The hero shouldn't have died.

It was a tale Senjuro had gotten used to.

After all, every family had their own stories, right? Each member is assigned a role in the scenario and the different characters are essential for the story. The show must go on, Kyojuro would have said, no matter what, so they kept going and going, because there was no life without performance.

The epic tale of their family was made out of three basic characters.

He was given the role of the weak and helpless villager, who's vulnerable against the winds that wreck his life. Just like any other civilian he must be torn to pieces, put through injustice and horror for years. He was the victim, the trial on the path of the hero, awaiting to be saved -who couldn't be strong and was forced to take on a minor role-.

Then came the hero, of course.

Kyojuro was who rose victorious with a sword by his waist and a blinding attitude, he set off on his journey and must be crowned hero when clearing a set of labours that become increasingly worse with each passing day -survive the Final Selection, make your way up the ranks, become a Pillar-. One of them was just defeating the monster that lived in the cave.

That was his father, who slept during long periods of time and can awake any minute to get out of his cave. He was as unpredictable as he was wrathful. Not caring about anything, he represented the evil in the world, all of it, as he turned for the villager into a bad omen. (When he woke up he would be angry, and when he was angry he turned violent.)

He stayed very still on the corridor, listening closely to distinguish his father's breathing in the room. The wooden boards cried when he gave a step too careless, echoing in the room like the song of a mermaid. His breathing stuck on his throat but he could do nothing but wait, cold sweat sliding down his back.

A door slid open, with a little skip midway because it broke long ago and no one ever fixed it.

This was a scene that they had both performed many times. Senjuro would quicken his pace with a shaky breath and stand up against the wall. He'd try to listen and would be able to identify how his father got out of the room, then he'd hear him rummage through the kitchen, with the clicking of the bottles in the background. He'd start drinking, then he'd call his name. And the cicadas would cry.

In every epic tale the hero was the one to save the villager from his tragic destiny. He appeared then like a saviour, who helped him soothe the monster so he'd go back, once again, inside his cave.

But heroes weren't supposed to die, the villagers weren't left at the mercy of the monsters and the monsters didn't continue living past the battle.

So the story in which Senjuro had placed his faith for years faded away in between his fingertips. And he was unable to hold onto the pieces that were left.

Ayaka Iwamoto carried the unconscious body of his father and laid it on the half made futon of his room.

Of course, Senjuro could have done it himself. (He had trained for years, although uselessly. Carrying heavy weights was nothing.) But he preferred not to.

He gave Yuu a piece of castella, who claimed it would help bring Tanjirou back to consciousness, and both were left alone.

"Thanks," Senjuro weakly muttered. Just to make sure he quickly added. "Iwamoto-san."

She leaned further against the kitchen counter, with the whistle of the teapot in the background, and smiled.

"Just call me Aya."

He rubbed his forearms, hidden under white cloth, without giving any answer. Ayaka's eyes fixed on them for a moment as he tried to look for a way to break the silence. She was the one to talk again:

"So you're Rengoku's brother, right?"

Senjuro nodded, not knowing what to say to that. Ayaka continued.

"You look alike." He drily laughed and did nothing but agree.

"What tea do you prefer?" He asked, looking in between the dozen bags kept in between the teacups.

At her request he picked a jasmine one, filling a cup that Ayaka received gratefully in between her hands. Both of them ignored that Senjuro was trembling.

"You never told me what kind of sweets you liked." He couldn't understand why she insisted on having a conversation, but he didn't care much because the company on his home was scarce and boring. Maybe he should go out more.

"Dango... always leaves a nice aftertaste," he whispers against the brim of his own teacup as he, too, leans against the kitchen counter, but he can't bring himself to drink.

The bruise on his cheek, painfully throbbing, lingered. The cicadas cried.

Ayaka finally looked him in the face, at the purple mark, and finally lashed out at him. "It's not the first time this kind of thing happens, is it?"

He only rubbed his forearm.

