a way that'd be too obvious, but I couldn't help myself, and maybe it reflected on my face, because the man stepped forward, still obscured, and placed something into the strip of light on the floor that came from the balcony.
"Your friend, however, did not."
There it was; golden-green, dizzyingly geometric haori, seemingly warping in the sun. I recognised it instantly.
Sabito's.
A boy I had met in my time training on Sagiri Mountain.
Though he only arrived a few months after I'd been taken under Urokodaki's wing, he was always the more skilled one, the more virtuous one…
The braver one.
"He… didn't pass?"
Yet I could not bring myself to hate him for it. The story behind him was standard fare for demon slayers – family got killed, only he survived – and perhaps it was due to this and our being similarly aged that we became fast friends. For between Urokodaki, my teacher, and Youma, my mentor, I was close to them, yes, but never in the sense of boy-to-boy, one-to-the-other.
But Sabito…
"He'd have passed, alright. It's just that he's…"
What was it about him?
That inexplicable quality which drew me to him?
What was it about him…
"Dead. Killed protecting somebody else. Was the only casualty in the entire selection."
That made him feel so alive?
Before I knew it, the man had turned and was making his way towards the exit. "He was a fool," he muttered, and he left the room.
When the first tear broke free, the rest followed in an uninterrupted stream. I lurched forward with my palms on the mat and began to cry with a force unalike to any that I'd sobbed with before. I tried to stop it – because I was a boy and boys don't cry – but it was then that I felt the hand come on my back, and I looked behind me and saw in the dawn-light the vivid green eyes, the curly sand-coloured hair, the radiant merriness of the man who attended to my dreams each night and who'd done so unfailingly for the past year-and-a-half; now here, in the flesh.
"Youma? Y–you–"
"Allow it, my boy," he said. "Did you know? Crying is much the same as cleaning house. The same as removing clutter, the same as sweating away poison. It is only natural. So, for now, just let it go. Just let it go…"
Back then, and for a good while thereafter, I didn't know why, didn't know how he appeared suddenly that day. But for the moments that I wept by Youma's side the world seemed all right, no better or worse than Sabito had left it, and when I returned to Sagiri mountain, golden-green haori slung over my shoulder, Urokodaki took me to the graveyards he had shown me the first time we met, and together, we lowered the forty-eighth granite tombstone into the ground, paying our respects to the glorious.
July 1915
I'm splayed over the sweet earth, frazzled and done for and beaten to a pulp. At least, that's how I felt. Youma always won when we sparred, though today he won more than usual. He out-kicked me, out-blocked me, out-punched and out-thought me, and managed to do all this without laying a single finger on me. Again, as he usually did. Maybe the metropolitan air was getting to my head and making me soft? Urokodaki always spoke with a special disdain of people who lived in the city, calling them townies or tenderfoots or yuppies, and Youma – although never outright supporting these statements – never rejected them, either. Speaking of which…
Where was Youma?
The sparring session had come and gone, and with it, he had too. If he'd disappeared, then that'd defeat the entire purpose of me coming out here to talk. Although, as much as I would've liked it, I wasn't necessarily alone…
"Well? How is it?"
Shinobu was leaning against a tree, a genial smile playing across her lips. Now where have I seen that before? She stepped forward and pinched her top, flapping it to-and-fro as if to cool herself down.
"Notice anything different?" she said.
"No, I don't…" I replied.
"Look again."
I squinted, and only then did I see the cropped white haori draping her figure, painted a tint green under the light shining through the forest canopy.
"Oh… the jacket," I said half-heartedly. Then I realised. "You bought a jacket? In the summer?"
"Not bought, got. Got for free. Courtesy of Tengen Uzui."
"Oh, right… the guy's got a boutique," I replied, hoping, foolishly, she'd go away after that. Instead…
"So? How is it?" she asked again.
"…Suits you," I offered. "Looks nice."
"Wow?! Really?! I never knew!" Shinobu cried, tone obviously fake. "Of course it looks nice! Give me some more feedback, man. Stuff like how it hugs my shoulders, or how it makes my biceps look bigger and waist look smaller, or how it accentuates my nail polish…" – she didn't wear nail polish – "…or how it makes me look taller…"
"It matches… your character. It's bold, and tomboyish. It makes a statement."
