the little paths we find ourselves upon

By: Aviantei

[Twelve Shots of Summer: DECK 10/12]

[Parameters: "XVII-Star" & "XVIII-Moon"]

October

In the autumn sky
lighting bolts cross the distance
connecting us all

I know I've already said this before, but holy shit was fall my favorite season, hands fucking down.

The changing leaves! The cooling temperatures after long months of summer heat! The food! Kimiko had given me quite the exasperated look when I'd come home with a pile of sweet potatoes so big we'd need to eat them every day to get through them, but, listen, the heart wants what the heart wants, and damn did I want some carbs up in this shit, and all the better if they were slow roasted over a fire.

Which was why we were holding a bonfire that night, just to be clear.

As someone who'd once lived in a smaller suburban home, there was something great to be said about having a lot of space and a lot of property, meaning we could kinda do whatever the fuck we wanted. Out by our lightning-struck tree, there was plenty of flat ground and a chunk of dried-out grass that we could burn stuff to our hearts' content.

…or my heart's content, if we were being more accurate, but hush.

"Come on, come on," I said, trying to coax the fire to flare up and build up enough heat to start cooking the pile of sweet potatoes I had at the ready. "You can do it. Set yourself ablaze, and then we can get to work…" Hm, was having Rengoku around to help with a bonfire a good or a bad idea? Too late to find out in the moment, but, like, autumn came every year, so…

Zenitsu, who was sitting nearby, snickered at me, but I didn't mind in the slightest. "You're not always this impatient, so it's kinda cute to see," he said, still giggling all the while. He, too, was adorable, so I couldn't even bring myself to be mad. "If you like it all that much, maybe we should have a bonfire every day…"

"It would be best if we didn't," Kimiko said, studying the flames with much more intensity. Her skillset seemed to also include knowing how to cook under such conditions, and I was always impressed. "For one, even I can't manage to prepare you a balanced menu under these conditions. For two, we'll go through a lot of wood this way, and there's no need to add more to our preparations for winter over something so avoidable."

I could've just gone ahead and chopped more wood myself, but I got the feeling that wasn't what Kimiko had been trying to get at. "Well, we'll just have to stuff ourselves full today, now won't we?" I intended to eat as much as I could, at the very least. Another glance at the pile did make me understand why she was so concerned, though. "…Do you think it'll be an issue to get through all of this?"

"If you don't mind eating them every day, no. They also last for a bit, so it won't be impossible…" At least after so many months I could recognize the look on her face as one of resigned affection, rather than one of pure exasperation. "In any event, I'll use this as an opportunity to get creative with some dishes. Though it will be a big help if perhaps you could invite some guests over to go through more of them."

"Oh, that could be fun!" Zenitsu said. He was a pretty sociable person, even with all his anxiety, so hanging out with a lot of people appealed to him. I was much more on the ambivert scale, but I wasn't all that bothered, and being able to eat more sweet potatoes was just an added bonus. "We could invite everyone, though we did just do that last month… Hmm, what if we hold a party for the locals, instead?"

"You mean like invite some people in the town?" Zenitsu nodded, and I thought that wasn't an awful idea in the slightest. It would also be a good opportunity to do some of that all important advertising. "Why don't we make it an open house, then? Like we can maybe do some Thunder Breathing demonstrations and see if we can collect any students?"

Zenitsu all but sparkled at the proposition. "I love that idea! We've done a lot of practicing, so it's about time we just go for it, right?" That smile of his sure made it hard for me to turn him down—not that I would have, seeing as it had been my idea in the first place. "We should go and visit Natagoro-san tomorrow, then! Hm, how long do you think we'd need to prepare the house?"

Kimiko leaned back in her seat, rocking forward and back as she thought. "That depends on how many people you want to have over, or how many will be staying over. At the bare minimum, we'll need to provide meals, but that's just a matter of supplies. So long as we know a few days in advance, we'll be able to take care of things."

"I don't want more than two students to start, I think," I said, though I thought better of it the next second. "Maybe three at most."

"Yeah," Zenitsu said. "Three sounds like a good number."

"That won't be too hard to manage at all. It's nothing we haven't handled before." Kimiko sounded casual, but I could already see that look in her eyes that indicated she was in planning mode. We could count ourselves lucky that she seemed excited by the prospect, rather than frustrated. "Let's see, if we're working with that plan, then we should be able to put everything together by the weekend. That should give us enough time to gather items for extra mouths in the house. Rairi-sama, Zenitsu-sama, please just let me know what you need us to take care of, and we'll make sure it happens."

Zenitsu and I exchanged a glance. In the end, I verbalized what we were both thinking, and that was one simple thing: "You are far too fucking good to us, Kimiko-san."

