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“What’sit?”
Tanjiro stops, turning to look back over his shoulder at where Inosuke’s come to a halt in the middle of the street. When Tanjiro follows where the boar’s head is turned he spots the local shrine.
“It’s a shrine, Inosuke, where you can pray to the local kami.”
Inosuke snorts, unimpressed, “No, Ganpachiro,” he flings his arm out, nearly taking out a passerby, “that.”
Tanjiro follows the line of Inosuke’s index finger. “Oh,” he says, “it’s a chinowa.” Tanjiro’s already starting across the street. “Ah, it’s already that time, isn’t it? I didn’t even notice.” Inosuke follows after him, grumbling.
“Here,” he says when they’re standing before it. “Now we go through it.”
The boar’s head manages to look skeptical.
“Think of it as a good luck charm,” he says, holding out his hand as he used to for his little brothers and sisters. They all used to go together during Minazuki, making the trek down to the bigger shrine in town. For as long as he could remember, they’d always gone through with linked hands.
“Hah!” Inosuke straightens up, puffing out his chest. “The god of the mountain doesn’t need luck!”
“Well,” Tanjiro lets his hand drop. “Me and Nezuko are going through.” He hoists her box higher on his shoulders and turns away from his friend. There’s no one else around, probably because it’s not only late in the day but late in the season; everyone must have already visited the shrine for purification by now. Tanjiro has the fleeting worry that the chinowa won’t let Nezuko pass through, but immediately dismisses it. They’re new to this town, but even the local kami must know how good she is, how hard she’s been trying.
“Here we go,” he mutters, and steps through.
When they were little, they used to be able to feel it. Tanjiro remembers this clearly, sitting at the edge of the shrine’s courtyard while their parents spoke with an acquaintance or prayed. They used to speak, him and Nezuko, hushed in the way one was supposed to speak of magic, with bowed heads turned towards one another.
He doesn’t feel anything now.
Inosuke is already waiting for him on the other side, having stomped over around the outside of the ring.
“The god of the mountain,” he continues once he sees he has Tanjiro’s attention again, “makes his own luck!”
Tanjiro thinks that Inosuke is really very right about some things, even more than he himself knows. He and Nezuko have gotten this far by doing just that, after all. “Well said, Inosuke!” he says, smiles as a simple complement still manages to catch his friend off guard. “We passed a tea shop on our way here, why don’t we stop there for a snack?”
Still, he thinks, circling around the chinowa rather than passing back through it, it was always so nice when they were little, feeling protected, feeling blessed.
The crowd gathered at the tea shop has him bumping into Inosuke to avoid running into anyone. His friend’s arm is warm against his own, almost too warm in the summer heat, and Inosuke doesn’t ever pull away in moments like these. Usually, as he does now, he draws closer. They find part of a bench that’s empty and sit squeezed together while they eat. Inosuke watches the crowd, commenting on one person or another, and Nezuko sleeps in her box where he’s set it by his side.
An old woman has caught Inosuke’s eye and he’s going off on her, but Tanjiro feels his gaze drawn back across the street. The sun’s setting just behind the roof of the shrine’s main building. It’s beautiful, almost as vermillion as the torii gate, and it casts a soft light over everything. He’s sweating from the humidity, and they still have a ways to travel for their mission, but he feels it now, what he’d missed earlier, passing through the chinowa.
“Oi, Tambakkuro, slow poke, ready to go to bed already, hah?”
“No, you’re right, Inosuke, let’s keep going!” He lifts Nezuko’s box back onto his shoulders and they set off, Inosuke taking the lead and Tanjiro content to follow behind.