Chapter Text
Tanjirou moved his torch so it would rest highly next to his head, he swallowed but his throat was so dry he felt like he was gulping down mouthfuls of sand.
The cave he was exploring had its roots deep into the Earth, so much so that it was hard to see anything outside of the halo his small candle produced. Tanjirou praised himself silently for saving some matches in his purse; he dreaded the idea of walking along the corridors without a guiding light.
Not far behind him, Inosuke put his hood down from his face, uncovering a wild mop of blueish hair. His back felt weird, but he couldn’t quite understand if it was because of the uncomfortable feeling of sticky clothes clinging to his wet skin, or because someone was actually following them.
He always trusted his feelings, so he sprinted to pat his friend on the shoulder and whisper in his ears, uncharacteristically quiet.
Almost as if on cue, a sound made its way from the darkness, creeping in front of them, a menacing aura and a smell so rancid it made Tanjirou’s nose twitch in discomfort.
The two boys took a step forward, moving the light up to the source of the sound, ever so slowly.
“And then the Dungeon goes kapow !”
Zenitsu slapped a hand on his forehead. He was so used to having some of the pieces thrown at his face during his friend’s typical tantrums that when the troll figure leapt up from the game board and spanked him on the cheek, he didn’t even make a pip.
“How many times do we have to tell you, Inosuke? You are not the Dungeon Master, you can’t go around making stuff up!” Zenitsu yelled, exasperated beyond reason, as he massaged his temples.
“But this campaign is boring!” Inosuke complained, loudly, smacking his hands on the table so the remaining few statues were knocked over.
“I’m sure Zenitsu was about to show us something really good,” Tanjirou intervened, ever the peace-maker, to try and quell his friends’ spirits. “You just didn’t give him a chance.”
“No, it’s fine,” Zenitsu replied. His anger was mostly short lived, and he had learned to pull his frustration down instead of adding up to the fire Inosuke usually started, it was the only way to make him shut up.
Not to mention, they had been playing for far too long and his eyes were getting heavy.
“Isn’t Giyuu supposed to come back soon, anyway? Maybe we should clean up in here before he arrives,” Tanjirou suggested, giving voice to his friend’s thoughts while he looked at the clock on his wrist. “He had a long shift today, I’m sure he’d appreciate it if we kept the house clean.”
“Shit, right,” Inosuke said, getting up from where he had laid his head on the table.
“Language, please.”
“Tanjirou, honestly, when will you give up?” Zenitsu asked.
“Give up what?” a voice said from the top of the staircase, just as the light coming from the ground floor hit the boys fiercely, forcing them to squint their eyes at the newcomer.
Giyuu stood with one foot inside the threshold that separated the basement from the hallway upstairs, he was looking down on them with a tired gaze and Tanjirou noticed the way he barely stifled a yawn.
“Playing for the evening, we were just putting everything away,” Tanjirou lied, making a show of taking empty bags of chips and coke cans in his arms to throw them in the nearest garbage bin.
Smiling despite himself, Giyuu gestured for the boys to rush upstairs. “It’s too late for that, bed now. You’ll clean tomorrow after school.”
The group of teens exchanged a few looks, using that way of communication that was just theirs; the secret understanding they had was so tight it was impossible for anyone else to get in their silent conversations.
After a final nod, they all scurried up the stairs, allowing Giyuu to pat their heads while they passed.
“It’s late, you guys wanna crash here?” Tanjirou asked. In any other circumstances, he would have had to ask his guardian first, but they all knew the house was more of a shared good than Giyuu’s private property.
“I bought a new camping mattress you could try,” Giyuu suggested. He undid one of his uniform buttons, giving into the momentary relief it gave him after a twelve hours shift at the station.
“I really have to go, mom can’t be alone in the house for long,” Inosuke said, matter-of-factly.
They walked into the kitchen space, Giyuu was about to open a bag of groceries filled with snacks and threats for the gang, but he stopped short when he noticed a shining bike helmet resting on the counter; it had a few scraps here and there, the name “Inosuke” scribbled on the back with a golden sharpie in Kanao’s nice handwriting.
“Really, Inosuke?” Giyuu complained, rolling his eyes. “I’m literally a police officer.”
“Eh, I got the helmet this time,” he said, shrugging. He took the offending object with both hands and put it on with purpose, daring anyone to speak about everything wrong about a fifteen years-old kid with no licence, driving a bike in the middle of the night.