Beaming, Kimiko almost preened at the words. "Thank you. I try my best."

One would think that after using Thunder Breathing in literal fights for our lives, there would be no such thing as nervousness while performing our craft. Being under the intense pressure of life or death battles seemed like it should have made any other situation seem trivial in comparison. On top of that, the both of us had done several demonstrations for our close friends, what with giving Aoi an idea of what physical capabilities I needed during my rehab and doing a test teaching run with Kei and Genya. And yet nervousness was rearing its head in full force.

Not for me, but for Zenitsu.

"Not good, not good, not good," he was saying, pacing back and forth and on the cusp of hyperventilation. "Why did I suggest this? I'm going to have to go out in front of a crowd. What if they think the fact that I can just do one thing isn't good enough and we don't get any students, and we're never ever going to do Sensei's legacy justice?"

"I get where you're coming from, but I don't think that's going to happen." Whenever he got like this, Zenitsu needed the bit of reassurance to know that he was valid for worrying, but that in the end there was another perspective to look at the situation from. "For starters, you're not restricted to just one thing anymore. For one, you made your own form, and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. For two, you've figured out your speed issue and been learning the other forms, too." They weren't as proficient as his Hekireki Issen, and neither of us had the expectation that he'd be able to hone them as much as he'd done with the first form, but he was more than capable of performing all that Thunder Breathing had to offer. "You're learning and growing, and I'm so fucking proud of you, and if no one else can see that, it's their loss."

A sniffle. "…You mean that?"

"You know I do." He could hear every ounce of sincerity and love I had in me—but even if he couldn't have, I wouldn't have lied. "Besides, once everyone sees how amazing you are, we'll have no trouble finding students. Natagoro-san already said that people were interested in learning, so we'll be fine."

We'd worked so hard to become the type of students Sensei was proud of. If we could earn his approval, then we could do anything.

Zenitsu breathed—not the Total Concentration kind, but a regular inhale and exhale to steady his nerves. "Okay. Okay. We can do this. We're together, so it'll be alright." He pulled me into a hug, playing with the end of my braid. "Thank you, Rairi. I love you."

"I love you, too, sweetie." The pet name brought that beaming sunshine smile back to the surface, and I kissed his forehead so we wouldn't get too distracted. We had somewhere to be, after all. "Now let's do this thing."

We might've had a decent number of people in the house for Zenitsu's birthday, but the current bonfire party surpassed that without even trying.

It wasn't like it was all that surprising, though. While Zenitsu and I had made a decent number of friends during our time in the Demon Slayer Corps, it wasn't like that could outnumber the population of a small town. That wasn't to say that the entire town had shown up, either—but it felt like it was pretty damn close. There were people packed onto the hillside, up and near the porch sides, and surrounding the multiple bonfires that Kimiko and the others had already ensured were up and running so that the food could cook. The preparation had been chaotic, and even Saori-san—though she didn't join the manual labor aspect—had come to the estate several times to help direct the process.

And in a few moments, all those eyes would be on us.

I turned to Zenitsu, ready to give some extra words of encouragement. But when I looked at him, his expression was already calm, nothing but pure determination in his honey-golden eyes, and I thought better of it. Instead, I caught his eye and nodded, and he nodded back before both of our hands went to the swords at our hips and we breathed.

"Kaminari no Kokyū—"

With synchronous Hekireki Issens, we both burst out of the house and into the area we'd left clear for our performance. Though there was something or other about how the effects of Total Concentration techniques weren't visible if you weren't skilled enough or whatever, it didn't matter, because the sound of our movements produced the boom of thunder, catching everyone's attention in an instant. For the longest time, we'd debated if we wanted to give some sort of introductory speech or something, but, in the end, we'd decided against it.

Thunder Breathing was more than capable of speaking for itself.

And so we went right into it. Though we'd launched off from about the same point, Zenitsu's speed meant he'd landed much more in the forefront—which was just where we wanted him. His next move was to perform the Netsu Kairai, the form he'd put the most work into, while I followed up from behind with a Shūbun Seirai, adding a spectacle in the air above his work. After making a couple of leaps, I landed across from Zenitsu, where we both drew our swords—one golden, one with a lightning bolt pattern of the same color racing from tsuba to tip—facing each other as we exchanged a few theatrical blows in basic swordplay. The hardest part about that section of the performance was not going full speed so that the audience could follow along, but we both managed well enough.

Having done enough, I let out a hum that Zenitsu would be able to hear, and that was his cue to perform the Inadama. That move was still a bit sloppy in his hands, but it did well enough that no one save someone who was intimate with Thunder Breathing would be able to tell, and that gave me plenty cause to dodge back before retaliating with a Dengō Raigō, the range also causing Zenitsu to retreat. The moment the attack was done, though, he got into position, his form so crisp as he zeroed his gaze in on me and kicked off for a Honoikazuchi no Kami.

