"No change."
"Thanks, son."
The taxi departed with a low growl of the engine and disappeared on the round. Adjusting the strap on his shoulder, Giyuu looked around.
It was twilight. The sky was red, early stars already beginning to blink. The crows swayed on the electric lines. Giyuu slightly turned around, looking into the distance. Two thousand kilometers from here, all of the city's lights and holograms merged into one glimmering, colorful halo. Clouds traveled smoothly among the skyscrapers.
Giyuu turned back around and started up the mountain. It was refreshing to smell pine cones and damp soil.
The crackling of the fire was quiet, but clear. Stepping out from the trees, Giyuu saw his sensei sitting in front of a small bonfire, several fish grilling next to it. The shadows shivered on the mask, fluctuating with the twisting of the flame. At the sound of the snapping branches, the mask looked up.
"Giyuu."
He stood up. Giyuu wordlessly walked up to him and swung his left arm over the old man's shoulders. The wooden mask buried into his shoulder, fingers holding clumsily to the backpack.
"I've missed you, my boy."
Giyuu's heart tightened. Sabito's face, always thirteen, flashed in front of him, the detached words ringing in his ears. Giyuu softly let go of Urokodaki and gave a small, sincere smile.
"I want to wash myself from the trip. May I use the bathhouse?"
"Yes." Urokodaki was still holding Giyuu by the shoulders. It was clear that he was looking over him, measuring how much he'd changed since the last time they met.
"The water has finally steamed up in the caves. If you want, you can take a short walk there," he proposed. Giyuu hesitated, remembering the small caves, illuminated only by paper lanterns that townspeople brought in, and the scorching, dark water. After a moment, he shook his head.
"I think I'll still use the bathhouse."
"Very well," Urokodaki easily agreed. He turned around and gestured with his hand. "Follow me, I'll give you the clothes and towels."
The house smelled exactly the same, wooden and warm. While Giyuu was setting down his backpack and katana, Urokodaki disappeared in the adjacent room, preparing the bath. Soon, steam rolled from the open door, the sound of rushing water filling the house. Urokodaki walked out, wiping his hands.
"The change is on the bench. Soak yourself in."
"Thank you," Giyuu bowed and, stepping into the room, carefully slid the door behind him.
The skin near the stump tickled from the hot water, but it wasn't painful. Stretching out his legs, Giyuu reclined his head on the bath's headrest and closed his eyes.
His body slowly relaxed, lulled by soft water. His chest carefully rose up and down, breathing in the air saturated with steam and herbs. It hissed around the wound.
Giyuu slightly squeezed his eyes, as if trying to wring out the most enjoyment from these brief moments. Thoughts about demons, work vaguely swirled in the back of his mind, appearing and disappearing.
Giyuu slowly opened his eyes. The steam dully glowed around the lamp, but his gaze looked right through.
The train trip, water, and humidity washed away her touch, but the still, shivering sensation, like a string pulled taut, couldn't let him go. Her eyes were so up close and sad.
Giyuu absently leaned over and took a small cup of herb oil. Some of it spilled as he poured it into his palm, the smears buoying on the water, but he didn't notice it.
Six months ago, after he accused her of the obsession she had for trying to hunt the Upper Rank Two, she slipped out of their apartment like a ghost. He was too infuriated with her to compromise; he sold their home and moved out to where he was now. She was coldly compliant with the transaction, wearing her classic menacing smile during the entire process.
Giyuu sank deeper into the tub. The only reason they didn't divorce was due to the red tape surrounding the procedure. Giyuu closed his eyes. The heaviness both from the saturated air and exhaustion pushed down on his head. He didn't know what he may have done in the heat of the moment.
The days continued, day switching to night, though that held no significance for demon slayers. With the amount of work, it was not difficult to distract himself from the absence of her slippers underneath their bed.
From the typical air freshener replacing the mixture of creams and perfume in the small bathroom.
