March 1, 1913

"So," Kaigaku said to Zenitsu as the two of them met at night on a hilltop, both of them having just returned from a mission together. "Why did you bring me out here after our mission? You said you wanted to talk to me, right?" He was suspicious of Zenitsu's motives, and even seemed annoyed.

"I do," Zenitsu replied. "I want to prove to you that I've improved since our days training with Gramps."

Kaigaku, confused, asked him, "Prove it to me? Why would you need to do that?"

"Because I know you don't think I have," Zenitsu then admitted, not holding anything back. "I've heard you say it, Kaigaku."

"You… I haven't sai-"

"Don't lie to me," Zenitsu interrupted him with. "I heard you talk to the count's daughter at the Butterfly Estate."

"You…" Kaigaku knew he could not lie to him any longer since he had revealed how he had found out about his views on him. He then turned his head away from him, asking him, "And if I did say that, what would your response be?"

"I'll prove it to you."

"Oh, really?" Kaigaku chuckled in amusement. "How do you plan on doing that? What's your idea of proving me wrong?"

"I challenge you to a sword duel," Zenitsu told him as he put a hand on the grip of his sword. "That's my idea! Draw your sword and face me like we did as children, Kaigaku!"

Kaigaku laughed, still half-believing that Zenitsu was joking. "You can't be fucking serious."

"I am," he sternly told him.

Kaigaku's expression turned from one of amusement to one of annoyance once he realized that Zenitsu was indeed being serious about his challenge. "If that's what it'll take to settle this shit," he replied as he drew his sword. "Then I'll do it."

Zenitsu thought to himself as he drew his own sword and stared at Kaigaku, "It's weird. Even though my opponent is someone as skilled as him, I feel oddly calm. I can still remember all the practice battles we had under Gramps' supervision all those years ago, but at least then, we had someone watching us just in case things went too far. Now, though… There's no telling what either of us could do to each other."

Meanwhile, Kaigaku thought to himself, "Does this idiot think he can actually beat me? I'll snap his fucking sword right in half. Even so… Even I have to admit that he looks determined. He's definitely changed since we were taught by Kuwajima-sama. This will be very different from the practice fights we had under his tutelage. Now, we could actually kill each other. I don't want to see him die, even if he can be a dumbass much of the time, but still… The risk is there for both of us. With both of us using the Breath of Thunder, this battle will probably be decided with only one move from each of us, so I must make mine count!"

However, at the bottom of the hill, two different people were racing towards the impending battle, guided by Zenitsu's sparrow. Nezuko and Chiyo, both deeply concerned about what was going to soon happen, ran up the hill as fast as they could, battling the steep terrain and the snow. Nezuko asked Ukogi, "How much longer, Chuntaro?!"

When Ukogi chirped an answer back to Nezuko, Chiyo asked her, "What did he say?!"

"He says we got another minute or two before we reach them," she told her. "I just hope they haven't started fighting yet!" She thought to herself, "When Zenitsu-san told me he was going to confront Kaigaku-san, I knew something really fucking bad would happen. I told Chiyo-chan as fast as I could, and she agreed that we needed to stop them before either one of them get hurt or, God forbid, killed!"

Back at the top of the hill, Zenitsu said to Kaigaku as the two stared each other down, "Are we just gonna stand here or do you wanna actually fight?"

"Let's get things started then!" Kaigaku then took a deep breath and said quietly to himself as he prepared to attack Zenitsu, "Breath of Thunder, Fourth Form: Distant Thunder." He then slashed the air around him several times while stepping forward, sending strong winds towards Zenitsu and pushing him back a few feet, though he never lost his footing and fell. Instead, he stayed standing, determined to win. "I will always be ahead of you," Kaigaku thought to himself. "You're nothing but trash!"

Zenitsu then took a deep breath of his own, both to prepare for his attack and calm his nerves. "Kaigaku," he thought to himself. "This is for your own good."

Kaigaku thought as he prepared for his own attack, "I will not let you win!"

"Breath of Thunder, First Form: Thunderclap and Flash!"