“Take it as a victory,” Zenitsu whispered, sliding a hand into the grocery bag to take out a pack of strawberry flavored candies. He opened it with a single motion and ate one almost immediately. “I know I would,” he muttered then, mouth half-full.
“You staying?” Giyuu asked the little imp who was already taking two more sweets to put in his mouth.
“No, sorry.” Zenitsu swallowed the lump of sugar. “I promised grandpa I’d cook breakfast tomorrow.”
“That’s fine, rain-check!” Tanjirou said, almost too excited. He walked his friends to the door and waved his goodbyes while Giyuu filled a kettle with hot water and let it boil to make himself some tea before he went to bed.
He had argued with Tanjirou - and almost all the people he knew - about his shifts being far too long in the last couple of weeks, but he wasn’t in the position to ask the Sheriff for a little space, and there were things a teenager didn’t have to know about, so Tanjirou’s complaints had fallen short.
Giyuu hoped the issue would be left aside for a while. He sighed.
“So,” Tanjirou announced, closing the entrance door behind himself. The kid looked cocky, far too knowing for Giyuu’s taste, his face twitched in the slightest hint of a grimace. “You bought a camping mattress.”
“Yes,” Giyuu deadpanned.
“We have never been camping, Giyuu.”
The man let out a small whimper as he busied himself with the teabag. “I know where this is going.”
“You went to the store to see Sabito-san. Again!” Tanjirou said, smug and incredibly heartfelt at the same time. “The thing I don’t understand is how you managed to buy a camping mattress of all things.”
“Inosuke and Zenitsu always sleep on the floor when they stay here,” Giyuu said, in lieu of an explanation. He poured the tea and took a sip, but it was too hot and it burned his tongue; the cup found its way on the dining table, still fuming.
“They sleep in futons,” Tanjirou rectified. “It’s not the same thing.”
“You should be sleeping right now.”
“You, too.”
A sigh. “Alright, we both go to bed now,” Giyuu said, tasting if the tea had cooled down before he took a second, tentative, taste. The beverage came down smoothly in his throat, melting away his nerves along with the weight in his chest.
Tanjirou yawned. “I’m going first,” he announced.
“I’ll be there in a second, go wash your teeth.”
The house Tanjirou and Giyuu lived in wasn’t exactly the biggest of the neighborhood, it barely counted more than two bedrooms and a kitchen that had been dressed partly as a living room; the basement space itself wasn’t large enough to use as a laundry room, so Giyuu had allowed it to be turned into the group’s secret base of sorts.
It was their little world, though, and Tanjirou wouldn’t have changed it for anything.
He was grateful to Giyuu for taking him in at such a young age, more than happy to help out in the house with his part-time job, satisfied with the way he was handling school and eternally awed at his little group of friends.
Tanjirou looked at himself in the small bathroom mirror: his eyes were bloodshot, his hair an unruly disaster and his old checkered hoodie had seen better days, still his face was serene.
Suddenly, the light flickered above him.
Just a second, not even long enough to be considered a proper black-out, but Tanjirou jumped on his feet anyway and when Giyuu's voice carried from the other side of the house, asking him if everything was fine, he hesitated before replying a chipped, “Yeah.”
He couldn’t tell why, but the little hiccup had caused his mood to take a weird turn and when Giyuu entered his room to say goodnight, Tanjirou was still a bit taken aback by the incident. He shuffled uncomfortably under the covers.
“You okay?” Giyuu asked. He had gotten far better at handling emotional situations, but there was still a long way to go; the pat he gave Tanjirou’s shoulder was tentative.
“Bit spooked, but I’ll live.”
His guardian waited for Tanjirou to say something else, he took the time to inspect his face, looking for any sign of lies hidden in the way his body squirmed, struggling to find a comfortable position.
“Alright,” Giyuu declared, finally, “Goodnight, then.” he ruffled Tanjirou’s hair, like he did every night, and shut the light on his way out the door.
Tanjirou huffed to himself, he turned around to face the wall an muttered, “It was just a stupid light,” with a second sigh for good measure. He closed his eyes, let his mind wonder to the following day.
Somewhere between reciting the classes’ schedule and working out his outfit, Tanjirou fell asleep.
