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Kocho Shinobu is nine years old when she first acquaints herself with Winter. It is a stealthy visitor, a force encroaching in the most minuscule of increments discernible only to the expectant and wary. The leaves droop and wilt, the winds increase marginally in their vigor and animals creep away to slink into unseen burrows.
This is the strength of Winter, a season with the ability to shift all the world in the most subtle ways, bringing an onset of cold that is gradual until it isn’t. In this fashion, the prickly chill in the air swells overnight. When Shinobu wakes up the next morning, the world is iced over and glacial, heaped and layered in a thick blanket of snow so white that even shadows fail to take hold. Shinobu stumbles to the window, peering shyly into a landscape in miniature. The sunlight is suddenly blinding across the fields that surround her home, and beneath this resplendent light of dawn does the frost and ice turn crystalline and glittering.
“Watch out for bears.” Her mother had warned with a solemn air. “Most of them sleep the winter away, but the ones that don’t are the most dangerous for their hunger.”
Shinobu had not seen any bears that year, nor had she in the years that had followed. In fact, the most eventful incidents are ones she can recount with ease and logical chronology; her mother dropping a pot, a misplaced bottle of medicine, Kanae’s stubbed toe, a snowball landed squarely across her father’s nose. The memories are faded and blurry around the edges, brief and biting as a wayward snowflake landing on her tongue, musical as fond laughter, hazy as a fog of fragrant chestnut smoke. Though these remnants of sweetness persists, the sensation itself has all but disappeared; misery alone rides the coattails of these happy impressions.
She’d wanted to be a doctor once. But all the sum of her well-meaning dreams and aspirations had not been sufficient to overcome the fact that her little hands had been much too small and much too helpless to staunch the flow of tragedy. She’d been a twig set before a crumbling dam, hapless and fated to be swept away in an impending flood of change and perturbation of apocalyptic magnitude. It is not a pleasant memory, but the human mind is a stubborn thing. In the very same way that one might learn to abhor a certain food when its taste is associated with a sour experience, there is a part of her which clings to every meager scrap of written memory pertaining to that day, all of it too salient to be forgotten.
This slew of recollection haunts her like an unrequited romance, creeping up to display itself when her resolve wears thin with fatigue and rage. In that instant the icicles in her mind’s eye turn jagged and gaping, and she finds herself staring blankly through the maw of a doorframe with the breath of winter caressing her wet cheeks, looking upon a scene strewn with horror and reflected tenfold in jutting fractals of broken glass and shattered porcelain.
It is a scene like a rehearsed section from a well-loved stage play or storybook. Shinobu can recite it even now - with all its intricacies and subtleties intact- by heart. Her mother is more wound than woman. She lacks any distinct injury to attend, and blood pours from her like a spurting faucet broken at its base. Her father is unrecognizable, a good portion of him is torn to featureless shreds, flesh macerated carelessly beneath the demon’s teeth and claws. Said demon hunches over his corpse, head down, back arched and quivering, throat bobbing.
It hasn’t seen her. It hasn’t seen them.
Or perhaps it has. Perhaps it is simply much too engrossed to care.
Kanae’s arms are wrapped around her and shaking. The two of them are crouched in the next room just beneath the small window, squeezed perilously into a gap between the cupboard and the adjacent wall. She’d thought it once so silly before- the furniture much too big, and her undersized frame much too small to make any use or sense of it. Now it presents itself as both a relief and a shortcoming. She wants nothing more than to shrink and dwindle, to reduce herself to the point of being entirely exempt from notice. But she becomes acutely aware that her size is only a testament to her helplessness; a mouse can only hide for so long before it finds itself wretched and at the mercy of a predator’s claws.
She can feel Kanae’s heart thundering against the middle of her back- it’s hard to seperate the two of them in the moment, squashed so tightly together that their bodies seem to have compressed into one entity, entwined so that their tears and heartbeats are indistinguishable.
Shinobu’s eyes wander for want of better scenery. She can see the series of parallel etches in the doorframe where father had once marked their heights. Beneath those are the scuff marks along the squeaking rails of the shoji leading into the kitchen. Beyond even that she can see the stain in the tatami from where she’d once tripped and spilled a bowl of miso. She can see blood. It floods her every sense, permeating the air like a heady perfume and wrapping itself around her like a serpent’s sinister embrace; it inscribes itself into her skin, tattooing its memory into the very fiber of her being and weaving into her marrow.
These are the remnants and relics of a life shattered in an instant. Here she is no doctor, instead she finds herself in the shoes of an archaeologist, a historian returning to a burial site too intimate and still in animation. Winter is here and it warms the ground with the blood of her family.