From his mug now in the kitchen, instead of the couch, bookshelves, and desk where she sneaked it while reading medical research papers.
She must be injecting wisteria, along with chemicals, more than ever.
She dodged his question earlier, but he saw it in the bright light of her office: the medications were taking a toll on her health.
A sour, nervous taste collected in Giyuu's mouth. He wanted to stop her. Opening his eyes, he sat up and slouched slightly in the tub. He stared at the dark water. The skin on his stump twinged, and he automatically took it with his other hand.
He wanted her back. More than anything in the world.
Giyuu lowered his hand, palm upwards, and gazed at the ring. It was a Western tradition, but Shinobu liked it, despite not wearing hers. Till death do us part - they all snorted at the ceremony when the pastor said that. The phrase was tactless when told to demon slayers.
He clenched his hand into a fist, the droplets squeezing between the skin. The inability to choose between her and his stance drove him mad.
The steam clouded up at the ceiling, a yellow halo around the lamp.
The fire gave a loud crackle, and Urokodaki wordlessly shuffled the branches with a stick.
His heart was bursting. In the bonfire, the wood blackened and curled, ashes crumbling on the ground. Every single time he saw Giyuu, memories would flood in, and he was too tired to stop them.
How two little boys would run around, whooping and yelping at each other, not even pretending to practice their techniques. The trip to the hot caves was always some undertaking, with the boys playing ocean warfare and, giggling and snorting out water, nearly drowning each other.
How Giyuu brought Shinobu here for the first time. He took her to the caves as well. Urokodaki was certain that they shamelessly made love. A grin glimpsed underneath the mask. That was perhaps the last thing he minded.
Something broke again. Urokodaki silently tossed the stick into the fire, watching it burn.
"Sensei?"
The door quietly slid open, and Urokodaki glanced over his shoulder. Giyuu, wearing a long kimono he lent him, stood in the doorway.
"I've prepared the fish."
Urokodaki stood up, turning away from the fire, and made his way towards the house.
"I'm coming."
It was dark in the control room. The data scrolled down the computer screens, several thousand commands executing in the span of a millisecond. Twisting around the entire room, the wires stretched from the monitors into the large processors. The pins protruded from the diagrams on the wall.
Feet on the desk, Kanzaburo reclined in the swiveling chair. The sound of his steady breathing shivered in the room. The neurotic signals pulsed inside the systems embedded into his mask.
From the overabundance of information stored and processed, as well as the necessity for the brain to constantly inhabit the cyber dimension, the chips were arranged into an apparatus that clasped around the user's face. The creators were unoriginal: the mask resembled those of the plague doctors' from centuries and centuries ago. Hence, the title.
Behind the closed eyelids, the eyeballs were rotating in concentration, jumping from one holographic location to another. Faint voices of other "crows" resounded in the network, quietly chattering with one another. It was the quiet time of the day.
The intrusion into the system was noiseless, with stealth that not even the most experienced of the crows could match. Without opening his eyes, Kanzaburo grimaced.
"What do you want?"
I'm chilling, Sabito replied simply. Kazaburo shifted his body, trying to get a better position in the chair. The scattered papers wrinkled under his socks.
"Here?"
Yeah, why not. This is the most saturated bundle of information.
Kanzaburo's hand rose to massage the bridge of his nose, but bonked over the mask. Tsking in irritation, the old man rubbed his hurt knuckles over his pants.
"Don't do your tricks on me. If you want something in particular, blurt it out so that I can refuse, and you can leave."
The records on the demon still haven't shown up, have they?
A beat of silence passed between the two. Kanzaburo slowly opened his eyes. The visual connections instantly snapped, and he stared into the familiar darkness.
"Which one?" He specified.
Doesn't matter, the other unemotionally returned. Kanzaburo sighed, still looking into the darkness. The piped, intricate insides of the mask slowly outlined into his irises.
"Dead ended."