If we hadn't practiced and choreographed the whole thing before, I never would've been able to retaliate in time. But because I'd known, I had already started moving, my Enrai bursting out from its central point, adding a trail effect of lightning to Zenitsu's own move as he shot past me in one final grand display. My heart raced, almost enough to make my chest ache, but the pure adrenaline and love I had for Thunder Breathing made it all worth it, every last second.

There were several beats of ringing silence as the last echoes of our techniques faded away.

And then somebody started to clap.

Zenitsu, of course, burst into immediate tears of relief, and I wasn't able to hold myself together much better.

Once our collective waterworks faded away, it was time to go and socialize. And by that, I meant it was time to get bombarded by a small collective of kids and teens who had very little restraint and thought what we'd done was super fucking cool. That was good, because it meant we'd accomplished our main mission, but it was also a little bit shocking, because part of me hadn't expected it to be so successful. I'd been ready to play the long game of having a few students at first, then building up our classes over time as our reputation grew, but it looked like we might be skipping a few steps in that department.

It might be hard to narrow down our class size to three at this rate, I thought, counting at least quadruple that number around us. Of course, not every one of them was guaranteed to stick with it; even if we weren't planning on pushing them as hard as Sensei had with us, it still took a lot of hard work to learn swordplay, and not everyone would be willing to do so. But for those that did…

Well, I was getting ahead of myself.

"Hey, hey, I wanna learn how to do that!"

"The sparky thing was so cool!"

"I thought it was beautiful."

The last comment caught my attention, locking eyes with one of the teens tucked in the back of the cluster—and then I was getting bombarded with questions, most of the young ones clamoring for attention. Glancing over, Zenitsu was in much of the same position, some of the smaller kiddos halfway through climbing up his back. He didn't seem to mind, though, laughing with that pure sunshine smile on his face. Was he good with kids, then? It looked like he enjoyed playing with them at any rate.

Either way, I adore him, wow.

"I see you've attracted quite a bit of attention over here," Natagoro-san said, working his way through the excited gaggle of spectators around us. He hadn't hesitated to grab a sweet potato on the way, I noticed. "Well done, well done. If you hadn't already had a collection of interested students, that performance alone would have attracted plenty."

I let myself swell with a bit of pride, while Zenitsu blushed and giggled, "No, no, you don't have to say that…"

"Well it's true, so I am saying it. I think you'll be able to make something good here." I'd thought so, too, but it felt good to hear someone else tell us the same thing, and all the more so because that someone had been close to Sensei. "Oh, but there I go again, making everything about business. We can worry about those sorts of details tomorrow. Tonight, you two deserve to enjoy yourselves, so I won't push too hard."

"We wouldn't have been able to do it without you, Natagoro-san," I said, still eying the closest bonfire. I knew the food wasn't going to run out or anything, but damn did the sweet potatoes taste best when they could still burn your mouth open. "We'll be counting on you to make sure we don't run ourselves into the ground, okay?"

Natagoro chuckled. A few of the smaller kids recognized him—he was pretty well known in town for his advising skills, and thus also interacted with plenty of the families—racing over to shower him in excited chatter. "I managed to keep Jigorō from making too much of a mess of himself. I'm sure working with you both will be a lot easier." Knowing full well there was a chance we'd make a mess sooner or later, I promised myself to at least try to not cause Natagoro too much trouble.

At least not on purpose. That was a safe promise to make.

"Rairi-sama, Zenitsu-sama." With a quick dip of her head, Kimiko arrived on the scene as well. "I don't mean to interrupt, but I didn't want you to miss the opportunity to eat." Sure enough, she had several sweet potatoes in her arms, and I tried to resist the urge to swipe them all up for myself. There was no doubt that Kimiko had intense mom energy, but might she also just be a goddess? Regardless, I accepted my share and took a bite, not caring that it was still hot enough to burn my mouth. As far as I was concerned, that just enhanced the flavor. "The same goes for you, honored guests. We have plenty of food to go around, so be sure to enjoy your fill, alright?"

The promise of food was enough to distract a handful of the younger kids, who dashed off towards the nearest bonfire with a speed that might've suggested an early aptitude for Thunder Breathing. I think I also saw one of the teens blush at the sight of Kimiko, which was more than fair. I, too, was weak to pretty girls, so I could feel the struggle.

I offered those surrounding us a smile. "Zenitsu and I are gonna spend some time to eat, but if you still have questions afterwards, we'll be happy to answer them." We had no intentions of holding tryouts or anything to be our students, but we wanted everyone to know what was expected of them before they committed to starting. "Like Kimiko-san said, there's plenty to eat, so help yourself, and we'll let you know when we're ready for more questions, okay?"

