Kyojuro woke up in the middle of a camp set deep into the woods of the island, surrounded entirely by at least twenty demons. He had been tied to a wooden pole suspended over what seemed to be a fire pit. However, he would not stay there long, as two demons stepped forward from the crowd and untied him, carefully lowering him down to his feet as he asked them, "Okay, I gotta ask, what the fuck is going on here?"
"Since you are a Pillar," one of the demons explained to him. "You will be feasted upon ritually. You will be sat down at this throne we have for important meals and then prepared to be eaten. It is a great honor for someone of your status to be consumed!" He said all of that with a smile on his face, disturbing Kyojuro even more so than the actual contents of his explanation.
"And where the Hell is my sword?"
"We stored them away in our weapons stash across the footbridge from our camp," another demon explained. "Your sword will be of great use to us!" The two then sat Kyojuro down in a small wooden throne before several more approached him to paint his face, carrying with them wooden boards with splotches of different colors all around. "Make him look pretty and appetizing."
"We shall," one of the painter demons replied. As Kyojuro sat and wondered what to do from here, the demons painted his face, adding extra painted eyes above and below his real ones. "Upper Moon One's own eyes gave us inspiration for these."
Kyojuro, deciding to play along for now to gain some level of trust, asked them, "Oh, really? Do you have a mirror so I can see how I look?"
"Right here," said yet another demon. "Give us your honest opinion so far." He then gave Kyojuro a hand-held mirror that the clan had stolen when they had killed a whole family of six a few weeks prior.
"It looks fantastic," he assured them with a smile. "Keep going!"
After another 15 seconds, the painting was done. "Okay, how about now?"
"Marvelous," he once again assured them. "Now, I've noticed that that fire pit of your's doesn't seem too good. You'd really need more wood if you really want to cook me properly. Sure, eating a raw human must be satisfying for you demons, but so must be preparing a human as we do our own meat." He thought to himself, in disbelief he had even said such words, "Damn, that was disgusting to say. I had to hold back puking when I told them that."
"Absolutely," said the painter demon, who then turned to the crowd. "You heard the man! Let's get more firewood on this bitch and light it the fuck up in here!"
As all the demons moved away from him and walked to another part of the camp to grab firewood, Kyojuro stood up from the throne and nervously looked around to see if anyone was watching. When he realized nobody was, he thought to himself, "Alright, I found my window of opportunity!"
About half a minute later, the demons returned. One of them spoke to Kyojuro, telling him, "Okay, we got the firewood! Let's get this party starte-" Every single demon in the group then stopped when they looked to the throne and realized he was gone. "Uh… Flame Pillar?"
Another demon shouted, "Where the fuck did he go?!"
Kyojuro was meanwhile making a run for it across the same footbridge mentioned earlier to the weapons stash the demons used. The footbridge ran over a steep ravine on the island, and as he crossed, he quickly looked behind him several times. "Thank God I'm outta there!" Once he was completely across, he found a small wooden cabin, and quickly broke in by running into the door and smashing it open with his body. Once he stopped and took a look around, finding a few hunting rifles and some farming equipment stained with blood, he looked to his left and found the glow of his sword's blade standing out from the dark wall inside. "Aha! My sword!" He also found a whole unopened can of paprika spice next to it. "Hmmm… I could use some paprika back home. Why not?"
He then calmly walked out, thinking he had managed to make a clean getaway. However, as soon as he did, he realized that the entire clan was waiting for him as he got to the footbridge. "Why did you run from us?! You broke our trust we had in you!"
As he realized just how screwed he was once more, he gave an awkward smile as the whole clan looked at him with stares of disappointment and anger before dropping his sword. "Uh… Well…" He then picked up the can of paprika and opened it, deciding to shake it on himself. "I, uh… I thought maybe I could use a little seasoning…" Realizing he fooled exactly zero people involved, he sighed and put the paprika down. "Okay, okay, fine. Just tie me up and get on with it. I can't act for shit."
…
Meanwhile, back at the Butterfly Estate, an entirely different problem showed itself to Shinobu. She had just arrived back at the camp from a mission to a nearby village with Giyu that had to be cut short due to her suffering an unexpected mental breakdown as she approached the village. As she was locked away in a room, watched over by a Kakushi as she huddled on a bed, whimpering to herself, Kanao was making a phone call to Kagaya about the situation. "Okay, alright, I'll tell her. Thank you, Oyakata-sama." She then hung the receiver of the hand-crank phone up and turned to Aoi. "Shinobu-sama will be offline for a week so she can sort herself out. Any missions where Giyu would normally go with her, I'll go in her place." It was raining out, and Giyu stood nearby in the hallway, soaking wet and mostly silent since he brought Shinobu over. "Still nothing on why this happened to her?"
