From the start, things weren't going well.

The strategy her grandmother had established was simple. There were three houses Uzui suspected of holding a demon, and each boy would be sold individually to investigate them all.

Her grandmother, instead, insisted the demon hid in the Kyogoku house and that it would be easier to sell them all there. Ayaka pressured her into not being so careless, so in the end she chose the same strategy as Uzui (to her displeasure) and decided to send each girl, too, to a different house.

But when the madame of the Kyogoku house eyed Kanao and Ayaka and offered to buy them both, her grandmother accepted so quickly it was hard to believe she didn't plan on following any other plan that wasn't hers from the start.

Aoi, instead, was forced to be sold to a different house with a familiar face.

"I already told you I have an eye for these things," the madame exclaimed, wiping away the makeup from Inosuke's face, who was the most still and quiet he had ever been in his entire life.

Despite the fact that they had both been sold the same day, everyone fluttered around Inosuke and complimented his beauty, as Aoi was pushed back to the shadows and forgotten about completely.

"Huh, Aoi is here," Inosuke said when seeing her in the kitchen a few hours later, where they had sent her to peel potatoes. The workers in the house had already cleaned all the makeup off his face and had put on some new one, they had even washed his hair! Aoi had to wipe off her own by herself and had gone back to her usual pigtails, but her everyday looks weren't as wonderful as Inosuke's and she was assigned kitchen labour.

"They think you're gonna become an oiran." Aoi cut down on a potato too harshly when saying that. "But we are leaving once we finish our mission, so don't give them too much hope." Throwing a potato at his face that he caught mid air with his teeth, Aoi brought her hands to her waist. "And don't talk, or else they'll find out you're a boy."

"Shit, that's true, the flashy guy told me not to talk," Inosuke cursed, mouth open in a way that she could see the disgusting potato in between his teeth.

'And they think that this guy can become an oiran…' Aoi thought in annoyance.

"Hey, hey, maybe this mission will be so long I'll be able to defeat that other oiran." Inosuke took another few potatoes by his hand this time.

"If the mission takes that long, I will have left by then," she added, letting go of the knife and surrendering before his friend, who jumped at what little was left of what she had been cooking. Was that really what she was there for? Doing the same thing she did in the Butterfly Estate?

"Do you really wanna leave that bad?" Inosuke looked up, make up ruined, rests of carrot all over his face and eyes as wide open as a deer's who was taken by surprise. "Now that I think about it, you never go on missions."

"Well, what's wrong with that?" Aoi bit, sounding particularly bitter. "If I suddenly wanna go on a mission without a reason, it's my decision."

"But when that guy took you, it didn't look like you wanted to go with him," Inosuke continued, suddenly getting so close to Aoi's face that she stepped back. "Something happened in between, didn't it?"

She rubbed her arms, frowning, but Inosuke just went back to the food:

"Or maybe I'm just stupid," he said, swallowing an entire boiled egg before Aoi's disgusted expression.

"Right…" Aoi whispered, without trying to push him away from the counter. "Stupid…"

"My best friend, that's who's super smart," Inosuke muttered, tapping his chin. "Twenty… twenty… something… November? How was it?"

Aoi raised an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't have friends, that you had 'subordinates'."

Inosuke didn't catch the sarcasm in her voice and reacted cheerfully, "Aya isn't my subordinate! She's my super duper best friend and she's super smart! She helped me defeat the beast and Tontaro says that the rank after subordinates is super best friends! So I gave her an upper rank!"

She tilted her head in both wonder and frustration. "You gave her an upper rank… That's not how it works…"

But Inosuke wasn't listening, since he had gone back to muttering to himself. "Twenty… nine. What was a birthday again?"

Finally, Aoi pushed him out of the way, let out a long sigh and told him not to talk to her again.

ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ

Because that mission had been deemed a competition, Kaede had made up a stupid rule of no contact with other members of the "rival team" that Uzui had supported.

Despite this rule, Aya had secretly hoped to end up in the same house as Tanjirou, but when seeing Zenitsu's blond head, that hope vanished in thin air. She didn't regret it completely, since Zenitsu was still her friend and she would find a way to see Tanjirou no matter what.

Zenitsu, just like Aya, didn't take well to that rule of 'no contact with the enemy'.

"Stop ignoring me!" Zenitsu whispered/screamed at them in a deserted corner, close to being hysteric.