Here crouched in the ruins of her home, Shinobu Kocho waits to die, a lamb trembling before this inattentive butcher’s and fate’s complicit hands. She feels too small and simple, too quantifiable- two arms, two legs, and a face ashen with fright.
But death only hovers at her shoulder before slipping politely past and out the front door. Shinobu feels at once the maddening lightness of its departure, and a terrible crashing sound marks the finality of its retreat. The demon stalls and whips around, just as an iron mace comes swinging through the splinters of the shattered door and crushes its head in a heartbeat.
A hulking beast of a man steps through the narrow frame. He is scarred and draped in the colors of spring, the weight of his brocade amplifying the set of his broad shoulders. Despite this, he moves far too quickly for his size. The demon shrieks in dismay and is dispatched in the next moment with prompt, ruthless ferocity.
This man- Shinobu thinks, is a bear. He is a creature of Spring made dangerous in the Winter, with short cropped hair like fur and skin as tough as hide. He steps over the demon and surveys the damage, then drops his weapon and clasps his hands together in silent prayer. Those hands are rough with callouses when they find her. She’s never seen a bear, so its understandable that Shinobu shrinks back as he beckons. For all his intended benevolence and altruism, his size and appearance do him no favors.
The three of them sit there in a stalemate for the better part of half a day. Shinobu thinks of nothing at all as she cowers, the ability to puppet her limbs long since lost. His words go unheard, drowned out by the rapid susurration of her panicked breathing. But he is patient. He sits to the side and speaks to them, offering comfort in guileless company and words that go unheard.
In the end, it is the gentle Spring-warmth of his kindness which thaws the ice that petrifies her. It is only when she is gathered in his arms that the cold that bites at her skin with the vengeance of a maddened serpent finally begins to abate.
Himejima Gyomei is a kind man.
They make a strange unit- two unwanted, skittish girls and a man shunned by the world. Despite this, the cottage in the mountains is home enough even if things have changed.
Shinobu ages, growing listless as strangling ivy around a fury that blazes deep within her. There’s a notable shift; intrigue deserts her and joy makes itself sparse. A species of recklessness makes its home within her, one which convinces her to cease in the thankless task of minding herself. In return, Kanae scolds her for her carelessness and devotes much of her time to trying to unearth within her some kernel of buried interest and cheer.
Kocho Kanae is a kind sister.
She attends to her and is meticulous in ensuring her needs are met, she helps around the house and follows Gyomei like an attentive shadow. She learns to sieve and cook rice, to husk corn and do the laundry, she tidies because Gyomei is largely unable to and learns to garden by his side.
Shinobu is a vessel for her wrath. She is selfish, ungrateful, and she has become everything that she ought not. A feeling of otherness settles within her, a vapid teeming thing that saturates her and strips her of peace. She feels other. She feels angry, and this alone sets her as far from this newfound peaceful domesticity as she can possibly imagine. She doesn’t fit in and it nauseates her, turning her stomach with every nightmare she wakes sobbing to, with every liter of imagined blood pouring down her gullet and clogging her throat.
She snaps a garden picket when she loses focus, she tangles string and tears fabric when sewing frustrates her, and she is reckless and imprecise when she is invited into the kitchen to assist, a hindrance to the efforts of others at every turn.
“Shinobu.” Kanae tries tentatively, weakly after one such incident which leaves a rice bowl lying in pieces at her feet. It is a considerate gesture, albeit a futile one.
Her vision is blurring and her face is hot.
Hearing her name uttered is enough to stir the ire within her. Shinobu curls her fingers into fists and stumbles back on legs devoid of strength, ducking out of the room and letting her feet thunder loosely into the hallway.
“Shinobu!” Her tears well and fall, Shinobu dashes blindly away, uncaring about her destination as she proceeds with a single-minded goal of escape. Her inner turmoil buffets her, carrying her off like a hapless insect in a torrent. It spits her out brusquely and leaves her to curl and stew in the shadow of the great Cypress.
When Kanae finally catches up, she has the sense to approach in a soft and mindful manner. Shinobu sees her feet through the gap between her knees and arms and feels her presence as she kneels beside her.
“It’s alright you know.” She intones, sounding muffled. “It was just an accident. He won’t be upset.”
“It’s not about the bowl.”
A sigh. “I know,”
Then, “Talk to me.” Shinobu knows it immediately as more of a plea than a directive. Kanae has always been gentle and amiable by nature, never one to turn to force or cruelty, ever soft and ever compassionate.
It is a long while before she speaks. There are tears, running hot and fluid down her cheeks, warming the corners of her eyes and making it hard to breathe. She hiccups wordlessly, feeling miserable even with Kanae’s hand laid over her back. “I miss them.” Shinobu whimpers, feeling like a feather swept up in a gale, like an ant dragged into a stream, her mind is spinning head over heels with months of anguish abruptly released. “I miss how things were.”