"I can't really deny it, can I?" For a moment it looked like Ayaka was going to shake her head, but she stayed still, expectant. "Kyojuro believed our father would go back to the way he used to be." He believed that, through offerings and banquets left at his door, the monster would realize he had lived with the villager and the hero in the past and that he'd fix that which had been broken. "But he was wrong."

And now Senjuro had nothing to hold onto because without a hero this story wasn't an epic tale, but a tragedy. Or maybe his life had been nothing but a tragedy from the start.

Ayaka gave him a long, thoughtful stare but kept a considerable distance between them, more for Senjuro's comfort than for hers.

"So your father wasn't always like this." She took out an entire leaf from her teacup and left it on the windowsill. "I won't lie, he looks like a violent person."

"He's a monster." It was something said under his breath but that she heard him hiss. "I don't know why I haven't run away yet."

But he did know. It was the only thing his father seemed to talk about.

Time for dinner would come and Shinjuro got out of his room, called by hunger.

"Where are you, Senjuro? Be useful for something and bring me the bottle I left on the table yesterday." Senjuro would go at the calling of his name, retrieving the bottle. Shinjuro talked. "You're worthless, you know that, don't you? That's right, you and I are average people, Senjuro. It's no use for us to try, just like your brother. He thinks he's better than us just because he's a Pillar now. He doesn't understand us, we know our limits." Here he stopped to chug down the last remains of barley brandy or sake or whatever he was drinking that day. "That's it, get it carved on your skull, if you're not brilliant you're nothing. Everything's useless. Only idiots try. You're smart so you know what I'm talking about. That's why you haven't left, you're smart, Senjuro, you're very smart. But too soft, sometimes you just have to do things without thinking about them. This is why you can't use Breaths." And by then Senjuro's eyes felt wet, but he stayed still looking down at the floor. His father continued. "In the end there's nothing we can do, now go and make me dinner."

And Senjuro walked, trembling, until reaching the kitchen, and he'd make him dinner. Then his father ate and fell asleep, appeased by mundane pleasures, as Senjuro could finally breathe again. Although his words would stay behind him much, much longer than his presence.

"Then why don't you?" The expression on Ayaka's face was strangely serene.

Senjuro knew why not, and his mouth bled words like an injury whose knife that had kept it together was suddenly purged.

"I would have nowhere to go," he replied," I'd have to sleep on alleyways or corners and work whatever job I could. And the truth is," he chuckled bitterly. He didn't know why he was telling this to a complete stranger. Did he even have any friends to begin with? "The only thing I've ever done is train swordsmanship, I don't know how to do anything else... And it's not like I'm very good at it, either."

Of course, the villager wasn't supposed to leave. The villager must stay, like a cycle, for the hero to come save him. If he left, the story wouldn't make sense. But the hero had left first and nothing made sense anymore.

"Then come with me," she said against the Sun, the light coming in through the window painted a golden halo around her head, blurring her features and making her look like a spirit. For a moment he believed her to be a force of nature. "Since I'm a tsuguko, my salary is higher than a normal mizunoto," Ayaka continued, steadiness of a dozen gales. "I'll rent a house far away from here. You don't have to worry about food or clothes either."

Could a villager even do that? Could he? Was that allowed? Kyojuro...

Kyojuro is dead, Senjuro. Stop crying already.

"Why would you help me? I don't even know you." It was a question more for himself than for her, because it felt too good to be true. "What would you get from it?"

Ayaka got just a centimetre closer to him in a way that she glowed under the sunlight that came in through the window. "I don't do this to get anything." Her big eyes looked him in the face, he believed to see infinity in them. "I'm just tired of not seeing anything."

The epic hero had died and with him so had the endearing of this story. But the only thing a tragedy needed to change was a saviour.

Ayaka Iwamoto, with skin as white and delicate as a Bodhisattva, appeared like a new role in the scenario. Outside, the cicadas cried.

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He remembered eating watermelon sitting by the porch, with his back soaked in sweat, and enjoying the fresh wind to battle the hot weather.

"It's not fair." Ayaka, hair much shorter than now, smiled at him with the edges of her mouth slightly red. She was still on her first portion. "You're too big."