This seemed to satisfy her: "mm-hmm. good enough." Then she pulled up her one sleeve to reveal a little rose gold watch. "By the way, it's twelve o'clock. Tengen sent me to come tell you. Said you look like a person who can't keep track of time."
Tengen was right.
I sprang to my feet. "Then let's not keep the prince of debauchery waiting."
"Hold on."
Shinobu approached me and tugged me down to reach my ear.
"Back then, I was only pretending to be asleep," she whispered. "The drug that woman gave me wore off after a few hours. I heard them talk while you were still out of it."
"Wait, why're you whispering–"
"Because they might be listening. But anyway. The way they were speaking… it seems they have a personal connection to this guy. Tengen in particular."
"Who? The killer?"
"Use your head. Who else?! Tsubone always talks about how the demon slayer corps has enemies – both demon and human – that they want to get rid of. My guess is that is this guy is one of them, and Tengen is trying to get him off the radar. Don't ask why I think so, though. Something just tells me that's how it is.
"So that means the killer isn't a demon after all…" I said.
"No! I mean… I don't know. I don't know who this person is or why and how Tengen is planning to help him. But he needs us to help find him, or at least, he needs us to be on his side. If we're… 'allies', then he'll at least have a guarantee that the demon slayers will be off his back for a while. And he's tryna do that by feeding us the story that he's a noble vigilante on the trail of crime and that it's the moral thing to join him."
"Oh… woah. That's actually…"
Plausible.
…By god this girl is smart.
And by god is this assignment turning into a mess.
"On his side my ass," I finished. "So, what now? Can't we just… run away? Come back another day? I mean, he let you come here unsupervised."
"I'd do it, but… he has my hairpin."
"What?"
Only then did I realise the glaring absence of the butterfly clip from her hair.
"Tengen said he wanted to look at it. So I left it there."
Sounds like he kept it as collateral.
"So, I'm going to stick with the act for now. Find out what I can. Then, we'll make a break for it and call Tsubone or someone and take both the killer and Tengen down. Yougettut?"
'Yougettut'?
"I get it, if that's what you're saying…"
And Shinobu left my ear and padded away through the forest. Following her, Youma appeared in the corner of my eye, and he approached me.
"I guess this means you're sticking with the role too… for now," he said.
I did not reply, not even in my thoughts.
"And about that talk we were going to have," he continued. "She said what I was going to say. The girl's got a good head on her shoulders. But as for me – I've got an even better idea of the guy we're chasing."
If only we knew what we were getting ourselves into.
Here's a joke; a wannabe demon slayer, a demon slayer who wants to be anything but, a freaky ninja, and a ghost who's probably the most powerful of them all walk into a traditional medicine practice.
Guess what they find?
Well, I don't know yet.
The clinic on the outskirts of Hiroshima port was a rickety old building, wrinkled under an impending sun and gnarled by years of receiving the salty sea wind, which balanced precariously on a skinny wooden pier that jut into the ocean that seemed only to get jankier the further one went down it. A sign strung up on the roof titled the place: "Takashi Medicine Import Company", and in all honesty, the place looked long since abandoned, and if not for the logo, I would've probably walked right past it.
That day the sea appeared bluer and clearer than it had all summer, and I remember feeling this urgent want to dive into it (as I usually did when no-one was looking), but I was too focused on Tengen, who'd left Hinatsuru behind, to notice anything else much.
Come to think of it…
There's nobody else around.
If he wanted to, he could just kill us right now and be done with it.
…No, he won't do that.
Shinobu did a better job of hiding her suspicions. She played the part of obliviousness unbelievably well, and I had a hunch that if we hadn't had that forest conversation, I'd still be under the impression that she was ignorant.
"The story goes that they built the clinic here to be close to the flow of imports coming into the city," Tengen said, sizing up the building. "And that may be a reason. But who knows? Maybe we'll discover another one inside…"
Then he jogged forward and smiled at us when he reached the door. "Watch out!" he cried, and he kicked it open.
"What'd you do that for?!" Shinobu asked.
"In case someone was waiting for us at the other side. But it looks like there wasn't."