⭒⭑⭒
High school was generally deemed a particularly hard time for young teens. Despite everyone's warnings, Giyuu had been more preoccupied with middle school: the real moment when Tanjirou got thrown out the safety net he had prepared for the kid and into the wilderness of school life.
Tanjirou was a sociable person, respectful and respected in turn, not to mention the endless lessons he took from Rengoku in karate and self defense had made him physically strong, too, which meant bullies and toughs didn’t even consider the idea of jumping him, unless they wanted a concussion.
Going through the day had been increasingly harder, though, because the lack of sleep from the night before caught up to him as the hours went by.
He was about to close his eyes and fall asleep during one of the last classes, but the bell that signaled the end of term saved him just in time.
The first thing he did to try and shake himself up was to reach his friends, who were surrounding Inosuke’s desk and seemed to be in the middle of a heated argument.
“I told you, this character doesn’t go there. This word makes absolutely no sense!” Zenitsu yelled, touching the notebook with a fierce gesture of his hand.
Inosuke, clearly put out about the way the other was handling his stuff, moved his papers away with too much force; Zentisu stumbled at the loss of balance.
“My answer is fine!” he replied, huffing through his nose like a wild beast.
Kanao stood silent to one side, watching with a careful eye. She wasn’t really talkative during class, none of the boys noticed anything wrong with her unresponsive guard.
“Tanjirou! Thank God, someone reasonable,” Zenitsu greeted him.
“What’s the problem?” Tanjirou asked, calm and collected. He was too used to their antics by this point, yet it wasn’t always easy to understand where their fights stemmed from. There were many things that could have pissed either one of them off.
They were a prickly bunch, one could say.
Inosuke showed Tanjirou his homework, written in the characteristic scribbles that were indecipherable to most. “Look here, Montarou! This is right, right?”
Tanjirou leaned over, inspecting the answer, after a few seconds he took a pen from the small pocket of his shirt and added a few lines to the string of kanjis, smiling successfully once he was done.
“Now, that’s correct.”
The bell rang above them, signaling the beginning of a new class. Inosuke didn’t move from his spot, he inspected the new meaning of the words in his hand and laughed, obnoxiously loud, then closed the notebook.
“Of course, of course! That’s more like it,” he said, everyone understood his tone as final.
Kanao nodded, peering over Zenitsu’s shoulders.
Zenitsu stared at his friend’s back while he walked away, flabbergasted. “How?”
“Shut up, Zenitsu, class is starting,” Kanao reprimanded him from her place sitting next to him.
Tanjirou laughed at his friend’s distress.
He believed the brief interaction had been enough to clear his head of any thoughts of blackouts and weird shivers up his back, but as soon as his sensei dived into the rules of arithmetics, his brain shut down to a different line.
It was like he was feeling through someone else’s body. His pen fell down.
He shivered, inexplicably, so hard that Zenitsu noticed from the row behind him. He laid a hand on Tanjirou’s shoulder and whispered, “Everything okay, there?”
“Yeah,” he replied, bending down with the excuse of retracing his pen so he could avoid looking Zenitsu in the eyes. Sadly, he had always been a horrible liar.
⭒⭑⭒
“Hello, hello!” a flowery voice came from the station’s entrance door, one that Giyuu knew far too well. He groaned in his paperwork before raising his head from the desk.
“What the hell are you doing here, Shinobu?”
“My, my,” the girl grinned, “Is that how you greet all your friends or is it a treatment you reserve just for me?”
He stared at her, blinking wordlessly, waiting for the inevitable follow-up.
“Oh, that’s right. You don’t have any other friends.”
“I do have other friends.”
“Fifteen years-old don’t count as friends,” she replied, walking her way to his desk so she could steal the green apple Giyuu had brought to eat later. She bit into it with gusto, even if he knew she preferred red ones. “So, how is the report coming along?”
“Fine,” he said, already turning his attention back on the papers so he could at least pretend he could go on with his job despite the menace that had taken residence close to him. “What do you want?”
“I came here to give you good news,” she pouted. “You know the old lab outside town?”
Giyuu did know it, far too well. He shivered. “I have a vague idea,” he said.
“A new company opened it up last week, they want me to enroll in one of their studies,” Shinobu said, her eyes were glowing at the prospect of the new job.
“That’s good, I’m happy for you,” he noted, his face a completely blank page.