"Or maybe you're just too small." Genya munched on his and replied to her by sticking his tongue out.

She sticked her tongue out back just to end up laughing meanwhile, in between the grass and the ferns, the cicadas cried.

On the entryway, Himejima-shishou hurried him to come in with an urgency strange for his master. The watermelons in a corner of the garden weren't still ripe but they had become of a significant size.

A few days ago a crow had come carrying a letter desperately asking for his help and he had killed the demon assigned to him as quickly as possible to go there.

"Here." Shishou made him kneel before the table that kept Genya's bonsais atop of it, where a few blankets had been huddled in a corner. With a single, careful finger, he brushed them away slightly to show him a collection of furry patches of different colours. "I need your help, Genya."

He leaned further against his knees. "Are those... cats?"

"Kittens," Himejima corrected, who had started to cry. "They were born a few days ago."

Genya picked up a tabby one and held him in between his hands. "They're just cats, what's the problem?"

Himejima only cried more. "I'm just scared I'll crash them under my hands if I try to pick them up."

"Ah," said Genya, who perfectly knew that his master had a soul too soft. "So it was that."

He picked up another one and held each one on either hands. "They're the kittens of Ayaka's cats, are they not?"

Himejima stayed still for a moment, as if he hadn't expected for him to splutter out that name so suddenly, and nodded.

"What do we do with them? Their mother is gone," he softly asked. Then he whispered. "Namu, namu."

"I guess we'll have to feed them ourselves," Genya said, leaving them again on that bundle made out of sheets and blankets. The kittens, with little meows, snuggled against the bodies of their siblings.

He remembered having done this a thousand times. Their mother had trouble producing milk and their siblings, as small as dolls, needed to eat. Nemi's hands were fast and he got to steal some milk from somewhere, the where didn't matter, that he would warm above the fire, spoon feeding it to whichever sibling it was. The next day he'd step through the door covered in bruises and their mother would silently cry during the night, were it because of the extremes her son was able to reach or the powerlessness at being unable to prevent it from happening, but that was the unpleasant part.

Even if he was someone that could barely be in his house without his head touching the ceiling, Himejima had always felt to him like someone extremely small for the most mundane things. Like a shy kid with the ability to break everything he touched who had been told to be careful of strangers.

"You've grown a lot," Himejima said at some point, as they took care of feeding the kittens one by one. He sounded nervous, but it was because he didn't want to crash the head of the kitten on his palm, who proudly carried its shiny and black fur.

Before the Final Selection Genya was tall enough to reach Himejima-shishou's ribs. Now, with a rapidly changing body, the mohawk tickled his shoulders.

"I guess that's true."

"Ayaka..." Genya knew his master had been wanting to ask ever since he arrived.

"She sent me a letter," he said. "And I read it."

"Did you write her back?"

"I don't think you should stick your nose into this, Himejima-shishou." Genya scratched the ear of the kitten he was holding, completely white. "Ayaka's smart enough to fix this by herself."

"I worry too much."

"That's why-" Genya left the kitten on the box where they had decided to keep them until they could eat by themselves. "You shouldn't get into this. You already have your own problems to deal with."

Himejima stayed silent as he picked up another kitten to place it on his knee, this time it had long, dark grey hair, messy and dirty. "You resemble your brother a lot, did I ever say that?"

At this Genya looked up in curiosity like a dog when listening to a whistle. He couldn't mean physically. "What do you mean?"

Himejima let out a hollow chuckle. "Not just you, but Ayaka too. You don't want to trouble anyone with your problems." He remained thoughtful for a moment. "Although I guess I'm also like that. We could be a family, don't you think?"

Genya hummed and looked at the box where the kittens were bundled together against one another. He'd like for that to be true.

By the time the Sun set they had already fed them and Genya left on a piece of paper how to warm up the milk for Himejima. He trusted him to do it by himself, but he knew it was more likely that he'd call Genya soon.

He stared at the watermelons, that would ripen during the next weeks along with the cicadas, that would get out of their hideouts to cry once more, and wondered if he truly wanted them to. In his pocket, Ayaka's letter burnt like fire.

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