And so Zenitsu and I took a short amount of time to enjoy a moment of peace, because there wasn't about to be any peace at all for the remainder of the night.

Just like we'd talked about, we ended up with three students, and they were as follows:

Yūta had been the youngest student we'd agreed upon, and he'd just turned eleven. However, his parents had assured us that he was very well-behaved, and he'd done some work on his family's farm—they owned one of the fields you had to walk past to get to the Thunder Estate—so he had a basic tolerance for physical exertion, which was a good place to start. His hair was a deep brown, and it fell partway in his face, not quite enough to hide the sharp focus of his eyes.

In contrast, there was Araki, who was about to turn fifteen, but came from a family of textile merchants. There was a little bit of physical labor there when it came to moving stock, but he looked pretty skinny for his age. His kimono was on the nicer end of things, too, but when we'd interviewed him, it was clear he was enthusiastic, so Zenitsu and I had no issue approving his passion as a potential student. He happened to look the most anime of the bunch, what with his bright red hair that could've put an apple to shame.

And then there was Chiori, the eldest at eighteen. She was the middle child of her family, and I was a little impressed that she hadn't been dragged into a marriage arrangement yet, considering the time period and all. Since she still stayed at home, she'd cited an interest in learning some skills for self-defense and protecting her family. Even if demons weren't an issue anymore, there was always some sort of risk at play, so I could admire her determination. While she'd cut the front of her black hair short, causing it to frame her face, the rest was long, almost on par with mine.

All things considered, they were nothing like Zenitsu, Kaigaku, and I had been, which I felt we could call a good thing—but it still made me feel nostalgic, nonetheless. Which was a welcome distraction, considering that the nervousness was coming for me this time, and in full force at that. Training Genya and Kei had been easy, since they'd both already had sword experience. The kids in front of me? I was going to be about fifty percent responsible for their fighting style, and if they got any bad habits, it would be on me.

Calm down. It's not like you're going to send them into actual battle. The stakes are far lower than they were for you. Now stop staring them down. I think you're about to make Yūta cry.

I cleared my throat, using some of my favorite memories of Zenitsu being adorable to brighten up my expression. Zenitsu giving me an encouraging look from my side helped out bundles, too. "I know we've all talked before, but it's nice to have you all here. Thunder Breathing is something that Zenitsu and I learned from our Sensei, who took us and other students in when we didn't have anywhere else to go." The students we were working with weren't in the same situation by any means, but Zenitsu and I had always known part of passing down Sensei's legacy was going to be about continuing to create a family. "So long as you're one of our students, we're going to look out for you, and we hope that you can build a bond between each other as well."

"You might end up running into trouble," Zenitsu said. "I went through plenty of trouble myself, and struggled for a long time. But in the end, I was able to grow skilled enough that I feel confident to start teaching others, too. So if this is something you want to do, keep working hard, and you'll be able to make progress—and anytime you get stuck, Rairi and I will be right here to help you."

"That being said, we're not going to get into anything too complicated right away. We promise we'll start to show you some of the skills in time, but we need to make sure you have the right foundation to build those skills on. So today, we're going to get started with a bit of a warm-up. We'll walk you through some stretches first, then we'll do a short jog before getting into the basics on how to handle your bokken. Sound good?"

"Yes, Sensei!"

I had known these children for less than fifteen minutes, and if I would die for them, no lie. Which was just an attempt at a joke to keep my feelings from exploding in a messy gooey mess.

I wasn't just a senpai anymore.

I was a sensei.

Hearing that acknowledgement from someone else made me certain of it:

This is where I belong, what I want to do for the rest of my life.

And with that thought, I set out at a jog and followed behind our new students as they made their first of many laps around the Thunder Estate.

[Author's Notes]

Man am I having a week. I didn't get the job I interviewed for, and then I didn't upload the right chapter into the beta doc, so everything's just a scrambled mess. Here's hoping my breather time off this upcoming week helps out.

To anyone reading this, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

But yes, the chapter. Rairi and Zenitsu have been planning to succeed Jigoro for ages, so I made them take steps to do it! Moon (specifically in the reversed position) can deal with strong feelings of insecurity. On the other hand, Star is often read as a card of hope. I used these aspects to help guide the emotional beats in this chapter.

Extra extra thanks to beta Noiz for being willing to beta at the last minute once I read my mistake, plus also just for being super supportive in general. Ily, you're the best. Go read their latest [Twelve Shots of Summer] one shot for The Witcher, "the mutterings of all your fears," and show them some love!

Next Week: November, featuring the prompts "XIX-Sun" and "XX-Judgement." Please look forward to it!

[08.05.2023]