“I know.” Kanae says softly, it is all the reasonable comfort she can give and both of them know it. “I know.”
“I hate this.”
In truth, this new life has not given her much to hate. Their newfound caretaker is practically faultless in moral character, if only a little awkward at times. Regardless, his blatant pragmatism is a blessing. She has a place to sleep, a home to go back to, love if she seeks it. Deep down, she knows her loathing cannot be unfairly imparted upon her immediate circumstances. The seed of it lies in the distant, untouchable past, and the vine of its convoluted growth is only made all the more indiscernible by her own confusion.
She shakes her head, her voice withered with these bitter confessions. Her anger has turned gaseous and intangible, slipping through the fingers that seek to shape it into a blade.
“I hate being so useless.”
The silence that prevails between them is answer enough. Kanae has always been the milder between the two of them, flexible as water and therefore able to shape and mold and grow from each setback. Shinobu, on the other hand, swallows her faults like blades, each a personal grievance and leaving aching and unresolved resentments in their wakes.
Neither of them are grown, and neither of them have any of the conventional trappings of sense or maturity to maneuver the turbulence of such a wearisome predicament.
Kanae’s hand goes still.
“Then let’s become demon slayers.” She says, with enough credence to stop Shinobu in her downward spiral of misery. Shinobu uncurls in disbelief. She has mustered the sum of her restrained truths and seen them reap the fruits of her undisclosed fury, she has prepared herself to shout and cry- anything that might put an end to the crushing pressure within her, only to see it all come to a crashing halt against her teeth.
“What?” This time, it is her voice that wavers. Kanae’s eyes are hard with determination, and they shine with cunning when she finally meets them.
“If you kill one demon, you save tens of lives.” She reasons smoothly. “It’d be a way to make a difference, don’t you think?”
“Kanae… we can’t just-! It’s dangerous!”
Kanae only smiles, hoisting her upright and wiping at her tears with her sleeve. “What else would you do, Shinobu?”
She stutters, averts her gaze, then wracks her brain for even a semblance of an answer that does not come. Kanae reaches over and begins to tidy her mussed hair. Kanae had always been the one to do it best, landing second only to their mother’s deft hands. Still, the question is a sharp and relentless barb, an unanswered point of interest which resonates like a handful of marbles in a shaken glass.
Would she be content to live out her days In this domestic stupor? Would she concede to marry off once she comes of age and allow herself to settle into the easy role of housewife? Would she be content to put her parent’s murder behind her, to forget Himejima-sama’s kindness and simply move on under a forced pretense of normalcy?
No. This much she knows for sure. It would be injustice at its finest to dismiss and turn to wilful ignorance for comfort. Their mutual decision is not met with an equally eager reception. Gyomei drags a hand down his face with a heave of a sigh, the clack of his prayer beads accentuating the heavy exasperation behind the motion. His eyes are blank and unreadable as ever, pearlescent and brumous.
It’s difficult to read him. Their resolution falls flat in the face of his staunch ambiguity.
“Whatever’s brought this on?”
“I’m tired of being a burden!” Shinobu cries, emboldened by the lack of reprimand and rebuke, speaking with all the self-righteous credence of a child ignorant of the world beyond their immediate environment. “I can’t just go on living like a normal person, it’d be wrong.”
Gyomei says nothing. These are bold claims, determined but equally as foolish. He looks discomfited more than displeased, and Shinobu spies lines and creases across his face that she can’t remember noticing before. She thinks she’s put herself in an acceptable place to be asking difficult questions; she’s dusted the counter tops, weeded the pasture along the perimeter of the house, and requisitioned some of the vegetables from the garden which had begun to skew towards overripe for their supper.
Any embarrassment for her outburst is overridden by her newfound passion. It’s dangerous to be investing so much into what might as well be a flight of fancy, but Shinobu doesn’t think she’s ever felt anything truer in her life.
Gyomei repeats this with agonizing slowness. Reluctance sets his jaw and stilts the syllables of each word. “You want to become… demon slayers.”
A beat. His posture deflates just marginally, a change so minute that Shinobu only catches it by virtue of all the months they’ve spent together. Familiarity- she thinks fiercely, family. The word sets the blaze in her chest off anew; she will not lose this again.
“I can’t allow that.” His voice is steeped in grave finality. “I can’t.” He stops, shakes his head and curls his fingers into the broad flats of his palms, then seemingly fortified- “You should put these foolish dreams out of your mind.”
“I understand your concerns.” Kanae begins sagely, but her voice has taken on a strained, wavering quality. “But surely you understand our reasoning, our family -“
“I understand how it gets children killed.” His words are just as strangled. He looks as if he is staring down a line of problems he has been set to solving without foreseeable release. “You misunderstand the circumstances such a choice would put you in.”