It was dark inside the tiny structure; though I could see windows from the outside, it looked like they'd been boarded up. What light shone through the doorway revealed a strange little room: both in design, and contents. The first thing I noticed upon entering was the smell. It was a pure and pungent odour, very medicine-ly, one that I'd exactly imagine encountering in a place like this. Contrary to the building's outward appearance, the interior was remarkably well-maintained, with a polished mahogany floor that shone red in the light and appeared almost crystalline. Pasted on the far wall were illustrations of numerous kinds; acupuncture charts, yin-and-yang banners, anatomical posters, botanical studies, the like, but it was the glass cabinet in the middle of the room that took centre stage. It was racked with peculiars; dried herbs, dehydrated animal parts, roasted insects, teas, spices, berries, fruits, flowers – you name it, they had it. And what you can't name probably was there too.
"Woah… this place doesn't look abandoned at all," I muttered.
"That's because it isn't," Tengen replied. "We're barging in on the owner's lunch break. That's why I chose to come at this time."
We dispersed into the corners of the room and started to look around for anything that could've been of use. Letters, clues, hints, tips, pointers where to go; in drawers, cupboards, closets, cabinets, behind jars, under tea leaves. But it was fruitless. We found nothing. The minutes wore on like hours, and the sea beneath us began to stir and crash against the bottom of the floor. Tengen, most likely getting bored, called me over.
"Here, hold this quick," he said.
He pinched something from a pile of somethings and dropped it into my hands. It was charred in colour, long and dry and organic feeling, and in all honesty, looked just like a twig. But something told me that it wasn't.
"…The heck is this?" I asked.
"Dried bull penis. Drink it as a tea and it makes you longer. And I don't mean taller."
"Fuck, man!" I swore him out, and threw the thing to the poster-ridden side of the room. "You– you… I…"
My protests fell on deaf, laughing ears, and by then the texture of the phallus was already burn into my skin. Instinctively, I buried my face into my palms, but then I realised what I was doing, but by then it was too late, and everything felt all wanky and wrong and ga–
"Hey, guys."
Shinobu called out to us, pointing towards a massive poster peeling from the wall, something metallic jutting out from behind it.
"What's that…?" I started.
"A doorhandle! A hidden room!" Tengen cried. "Well done, Shinobu!"
"It wasn't me. It was that thing he threw."
We ripped the sheet off to uncover an old door, and I opened it to reveal a study of sorts. I took the initiative to search it, and Tengen and Shinobu stayed behind.
It was dark in there, and from what little I could see was not nearly as glamorous as the previous room. The air was salty and still racked with the smell of herbs, and the floor was holey and rotten. Something else snared my attention, though. When I'd walked in, I'd heard…
A hiss.
A serpentine buzz.
One, at first…
But soon, more.
I already had a good idea of what it was, and where it came from. I strained my eyes into the darkness before me, and when I saw the first pair of red dots staring back at me, then the second, then the third, the fourth, the tenth, the twentieth, I tore off the board barring the room window, and opened it to reveal cage upon cage of maroon-eyed, blanch-bodied snakes.
They hissed in response to the light, and some circled in their cages, others bit madly on the bars. They eyed me dangerously, as if I was a foreigner come to intrude on their presence, and to affirm this they snapped at the air and screamed in unison and banged their heads on the rooves.
I'd say this confirms this is where the killer gets his snakes from.
They were evil looking creatures, sinfully beautiful in their own right, and when they had calmed in their pens they seemed beatific, godlike even. 'Albino Ratsnakes', Tengen called them? They fit the description about right. Through the motley of cages I saw a clearing in the back of the room, and holding my breath I weaved my way through, careful not to bump anything, crossing it, and finding on the other side…
A desk.
A desk – with a paper on it.
And written on this paper –
Was a script.
A play-script, of sorts.
And it read:
Scene TWO, Act THREE. Continued from Scene ONE.
TENGENMON
(looking at the building)
The story goes that they built the clinic here to be close to the flow of imports coming into the city. And that may be a reason. But who knows? Maybe we'll discover another one inside…
TENGENMON runs up to the door and smiles at GIYUU and SHINOBU. He then kicks it open, for no other reason than to feel cool.
SHINOBU
(demanding)
What'd you do that for?!
TENGENMON
In case someone was waiting for us at the other side. But it looks like there wasn't.
What… the hell?
This script…
…The clinic is dark. It reeks of herbs. The windows are boarded up. SHINOBU pinches her nose. GIYUU comments that the place doesn't look abandoned at all.
