Ubuyashiki Kanata was descending the steps of his intangible estate when the world turned on him. Even if walking by itself was one of his greatest cautions, and the larger caution than which was that he often refused any assistance doing so, this was not what went wrong. A man in demon slayer uniform rose from the courtyard bushes and lunged a spear that tore into his hip, and it was ascertained later by Tsubone Endou that it was a miracle he did not die instantly. The only bodyguard Ubuyashiki kept threw himself at the assailant while Nen Kusakabe blew the alarm and attended to the leader the best he could, but the damage was already incorrigible. The ear muffs were off long enough that he would never hear again, and his stomach had been gouged and he would be confined to liquid sustenance for the remainder of his life. The fall, too, shattered the backs of his ribs and his pelvis, ripping the hope from him that he would stand another time. By the decline of the day Ubuyashiki Kanata was wheelchair-ridden, perma-injured, deaf. Now the holy man had been usurped from his heaven.
19th of April 1916
Giyuu's POV
The radio was working today, working in the sense that we wanted it to. Out of the speaker came the news-voice, low and as standard as concrete, rendered unisex by the gradual degradation of quality of it having been relayed from Tokyo. At first Kanae and I leaned over on the floor so that were closer, but the interest waned slowly and then exponentially, and we were back on the couch reading, waiting for an assignment to come in, a bolt of thunder to come down and shock some fun in us perhaps. For boredom, I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror awhile. Was my nose different? And that blond stubble was still growing. I dismissed it, washed my face, dried off. I stepped out, and Tsubone was there.
…But she did not mind us. Kanae greeted her, and Tsubone returned it, but there was no indication in the hurried tone that the reply was meant for her ears. She went past me and wiped her face of sweat, then to her room to get her comb and un-strangle her hair, and zig-zagging through the house for other parts she did not even notice the relocation of the radio in the corner, for her feng shui standards that she so often dictated. She was absorbed in something that escaped my and Kanae, and after long it was I who finally came forward to ask her what it was.
"It's nothing that should concern you."
Though the answer, answered nothing. But the whole while she marched around the house Kanae and I reckoned that whatever was able to trouble Tsubone would be somewhat parallel to a cataclysm in our world, and so we were intrigued. Also, when she tugged down her collar for comfort, we saw a spot of blood. So – a surgery? But of what sort, and on who? In time, she did divulge more, but on other things.
"I'm going to meet Tetsuo," Tsubone said. She was still now because she was taking a smoke break. "It's urgent."
"Well, is it for this thing that 'shouldn't trouble us?'"
"Yes. But I still won't tell you what." Tsubone dangled the cigarette. "By the way, shouldn't you be somewhere? Not idle like this."
"Oh yeah," Kanae brought up. "Miyamoto's Hashira ceremony is today." I remembered it too, because of her.
"What? That's today? Then it won't…" Tsubone's eyes fell, then she told herself: "No, just let them find out that way. It's better…" She put out the cigarette and went to the door, opened it halfway, but did not leave. We were called to the hallway and given a warning.
"Where's Shinobu now?" Tsubone asked.
"In the laundry field, with the dummy…"
"Go to her quickly, and take her with you to Miyamoto. Don't let her be alone. In fact, don't let any of you go anywhere alone. Stick together for the next few days, until I tell you different."
"Really, Tsubone," Kanae stepped forward. "What's wrong?"
"It's instinct…" Tsubone replied. She rubbed her nose. "I don't know if it's related to the Catholic victory, but something's happened. And now I just want caution for the rest of us."
Catholic victory? Kanae would ask, and even if I knew what Tsubone meant I did not understand. When she'd left we didn't move from the hallway, maybe hoping that she would come back in the door and tell us it was all a terrible joke, but this didn't happen. The only way left now…
Onwards, to Miyamoto Shō.
We entered the eastern auditorium in the shape of a half-egg and built out of cedar wood and partly open to let the sun come in, and we went backstage and saw her: Miyamoto Shō, bashful and handsome as chrysanthemum, in the demon slaying uniform that shone more than ever, wearing the lipstick on her bottom lip but not on her upper. And Shinobu and Kanae would fawn over her. And maybe I fawned over her too, in my own silent way. We went onto the stage together and saw before us the rows of seats, the odd demon slayer come to watch, the dusk of this strange morning that looked like evening, and it was quiet and in ways unremarkable, but regardless I knew the one feeling in Miyamoto's head was this: that the whole world was hers. And if that was enough for her then it was enough for me to know only that.
"Tsubone told me…" Miyamoto said. "That when she became Hashira, the process was that she had to kneel down, and Ubuyashiki came and dipped his thumb into a tub of ink and made a dot on her forehead. Like in India. Then she was given a new hilt in a fancy water style… then I think, a necklace, too… but apparently a lot of people were at her event because she was the youngest Hashira ever to be inducted… and the record still stands."
