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Daki, going by a pretentious and throwaway Oiran name, looked up from her client and toward the ceiling. It was all she could see in place of the sky. “Was that thunder?”
“You scared of thunder, princess?”
“No. I just found it loud,” she said, smiling back to the face breathing all over hers. His breath stank, but she had caught a whiff of strength that intrigued her. While she sat in his lap and had her arms laced around his neck, she felt for the pulse through his veins, trying to pinpoint more about this man.
Flesh well into his thirties, a ready tension in all of his muscles. He was looking for something more than the usual customer was, and the fact that he hadn't gone weak from her lips so close to him indicated that he had a strong constitution. “Loud is fine," he said. "It’ll cover us, won’t it? I’ve a got a feeling we’ll make a lot of noise tonight.”
“You’re a confident one, aren’t you?” she grinned in his ear.
“That’s what I’ve heard about you, too. You must have worked hard to come this far, didn't you? Stepped on a lot of girls in the process, huh?”
“Not girls you liked, I hope?”
He drew back so he could hold her chin with his thumb, and gaze down into her face. He had a thick scar under his left eye, and a smirk that stretched to the right. “I’ll bet you ate them right up.”
That line was almost a good one, she had to give him that. “Me? As long as I paid for them, then that’s all that matters, right?”
“How much does a thing like you cost?" he asked, tilting her chin. "In my line of work, I make a big salary, you know. As much as I want, it’s mine."
"You're a tease, trying to make me curious."
"I could buy you right out of this whole place. What’s your debt? I can make it go away.”
Daki felt repulsed; it was as though he really meant all that instead of fishing for more information out of her. With any other man she’d ask him, then what? Would she go be stuck as his private plaything, hidden away instead of basking in her Oiran glory? None of them would ever follow through on anything whispered in her chambers. She'd heard everything, every self-aggrandizing lie and cheap ploy for her affections. The way this customer talked smacked of a savior complex, though. That made her almost certain he was a Hashira.
“You’re presumptuous that I’d want to leave. As if there would be anything for me away from Yoshiwara.”
When she said that, his smirk faded, and his bushy eyebrows knit tighter. Was he holding back because he hadn’t figured her out yet? Most Hashira had known that by one glance at her, so maybe he wasn’t worth her effort after all. It always took so long to lure and reel Hashira in, and she couldn't have that all spoiled by a demon hunter not worth Muzan's praise for killing. If he wasn't a Hashira, then he was just some guy using demon hunting an excuse to investigate her, privately. Stare her down and study her with a deep gaze.
She wished he'd stop gazing.
“What if I took you in?" he said.
"Excuse me?"
"I wouldn’t mind looking after an orphan.”
“Do I seem helpless to you?”
His muscles pulsed; he had made a judgement, and his smirk was back. “Not at all. Princess, you're capable, aren't you? Really strong,” he said, very suddenly tightening his grip around her as another crack of thunder boomed outside. It was such a fast change and tight grip that Daki felt the rare buzz of fear, nearly mistaking his Breath on her neck for a blade itself. “Are you perhaps a Lower Moon?”
"--!!"
Her lips pearled to a snarl. At that same instant, she shot her obi at him from all angles of the room.
"HNGH!!"
He should have been in pieces, but she instead found him with his back on the tatami, and his severed right leg spewing with blood beneath the knee as he held it and groaned. Remarkable that he had moved fast enough to have that be his only injury, for she had skewered and diced Hashira with her opening shot before. She stood over the demon hunter with a scowl, and she would have enjoyed the sight of his increasing panic if not for what an indignant mood he had put her in.
“Assessing someone like me so lightly with be the death of you,” Daki said, taking slow steps over to the pool of blood staining the tatami. When the ends of her kimono were dyed in it, she leaned over him so their faces were nearly as close as before. “Get a good look,” she widened her eyes. “Know the rank of the one who will kill you.”
She took another sweep of her obi, but the demon hunter was gone. He was a fast one, faster than all those other Hashira, that was easy to say. He was the only one never to have taken a shot at her, though. Was it because he really saw a helpless orphan in her, and he truly wanted to help?
Well, no help he was now. The room was in pieces and that blood must had dripped down to the floor below adn caused a fuss already. Now she’d have to start over as some nobody girl in some other brothel all over again. What a pain. She picked up the lower leg he left behind to have a snack, and although it smelled as strong as any good Hashira limb, the meat was tough. “Ew,” she cringed and held it away from her face. “You can have this one, Oniichan.”