TENGENMON
(lying on the spot)
That's because it isn't. We're barging in on the owner's lunch break. That's why I chose to come at this time.
The gang spreads out and start looking for clues. After a while, TENGENMON gets bored.
Everything's here.
I… didn't even notice Shinobu pinching her nose.
And it says here that Tengen – or 'Tengenmon' – lied.
Gradually, the descriptions started to become more detailed.
…TENGENMON takes the top-right corner of the poster and rips it off, trying to hide his impatience. It reveals a door. Upon opening it, he tells GIYUU to go look. He continues to look for the entrance to the attic himself.
What… attic?
Tengen's… looking for something in the attic?
Who… made this?
Was it… the killer?
But then, how do they…?
…GIYUU walks in and hears a snake hiss. The backroom is decrepit and smells like salt and herbs. The scent is so strong that he doesn't notice the odour coming from upstairs. He opens the window and the light reveals cage upon cage of snakes.
Scent?
Upstairs…?
Could it be…
…Then GIYUU finds the desk, and this script. He reads through it and tries furiously to put together the pieces in his head. The trap set in Scene ONE continues to burn.
Scene ONE?
And… trap?
Indeed, on the flip-side of the paper, there was another script titled Scene ONE. By then already freaked out, I gulped, and read it.
Scene ONE, Act THREE.
TENGENMON, SHINOBU, and GIYUU come into view on the pier. (REDACTED) notices them from inside the clinic, and sets the trap and prints the script, putting it on the desk for GIYUU to discover.
(REDACTED)
(muttering under his breath)
Here comes Tengenmon. Or Tengen, as he likes to call himself nowadays. Oh? And he brought two friends. Demon Slayers, by the look of it. Welp, goodbye, Takashi. Guess I'll go see Hinatsuru now.
TAKASHI, the shop-keeper, is tied to a chair in the attic, having been gagged. He watches fearfully as the fuse shortens and shortens. (REDACTED) exits through the backdoor, leaving TAKASHI behind. (REDACTED) predicts that the trap will detonate once GIYUU finishes reading Scene ONE.
Perhaps I should have known then to run. For a while, Youma had been screaming over my shoulder, telling me to get out. But I was paralysed. My body would not listen to me. The paper fell from my hands, and when the fuse upstairs had been expended, the final sizzle being sounded with it, there was a flash, then a bang, then everything around me became engulfed in a ball of fire, and soon I was too. My body seared, and I think I was screaming. There was blood, maybe even guts, but then a piece of debris smashed into my head, things started to slide into one another, and there was the sensation of being plunged into water, before everything collapsed into darkness.
A blank figure, sitting cross-legged, stares at me in limbo.
He shakes his head, and says:
"Now is not your time to go."
Washed up on that beach, the surreal midday sun burning away the land, my vision blacked out once or twice before stabilising. A yattering bird landed next to me, pecked me with its beak, before flying off. I blinked. I blinked again. Then I realised, and sat up.
Contrary to what my memory portrayed, my body didn't hurt, didn't sting, only ached slightly. The back of my head was numb; the skin on my fingers were hacked; my newly made haori had been torn to heck – but, for the most part, I was alright. I felt around myself, quite amazed by this. I should have been in the dead centre of the explosion. Me, and…
Shinobu!
I swung my head around, looking for her. The shore about me was littered with wood debris, bits of snake, and some other kind of flesh. The sea was blue tinted red, lazy waves flipped and brought more rabble, and the whole place reeked in the humidity and smelled like rotting seaweed.
Nearby, a group of children ambled. They had formed a ring around something, chatting wildly and looking down at whatever they circled. I picked myself up and stumbled towards them, shouting and waving my arms, and they dispersed. Indeed – there Shinobu lay. She appeared about as injury free as I was, snoozing where she did on the sand. The man that lay on top of her, however –
The man that shielded her –
Was nowhere near as lucky.
Tengen's entire back had been torn open and peppered with wood; from neck to tailbone patches of skin had burned away, revealing throbbing pieces of muscle that were lined yellow with bits of fat. He was charred to the extent that he did not bleed, and instead something plasmic pooled from his wounds, like organic, golden egg white.
I panicked, and instinctively slipped out of my haori, thinking to apply it as a bandage, but then I thought about it for a moment, and chose to use my uniform jacket instead. Before I could take it off, however, Tengen's body spasmed, and he unwrapped his arms from Shinobu and placed his palms on the sand, before pushing himself up, grunting and yawning. I stepped back, bewildered.