"But you're nineteen," Shinobu said. "How old was she, then?"
"Eighteen. Like, just eighteen. A week after her birthday."
"And Morinaga?" I asked.
"They became demon slayers and then Hashira at the same time… so he was Hashira at twenty-two something."
"…That's still young," Shinobu said. "So they both must be plenty strong… like how I'm gonna be, soon."
"But look," Kanae pointed. "A lot of people are coming for you, too."
And there were. They were spewing into the auditorium now, and the original crowd was doubling, tripling, so on and forth, and we quickly went back behind the curtain. Miyamoto dipped her red face into her hands. We gave her our final encouragements, and then the bell rang. Ubuyashiki Kanata was coming, and we took our seats before the stage.
Next to me, Numachi.
"It's boring hanging around the medical faculty all day, so I came," he said. "And maybe it's nice to see her." As a habit, I observed, he liked to rub his empty sleeve when he spoke.
"Well, was just surprised…" I replied. "I didn't think you were the type… to do… anything." I didn't let him hear the last part.
So the ceremony went on. And a mesh was pulled over the open roof so the light was dimmed. And there was less talking. Shinobu and Kanae huddled whispering in their own sisterly group, and in my mind I went closer to Numachi. Then, he pointed out two open seats next to us.
Tsubone and Morinaga, I said to him.
Where were they? I wondered.
When Miyamoto came out again the room exploded. Boys younger than me, men doubly as old, all jumped from their seats to give applause that shook the foundations of the earth. Except Shinobu and Kanae, the women weren't so excited. Numachi slapped his lap to imitate the sound, and shyly, I smiled, and hoped Miyamoto would see it. She received the ovation gracefully, but must've been looking among us for Tsubone, and most of all, Morinaga, and was too busy in that to bow. When she did not find them, if only for a moment she let her head sink down.
Then she kneeled on the stage.
Then the world was silent.
Then Ubuyashiki Kanata was to come and anoint her.
But Ubuyashiki Kanata never did.
In his stead, Nen Kusakabe.
Tetsuo Morinaga.
Tsubone Endou.
Soon as she saw them Miyamoto lit up. They went to their seats by us and gave Numachi mixed looks when they passed, but Kusakabe remained in the passageway. Then Miyamoto and I knew at the same time: for whatever reason Ubuyashiki could not come today, and Kusakabe was here to serve as replacement.
"Something truly urgent has come up for Oyakata-sama." He confirmed it to the crowd, from the stage. He pat down his dazzled hair. "So I'm here."
Tsubone and Morinaga, eternally anxious-looking, scowled. But the process went forward, and at the end Miyamoto's forehead was dotted and her neck was weighed down with the jewelled copper scarf and she held in her hands the jade-like cloud hilt. She stood up, finally bowed, and the world again erupted with their applause.
Swept in the whirlwind of ecstasy, Miyamoto twirled and placed kisses on the girls' cheeks and gave me a huge hug and then it was Numachi.
Foreigner Numachi, just come to watch.
…Almost like an immigrant.
Standing there, not quite knowing what do with any part of himself.
"Oh, well… I'm just here…" he said. "I…"
"If it's about that day I saved you," she replied, smiling. "Then there's no need for thanks."
Numachi's tension did not lift. "But… in any case, congrat–"
Taken in an immobilising embrace, the voice was squeezed out of him and he didn't finish. He became upright like iron and was frozen against, what must've been to him, the prying shape of Miyamoto. It was long before she let go, and even after Numachi did not speak. And when she'd left on her trail of ravishment I only then saw it: the blush below his eyes, the first expression of this outlander named Numachi.
"I was lying," Numachi said afterwards, alone. "When I said I don't have a home here." At first stunned because it defied my mental convention of him, I calmed and told him to go on.
"It was a good home. Maybe those living there were like family, too. The truth is… I left it to become a slayer. Don't really know why. Though now I'm this way I'm thinking I ought to go back. But I don't know how I can face them. That's why I'm keeping with this story. To Tsubone, too. So… you gonna tell her?"
"No," I replied. "I wouldn't do that."
"…I see. You really are kind."
Then Numachi leaned deeper into the wall, and held the stump of his lost arm.
"But if you're so kind… why fight?"
"…Huh?"
"Why'd you become a demon slayer, Giyuu?"
The atypical question of many years past, so my answer was quick: to avenge my sister.
"Perhaps…" Numachi started. "I'll say the same thing as the others, that you don't seem the belligerent type. And it's true. But I'll also ask you why. Why do you want to avenge her?"
"Because that's… just revenge. How it goes," I replied. "He took her life and so I'll take his. It's a fair exchange."