Shinobu caught up on his obvious discomfort, but she couldn’t quite understand where it was coming from. “It’s a really big deal, you know.”
“I’m sure it is,” he agreed, casting his eyes down.
The gig was over, Shinobu’s concern for her friend only grew as he averted her gaze. “What’s gotten into you?” she asked, sincerely concerned.
“Nothing,” Giyuu lied. “It’s great. You’ll be awesome,” he tried to fake a smile that would make her drop the issue, but it was clear from the set of her shoulders that they were going to talk about it sooner or later, and he’d have to spill.
“I’m gonna cut you some slack because I’m really excited about this, but you owe me an ice cream just for the way you answered today,” she said, turning back to her preppy self. She left the apple on his desk, a single big bite on its side and nothing else.
Despite himself, Giyuu gave her a half-smile, genuine in a way his previous expressions hadn’t been.
She was in a similar situation as him, becoming a tutor for her younger sister when she was barely legal, by the time Giyuu had already adopted a squealing baby Tanjirou. It took a hard turn for both of them, it was easy for them to bond over their shared distress of having to deal with toddlers when they had been barely out of teenage-hood themselves..
They learned and grew together as parents and, before then, as children in kindergarten.
Everyone thought they were going to get married once they were old enough to take the step, ignoring the fact that they both had no interest in the opposite sex and saw their relationship as one between siblings more than anything else.
Shinobu loved to pester Giyuu, that was undeniable, and sometimes borderline annoying, but he had grown used to the constant teasing.
Before she could walk out the door, someone else walked in and Giyuu’s face turned crimson.
“Sabito-san, hello. What brings you here?” Shinobu greeted in a suggestive manner, making her eyes travel from one man to the other. Her smirk made Giyuu’s blood boil, he had the sudden urge to disappear immediately.
“Deliveries,” he explained, raising the bag he had in his hands to show her proof. “Groceries, mostly.”
Shinobu nodded in acknowledgment. “I was just heading out,” she said, pointing to the door. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
Giyuu was dense as a brick wall, but Sabito blushed at the implication, making his cheeks turn the same rosy shade of his hair. He kept the door open for her and waved, too flustered to trust his voice.
“Oh, what a gentleman,” Shinobu noticed, pretending to swoon at the chivalrous gesture. Her eyes kept darting to Giyuu, who was trying to pretend neither of them existed to preserve some of his sanity.
His paperwork had never been so interesting, even after Shinobu was gone and Sabito stood motionlessly in front of him, plastic bag hanging from one hand.
“This is yours,” he repeated, putting the delivered item on the side of the desk.
“Thank you,” Giyuu whispered, clearing his throat when he noticed how hoarse his voice was.
An uncomfortable silence fell on them, heavy with Shinobu’s implications that neither was ready to talk about.
It had been years since they had started to flounder around each other.
Rather, Giyuu blushed and fell over himself, while Sabito tried to be as smooth as possible but failed due to his unavoidable bluntness, which meant he avoided flirting and talking of feeling in any shape or form in fear of scaring off Giyuu.
They were at an impasse.
It didn’t help that Giyuu was so relentlessly idiotic that he didn’t believe his feelings were returned. Sabito was going to lose his hair because of that man, he could feel it.
“Did Tanjirou like the candies you brought him yesterday?” Sabito asked as a way to make conversation.
“Yes,” Giyuu said, almost too quickly. “He wasn’t feeling well, though, so I’ll try to be home when he arrives. I don’t want to leave him alone.” His awkwardness disappeared when he talked about Tanjirou, the uneasiness left space to the strong affection he felt for the kid.
Sabito found it admirable, he smiled softly at the domestic image the two of them painted if he pictured them around a homemade dish after school.
“Tanjirou’s a good kid, he deserves it. I can cook something for the both of you, if you want.”
Giyuu wasn’t used to people offering him help with his daily life, after his sister’s death he had been fending for himself for years. Tanjirou had really helped him come out of his shell, despite what other people may believe, all those who knew them understood and respected their bond.
“Thanks, that’d be… yeah, you can take the keys from-”
“Under the mat, I know.” He smiled, rubbing his hands together. “What happened, anyway? He doesn’t get spooked easily.”
Giyuu put the issue aside with a movement of his hand. “Nothing much, the lights flickered in the house for a second.”
“Uh,” Sabito commented. It was weird for him to not have a quip ready.