"T–Tengen…"
I muttered his name to myself and didn't expect it to reach him, but he turned, blinked and dragged his eyes around sluggishly to find the source of the sound, before they landed on me, and they widened.
"Giyuu! You're… you're not hurt?!" he exclaimed.
"No… b–but… your back…" I stammered.
Tengen bounced to his feet and wiped the dust off his shoulders. "Shit! I should've known that there'd be a trap! The smell of the herbs in there masked the gunpowder…"
"But… y-your back…"
"Hmm? What about my back? Come to think of it, it does feel kind of itchy…"
He moved to scratch it, but I stopped him, nigh in time.
"Can't you feel it?" I asked.
"Feel what? If it's the itchiness, then yes."
"No… I mean the pain," I said.
"What pain?" Tengen replied, oblivious.
"Your back's been…"
"What about my back!? Hell, I know it's sexy! If you wanna say it, then say it! There's no shame in complimenting another guy!"
"–It's been blown open, man! Your… your muscles're sticking out! I think your spine is too! Your skin's gone! And there's pieces of wood in there! And… and…"
Maybe to process my sputtering, Tengen didn't reply immediately.
"Oh, so that's it…"
Then he flexed his shoulders, squeezed his arms together, and the veins on his face bulged, then I heard a snap, crackle, and pop, before countless pieces of debris flew out of his back and were flung into the air. I watched with my mouth open, half disgusted, half amazed. Then Tengen caught his breath and pulled his body tense again, and although nothing came out this time, there was the elastic sound of flesh wrapping and warping, snapping and pulling.
"There we go! That's better! I'm in tip-top shape, and I can eat one hundred tempura bowls! Flamboyantly! Look, Giyuu!" He turned around, and showed his back. "A-OK, ain't it?"
It looked more B-OK, but indeed, by way of some sort of muscle-manipulation-trickery-wizardry, Tengen had, by all appearances, regenerated much of the flesh on his back, though most of it was still without skin. I was awestruck.
"Doesn't it hurt?" I asked.
"Nope. Been conditioned since childhood. I've had worse. But you? You were supposed to be smack-dab in the middle of the blast. And yet, you're all okay."
"It's weird, yeah… Shinobu's alright, too."
"Oh?" – he hadn't noticed her yet by his feet – "Shinobu?! Where is she–"
"Right next to you."
Did he shield her from the explosion?
If he did, then…
Tengen looked glad, but then his eyes graced me, and his expression changed to an inquisitive one.
"Hmm? What's up? You look like you wanna say something."
"No, it's nothing…"
Oh, right, the script!
"You're not gonna believe me," I said. "But I saw a script in there."
"A script?" Tengen crossed his arms. "You mean a prescription?"
"No, the kind meant for a play. It was on the desk… and… we..." – I gulped – "…we were the characters."
I expected him to be as dazed as I was, but you know what he replied? Not 'really?' or 'are you sure?' or 'it can't be!' or anything like that, but…
"And? What did it say?"
I was taken aback.
"What do you mean, 'what did it say'? You… believe me? Just like that?" I asked, in disbelief.
"Well, it's one of this guy's abilities. To produce scripts that predict the near future a hundred percent accurately. The next three hours, to be specific. It's a pretty lame power, right? But it's how he's managed to evade us all this time."
"You never told me–"
"Forgot to. Sorry. I'll explain it now…"
– Abilit(y/ies) of the killer –
To show the near future in the form of a play-script.
Describes only future events that occur in the immediate vicinity of where the script is printed.
Thus, an intelligent deduction, backed up by what Giyuu himself read in Scene ONE:
The killer was in the clinic just before the trio arrived, and upon seeing them in the distance, set a trap (the explosion).
Was in the meantime holding the shop-keeper hostage in the attic, for reasons unknown.
Just before leaving, he used his ability and printed a script, for reasons unknown.
Left it on the table for one of the trio to discover, for reasons unknown.
"I don't understand any of this..." I said. "But if that script predicted the future, then… shouldn't he have been able to see that the trap didn't take us out?"
"In theory, yes. But maybe he wants to keep us alive for some reason?" Tengen wondered.