Shinobu hesitates, unable to dismiss this inexplicable change in the unshakeable boulder of a man before her. It’s rather a remarkable thing to see, a mountainside crumbling under the force of raindrops, a cliff giving way and crashing into the tide.
Beneath this terse disapproval, her courage is fleeting as a momentary glimpse of a flighty deer after which she gives chase. She’s only tried her hand at disobedience a couple of times in her life and the act isn’t quite familiar enough to form habit or muscle memory. As it stands, it feels awkward- demanding just a little more of her attention than she’s ready to freely give.
“You’re a slayer, Himejima-sama,” she is not above bargaining, and she musters her most imperative tone to do so. “You could test us- just give us a chance, that’s all we want.”
Silence is long-lived and persistent company, a thing of overstayed welcomes. An era passes and Shinobu stops trying to number the seconds once she loses count.
Finally, there is an anemic response, Gyomei’s voice bleached of all color.
“If that is what you wish.”
This aforementioned trial leads into sessions of training, which in turn progress into the assignment of impossible tasks: cutting into and through tree trunks with wooden blades, submerging herself in an icy waterfall that wrests the breath from her lungs, learning volumes upon volumes of chants and sutra to be recited immediately upon prompting.
Training is tough. Much to Gyomei’s chagrin, neither Shinobu nor Kanae give up. Pushed to the brink with his back against the wall, Gyomei passes them on. There are better teachers- is what he says, he’s ill-equipped to bring up two girls vying after reckless chivalry.
Shinobu can’t help but think he looks just a little more distraught ( or perhaps forlorn ) than usual to see them go.
By the time they see Gyomei again, years have passed. With the grueling days of training and Final Selection behind them, tracking and slaying demons becomes what consumes their every waking moment. Shinobu’s life becomes a condensed series of images and motifs- black feathered messengers crying their raucous melodies, the sun dipping below the heavy swell of the horizon and the moon strutting an indolent path across the starry expanse of the sky. The flutter of her sister’s haori three paces ahead of her is a constant as they run down shadowed paths with their swords clinking at their hips. It's an odd and frugal lifestyle, but live it they do.
Kanae is granted her Hashira rank and they are summoned ( more aptly- Kanae is summoned, but Shinobu will not leave her side ) to the master’s mansion. This is how their names become known for the first time, kneeling before the Ubuyashiki with a half-circle of the existing Hashira behind them.
“Kocho Kanae.” Kagaya Ubuyashiki says, and despite his warm smile, his intonation rings with the startling clarity of a death knell, double-edged and two-faced. Despite the sinking feeling that knots itself through her gut, this sense of foreboding is not one which gathers reason until much, much later.
With this title bestowed upon Kanae, They go from nameless attributes of the Corp to Shinobu and Kanae, more than Kocho, more than too feeble and too idealistic. It feels as if they’ve wrested control from a world which has thus far consistently refused it, but the ominous trepidation remains. With the title comes responsibility- which in the world of slayers, is just as condemning as walking into a battle with a faulty blade.
Yet, life goes on. The cloud of anticipatory dread hovers, never quite dissipating even as Shinobu’s regard for it begins to slip. These gradual changes within her are dangerous and comfortable all at once; like a child treading on the edges of a frozen lake, emboldened by the pretense of a solid foothold and edging ever closer to the fragile center.
Life is good. The Butterfly mansion makes for a home that proves more than comfortable; slowly, a family begins to form around them like a crystal hugging its nidus. It feels good, too luxurious and too kind, well-deserved in all the ways they’ve lost and grieved.
But just as things go, it all comes to a screeching halt.
“If I can kill an Upper Rank, that’s hundreds of people saved.” Kanae says, her face dark with grim dedication.
Shinobu’s voice curls and wavers like paper held over a crackling flame. She understands that this- this is the collateral damage of her inadequacy. “But why does it have to be you?”
The atmos phere is terse with little room for give and compromise, but Kanae does not reciprocate her perturbation. Her smile is soft and golden as sunlight, apologetic and resolved. “Because I’m a Hashira , Shinobu. And if anybody is going to make a change, its going to be one of us.”
To end Kibustuji’s reign of terror. To befriend the very enemies who would gladly devour them given even the slightest opportunity. Her dream is one which Shinobu has heard, ruminated over, and appraised with only the utmost disbelief. It is only the unconditional, unquestionable love which runs through their sibling tie- blood is ever thicker than water- which nurtures her continued ( if dubious ) support.
Shinobu takes the head of her fiftieth demon the night that Kanae dies.
Her crow circles and shrieks half-formed declarations of her eligibility, but Shinobu can only think of the vacant abyss yawning within her- the cold vacuum of a laughing chasm brimming with what-ifs and morbid possibilities- there is a sinking in her ribs like a stone plummeting into the depths of a well, and frost gnaws at her intercostals, making it hard to breathe.