“What?”
“Nothing, just… it happened at my house, too.” He shrugged. “Well, it’s fixed now, but I’ll check the power station while I’m there. Just in case.”
“Thanks, really, you don’t have to go to all this trouble for us,” Giyuu said, apologetic. He didn’t have the possibility to repay Sabito with actions or money, but he was always quick to offer help around the house.
If it weren’t for his crazy shifts, Giyuu would have refused his offers with a little more conviction because he hated owing debts to people, but he was dead on his feet and he wanted to take good care of his sister’s house, so he gave in.
“Don’t even mention it!” Sabito took a look at the clock on the other wall. “I’d better get going, school will be out soon.” He jogged to the exit, saluting with a wave, he had taken the bag of groceries with him and disappeared behind the corner on the other side of the street.
Giyuu smiled to himself and returned to his work, head lighter.
He didn’t notice the flash of lights coming from the laboratory that could be seen from behind the station’s windows.
⭒⭑⭒
The small house Giyuu had inherited from his sister laid just outside the city limits, its light red walls showed the bricks underneath. Sabito realized he had to think about giving it a hand of paint, perhaps during the weekend, when the kids were out playing and no one would bother him.
Sabito kneeled down in front of the front door, picked up the spare key from under the mat - a bad habit no cop should have but was too convenient to be changed - and let himself in.
As soon as he entered, a mild scent of lavender took hold of his nostrils, surrounding him along with something that was uncannily Giyuu, something he had long since associated with the comfort of his friend’s kitchen.
Opening the cabinets, Sabito realized, not for the first time, that he found himself more at ease in that place than his own, lonely home.
The old house was lived, he could see it in the shoes laying around the floor near the entrance, scattered but relegated to their rightful place; in the hoodies and blankets piled on the couch’s backrest.
Ever since Makomo had moved out of old Urokodaki’s place to live in Tokyo, Sabito had felt the ghost of his foster father haunting the house and he was unable to move anything from where the old geezer had put it.
It didn’t feel like home to him, not really.
Sabito shook his head to release it of the haunting thoughts. He focused on cleaning the rice for his receipt, using the shooting sound of water to clean away all the melancholy that had taken place somewhere on his chest.
The clock signaled half an hour before the end of school.
He hummed at the thought that, somehow, he had memorized both Giyuu and Tanjirou’s schedule along the line. There was said about his strong determination to find any excuse to make his paths cross with the one of the little mismatched family.
He was about to chop some vegetables when the light flickered once, then a second time and a third. Rapid motions, too quick to be a blackout but too regular to be a fault of the electric system.
Sabito frowned, he reminded himself to check anyway.
⭒⭑⭒
School let out at the usual time, obviously, but Tanjirou felt like he had been sitting down for half a century. He stretched his arms, putting his hands high above his head and getting on his tiptoes on instinct.
He sighed, relieved, and took a second the inhale the crisp air that came with early winter evenings.
“It’s nice to be out,” Tanjirou said, fixing his hands in the pockets of his bomber jacket.
“Are you alright, Tanjirou? You looked weird today,” Zenitsu asked, followed by deep nods from the other two members of their little gang.
“I didn’t sleep well last light,” he explained. “Weird dreams.”
“Then I guess stopping by Sabito’s shop is out for today,” Kanao said, her voice barely loud enough to be heard by her friends. “You probably want to go lay down for awhile.” It sounded more like a warning than a question, one which Tanjirou was happy to oblige.
“I’m hitting it, too,” Inosuke said, gesturing to his motorcycle, barely hidden from view behind a bush. “I need to be home before that idiot comes back to bug my mom.”
“Douma-san again?” Tanjirou asked.
They were all worried about Hashibira-san’s latest suitor: going by Inosuke’s world, the guy was sneaky and a bit creepy, not to mention no one knew where he came from or why he had started to bother the poor widow in the last couple of days.
“Say, Inosuke,” Kanao wondered aloud, following him to his bike so she could be heard before the rumble of the motor overcame her voice. “Does Douma-san work for the company who opened the old lab outside town?”
Inosuke blinked. “I don’t know. Why?”
She shrugged. “He appeared right when they opened, is’t it weird?”
The boys all eyed each other. It was such a simple correlation, yet none of them had managed to make it. It was particularly weird for anything new to open around their little town, so the fact that a major energy company had decided to make their old, unused lab, their headquarters had been on everyone’s tongue for a while.