"…That seems like an awfully specific deduction."
I heard a scoff come from him, and then he shook his head.
"…Giyuu, I'm not going to pretend anymore. I know about that talk you and Shinobu had in the forest."
His revelation came seemingly out of nowhere, and instinctively, my hand went to my sword, even though I probably wouldn't've been able to use it, should things have come down to it. Tengen saw this, but didn't stop me, and instead, continued to speak:
"I mean, it was so obvious what she was trying to do when she asked to go wake you up alone. And I could hear you, anyway." – Hear me? What did he mean by that? – "So, I know that you've already discovered by this point that I have some sort of personal connection with the killer. Fine then. I come clean. I do. We've known each other for a long time. Been in the shinobi business together, was close to each other, too. But then something went wrong. He went and got himself turned into a demon. I don't know how or why he did it, just know that's the way it is. So now he's on the radar of the Demon Slayers. Big deal. He goes on a killing spree. Even bigger deal. Now everyone's out to get him. Police in addition to the slayers. Thing is, I… don't want him to die. Please, hear me out. Of course, what he's doing right now is despicable. Everyone with at least half a brain can see that. But I think…" – Tengen hesitated – "I think… if I can get to him before he's killed, I can talk with him. Maybe try to reason with him. And I need your help to find him, Giyuu. Please. You're not the strongest or brightest, and you don't have a sense of humour, but… you're good. You, and Shinobu."
Tengen's proud tone gradually wavered in his speech, and by the end of it, he sounded broken, frustrated. I'd never thought I'd see him like this, and I only realised then the perfectly imperfect image of him I'd constructed in my mind; an asshole, yes, but an infallible, damn-cocksure one. Somewhat like Sabito. But now, this same man prostrated himself before someone like me – just a demon slayer, out for revenge, like everyone else – and pleaded for help.
I tried to stop him. I told him to stand up and that he needn't kneel, but didn't answer his request yet. He looked at me from his place on the ground, his eyes gleaming more than usual, and his grip on the sand softened, the muscle knots in his jaw relaxed.
"I… I…" I started. "Let's… let's first go back. Join up with Hinatsuru. Then we'll talk–"
Wait…
Hinatsuru!
In the script, it said…
"Guess I'll go see Hinatsuru."
If that was the killer talking, then…
"Tengen! What time is it?"
He looked confused. He stammered, and getting impatient, I rushed over to a still-sleeping Shinobu, and checked her wrist.
Shit!
It's already two!
How long were we out for?
"We've gotta go!" I yanked Tengen up by the arm. "It's Hinatsuru. I don't know – but if the script I read's correct, he's heading for your house. Hell, he might already be there!"
"What? How's he know where I live?"
"I don't know! I– I–" I gave up trying to explain it to Tengen, and I woke up Shinobu. She looked at me bafflingly, purple eyes fluttering, but at the mention of Hinatsuru's name, her ears shot up.
So we ran.
Ran like we never ran before.
And when we'd arrived, we saw it.
A snake hammered onto the door of the apartment building… a trail of red that slithered along the corridors… the half-open door gating Tengen's flat…
And the lone figure who met us inside.
"I… didn't want it to be you."
It was Tengen who spoke. I watched him wearily, knees heavy, throat throbbing, and then my gaze went back to the man. He was monumental, his head nearly graced the ceiling, his shoulders nearly spanned the hallway. Just like Tengen. He turned, and faced us.
"Tengenmon," he boomed. "The bastard sibling comes to redeem himself. Still letting father play you like a pussy, are you? Come to bring me back over?"
Tengen grit his teeth, looking helpless.
"We're the last two," he replied. "Everyone else's gone. Someone needs to carry the Uzui name… and he wants it to be you."
The man shook his head, and when I looked in his eyes, I saw the moniker emblazoned upon them:
"一壱"
"Lower Moon One."
Or, as Tengen called him:
"Nishimon… Nishimon Uzui…"
"…My last remaining brother."
A/N: Do you know Tengen's backstory? The one the author herself/himself gave? If you don't, maybe you want to re-read it. Here's an excerpt from the wiki page about him…
"…Tengen was born into a family of nine children within a shinobi clan. By the age of 15, seven of his siblings had already died leaving only him and his younger brother…"
Maybe I'll write my own one. It'll fit into canon, of course. Like a key into a lock!