The dried leaves of autumn are fading from copper to a colorless, disinterested shade. Their surfaces glisten and shimmer- wet, then crystalline and glittering with untouched rime.
Shinobu runs. The air is growing chill and icy, seeping into her bones and pricking at her skin, and the cold is a miser wrestling each breath from her straining lungs. She kicks up a whirlwind flurry of leaves and soil in her wake, her heels throwing up pebbles which scatter in testament to her frantic pace. She may be seeking but she is no hunter; this blind, half-mad chase is little more than representative of her sudden and arguably baseless desperation, the disoriented throes of wounded prey stupid enough to run into death’s waiting maw.
Death refuses her yet again. It snags her ankle in the iron grip of a raised tree root and snickers in the voice of the wind as she goes sprawling- out of the arms of the wood and across the paved path of the village it borders. Shinobu catches herself, her palms splaying across the stone an instant before her nose shatters against the pavement, she sees blood.
It’s a momentous effort that allows her to stack the remnants of her fraying strength into something of a buttress which proves equally mental as literal. The latter feels ancillary- it is her mind that is beside itself - her body is ataxic but functional ( if reticent ) and she wills it into action.
Shinobu comes across Kanae’s unmoving body as the rays of dawn fall upon the rooftops, shafts of sunlight bleeding through the clouded layers of the overcast sky and pouring generously like gold coins from a rich man’s purse into the streets- abundance given too late.
She is numb as she kneels by her sister’s head, pulling her into her lap, her eyes glued to the promontory of ice jutting condemningly from her abdomen, its base lacquered in a crust of frozen blood. She tries to say her name but her tongue has seemingly affixed itself to the backs of her teeth, a child licking an icicle and rudely being acquainted with its unforgiving chill.
“Shinobu.” Kanae says. There is blood smeared across her lower lip, and more begins to trickle from the corner of her mouth, from her nose. Her breaths are shaky, uneven and wet, and the way her chest moves in slow, laborious gasps speaks only to a poor prognosis.
“Kanae.” Her voice is foreign and distant, more a rush of air than a formed enunciation. Her ears ring with unspoken words, her thoughts drowning in the rushing of the wind. “Kanae.”
This is shock- Shinobu dimly realizes; this much her knowledge can supply her. What her wisdom cannot provide however, is how she ought to go about parsing it, how she ought to react- what she ought to do with her sister lying moribund in her lap, too impossibly close to death’s reaching grasp that she might exchange it for the fingers Shinobu knots into the cold and lifeless clasp of her left hand.
Kanae. Kanae. Kanae. Shinobu breaks out of the litany of her name which evolves into breathless, wordless sobs. The weight of her grief drives her into mindless supplication before any deity with the mercy to hear her plea.
Kanae leaves her with instructions and a memory, with an image and a reputation to haunt her in place of her kindly spirit. Kanae leaves her a butterfly pin, not large but weighted with promise. In turn, Shinobu leaves her ashes with a vow hanging from her heart, heavy as an overripe fruit, her anger coalescing into a single entity with its harvest long overdue.
Another snapshot of winter is framed and filed away, this particular snapshot treasured- not fondly in the way of all the rest, but with the cold gravity of an oath made in the name of unpaid dues. Winter has lost its allure, the melting of hoarfrost washing thin the rose-tint of childhood and all its innocuous joys. The wondrous novelty of the ice and snow has diminished, and in its place there is only the cold, desolate truth of its peril.
Is this what it means to live? To love and lose and lose more times than you can count, to lose so much that it subsumes you and hollows you out, leaving you as a shell to be filled with the remnants of all the vanished? Is pain the core of living the same way that cinnamon bark and perilla are key components of kampo?
This truth is like a key, an heirloom passed down through the generations as each receiver slides slowly into maturity, an artifact to guide the way past doors locked in the name of comfort and into the ravenous depths of the disagreeable truth. But loss- no matter how poignant- cannot manufacture a corporeal obstacle. A vacancy cannot equate to an added value, regardless of how insuperable either of them might seem.
Pit or boulder, Shinobu cannot stop. She clings to life like a stubborn sea star battered by the tide, not because she wants to live, but because she desires death in its entirety. It’s a half-formed puzzle of Sisyphean nature that she has yet to decipher, and some part of her is certain that there is no definite answer.
“You are not your sister.” Sanemi says, with his brows knit as tight as a choke chain. He looks disconcerted to say the least. Shinobu hasn’t failed to recognise his abiding unease so much as elected to ignore it. She smiles, even as she trembles with her heart and mind colliding in a thoughtless amalgamation of fresh desire and learned habit.