They should have noticed, but that was what Kanao was needed for: to act as the brain of the group.
“It is weird, uh?” Inosuke mused. He ignited the motor of his bike, letting it roar for a few seconds, he covered his face with the black helmet and, without even acknowledging any of his friends, raised his feet from the ground and took off.
“Inosuke, wait!” Tanjirou yelled, both hands in front of his mouth.
Zenitsu put a hand on his shoulder. “We can’t stay here all day.” He sighed. “Inosuke can handle himself.”
Kanao was silent, but she crossed her arms in front of her chest, which meant that there was something off about the situation that was putting her off. Regardless, she nodded in agreement when Zentisu urged them to leave.
Tanjirou followed as they all moved away from the school and into the street that would take them home.
⭒⭑⭒
Tanjirou smelled an uncharacteristic smell come from inside the house. It wasn’t necessarily an unpleasant one, but it was surely unusual.
He opened the door to find Giyuu sitting at the dinner table, reading the papers in a sweater and jeans, he hadn’t seen his guardian in anything but his uniform in a few weeks, it was almost weird to find him so at ease; the table in front of him was set with various plates filled with warm food, Tanjirou could see cooked meet and roasted vegetables. He licked his lips in anticipation.
“I’m home!” Tanjirou yelled. He laid his shoes by the door and moved to enter the house completely.
Giyuu put the newspaper aside and smiled at him, his face was still showing clear signs of exhaustion but he looked more relaxed than the night before, which eased Tanjirou’s mind.
He sat in his place, taking his chopsticks eagerly. “This looks delicious. You came home really early, it must have taken a long time,” Tanjirou noted around a mouthful of rice.
Giyuu silently started eating, too, albeit in a slower manner. “Actually,” he said, coughing. “Sabito offered to cook for us. He came by while I was at the station.” He bit into a large piece of meat, preparing himself for the teasing that was about to come.
Tanjirou stared at him with a look at that was far too knowing. He nodded and kept eating. “Very considerate of him.”
“How do you feel?” Giyuu asked, steering the conversation away from him and into safer territory. “You got really spooked last night.”
“Not good, but it’s not about the lights.” Tanjirou put down his chopsticks for a second, fiddling with his fingers under the table. “I’m really worried about Hashibira-san. Inosuke said she’s getting around some dangerous people.”
“I can pay them a visit before I go back to the station later.”
“I thought you were done for the day.”
Giyuu looked down, sheepish. “I needed to get some paperwork done. Kinda cheated my way out to stay with you for lunch.”
“Oh,” Tanjirou muttered. He was glad for the company, it was hard to see much of Giyuu lately and he had missed they casual chats.
Sometimes he forgot how much he meant for the little mismatched family that had taken him in.
Once his concern dwelled somehow, knowing that Giyuu was going to act soon, a newfound exhaustion fell over him. He kept stuffing his face with food until his stomach complained and he managed to relax on his chair, yawning.
“You didn’t sleep much last night, did you?” Giyuu asked, watching him carefully from behind his lashes as he took another bite of rice.
“I’ll take a nap later,” Tanjirou said. He passed a hand on his eyes, taking the tiredness out of them with a convinced movement of his fingers. He scrubbed until he saw spots behind his eyelids. “I have so much homework to do.”
Giyuu hummed, unconvinced, but he allowed Tanjirou the freedom to lie to himself. The kid had never slept during the evenings, not even when his little toddler brain ran out of gasoline after a whole play day with Kanao. He had always been resilient, even in the stupidest things.
“Sure, I’ll be back before you wake up.”
⭒⭑⭒
“I’m home!” Shinobu yelled, taking off her shoes and putting them by the door.
No response, as usual. She ran up the stairs to Kanao’s room, opening the door after a few knocks.
Her sister was there, focusing completely on the homework in front of her, hunched over her desk and rolling her pen between two fingers.
“Kanao!” she greeted, entering the room until she was sitting on the bed behind the desk. “Can you press pause for a second? I have good news.”
The younger one obeyed, laying her papers down and turning in her chair until they were face to face. Kanao blinked.
“I’m going to star working for the new project that’s been set up in the old laboratory,” she said, almost vibrating with excitement.
Kanao didn’t move an inch.