"Breath of Thunder, Fifth Form: Heat Lightning!"

As they both charged at each other, Nezuko and Chiyo arrived at the scene of the battle. Horrified that both of them were using attacks at their full potential, Chiyo called out, "STOP IT!"

Ignoring her protest, the two clashed and then stopped opposite each other. The loud sound of steel swords crashing into each other rang throughout the area, and as Kaigaku looked at his sword, he realized what Zenitsu had done as a crack formed in the middle of it. "I… You…"

Zenitsu took a deep breath and sheathed his sword, telling Kaigaku, "It's done."

Nezuko gasped as Kaigaku's sword completely shattered, having been broken by Kaigaku's attack. "No way…"

Kaigaku meanwhile was speechless, completely at a loss for words in response to his own sword breaking into multiple pieces. He could not even string together a coherent thought in his head, in denial and deeply disturbed that Zenitsu, a slayer who had never even mastered any forms of the Breath of Thunder beyond its first form, had defeated him, someone who had mastered all forms of the same Breath Style minus the first. In his mind, it just did not make any sense.

"Nezuko," Zenitsu then asked his girlfriend, surprised to see her and Chiyo present. "When did you get here?"

"Just now," she replied. "We… We thought you were going to kill each other."

"I wasn't planning to." Zenitsu then took Nezuko by the hand, surprising her as Kaigaku slowly turned around to look at him. "Come on, Nezuko-chan. Let's go home. I've done what I needed to do."

As the two of them walked away, Chiyo ran to Kaigaku and asked him out of concern, "Kaigaku, are you okay?!"

"I…" He then slowly got up and looked out at Zenitsu and Nezuko as they walked away together. "I can't believe it…"

Chiyo placed a hand on his shoulder in an effort to comfort him, thinking to herself, "Agatsuma-san really has improved, hasn't he? I would have never guessed that he would come this far based on what I saw of him when I was training to be a slayer."

Meanwhile, Zenitsu thought to himself, "I told you, Kaigaku. I've improved since we last sparred. I didn't do this out of hatred. I could never hate you. I did this because you're the closest thing to a brother I've ever had, and I just want you to acknowledge me as a slayer alongside you. I know you'll overcome this. This will be just a bump in the road on your journey." He had no idea about the truth behind what Kaigaku was truly feeling, nor of what he would soon do to respond to his defeat. In his mind, Kaigaku would get up and move on just as he did in the past.

Kaigaku blankly stared at Zenitsu and Nezuko, feeling nothing but resentment for the former. "I feel so weak," he thought to himself. "That piece of shit emasculated me. I shouldn't have hesitated to properly strike him! I can't live like this! I need to do something!"

As he stood up, Chiyo asked him, "What will you do now?"

"I don't know," he replied to her. "Aside from the fact that I need a new sword now, I really don't know." He then began to walk in the opposite direction of Zenitsu and Nezuko, trying to think of ways to cope with what had just happened.

Chiyo caught up with him, asking him, "Do you need me to go with you? I can help you."

"No," he insisted. "You're fine. Go back home. I can deal with this alone, Sotozaki."

As Kaigaku walked away by himself, Chiyo looked on with sadness in her eyes. "He still doesn't see me as a woman," she thought to himself. "Perhaps… Perhaps there hasn't been a place for me at Kaigaku's side for a while."

…

March 3, 1914

Emi was looking out her bedroom window, watching the rain fall from the gray sky above. In her room was a fireplace and an electric light which both kept her warm and kept the room from being dark. She sighed as she watched the rain silently fall, dressed in only a nightgown as she prepared to go to bed as she said to herself, "I wonder how Kaigaku-san is doing…"

She then got up from her chair as she went to grab a book from a small bookcase in her room, looking around to see if anyone else was in the room with her out of some nervousness. As she did, however, she heard tapping at her window and looked over to find Kaigaku staring back at her. She let out a short yelp in fright as she dropped the book she had just grabbed. Kaigaku said through the window, "Let me in."

