Chapter Text
Aoi walked quickly and purposefully down the halls of the rehab section of the Butterfly Estate, carrying a wooden box on her back. She had made sure everyone was still in bed and asleep. Everyone, except-- as she had expected-- Inosuke. Sometimes it seemed like he didn't want to recover. Ascribing bad intentions to people wasn't something Aoi enjoyed, but in Inosuke's case, it was easy. He'd have to be so stupid to act how he did that, to Aoi, assuming malice was giving him the benefit of the doubt. As she opened the door and stepped out into the cold morning air, she mentally prepared herself to pry the pig headed boy off another wall. He likes the ones that don't have many windows on them, so he's probably on the outer wall of the estate. He might not have figured out that it has no windows yet, though.
When she reached the entrance to the estate, Aoi noticed something in the dirt of the path. She had to strain her eyes to see them fully, but when she did, she was certain they were footprints. They were clearly made by someone who wasn't wearing shoes. It must be him! Aoi abandoned her search of the wall and followed the footprints into the nearby woods. Of course, he's in the woods. He's more of a boar with a human's body than a human wearing a boar's head. She took note of all the flowers she passed by. Those could be picked on her way back and put in the recovery room. Shinobu couldn't appreciate it, obviously, but Aoi knew that Kanao would.
As Aoi crouched down to get a closer look at one distinctive lily, something big wooshed right over her head. Before she had time to process it, a familiar, fur-clad, shirtless figure tumbled loudly onto the dirt in front of her. Immediately, Aoi stood up straight, took two steps forward, and pulled Inosuke off the ground.
"What were you doing?" she asked him, unamused.
"I was sneak attacking you, Kenshiki!" Inosuke shouted in response, trying to writhe out of Aoi's grasp. But her grip on his shoulders was like iron.
"Say my name again," she ordered.
"Kuroki," Inosuke declared proudly, poking her in the chest in an attempt to point at her.
"Kanzaki," Aoi corrected him, trying her best to sound patient. "I'm Aoi Kanzaki. Kan-za-ki. Can you say that back to me?"
Inosuke took a few seconds to process the information before lifting the finger he was pointing with and flicking Aoi's chin. "Kaori Amanaki!"
Aoi let go of Inosuke's shoulders and rubbed her chin where he'd flicked her, sighing. "Fine, we'll do names later," she said. "For now, tell me what you're doing out here."
Inosuke sat down, slumping a bit when he heard the question, and Aoi crouched down to listen to him. He sighed through the nostrils of the boar head he wore. "I don't like the place you tell me to stay. There's nothing to do but climb walls, and there's nobody else to be inferior to me!" As he spoke, his slump disappeared, and his voice rose. "I came out here to cut a boulder, cause I can do that better than Gonpachiro!" Inosuke rolled backward, put his hands under his shoulders, and threw himself up onto his feet, laughing wildly. "Watch me cut a boulder, watch me! I can cut the biggest boulder you've ever seen! I'll cut it into tiny pieces and then eat them, too!"
The boy continued with his excited rambling, but Aoi didn't listen. She just stood up from her crouched position, walked up to him, and put her hands on both sides of his boar's head.
"...Monjiro's gonna cry when he sees how good I can cut-- eh?" Inosuke stopped himself when he noticed Aoi's hands. And before he could react beyond that, she yanked the mask right up and off his head, causing Inosuke to screech in shock. He first tried to grab the false head back from her, but she turned to the side and held it close to keep that from happening. His next plan was apparently to wrap his arms around Aoi and pry her arms off of it. That also failed. After pushing Aoi around-- surprisingly gently-- a few times, Inosuke finally gave up and fell onto his back with a roar of defeat.
Aoi dropped the boar head and sat down on a rock next to the collapsed Inosuke. She took one arm out from its strap on the box she was carrying before swinging it around and putting it down next to Inosuke's head. He turned his head slightly to look at the box before shooting up into a kneeling position next to it.
"Mimiko?" he asked, pounding the top of the box with a fist. "You in there? Are you asleep?"
"Nezuko can't fit in the box anymore, Inosuke," Aoi explained. "She can't shrink now that she's a human, so she gave it to me to use as a pack."
Inosuke looked at Aoi with big green eyes, like a puppy trying to process a magic trick. "So she's not in there?"
"That's right," Aoi confirmed.
"What's in there?"
"Something I made for you as soon as I got up. I knew you'd like it, and I knew you wouldn't get anything by yourself, so I had everything ready to go before I left the kitchen." Seeing Inosuke's face light up at the mention of the word "kitchen", Aoi reached around the box and gave the handle a firm tug to get the door unwedged.
Inosuke did the rest, grabbing the handle, swinging the door open, and letting the wrapped up pieces of cloth inside tumble out. Aoi was about to explain that they weren't just pieces of cloth, but Inosuke surprisingly worked it out on his own. He had a hard time untying the top of the first cloth, but he quickly figured that part out too. Inside were three onigiris... which Inosuke reduced to two within a second. He eats like an animal too, Aoi thought as she watched him devour his breakfast. Obviously, she was happy that he liked it, but that was somewhat dampened by how much of a mess he was making. Eventually, she spoke up.
"You'll miss out on a lot of the food when you eat like that," she said, trying to help him.
"I ca' ea' fa'er 'han a'ybo'y!" Inosuke shouted through his mouthful of rice.
"Everybody knows you can eat fast," Aoi explained to him, "so there's no point in doing it all the time." That was surely ironclad enough to convince Insouke out of a competition, right? Of course not.
Inosuke swallowed the fistful of tempura he'd just shoved into his mouth before answering. "I can eat faster than anybody!" He followed with raucous laughter, which he shortly cut off by filling his mouth with a clump of chopped vegetables.