“No, of course not.”
It is a foregone truth that she conveniently ignores with each day she lives, claiming obeisance to the mere notion of filling her shoes. The world needs Kanae more than it does Shinobu, and what better way is there to honor her life than to carry forth her dream?
Perhaps deep down, there is some part of her which deems this path an easier one. Better to slip into empty shoes than go about making a new pair.
Life goes on.
Sanemi trails her like a shadow mourning in silent solidarity. That he’d felt more than easy friendship with Kanae had been no secret, but Shinobu had never seen fit to intervene or further intertwine herself in understanding that relationship more than was superficially necessary.
‘Are you alright?’ He asks, each time with imploring and almost mulish concern, his eyes always searching for something more like an angler scanning the surface of a deep lake. There are variations of this- ‘do you need anything?’ or ‘how have you been doing?’ or ‘be careful out there.’ Compassion and sympathy are not traits often associated with Sanemi Shinazugawa; his hands are calloused and rough, his voice as sharp as a ripping gale, and his personality much too explosive and devoid of casual sentiment. He is a creature of stone and cold steel, of whirlwinds and gusts that squint your eyes and snatch at your clothing.
But he is also a brother, a quiet, uninvited shadow hovering over her shoulder, instinctively filling a role recently hollowed.
Shinobu thinks of abandoning her pretenses completely on each occasion; she thinks of giving in and cracking like thin ice trodden upon, collapsing and tumbling into the gaping vacancy that has subsumed all of her, allowing the freefall to devour all traces of sorrow- she thinks of that momentary, thoughtless escape. Indeed, it’s tempting to cry onto that offered shoulder and recount all her guilt and woe in some belated, self-centered obituary- a part of her had died with Kanae, and yet it seems unthinkably selfish to let herself mourn that too.
Regardless, it never comes to fruition. She actively refutes her prospective journey down this path of least resistance, fortifying herself on each occasion with a breath and a swig from her cup of self-dependence, laying mortar and building walls to block out his selfless altruism.
In the meantime, she learns to smile in half shadows and half sunlight. The Butterfly mansion is emptier without the individual who’d once made up the core of its being, but it fills steadily as time goes on. This is the natural order of things, establishing equilibrium the inherent priority of the universe. The corridors fill once more with life- Aoi, Kiyo, Sumi, Naho, Kanao- it’s a privilege to be able to look in on these moments, to be given the opportunity to familiarize herself with the respective languages of each group-family -team.
In the beginning, she skirts the boundary, finding herself devoid of the hefty tolerance required to be an interloper. Yet, domesticity snags itself newly and innocuously on the needle of her focus, its vast tapestry unwinding and rewinding itself into spools to be woven into the cloth of her being. Otherness turns into togetherness; it’s easy to stay in this comfortable familiarity, pruning back the hedge of her life for any branches of exploitation and exaltation, dwelling in the humble present.
Hope presents itself like a rare migratory bird. She might choose to see it as an omen of fortune, but superstition has never served her well. Yet she finds herself wondering- wouldn’t it be wonderful to carry on in this manner for decades to come? To live on with the bright promise of a tomorrow each day, to thrive without counting and numbering the days and moments until her pre-planned demise? She has a family, friends, all the basic necessities for a comfortable life and more, wouldn’t it be a terrible thing to spurn it all and discard it in the name of vengeance?
“Shinobu. Are you alright?”
This time, there is a physical component to justify his attention. Shinobu rouses at the question, bleary with unconsciousness. Her rise to the realm of the waking through the colorless mist of dreams is slow and meticulous- like picking at scattered wool and trying to lump the fraying strands into some semblance of form. Pain echoes and clamors through her body in succession like a rack of ceremonial bells.
She is greeted by a room awash with the mild glow of morning. There is the faint sound of somebody singing in the distance, the barely-perceptible shuffle of feet translating from the floor above; pale silken curtains shimmer with sunlight, stirring mirage-like in the breeze. She turns her head with great difficulty, the sheets and pillows smooth and soft beneath her cheek, and meets Sanemi’s hardened gaze.
“There will come a day when I am moved to an unspeakable act of violence,” Sanemi grouses, “After which there will not be a soul who might say that it was unwarranted, unnecessary or unexpected.”
Shinobu manages a weak laugh, still drifting in the limbo between unconsciousness and lucidity and seating herself in the formless, nebulous in-between. “I suppose I’ll indulge myself in turning to that memory in times of aggravation.”
Lucidity returns to her in a slow, reluctant trickle. She recalls a plan expedited out of urgency; Muzan has always been little more than a crisis imposing itself upon the delicately crafted timelines of her making, a force lacking all respect for the discipline of a formulated schedule. Fortunately, she’d never been so bound to moral righteousness or common sense that radical shortcuts might be entirely dismissed from her repertoire.