"So you play God, like that. Then your path is set in stone. A shame. But besides that, Giyuu." Numachi swirled a circle with her finger in the air. "You feel that?"
"Feel what?"
"A change in the air."
And the thought of stressed Tsubone came up.
"I do, yeah."
"This world will collapse soon, Giyuu… and we will be the ones left in the end."
"What?" I asked.
But Numachi had already looked away. "Ignore that," she said. "It was a stupid thing to say." He then bid me atheist Godspeed, and left.
So I went home too.
Shinobu was not the most beautiful eater. From years spent wagging her tongue endlessly she had attained a loose jaw, and when Tsubone was not there and she'd consciously stop forcing manners into the movements of her mouth it would often hang open, sometimes spill, always more words coming out of it than food coming in.
"Numachi and Miyamoto–" she churned, that lunch. "They look good together."
"Ya dig?" Kanae replied. "No, I mean… they do. What do you think, Giyuu?"
"…I've never seen them next to each other." I tried to be leeward. "I can't judge."
"You have… when they hugged. Or he got hugged." Kanae repeated Shinobu: "Numachi… Miyamoto. Their hair colours contrast, so it matches…"
"Yin-yang," Shinobu added.
"Well, nice to know," I said, and went to fetch her more tea.
When I was back the room was intoxicated with the air of pubescent gossip. Though they were not whispering I could not hear; it was unintelligible, girly wordplay. First I deduced something about guys, then Miyamoto's name came up, and then mine. Then I was trapped.
"Giyuu, did you know? Miyamoto's actually single."
Either one of them tells me, but it doesn't matter. I was shaken.
"Really?" I asked.
"Yeah!"
"Well, I don't think there's any time for boyfriend'ing now that she's Hashira."
"Sounds like paranoia." Kanae smiled and her chin went in her hands. "But you know, Numachi and Miyamoto…"
"…Numachi and Miyamoto…" Shinobu murmured.
"…they look good together. So let's pair them up. For fun, for us. Maybe it'll turn into something bigger for them."
"You know what you're doing?" I put a hand on the table. "You're being meddlesome."
"But it's only natural, right?" Kanae reasoned. "Sometimes she tells me about how there's nobody around her own age. Eighteen, nineteen, whatever. That it gets boring. Though, I don't know what she was thinking, saying it to her junior…"
"Then, if she wants a… partner, she can get one herself. It won't… be trouble… for…"
"Won't be trouble for her?" Kanae said. "You think she's pretty?"
"…I do."
"And you like her? I mean, not in that way."
"I guess."
"And she likes you too. She's always been nice to you, so you have to pay her back. In our method."
I took my hand off the table. I thought about it for a long time, then told her I'd do it.
"You get Numachi," I was ordered. "Bring him to Miyamoto, and we'll explain the thing to her."
Nevertheless the romance had to be postponed. The head of Wisteria Week was above the horizon and dawn was coming fast, so we went to work. By Tsubone's say we trimmed the ivy and dusted the paths and washed the walls of the auditorium – 'for a huge crowd'. Our mentor, quieter now, did not let go of the strain she returned with on the 20th. Often Tsubone would make trips to Morinaga, and Morinaga and her would make trips to places unknown. Though nobody knew where they went, they would always return from the vague direction of the Ubuyashiki estate, unsmiling. And because of the hazardous schedule Youma and I decided to delay the ceremonious induction of him into Shinobu's sight.
There was upheaval too, in the far corners of the world. Though they managed to run under my ears before, now it was unavoidable: on the 21st a trio of slayers based in Chiba refused orders to pursue a demon, and again after given an ultimatum. The motivation was unclear, but when a task force was sent to detain them they fought back with crude knives and spears made by taping straight razors to the ends of poles, weapons they would never use against demons. When they were bound on course for court they screamed the name of revolution, whatever name that may be, but when the trial came to a unanimous decision for retrenchment a supernatural force swayed the leaders of the legislation and they were allowed to keep their jobs under parole by a designated officer, with a fine of fifty yen each and no reparation besides that and the shame they thought to have marked on them. When asked, Tsubone said her thoughts in her own way: "They are troublemakers, and only they know what they are thinking."
Then came the 22nd. It was the end of an onerous day, but now the work was done and the world allowed us rest. Shinobu returned to training and Kanae went home, but spurred by a conversation with Youma where he told me the common opinion that there was more to Oyakata's absence at Miyamoto's induction than him being busy, I took an offbeat path and arrived at the estate of Ubuyashiki Kanata. It was late now, and I was sure they would not let me in, so I went past the gate and found what would've been to others, a worrying gap in the fence, then peered over my shoulder. I saw no-one, and slipped inside.