Emi then ran over and opened the window, finding that Kaigaku had scaled the Mochizuki Mansion and was hanging onto the wall. She grabbed a hold of him and said, "Come on in." She then managed to pull him into the bedroom, but as she did, he fell on top of her, causing her to blush intensely before he got off of her and dusted himself off. "Uh…"

As Emi herself got up, Kaigaku closed the window and told her, "I came to visit you."

Confused, Emi asked, "Why?"

"I missed you," he replied. "I've had a rough past few days, and I wanted to see you."

"You… missed me?" Emi then hugged Kaigaku, emotionally admitting to him, "I missed you, too… Every day, I wonder if you've been hurt or even killed in a hunt against demons. With everything going on plus that, it feels like I'm losing my mind." She then looked up at him, telling him, "And then you came all the way here to see me… Aren't you afraid?"

"Of what?"

"I don't think my family would like it if they knew you were in my bedroom," Emi pointed out. "They might get… Ideas."

"Ideas?"

"I mean… My parents aren't actually here right now, but they'll be home tomorrow morning, and I…"

"I see…" Kaigaku then looked over and noticed the book that Emi had dropped. "Wait, what's that book?"

Emi, feeling embarrassed, broke free of the embrace and ran over to the book to grab and hide it from him. "Oh, it's, uh, nothing! It's nothi-"

"Come on," Kaigaku replied with a chuckle. "You don't have to hide shit from me, Emi."

"Emi…" The girl was amazed that Kaigaku uses her first name with her. "My first name…"

"Yes," Kaigaku replied, stating the obvious. "That's your name. What's up?"

"You're already using my first name…" She then absentmindedly dropped the book she was holding, revealing the title to be Een Uitgebreide Gids voor Menselijke Seksuele Anatomie, Biologie en Gedrag, a Dutch science book.

Before Emi had a chance to grab it, Kaigaku picked it up and opened to a random page, finding a fully-detailed drawing of human sexual intercourse upon looking at it. Though he obviously could not read Dutch, he knew immediately what the book was about based on the illustrations inside. He gave the book back to Emi, whose face by now was beet red, and asked her, "How did you get this?"

"My family got it a long time ago when the Dutch used to come to Dejima in Nagasaki," Emi explained. "It's over seventy years old. I don't know a lot of Dutch, but I…"

"Do you like the pictures?" He thought to himself as he asked the question, "I gotta admit, that one picture was actually pretty hot. I'm amazed someone like her has such a book."

"I, um…"

Kaigaku then got closer to Emi, causing her to take a few steps back and then sit on her bed. "What do you think about when you read the book?"

"I know that one day… One day, I'll have to do those things to have children, but… I don't really know what will happen when I…"

"Is there someone you think about?"

Emi took a few deep breaths, overwhelmed by the situation at hand. "Well, I… You know, I… Kaigaku-san, I, um…"

Kaigaku then surprised her with a kiss, causing her eyes to widen briefly before he caressed her chin and she closed them, accepting what he was doing to her. He thought to himself as they locked lips, "I need to do this… I need to do this to get my mind off of what Zenitsu did to me… I need to feel like a man again."

When they split, the two of them stared at each other again briefly before Emi took the lead and wrapped an arm around his neck before kissing him as best as she could. After they split the second time, Emi told him, "I feel something inside of me… It feels… It feels good, actually…"

Kaigaku then slowly got on top of her in the bed, "Are you scared?"

"Not if I'm with you…"

"Excellent," he replied before the two kissed again. As they kissed a third time, Kaigaku slowly began to undress her, and after they split, he began to slowly kiss down her neck and then her chest. "This is my first time, too, you know."

"Ah, I see…" Emi let out a short moan as Kaigaku began to caress her body before he pulled off the last of her clothes and dropped them on the floor, feeling small waves of pleasure hit her. Now completely nude, Emi looked up at him and gave him a faint smile, playfully telling him, "If I'm naked, you have to be too. It's only fair."

"I know," he replied before stripping himself of all of his clothes and tossing them on the floor too. "Do you know what we're about to do?"