Her body aches with the poison, too much and too soon. Indeed somehow, this is what she fears most of all- this syllabic progression towards complacency, an indication that her limits have been reached and that she will never amount to enough.
“Stop this, Shinobu.” Sanemi utters softly, pleading as he cards his fingers through her tangled hair and thumbs at her cheek. “Are you under the impression that you are destitute of options? Of help?”
She grimaces. “Perhaps I could, if He could just have the decency to die.”
“Does this grandiose plan of yours demand your termination at its foundation?” Sanemi looks at her- really looks- there is an ironclad intensity in his gaze that demands an answer. “We’re going to discuss this, here and now. I don’t care how you feel about it- hell , knowing you, the whole crux of it is going to be on how I feel- but whether this is a conversation or a monologue will depend on you.”
Self-imposed reason is the panacea for all irrationality. It’s a contradiction she doesn’t care to acknowledge. It is almost instinct to set about waiting with generous allowance for the moment where she might address all his perceived errors at once, yet she cannot bring herself to be defensive.
Kanae had reneged upon her promise to live. It is simply Shinobu’s duty to follow through those dreams she’d left as a de facto inheritance, nevermind whether they’d been transferred to her in any official capacity. Shinobu is stubborn and unaccustomed to abiding by the touchstones of failure, but here Sanemi’s frosty displeasure gives her pause. Even without any overt shifts in cognisance, she feels her anger that was once incandescent become cold as ashes left too long in the wind. In this momentary silence addled still with the stupor of sleep, she relives her memories, turning them over in her mind like children’s toys, dwelling in this act of rumination.
“You’re a capable woman, Shinobu.” Sanemi mutters. Her focus comes in fits and starts, but his words are soft and tender as an uncovered wound. “Don’t think of it as lip service. I don’t say things I don’t mean. But the purpose of the Corp is that we work together. There’s no point in having each member run off and sacrifice themselves for a chance at taking down one of those bastards.”
She chuckles finally, her voice faint and sibilant with fatigue. “I might have to postpone spreading these rumors on sedition and unlawfulness, Shinazugawa. You’re proving yourself both uncharacteristically reliable and loyal. A pity. I was so looking forward to it too.”
Sanemi’s expression shifts unreadably, soberingly. “If that’s what it takes for you to get a grip.”
Neither of them speak. The sounds of the world filter in through the open windows, the living once again moving with some inherent magnetism to usurp the weighted silence. Shinobu waits, her gaze dropping to Sanemi’s scarred chest in lieu of looking him directly in the eye.
“Obanai says you’ve been off getting yourself hurt in my absence. It feels like an age since I’ve last seen you.”
A snort draws her attention back upwards. “He’s an idiot. I’ll take it upon myself to repudiate his accounts.” His eyes are glossy as ice cubes in the summer heat, glistening with hidden promises of relief. “You spend all your time with those two down in the lab, it’s hardly a surprise that you’re feeling out of touch.”
“You know I have to do this, Sanemi.” Her resolve is the rough pit of a cherry in her teeth. It grinds against her molars and knocks the back of her incisors as she worries at it with a tongue numbed with wisteria.
“You don’t.” He says, voice hushed with hapless pleading. “You don’t. ”
She does not know what is more cruel. Is it more terrible to lose something and forget it entirely, left grasping at the slivers of vacancy and feeling for an invisible boundary or shape of something already gone? Or is it more abhorrent to lose something and be entirely cognisant of its whereabouts and of its fate, all the while being wholly unable to do anything about the hole left in its wake?
He will lose her, just as they had both lost Kanae. Loss is the creed of the Slayer Corp, a long accepted truth with no room for rebuke or protest. Yet, Shinobu cannot help but feel an inward tinge of melancholy at the thought of leaving all this behind. She has rebuilt her life twice now, each time finding hard-earned comfort that she has begun to shy away from in fear of inevitable disruption.
But personal feelings do not number into the sum of duty. She is afraid and that is more than human enough to convince her of her own worth. She will not spurn fear itself; faultless and impartial, that which simultaneously inspires sensibility and recklessness, that which gives meaning to her endeavors.
“I’m sorry.” Shinobu whispers, and lets sleep pull her under. It seems she has already entrusted herself so intimately to the dead that the living have lost their sway.
Life, death, rebirth. This is an endless, progressive cycle without a defined terminus, a gradient of hues and thresholds ranging from black to white, a diaphanous object never quite content to settle on either end of the dichotomy.
Lotus flowers dot the surface of this frigid lake, blossoming in icy hues, their petals tinged pink like rows of teeth washed in the gory aftermath of bloodshed. For all the ways her surroundings demand terror, within her are ocean waves like glass and her anger forms a quiet rolling tide, smothering and lethal.