Sabito didn't reply. The murmurs of the crows became stronger.
Kanzaburo massaged the back of his neck. Using external vision, he saw that several notifications popped up on one of the computer screens, but he didn't feel like checking them out. His eyes slanted towards the edge of his desk.
Kanzaburo could almost imagine the boy sitting there, one hand tucked into the pocket of his sweater, and the other loosely holding the katana. He never even met Sabito, only pieced him out by old photographs and the bodiless personality speaking occasionally with him through the electronic dimension.
Maybe because of that dominant, swiping personality it was always uneasy to abide by the protocol during missions and refer to Sabito as Auto-Consciousness. It was the truth, though.
The computer flickered, and a news page flashed on the screen.
"What now?" Kanzaburo twisted his lips in displeasure, connecting reluctantly to the monitors. Sabito stepped in as well, inaudible as always.
It's from a lower crow.
"I don't give a damn who it's from," Kanzaburo muttered, preparing for the news to blast into the system. "I hate when they send the news."
"Today, at 15:17, the President of the Yoshitsuki Electric Power Company Iikubo Akifumi and one of the employees Suzuki Shin were converted into demons and murdered despite the presence of three demon slayers at the scene…"
"Huh?" Kanzaburo abruptly swung his feet down and rolled up close to the desk. "The hell?"
An electronic wave passed in the back of his mind; Sabito sunk into other outlets, cross-checking the facts. Kanzaburo swatted away the disturbance. His fingers flew over the keyboardless pad: ten, twenty, thirty channels, blogs, and video recordings popped across the monitors, the voices blurring into an incomprehensible mess.
"...Were unable to do anything..."
"Seems to be another demon..."
"Rather incompetent..."
"Decapitated..."
The gears clicked into place without even hearing the rest of the report.
"This is bad, this is bad, this is bad!" Kanzaburo swiveled in his chair to the processors, yanking a couple of switches. Yellow, green, and blue lights blinked. Kanzaburo wheeled back to the monitors, maneuvering through the security system of the company's building.
"Oi there, Sabito!" He barked into the speaker, at the same time vision traveling through an UV map of the hallways. "Pull up the boys' watch camera! We need to get footage of the demon before they're blocked. Sabito? AutCo?"
With a delayed stupor, he understood that the AutCo left the network.
"Shit," he gritted through his teeth and quickly typed in the codes. Simultaneously, he eyed the news media still preaching on his monitors. They all seemed to be reporting the same thing. It was unsurprising, but still unnerving.
Outside the headquarters, the city was blasting with full life. Some of the news was transmitted through the bulletin holograms, reflecting in the windshields of the flyers. Robots of various shapes and sizes hopped on the railings, screeching with their clear and metallic voices.
"Fresh news, fresh news!"
One of them skidded to a stop next to a man carrying a cup of coffee and eagerly blurted out a hologram. The man absently drank from the cup, listening to the news. The eye not covered by the jeweled patch narrowed in suspicion.
In a different region, when a similar robot tried to tag on to a passerby, he got mercilessly kicked into the wall after a couple seconds of coverage. The white-haired man spat on the ground and roughly turned around, disappearing in an alley.
In the hospital, Shinobu stood in the middle of the lobby, head craned towards the TV at the top of the ceiling. Her gaze lowered, traversing across the whispering patients. Obanai's face was unreadable, but the fingers around the wheelchair's handle were slightly clenched. Hand to her mouth, Mitsuri stared mesmerized at the screen.
"Kamado Tanjiro, Agatsuma Zenitsu, and Hashibira Inosuke were charged and are currently held in custody for the direct and asssisted murder of Iikubo Akufumi and Suzuki Shin, respectively."
Alone in the dark lit room, Giyuu switched off the portable transmitter and rubbed his forehead. His face was strained and hard.
A/N: New update! Shorter than the previous two, but it is a somewhat transitionary chapter.
See you next update, thanks for reading!