Emi admitted to him, finally using proper terminology despite feeling embarrassed doing so, "We're, ah… We're about to have sex, right?"

"Yes," he replied. "I want to show you what it's like, since you seem to be so curious about it." He then stopped himself and sat up in bed, asking her as he looked down at her body, "Do you want to have sex with me? If you don't, I'll leave, and we can pretend this night never happened. I won't go any further unless you want me to." He thought to himself, "Please, Emi, say yes. I need this. I need this more than you'll ever know."

Emi looked up at him and took a deep breath before slightly spreading her legs and telling him, "Show me what sex is like, Kaigaku-san."

Kaigaku smiled and told her, "Good answer." He then got up and turned off the electric light inside the room, allowing only the glow of the fire inside the fireplace to both light the room and heat it. As he got back on the bed and got on top of Emi, he told her, "Here I go."

What followed next were the fervent sounds of sex, which filled the room as the young couple lost their virginities to each other. For Emi, doing something like this with Kaigaku, whom she had developed romantic feelings for by then, was almost a dream come true in a way, and she felt as though she was truly making love to him. The wave of new sensations throughout her body, as well as the somewhat rough way Kaigaku had his way with her, contributed to her being rather loud in bed even though she knew other people lived in the mansion.

For Kaigaku, however, he was not truly making love to Emi. While he was certainly sexually attracted to her, and he thought of her as a kind and gentle girl, the biggest reason he was having sex with the daughter of a count was because of the feeling of being emasculated by Zenitsu defeating him. In fact, in his mind, he flashed back to the battle with him several times, in particular the moment he walked away hand-in-hand with Nezuko. He thought to himself, "I can't believe it… He defeated me, he has a woman of his own, and he's already enjoyed the pleasures of taking a woman's body… How did I let him surpass me so terribly?! I won't allow it anymore! I would have waited to perhaps talk Emi's father into marrying her before having sex with her, but now, it can't wait!"

Outside of the bedroom, a servant of the family happened to be walking by when he heard a commotion inside and then heard Emi's moans of pleasure. Concerned but not entirely surprised since he knew about the Dutch book she kept, he said to himself, "That's odd… Does Emi-sama have that book she hides from the Count and Countess again?" When he hears the sound of the bed creaking, however, he suddenly grew worried and peered in through the keyhole of the bedroom. When he looked inside, he found Kaigaku thrusting into her while Emi tightly embraced him and gasped. "Oh my God!" Fearing that perhaps Emi was being raped by an intruder, he ran down the hall to let someone else know since her parents were not home.

In the bedroom, Emi and Kaigaku finished having sex with each other. Emi, still somewhat overwhelmed by what had happened, laid down on her chest and stomach, taking several deep breaths as sweat poured down her face. "Wow… I…"

Meanwhile, Kaigaku sat away from her on the bed, still tormented by the thoughts of Zenitsu and Nezuko in his mind. He tightly wrapped his arms around his shoulders, trying to expel the thoughts from his mind. "Get out of my head," he thought to himself as he tightened his grip and ground his teeth. "God damn it, I want you out of my fucking head already!"

Emi noticed him looking away and turned her head, asking him, "Kaigaku, what's wrong?"

Not wanting to admit what had happened, he told her, "Nothing…"

Emi then sat up in bed and hugged him from behind, asking him, "You can tell me. We've already shown each other the most intimate parts of ourselves. What's going on?"

"I… I…" Kaigaku sighed and admitted, "I lost a battle."

"Against a demon?"

"No, against a human. Specifically, Zenitsu."

Confused, Emi asked him, "Agatsuma-san? You battled him? What happened?"

"It's too complicated," Kaigaku replied, not in the mood to discuss what had truly happened. "But… We don't see each other in the same light anymore."

Feeling bad for him, Emi replied, "Oh, I'm sorry. I feel bad for you, Kaigaku-san."

"Don't take pity on me," he warned her. "I can deal with it just fine." He then turned around and told her, "All I need from you is your love."

Emi blushed again, telling him as she rested her head against his chest, "I… I think I love you. My heart pounds whenever I see you, and now… We've done this."