Giyu did not answer. Aoi then demanded from him a bit more forcefully, "You need to give us some background here, Giyu-sama! Shinobu just doesn't do this, you know!"
"I'm not entirely sure," Giyu then admitted to them. "I'm sorry I can't be of much help. I tried asking her what was wrong, but she didn't listen to me."
The Kakushi in her room then opened the door, asking Kanao and Aoi, "You two, you may come in. Tomioka-sama, stay out here to guard Kocho-sama."
Kanao and Aoi nodded as they both entered the room together. There, Shinobu was still dressed in her soaking-wet uniform, and the bed had a giant puddle of rainwater from the downpour outside. Kanao flipped a coin as she sat down on the bed, and it landed on tails. "Alright, looks like I'll ask first. Shinobu-sama, what's going on?"
Shinobu looked at her, her hair a mess and her eyes reddened by crying from her earlier breakdown. "It's the village itself."
Aoi, confused and worried for her adoptive older sister, asked her, "What's wrong with that village?"
"Okay," Shinobu explained to them. "This story… This story is hard for me to tell… You might not want to hear it. It's not a story you'd tell when taking a walk around town, okay?"
"Giyu-sama said you kept mentioning taking walks when you had your breakdown," Aoi replied. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"It was a mission at the same village," Shinobu explained. "I was with Tomioka-san at the time, too, just like now. It was right after Kanae-oneesan died. We were leading a family who lived nearby away from their remote house due to a demon going around trying to wipe the village out, starting with the residents on the outskirts." As she began to tell the story, she took a few deep breaths to prepare herself. "And… There's this woman holding a chicken. Yeah, a chicken."
Kanao, confused, asked her, "A chicken? Why a chicken?"
"And it was being loud," Shinobu continued, ignoring her question. "Way too loud. I thought for sure the demon was gonna hear us, so I turned to the mother and told her to keep that damn animal quiet." She then mimicked a shushing sound with her index finger and her mouth. "Like that. Then, the sound ceases when I turn around, but it ceases very unnaturally. Giyu turned around again first, and he gasped as the woman started to cry. She… She killed the fucking thing…"
Both Kanao and Aoi, who had no idea why Shinobu nor the woman in the story were so torn up over a simple chicken, turned to each other. Kanao then asked her, "She killed the chicken?"
Shinobu then paused as she looked up at both of them with a disturbed look on her face, her eyes fixated on nothing and dulled. Almost on cue, she let out a shrill near-inhuman scream as she seemed to stare at something behind them, kicking and flailing at the air as Kanao and Aoi quickly jumped up and restrained her. As they did, she spoke again, "It wasn't a chicken! It wasn't a fucking chicken! It was a baby! She killed her own fucking baby! She suffocated her own fucking child, and when she started crying, she led the demon right to us! We couldn't save them even though we were right fucking there! That demon killed the other four people in that family, including their other young children!" As she finished, she screamed again as the memories of the encounter tormented her more and more. "Why can't I do anything right? Why can't I save more people?! I didn't want her to kill the baby! I didn't want to see them all die!" She was clearly torn up by the repressed memory coming back, and it drove her into madness.
"Shinobu-sama," Kanao begged of her as she continued to flail around, seemingly seeing the mother holding her dead baby in her arms all around her. "Calm down! Please, you're scaring me!"
Outside, Giyu was now holding back tears as he remembered the same incident. He had always thought Shinobu was not bothered by what had happened, but clearly such was not the case. "Damn it," he muttered to himself. "How can I just let this happen?" He, too, had been affected by the incident, but not nearly to the extent Shinobu had. He decided to turn to the door and enter the room just as Kanao and Aoi were able to get Shinobu to calm down. "Hey, Kocho."
Shinobu immediately stopped and turned to him, asking, "What is it?"
"I… I was affected by it, too." He then sat down in a chair next to the bed in the room, keeping his eyes locked on her. "I had no idea you were so shaken by it. If I had known, I would have gone to the village by myself this time. I'm sorry I put you through all this."
"It's not your fault, Tomioka-san," Shinobu assured him. "I was the one who had the breakdown and got taken offline, not you. I can't believe it's been almost two years since then. A lot has changed, hasn't it?"