The garden of Ubuyashiki Kanata smelled like pickles, because of the dill that was left to grow wild and the old atmosphere that never rose above the altitude of the house. However that was just where I stood. I stumbled out of the bush and came to be immersed in it: a symmetrical plane of chrysanthemum and grass, the fresher air where roses had been, the lake beyond that was still as mercury.
Then I saw Ubuyashiki Kanata, sitting before that lake.
Instinctively I ducked and dived behind a bush. I watched awhile, but noticed something strange.
I noticed the Ubuyashiki Kanata with no ear muffs.
The Ubuyashiki Kanata with no Kusakabe by his side.
The Ubuyashiki Kanata who haphazardly sang his own voice into his ears.
The Ubuyashiki Kanata who cossetted the child in his arms.
An intruder? was the first thought, and how ironic of me. Without thinking I got up and made one pace forward, and when I was thinking I didn't stop neither. I put my hand out, to call him if he saw and distance him if he did not, and apparently I was quiet enough I got just short of him without noticing, but I wasn't careful. My foot fell on a stick, and he turned around. The top half of his face was purple, and he had eyes like obsidian.
…and he said to me his name was Ubuyashiki Kagaya, and I was told to give mine. I presented Giyuu Tomioka, uncrooked and with no lying.
"Demon Slayer Giyuu Tomioka." He repeated it. "Tsubone's Tsuguko?"
I nodded. The resemblance made the relation to Ubuyashiki obvious, but whatever they were to each other was made marred by the age and the temperance, and twisted by the little boy who hid in his arms like a son and never looked into my eyes. Nevertheless this was a younger man.
"We're all fans of Tsubone, aren't we?" Kagaya said. "She's been there… since I could ever remember. I'm eighteen, so that's long enough to be called long."
"…She's a veteran, I've heard," I replied. "So, are you…"
"Ubuyashiki Kagaya," he repeated, then he declared his title. "A child of Ubuyashiki Kanata, if that's what you're meaning to know."
"But he's twenty-nine going thirty. And you said you're eighteen. That doesn't make sense."
Kagaya waved me off and left the details of his existence up for ponderance. He turned to the boy and played with him while talking.
"This is my son. He's three, and taller now than I ever imagined him to be. I stopped growing long ago. But him? Every day he's rising, rising…" Kagaya made vertical increments with his hands. "And one day he'll catch up. It's better genes, from his mother's side."
"…Maybe he just drinks a lot of milk," I proposed.
"No. It's inherent in an Ubuyashiki that he can't keep any dairy down. It's why we're all so stunted. It's an evil plate we've been given on our table, and some would even call it atonement, but I won't have it. Isn't that right, Kiriya?"
The son seemed to be nodding off, and he slumped into stillness in his father's arms. Kagaya smiled, sadly. He looked across the lake again.
"Though, I'm worried. I haven't seen my father… the 'Oyakata-sama'… since the eighteenth. They say he's got a bout of sickness. Asthma, pneumonia, or something else terrible in his lungs, but I don't believe it. Never believed those people."
"The eighteenth…?" I repeated to myself. "That's the day before Miyamoto's ceremony."
"And they won't let me see him, either."
The son was now asleep, so I said it. "That's an asshole move. By whoever."
"Ass-whole? Huh?"
"It's what you call a not-so-nice person."
The Ubuyashiki boy was quite sheltered. Or maybe I was the one with no roof of censorship over my head.
"Well, I ain't so wise of the world, and street talk," Kagaya said. "But… Kusakabe's the one responsible for the quarantine, I'm guessing. So he's the ass-hole."
"…Have heard a lot of things about Kusakabe," I assented. "But anyway, your father will get better. Because… because… there's…"
"Tsubone? She's been coming around often."
"…Yeah, Tsubone." It confirmed to me the hunch of Tsubone's daytime trips.
Then Kagaya laid his boy on the grass and turned around to give me a sparkling smile. "Thank you," he said, and he stood up.
"I'm guessing… you found that hole in the fence. How you came in," Kagaya said, suddenly. He was not suspicious, only prodding. "I made that hole, you know."
He began down the rim of the lake, and I followed.
"We don't keep much security around," Kagaya explained. "There was more before, but since my grandfather's time it's been like this. He said it interfered with family life."
"Sounds wise of him," I replied.
"But I'm not allowed outside the estate anyway, except for occasions."
"Occasions?"
"Rare events that my father and Morinaga and Kusakabe can't be at. Where Tsubone fills in for them. Shelets me accompany. Though not anymore. Because… because… I'm getting weaker."
Then he stopped, from the fence where I came, at the gap. He grabbed the bush covering it supply and pulled it to the side to reveal it.
"So that's why I made this hole. To have a way out." he said. "Me and my brother, when he was still here."
"Where's your brother now?" I asked.