"I know you do," he replied, not saying the exact words back to her. The two then shared another kiss before lying back down in bed with each other, not caring about what would come the next day as they kept warm by wrapping their arms around each other in a close embrace.

Just as they were about to fall asleep in each other's arms, however, the door to the bedroom burst open as the family's two servants and two maids broke in, all of them armed with any random blunt weapons they could find while the head servant carried a gun. Scared by their sudden entrance, Emi screamed in fright as the lead servant yelled at Kaigaku, "Step away from Emi-sama!"

Kaigaku put his hands up, telling them, "I didn't rape her, if that's what you're wondering."

"Liar!" The lead servant and a maid then walked over and grabbed a hold of Kaigaku. "Come with us!"

"Let go of me, asshole!"

Emi begged them both, "Let go of him! I wanted this, too! He didn't force himself on me!"

"Calm down," said the maid to Emi. "We'll take care of him!"

"No! Let go of him now!"

As the four servants and maid dragged a kicking and screaming Kaigaku away, he yelled at him, "We had sex because she fucking wanted it, asshole! Get your fucking hands off of me!"

The lead servant yelled at him, "Shut the fuck up!"

"Oh, fuck you, motherfucker! You don't have shit on me! You can't prove fucking anything!"

Fearful of what would happen, Emi got up from bed and tried to run after Kaigaku, but she was stopped by a third maid that ran in and grabbed her. "Let me go!"

The maid yelled at her, "Stay here, Emi-sama! You don't know what you're doing! He took advantage of you!"

"No! No!" The maid then threw her onto the floor and quickly shut and locked the door from the outside, preventing her from leaving the room as she banged on the door to be let out. "No, no, no, no, no! Please, don't take him away! I love him!"

As Kaigaku was dragged down the hallway, still completely naked, the lead servant yelled at him, "The Count will have you jailed for the crime of rape when he finds out what you did! You defiled his daughter so she won't be able to be married to another nobleman!"

A defiant and angry Kaigaku yelled as they threw him into an empty spare bedroom, "They'll have to charge me with a fucking murder too if you keep this shit up!"

"And now you're threatening me. How stupid of you." He then had the door behind him locked after the other servant in the house stepped into the room. He noticed Kaigaku looking at a window to the outside and told him, "If you try to escape, we'll be sure to kill you, so don't fucking move. You have no idea the trouble you brought on yourself, young man!"

…

March 4, 1914

A few hours after Kaigaku had been captured by the Mochizuki Family's servants and maids, Chiyo arrived at the door of Rinji and Reiko's house and knocked on it. Rinji, who slept alone near the door, got up from bed and got dressed in a yukata, having been awoken by the knocking. "Ugh…" He looked at a pocket watch he had in the room and remarked to himself out of annoyance, "It's three-thirty in the fucking morning. I've only been asleep for an hour since coming back."

Reiko, who slept on the other side of the room, asked him as she turned in her bed, "Rinji, who is it?"

"I don't know," he replied before letting out a yawn. When the knocking occurred again, he sighed and said more loudly, "Hang on! I'm coming!" He walked out of the bedroom and then opened the front door. When he saw that it was Chiyo, he rubbed his eyes and asked her, "Wait a minute, Sotozaki-san?"

"I need to talk to you," she replied before taking a deep breath to clear her mind and settle her nerves. "It's about Kaigaku-san."

"I hate to say this, but can it wai-?" Rinji stopped himself as soon as he saw that Chiyo seemed rather sad and on the verge of tears. "Wait…"

"I can go if you want," she replied. "I know it's early in the mor-"

"No," Rinji interrupted her. "Come with me. We'll talk by the creek behind my house. That way we won't bother my sister." He then exited the house, with Chiyo following him to a small but full creek behind the house. "The flowing water will cover our conversation as long as we're not yelling. With the end of winter and the snow melting, the creek is a lot more full than usual." He thought to himself as they reached the creek, "What's going on with her and Inadama-san? Something must have happened between them… Something that isn't good."