"We can't act friendly around each other!" Aya whispered/screamed back. "Don't you think it would be weird!? If they find out about one of us, then we'll all be found out!"

Zenitsu pointed with his eyes at the hands of Aya and Kanao, intertwined, and raised a single sceptic eyebrow.

A small smile painted itself on Kanao's face as Aya blushed, stepping up in a way that their hands were hidden behind their backs

"Kanao and I don't count because we were sold together! Stop being so childish!" she huffed, tugging Kanao somewhere else and leaving a fuming Zenitsu behind.

Zenitsu didn't give up, in fact, he only became even more annoying.

When he wasn't furiously playing the shamisen, something he was very good at (which surprised no one), Zenitsu went to Aya and Kanao complaining about Uzui, with bloody ideas about how he would ruin his life, about the madame, who made him play until his fingers became bloody, or, why not say it? About any little thing that slightly bothered him.

Of course, Aya tried to have as little contact as possible with him and told him to go away every time he came at them with any intent of ranting, but the times Kanao was alone, the tsuguko didn't have the strength to tell him to leave without her coin, so she ended up getting used to Zenitsu's constant chattering with the passing days.

"Hey, hey, Kanao," Zenitsu approached her one day, holding a little package in his hands and taking her to a corner.

Once they were alone he unwrapped it, showing her a bunch of shiny candies. Zenitsu threw one at his mouth and swallowed, pushing the candies Kanao's way.

"Did you steal them?" she asked, trying not to think about how delicious they looked. "You stole a lot of food from the kitchens in the Estate…"

"Who cares?" Zenitsu only said, only pushing the candies closer to Kanao's face. She swallowed, unknowingly, and raised her hand to take one.

"What the hell, Zenitsu!?" Aya suddenly appeared by the corner and he let out a high pitched yelp.

Kanao looked between them as Aya gave him a dirty look.

"I was just offering my friend some candies! You're a real party pooper!" Zenitsu hissed, placing himself by Kanao's side. "You babysit her too much, she was gonna take one, weren't you, Kanao!?"

Aya turned to her with a frown. "You weren't, were you, Kanao?"

"Um, I-..." She looked between Zenitsu and Aya, choosing her coin. "Kaede-san told us… not to have contact with each other."

Disappointment appeared on Zenitsu's face as Aya snickered and finally shooed him away. He complained and promised to share the candies with someone else.

Kanao stared at his back as Zenitsu turned the corner and wondered if she had hurt him, thinking about just how happy he had been before she lied so ridiculously.

ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ

Tanjirou ended up being the only one in the Tokito house, well, apart from him and Nezuko, who he had been worried about later.

His sister scratched the box and complained painfully from time to time without any reason why and that troubled him to no end. It was very painful, too, for him not only to witness Nezuko's suffering, but also to lie about the strange noises every time someone asked him about them.

But despite it all, he had no problem with being accepted for his great dedication on all the chores the madame assigned him. The scar on his forehead hadn't been well received, of course, but his enthusiasm was contagious and it made the madame feel like buying him had been worth it. She was so satisfied about Tanjirou's hard work that she even gave him a bunch of coins to buy whatever he wanted in the market.

In fact, there was one time where the madame from his house told him to tag along with her while she went shopping, since Tanjirou had unnatural strength (which would have been normal in the corps). Suddenly, a vendor from some flower stall in the main street approached -more like attacked- him.

"Isn't this little miss interested in a beautiful flower bouquet!? Every girl would love to have this!" They came closer to his face as they screamed and he stepped back, hoping not to be overwhelmed by the smell.

Tanjirou, not wanting to be impolite, took from his pocket a few of the coins the madame had given him for the extra work. The vendor took them away without even looking at how much they were worth before leaving a flower bouquet in Tanjirou's hands and going back to their moving stall.

"Thank you for your purchase, no refunds!"

And in the blink of an eye they were gone.

Not daring to think ill of the vendor, since he was from the countryside where it was strange for them to be anything that wasn't honest, Tanjirou didn't even question if the price of the bouquet was one fitting of the coins the vendor had taken from his hand.

He looked at the flowers on his hand and couldn't help but sigh in tiredness.

"What am I supposed to do with this now?" He wondered, going back to the madame's side with a new item.

She asked him what took him so long and Tanjirou had to tell her he had been tricked into buying a bouquet he didn't want. (If he spilled another lie he would have exploded).

"Well, why don't you give it to someone?" She suggested. And suddenly the purchase didn't feel like such a waste anymore.

ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