"I don't know. Somewhere in the wide world, playing emperor, maybe," he replied, longingly. "And I've never mustered to step out here once to find him."
He let go of the bush, and it twung back into rigid place. We went back to sit by the lake. Kagaya made sure his son was asleep again.
"Actually, I've been allowed one moment with my father recently," he said, when it was confirmed. "Yesterday. Tsubone let me have it."
"Well…" – something told me not to say it – "…how's he doing?"
He didn't answer so soon.
"…No, let's rather not talk about it," he said quickly. He threw a stone across the lake. "I… don't want to curse it."
I looked behind me, opposite the lake, towards the estate building. I imagined the room that Ubuyashiki Kanata stayed in to be quite lavish. There would be a huge Western bed… maybe a mahogany desk with copper inkwells and nice French paper, but no pen. On the wall, a painting, a relic from the times when he could see. A porcelain plate, a fancy rug, a walking stick…
Blood.
Blood everywhere. His blood.
The red struck me so immediately I didn't wonder what put it in me. It was simply spontaneous. Then it was again something without precedence:
A woman, that left the house, and was now on the lawn.
A woman that brought with her foreboding, when she crossed the grass to us.
"Giyuu? What're you doing here?"
I was asked this, but the answer was not waited for.
"But stay, anyway. Maybe it's better for you to know, too."
Kagaya lurched with the dread, and Tsubone departed it to him:
Ubuyashiki Kanata was dead.
It was reckoned by people who had no experience in reckoning that the attack on Ubuyashiki Kanata was an impromptu crime. Then the revolt of the three in Chiba happened, but their opinion did not change. Then news of the dear leader's death reached their feet and they shed dry tears, and they took their pens and started to draw the lines; but parallel, and disjointed, with no vision.
Then it was men with old muskets and unknown anger.
The target of the trouble was an old Edo-era magazine in Otake, built some half a century ago as part of a greater chain of fortifications meant to ward the soft Honshu underbelly from the perceived dagger of American imperialism. When war never came, it was converted into an arsenal for the Meiji army. Now it was a museum for the Taishō people. When the town clock struck three in the morning an imperceptible scuffle began. Old boys and young men in Gakuen-esque uniform rose from the courtyard bushes and, like a militant gust of wind, overran the civilian security paid to watch but not to fight. The earth shook with the first attack, then it was the building. The droplet structure was looted from the foundation upwards, but after unfettered examination by authorities the morning after it was discovered only eleven outdated murata rifles had been taken, with swaths of stockpiled bullets - and the comforting, but false explanation was given that they would not be able to fire these bullets because of their age - but regardless there was no shortage of journalists to deliver an excessive flurry of media coverage into the gawking minds of the Japanese people.
After suspecting, the demon slayers sent their own investigators to the scene. It took one black crow feather found to be determined: that these assailants were their own men, that dissidence was on the shoreline.
Yet after the fiesta no meeting, nothing, was called. The higher-ups sat with their thumbs locked over each other and twiddled with the angst, and they hoped the situation would run past their riverbank like water and be deposited in the sea of non-concerning. This would be their greatest mistake, but they would not know what kind of mistake it was just yet.
23rd of April 1916
Now it was the 23rd, and Wisteria Week. I had the illusion that fireworks would be shot up at the adjoining twelve o'clock hour, but I descended the house steps in the morning with a full night's sleep and only then saw the first sign: casual clothes, like a school in festivity.
In decidedly Parisian get-up was Kanae. She was a fan of attire from the other side of the world – and I wondered if those from the other side of the world were fans of ours – and it manifested in a long blue skirt, a blouse, a necktie. I imagined Shinobu would've copied her, but she was not there. I looked to unchanged Tsubone for the answer where: she was the same as me, still in uniform, drinking tea in a chair with deep blue bags under her eyes. I was told Shinobu was training, and that we should be out-and-about just the same.
Of course, the day before was the real reason Tsubone wanted us away. After delivering the death rattle to Kagaya she declared in my ear that there was no need for us anymore, and she took her hands out of the boiling pot and we went home. I saw Morinaga behind an estate window when going out, and he waved at me and smiled. I did not question that smile, because it was the kind of smile that adults gave when they saw children. Though if he was there, Miyamoto…
Miyamoto – must've been alone at home. But there was something else about her.
Miyamoto…
"Giyuu," Kanae said. She put her hands together, then I knew. "Today's the day."
Miyamoto and Numachi.
The day of the date.
Kanae did not know anything, inferring from her mood, and if she didn't then Shinobu didn't. It was only that Tsubone chose to put the weight of knowing Ubuyashiki's death on only me that made me wonder. If I was the mature one, and that was why she absolved me to know, then… what was there for me to say? However…
"You brought me here, Giyuu?"
Do mature kids set up romances between their seniors?
