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i.
Rengoku-san is fire.
ii.
Kanroji Mitsuri is a girl in love with love itself, with the spring dyed in her hair and her blooming love tangled around her eyelashes. Mitsuri loves with all her heart’s strength, looking at the virtues of everyone around her— even when she fails to look at hers; waiting for someone who could love her, who could accept her even with her hard-to-rival strength and her hair of such a beautifully unnatural color.
Mitsuri is a warrior of flexible movements. She moves like a ballerina as she cuts off the heads of every demon that threatens the life of an innocent person. She fights everyday, having found a purpose for herself, for that strength that had brought her so much pain and shame in the past. Because she was born with the power to help the weak, to save and protect others.
(That’s one of the many things she learns from Rengoku-san.)
iii.
The thing is—
Rengoku-san is fire.
He trains her, and he doesn’t judge her because of the reason she joined the Demon Corps in the first place. Just like he doesn’t reprimand her when at first she is incapable of taking more than two steps with a sword in her hands without tripping over her own feet. Instead, he guides her and encourages her and inspires her, even when she ends up creating her own Breathing Style and leaving him with the task to once again try to find someone who could pass the Flame Breathing to the next generations.
Yet he doesn’t look at her with disappointment, but with pride. And they are no longer mentor and student, but equals. Two Pillars fighting their own fights to keep humanity safe.
(And the nights are particularly hard and tough, but Mitsuri clings to the hope that one day she and Rengoku-san and everyone else will finally be able to rest and live a peaceful, safe life— one with no more sacrifices, with no more pain.)
iv.
Rengoku-san is fire.
And Mitsuri thinks her heart could burst into flames at the sight of his summer-smile, like the blade of a sword freshly forged in fire. Because everything about Rengoku-san is pure warmth and Mitsuri is a daughter of Venus, eternally in love with love, with life itself.
She ends up falling for him all too easily— even when she thinks she can feel green and gold staring at her with mute adoration in the form of a pair of striped socks. But it’s Rengoku-san’s fiery spirit that makes her fall in love, a deeper and more painful fall compared to anything she's ever felt before. And yet—
And yet she doesn’t say anything, not even when her heart beats harder and harder when he is around, more than with any other of their comrades— the thing is that Mitsuri has never been good at hiding her feelings or the blush almost always present on her cheeks. She doesn’t say anything because doing so would be too selfish of her when they are in the middle of a constant fight. She doesn’t say anything because she is afraid she will no longer be able to see Rengoku-san smile at her sincerely.
So she doesn’t say anything until it turns out to be too late.
v.
Because Rengoku-san is fire. He burns everything around him, protecting the defenseless, giving it all up in the process— even his own life.
Because Rengoku-san is fire. He ends up burning himself in the process, extinguishing and leaving behind nothing but ashes in the shape of a crow, along with devastating news and all the tears she cries once she hears it.
Because Rengoku-san was fire. He was full of life. With his summer-skin and his strong hands, his hair waving in the wind— yellow and red, gold and scarlet.
Mitsuri cries for everything she couldn’t tell him, for everything she could have done but didn’t. She cries for him because it is not fair, because Rengoku-san deserved to live. He deserved to find happiness in a world without demons hiding in every shadow. But this world is cruel and Rengoku-san is gone. His smile has left a hole inside her chest, a sharp pain that reappears every time she tries to recreate his memory. Like a phantom limb, like an apparition, like a phoenix unable to reborn and take flight.
Because Rengoku-san was fire.
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(The night seem to have become darker and colder since he left.)