“What?”
“The man Hashibira-san is seeing works there. Inosuke told us he’s a really important person.” The fact that she believed it to be a discouraging thing was implied. Shinobu knew something about the new guy that had arrived in town lately, apparently Sabito had caught a weird vibe from him.
“You think I should refuse,” Shinobu said.
Kanao shrugged. “It’s a good opportunity.”
“I know that. I’m asking what you think about it.”
“Be careful, that’s all I ask.” She rolled around and resumed her homework, closing the discussion. There was nothing else to say.
Shinobu hummed. It was a different reaction from what she had expected. Granted, her little sister had never been one to jump up and down with joy, but she had her own way of expressing happiness when it came to it.
“Alright then, I guess I’ll hit the shower. Since you clearly don’t want to talk to me.” She hesitated before she got up, waiting to see if her outright refusal to insist would steer up something in her sister.
Nothing.
Shinobu put a sign on the conversation in her mind so she could remind herself to go back to it once they had enough time and her sister wasn’t distracted with something else.
The doorbell rang just as Kanao was about to go back to her papers. She huffed, deeply annoyed, and got up with too much force.
Her steps bounced as she walked down the stairs, side ponytail shifting on her shoulder. Her feet were feather light, it was always hard to understand when she was going to appear next to someone and that gave her the advantage in most situations.
Sadly, there was no way to get the upper hand when she opened the door and the stranger she wanted to avoid was on the other side, waiting for someone to receive him.
“Hello.” The man waved.
He was dressed in bright colored clothes: a mismatched jumper that must have been expensive but looked simply hideous to Kanao, a pair of washed-up jeans. His eyes sparkled, she struggled to find a single color to define them.
“I don’t know you,” she said.
Kanao made a move to close the door, but the man stopped her with a manicured hand.
He turned his head to a side. “I needed to see your sister, but I guess you’ll do fine. Kanao, right?.”
She frowned. “How do you know my name?”
“You’re in Shinobu-chan’s family record. Of course!” he explained with a cheerful voice that resembled the falseness her sister sometimes used when she was upset. “I’m the chief inspector in her new office, my name is Douma. Didn’t she tell you how lucky she got?”
“She… may have mentioned, yes.”
He took out a small pen, pink and fluffy. Kanao had landed it to Inosuke a few days before to help when his bic had died on him before a test. She didn’t think she was ever going to see it again. “Inosuke-chan told me to bring this back to you.”
Kanao took the pen gingerly, careful not to brush Douma’s fingers.
She had a hard time believing that Inosuke would ever ask the man to give her anything. She knew he was the one who had started dating Hashibira-san, the same slimy man who her friend complained about daily. Something didn’t add up.
“Thank you. If that’s all.”
“It’s all,” the man agreed. “Tell your sister I’ll see her soon.”
“You going somewhere?”
Douma smiled, it made the hair at the back of her neck stand on edge. “Back to work. Lots of things to do, you see.”
She closed the door slowly, until he was completely out of her vision. She sighed, looking at the floor above when the sound of water running in the bathroom stopped.
Kanao run to her room before Shinobu could get out and notice that she had moved. Her sister caught her halfway to the upper floor; Shinobu was drying her hair with one of the soft towels they kept in the upper drawers by the sink.
“Something wrong?” she asked, seeing that Kanao had turned pale.
“Not really.”
She skipped past her sister and reached her room without rushing to avoid the possibility of drawing further suspicions. Once she managed in the feat, it was easy to connect to their frequence, the light buzzing was replaced by Inosuke’s voice almost immediately. “Who's there? Over.”
“The weird guy came to my house. Over.”
“What!” he yelled. “What! What!” The line fell silent, she heard a loud sound that signaled the walkie was being thrown haphazardly on some flat surface, probably the ground.
Kanao remained in line for a few seconds, until Tanjirou picked up on the discrepancies and answered, “Is everything okay there? Over.”
“He’s gone now, but I think Inosuke went after him. Over.”
“Where is he going?” Zenitzu asked, he was breathing heavily so he had probably sped to make sure he reached the walkie before they hung up. “Over,” he added, as an afterthought.
“The lab out town. Over.”
A few seconds of thoughtful silence passed, their collective mind planning the same crazy idea.
Zenitsu sighed. “We’re going after him, aren’t we?”
“Yup.”