I'd plucked Numachi from his hospital-bed nap and taken him to Miyamoto's office, newly renovated last month and so less dark. She'd hardly noticed us come in, and we stood by the archway a while and watched her attend with full grace to a retiring demon slayer here for his last wage.
"You see, Numachi…" I brought up, suddenly. "There's a pretty girl."
"What?" he replied.
"And I've heard… that despite those looks, and her wonderful temperance, she doesn't have a boyfriend. That's right, Numachi, she's single."
Miyamoto took out an envelope and put some money in it. We still watched.
"…Okay," Numachi said, detached. "That's not nice."
"Must be…" – and I wasn't truly sure where to take it from there – "…but it doesn't have to be like that. We'll wait for this guy to leave."
This guy to leave for what, Numachi didn't ask. Miyamoto wrote out the pardoning letter – and that blue acrylic pen she was using, I bought for her – and stuffed it in the envelope. The man left with the package, joyful with the acquittance of this tumultuous job. Then it was only us, and then it was Kanae and Shinobu.
From the doorway, beside us, they came in. I gave a nod to them, and they went to Miyamoto. A few girly whispers were passed around, some hey's and have you heard's, and while leaning to hear, slowly Miyamoto's eyes drew on us. Then she made a bedazzled expression, and then she smiled, and she pulled herself from the gossip and paced to us. Her face was pink, and she couldn't look straight at Numachi.
"H-hey…" she stuttered. "I've been hearing things."
"What?" Numachi replied again.
"If that's how you want it to be, I've got no reason to say n-no."
"No to what? What?" That made thrice.
I left Numachi's space and joined Kanae and Shinobu's side. They looked on with big oval smiles.
"That's a nice venue. The festival tonight?" – what festival? – "Yep, a nice venue for a d-d-date, indeed."
"A date? Wha–" But Numachi knew. See you later, Miyamoto said, and she danced away. Beyond where she had stood, Numachi eyed us fiercely, and he mouthed a bare protest. But nobody wanted to break a heart like hers, and for his empathetic own Numachi could say nothing. The only way left now…
Onwards, to Miyamoto Shō!
It was inevitable to me: the dry air that accompanied festivals with fireworks always brought forth the memories of a childhood I did not remember.
"But you were always at these events. You and Tsutako," Youma said, and he pointed down and up the corridor of outside stalls. "You walked hand-in-hand, and I watched you go, from behind."
Just before then the lady of the hour had stopped by, and for a moment she appeared just as she had then: barely-eighteen debutante, of the last-year Tsuguko summer, but the image was fluttering. Was Miyamoto different? Did she smile wider, was she less shy? Numachi came still in uniform – and his decision for this was as inscrutable as he – and Miyamoto forced her arm under his and they moved on. So goes the romance of the Hashira and the lonely amputee.
"Where's Shinobu?" Youma asked, and surprisingly Shinobu was there just then. She walked through Youma's hologram and approached me to explain Kanae: she was by Miyamoto, but out of her sight. She had taken preppy instinct and decided to follow them.
"But I don't wanna do that," Shinobu said, and it became reasonable to me why such a fashionista came in boorish black uniform just like I. Nevertheless, this was opportunity!
One week ago I was told it: the borders of Youma's condition now allowed one other person than me to see him, and that person was for me to choose. My finger landed on Shinobu.
"Then let me buy you tea," I said, "and we will wait your loneliness out."
The method for seeing involved the blood from my right arm, and why the right arm Youma never specified but neither did I ever ask. Behind where Shinobu could see I put the cup down and pinched the tip of my finger between my teeth so that blood would start to drip, and one drop inside was all that was needed. I swirled it to diffuse the red, and gave the tea to Shinobu.
"Zdrastvootie!" Youma said, when she took the first sip, but it seemed to take the second to fully see. Nonetheless, Youma was my ghost exclusively no more.
Because he always had a fantastic ability for storytelling, Youma condensed our long and tumultuous four-year history into a twenty-minute talk of remarkably easy diction – and he did not do this just for Shinobu – for this was how I knew of he and his brother's stints as soldiers in the early years of Czarist Russia, and nothing much after that until he found my sister's side not too long ago and everything that transpired under their love was suddenly easy memory for him. Besides that, now Shinobu knew Giyuu Tomioka's intermittent years better than I would like admitting. But this was her first question:
"How tall are you, Youma?"
She made an effort to stand against his shoulder when asking.
"185? Somewhere there?" he replied, and it was apparent the second emotion to Shinobu's wonder was jealousy. Regardless they were like acquaintances from the same tribal homeland split by two averse empires, now reunited and realising their bond was always going to be underlying. In other words, they were fast friends.
They went off in their corner talking, and indeed Shinobu's loneliness had been waited out. Prospecting for entertainment, I decided to find Numachi.