Her adversary looks on with dead eyes, his gaze scintillating in a thousand iridescent hues with eager hunger, milky with a lack of warmth as a shark’s. He smiles and his teeth are razors, the very curve of his mouth and the plush pink of his lips deceptively soft around edges poised to plunge into flesh. Here, standing small before him, she is a fish in a raging torrent, a bird in a tempest, a pebble ricocheting down a steep mountainside. This demon will kill her, and that is the only certainty that she can reasonably stomach.
“You know,” Douma says, in a voice like syrup poured over black ice. “Everyone's afraid of dying.”
“You’re making me sick.” She spits with pyretic disdain, succinct in a way that does not negate the acid of her distaste. “Do you even hear yourself?”
He remembers Kanae as she thrusts the tip of her blade through his eye, the kanji denoting his rank blurring in the spurt of blood that follows. Shinobu watches him with guarded caution as he writhes under the effects of the first dose of poison. Less than a minute passes before his features stop melting, before his voice loses the warbling quality that comes with disintegrating vocal cords.
He laughs; with failure fresh on her mind, Shinobu continues her assault.
Cut, slice, stab. She spills his intestines, pocketing the tip of her blade into the soft flesh of his waist and drawing it cleanly across the flat of his stomach. She cuts the ligaments of one knee, stabbing between the bones with medical precision. She injects him with poison- six mixes out of fifteen are potent enough to give him pause, but the others are swept away with the ease of a child downing bitter coffee.
His attacks are just as relentless, though each flick and frisk of his fans is imbibed with a playful quality that she simply cannot match. She feels herself weakening, sharp pains in her chest blooming with each breath. She feels heavy, each limb weighed down as blood clogs her throat and nose, slick and fluid and salty. Her extremities ache with cold and she can intimately feel the searing array of lacerations he inflicts, the pain of each individual wound building and convening into a single full-body ache dulled only by a flood of adrenaline.
Shinobu does not allow herself the luxury of hope. Her heartbeat is a mindless surge in her ears, rage boils beneath her skin, heat to match the frigid quality of the Blood Demon Art saturating the air. She knows immediately that this is the crux of it all, that she has reached the pinnacle of what will define her life and death. She lunges, the point of her blade driving into the demon’s throat. With their proximity, she can feel the icy gasp of breath that escapes him, his face is ashen and rife with bleeding cracks like stained porcelain oozing drops of oversteeped tea.
And then she is falling. Gravity takes its due course with a seamless rush of air around her. Her head spins from a combination of vertigo and exhaustion, and she’s much too tired to register even the distance she falls. The passing seconds compress themselves and draw themselves out in unison; time proves itself is a nebulous thing when one is in such close proximity to their demise.
Icy vines dart down to catch her, snapping open loosely and curling around her torso with deceiving caution to draw her back up. The motion jerks her entire body painfully, and her slight frame is tossed about carelessly in a vicious struggle between the demon’s grasp and her own momentum.
“You’ve tried so hard!” Douma cries, abruptly exuberant in this declaration. His arms encircle her in a mockery of a crushing embrace, his face is moist with the tracks of false tears, and she glimpses the points of his sharp fangs and smell the tang of fresh blood on his breath.
Wisteria buzzes through her veins- an assurance, a comfort.
“It’s a miracle that you’re still alive, yet you’re stupid enough to keep fighting!”
He blathers on heedless of her struggling, grand utterances that Shinobu neither cares to, nor attempts to hear. None of it matters, and she thinks she would much rather concern herself with those she would like to remember rather than the empty proclamations of her to-be killer.
She thinks of Kanae - ‘ Live a long life, Shinobu. ’
She thinks of Gyomei - ‘ You misunderstand the circumstances such a choice would put you in. ’
She thinks of Sanemi - ‘ Does this grandiose plan of yours demand your termination as its foundation? ’
It is like being frozen and burned alive all at once. She can’t quite feel her fingers, and she’s not entirely certain if she could move her legs even if she wanted to. She is suffocating, her lungs either nonexistent or nonfunctional, she dries to draw breath and feels her throat close with primal terror.
Later, Kanao will enter the room and finish the job. Later, Sumi, Naho and Kiyo will tend the wounded and give their assistance in the aftermath. Later, the night will give way to dawn. Nature will take its course, and life will go on as it always has. It is a robust machine which does not mourn the loss of a few components here and there- life will go on.
A part of her laments her premature exit and she dares not contemplate that which might come after. This is life and the universe will not bend to the semantics of an insect.
Winter comes and chokes the life from her flesh, squeezes the breath from her lungs and freezes her blood.
“Go to hell.” She spits, and feels him overtake her.
She thinks of unscathed snow, white and devoid of shadows.