“Did you kill the demon, at least?”
“Leave me alone,” Jigoro hugged his face into a pillow, not at all wanting to see Sakonji’s stupid red Tengu nose. Why was he still wearing that thing after all these years? Telling him he should wear one had only ever been a joke!
“Then you didn’t kill the demon. Well, where is it? I’ll go avenge you.”
“No one ever said I was done with it!” he threw the pillow down and yelled. “I got it good and roughed up! It only ever got one good shot at me. I’ll finish it off, good and dead!”
“You ran away.”
“I—well—I’m alive, aren’t I? It’s fine to run away,” he grumbled, trying to sound convincing though he didn’t believe a word he said. If he was already lying to cover up that he didn’t even put a scratch on the first Upper Moon her ever saw, then a few more lies couldn’t hurt. “It’s fine as long as you never give up.”
“Anything short of taking the demon’s neck means whatever damage you dealt it is moot. It’s over. You’ve made your last run. You can’t expect to perform Thunder Breath anymore in your condition.”
“But I’m still in fine condition otherwise—”
“Don’t be a fool, Kuwajima. You were an excellent Roaring Hashira. Thank you for your services.”
His throat clenched up, and his face flushed almost as bright a red as Urokodaki's fake face. “I’m not done being a Hashira. I can’t be. There’s nobody even close to taking my place.”
When he put it into those words, he felt the sting and regret. Thunder Breath wasn’t easy, hardly everyone ever picked it up, not in any way they could use it well. Even as one of the basic Breaths, it was nearly extinct among the Corp with how quickly those other guys using it kept getting picked off. All this time, for all his mastery of it, Jigoro had been too haughty, saying it wasn’t worth trying to train someone who didn’t have talent for it. Now with only half a leg, Jigoro was only half as good as any of those Thunder chumps. It’d have broken his old cultivator’s heart to see the Breath go without a successor.
No! If he had the gall to say running away was fine as long as he didn’t give up, then he had to make good on that. There were determined demon hunters all throughout history who didn’t let injuries like that stop them, and Jigoro wasn’t just any hunter, he was a Hashira!
When he was recovered enough, he went out in secret to keep slaying demons while getting used to Thunder Breath on a peg leg. Thunder Breath was about more than running fast, and he still had plenty of agility and power to use in just about every form but the First one. That was regrettable, but he could make do. He had to. Maybe he was no longer any match for that Upper Moon Princess, but he at least couldn’t give up.
A few months later, with trembling nerves he had to use Breath technique to control, he returned to Yoshiwara. She was no longer for sale. The commotion must had sent her into hiding. He kept training, and the Roaring Hashira position remained vacant. Jigoro returned to Yoshiwara a few years later, thinking she might have returned by then, but he couldn’t rat her out. She must not have cared to finish anything, for he wasn't worth it anymore.
Over the next decade and a half, Jigoro made occasional trips back to Yoshiwara, laughing it off by excusing himself to go have a good time, and telling himself that his day-trips there to wander and listlessly read the catalogs of women were his way of not giving up. More and more, that became a lie.
When a new Water Hashira replaced Sakonji, Sakonji still wore that stupid Tengu mask. “I’m going to go find orphans to recruit as Water Breath pupils,” he grunted from behind the mask. Though he meant it the typical way a Hashira would, Jigoro couldn’t help but hear it through a layman’s ears and think it sounded like Sakonji intended to kidnap children off the street to torture them. Maybe that was how Hashira always sounded. “There’s still been no successor to the position of Roaring Hashira. You ought to take in a disciple.”
Jigoro’s own words from years ago ran through his head. “What if I took you in? I wouldn’t mind looking after an orphan.”
If she had been human, he had meant that, didn’t he? Not that he would have bothered training her if she didn’t show promise, but giving her a stable home and someone to eat her meals with, he would had done that much. He had meant it.
“It’s not a bad idea,” he agreed with Sakonji. "Maybe one of these days."
Training someone might be his new way of not giving up. If he looked, he was sure he could find someone of talent. That Upper Moon Princess had warned him that assessing her lightly had been his doom, and she had been right. Maybe all this time he had been assessing all those old Thunder Breath users too lightly too, not giving them a chance. Maybe if he had spent time on them, they could have been polished into something great.
Jigoro wanted to start low. Look for orphans who needed a fresh start in life, who must have never been assessed for their strengths. Maybe it was time he give up on himself, and not give up on someone who needed him.