Far from the prospecting eye of whatever spirit stands on the clouds was Numachi. Miyamoto was nowhere here, and I learned that the date had been adjourned.
"She had a mission suddenly," Numachi said. "But I got to shake her hand."
It wasn't enough to call the romance a failure, though, in newly-appeared Kanae's terms. She came from her spying place behind a tree and declared the day done; she went home. Now it was just me and Numachi, a scenario that seems to be repeated often throughout time.
"Giyuu." Numachi leaned forward. "Your nose…"
"My nose?"
"Bleeding."
…Indeed, it bled. That was the outcome of dry air for my tentative sinuses. Numachi gave me a cloth and I dried it up, then gave it back to him only because he offered to hold. Afterwards there was more silence, but then I took initiative.
"How was Miyamoto?" I asked. "You liked it?"
"She…" Numachi stalled. He wasn't looking my way. "She's good."
"Good?"
"Sweet."
For Numachi, it was a lavish adjective.
"And what'd you do?" I asked.
"We…" Numachi scratched his beard. "You know that thing where you shoot balloons with a BB gun?"
"Uh-huh."
"And where you throw rings onto a hook to get things?"
"Yeah. Carnival games."
"All of those," Numachi said. "Miyamoto showed me all of those. It wasn't plenty fun, but she liked it."
Terribly humdrum, between the depictions of romance I read in Kanae's lover-novels and my imagining of Tsutako and Youma's relationship, but that was the opinion of the third-person. To Numachi it was something more. He continued to pepper details of the evening on the walk back, and when these were exhausted he stopped quickly under a light and scratched his beard again.
"…Itching?" I asked.
"Should I get rid of this beard?" Numachi said, and it was so abrupt. "Would she prefer it that way?"
"Dunno."
"Well, what do you think of it, Giyuu?"
I told him that I had no opinion, and Numachi kept his face in the low light of the lamp. He held his eye on the image of himself in the glass and with no objection to the fluorescence beyond. His finger then found his chin, and he pulled taut the beard-strands there and began to rip.
"Miyamoto…" he said.
Rip something from his jaw –
"She's…"
Something like silicone, and the hair imparted with it.
"She's a sweet girl, yes."
When he was done he held between his nails a fuzz of hair that was adhesive on one side, and it became apparent to me how unreal the dye of it really looked.
And what a baffling smile she gave when she turned around. The face now clear and polished, it was revealed only to me: that Numachi was a woman, that I had the rainbow wool pulled over my eyes.
A newsletter the next day, from Ren Goto
Oyakata-sama incumbent, the 96th leader of the Japanese Demon Slayer Corps, personal name Ubuyashiki Kanata, has been announced dead today. The honourable succumbed peacefully to an infection of the lungs at his estate this Friday afternoon, 4:37 pm. His wake will be attended only by his family. The details of his public funeral will be announced shortly. The honourable's duties will be temporarily assumed by General Secretary Nen Kusakabe. The inauguration of the heir incumbent, Ubuyashiki Kagaya, will take place on the 30th of April. Further details of that event will also be announced. Let the intermittent time before then be a time of grieving.
The intermittent time was not a time for grieving for most, but a time of merry-making. For faraway leader Kanata it was apparent his people would not mourn him especially, because the death of an Ubuyashiki was a common death and to experience one was a regiment in a slayer's lifetime routine, as their breaths and training and close instances with mortality were.
Everyday, in the shade of the maple trees and the white laundry lines, Shinobu kept locked on the dogged task of acceptance. Occasionally Kanae and I joined her tightly compacted routine of push-ups and sword-swings, but otherwise on cool seats of stone we cheered her from the side onto what we must've all, in some compartment of our hearts, thought was a useless cause. Though let that be a compartment at the bottom of the cupboard, kept under five keys and half a lock.
Numachi, venerable Numachi, did eventually declare herself to Miyamoto, but after that they got along fastly and nicely. Still, the reveal was as shocking to anyone else as it was to me. In those intermittent days there was not moment hidden from Numachi where we did not wonder how she kept her identity from the relentless and impartial eye of Tsubone, who patrolled the hallways every evening with her nose down as part of the final check-ups.
Tsubone tried being lighter but was still bleak. Sometimes I would see her embroiled in tea and clouds of smoke on the seaside, with Morinaga, but they'd only be watching the waves or something, and never talking.
I never heard from Kagaya, didn't expect to. On the 24th I went to sleep with a clean conscience and woke up to walk the dead to death.
25th of April 1916
In the small hours of the morning, when you go to Akuma Ramen to dilute boredom, you will occasionally find Yoneda Magase.
"And the boy gets the whole world thrusts on his shoulders," it was said. "A sympathetic shame. But that was God's mandate, not mine."
Sitting parallel me, across the floating beads that bisected the oxen ramen cart and that kept the two rows of stools opposite about one table, was Magase. He ate handsomely, and kept on patting his defiant hair back into shape. In obnoxious fashion he presented himself as a refined man, a French fairy-tale soldier perhaps, who wore nutty cologne, well-ironed uniform, shoes instead of sandals.
"I heard about this place from Morinaga. He said it was only decent, but I don't trust his word. So I came. And I found you." Then Magase pointed at me through the beads with a chopstick. "Come to eat before the funeral of the leader, I'm guessing?"
"Correct-o," I replied.
"Same. But I don't know the menu here. So order for me, huh?"
And that's how I met Yoneda Magase, exclusive of the Wind Hashira.
Soon we're standing before the estate of Ubuyashiki Kanata, but now the great flagstone pathways were paved with linen and the edges were rowed with chrysanthemum flowers symbolising a tranquil death and a joyous voyage unto nirvana. Three hours later, I would march behind the column of pagan-like mourners on these same passages, but their uniforms would be adorned with sapphire medals and Wisteria badges, gold lace around the collars and silk handkerchiefs from China, and there was no shortage of them to weep and holler for the leader as they lowered him into the bonfire of cremation, wishing him a splendid imbursement in the afterlife for the modest existence he led on earth, an example for them all.
Magase spoke, suddenly:
"I've heard floating talk. Rumours. That the way they say Ubuyashiki conked out isn't actually true. Well, how about it, Tomioka?"
He liked to call me by my surname, and I never authorised it, but that's why he's Magase here and not Yoneda, anyway.
"How about what?" I replied.
"You want to hear the rumours?"
"Maybe."
"Can't be sitting on no fence. Yes or no?"
"…Yeah."
"They say that Ubuyashiki Kanata was killed by one of our own."
Naturally this shocks me and his words are like treason, but what treason? Hearsay only. But Magase seemed to believe this own truth. He hooked his hands behind his back and looked the other way.
"Though it's only a rumour," he was sure to reiterate. "Take it at face value and you're a fool. Even if it's true."
I ignored him. "But Ubuyashi…Oyakata-sama's liked, isn't he?"
"In your small circle, maybe. But on the field?" Magase lets his hands go. "…He's hated."
It came as the greatest revelation to me, and it was either fact or Magase cutting a fool. Five days and thirteen hours later I would know for certain: in the embers of turbulence I'd be shoved off the fence into a side notwithstanding of any choosing, just as he summed it up all those years ago.
"But before it all goes to hell, Tomioka," Magase said. "There'll be one more."
"One more? All goes to hell–"
"One more death. There must be. Three is the minimum sacrifice."
Magase, much taller than myself, was crowing down now and pouring into me with his baby green eyes, but he kept trying to fix his purposely let down fringe to distract it and because of this was always squinting and this was a nefarious expression indeed and it frightened me. Behind his eyes there must have been some kind of motive, but I couldn't see it. Then his stare went away, and he made off to leave. Before then he wished me a bloodless passage through troubled times I could not perceive, and of course, not to be late for the funeral.
While positive for appearances and hiddenly expected, no demon slayer besides the Hashira and their Tsuguko were obligated to attend the cremation of an Ubuyashiki, and so Numachi hadn't come. Youma neither. But it seemed everyone else in the world had. They lined up and started their marching way down the ceremonial paths, and though we were expected at the front of the group Tsubone pulled my and Morinaga's side away without seeing and we hid in an alley.
"I haven't noticed Miyamoto," she said, and I also realised the absence then, of Magase too. "Where is she?"
"She told me she was drying her hair, then she'd come," replied Morinaga. "…Heard that takes long."
Tsubone confronted me. "Go and get her. Quickly!" I was ordered. "And a Hashira, seriously!" she went off muttering.
Below the useless shadow of an exhausted tree I took a break from running and lingered there a while in front of Miyamoto's office, the old decrepit image of last year's shack sticking to the front like a veil though it was upgraded now, and I knew to come here because on her busiest Tuesdays she would lock this place and take her midday bath in the same cubicles as she worked.
The slight crook of the door told me today was wrong. I sped inside with no reason to speed and saw the limping peony bunch on the windowsill I presented her for unsure motives, the acrylic blue pen uncapped on the desk beyond that, and on the wall behind the floating image there was the projection of a montage. Her face. The first meeting and combat. The nineteenth birthday, the handover of the pen. The bitter way I watched Numachi in her arms vanish beyond the hemline of the earth, and my pinker face hidden behind the overwhelming bundle of flowers thrust in her hands the next day. An older girl I had known and liked too much perhaps.
And strung from the ceiling forth everything there like a bull lassoed for his disobedience was the cooling and prostate body of Miyamoto Shō.
