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“Kochou.”
It wasn’t often that Shinobu had another Hashira approach her, most especially Giyuu. Usually, she would approach them, asking how their injuries were after her lovely servants had fixed them up. Tengen was usually the one to approach her most often though, boasting about how lovely she was (and she just had to act like she didn’t hear the comment about her ass) and how he’d love to have her fix him up, or try and get him to be his wife, but she would simply decline with a smile on her face and her eye was definitely not twitching.
He’d pat her on the back and walk away, before beginning to talk to Mitsuri and say the same thing instead. It annoyed her.
She was easily ticked off. Tanjiro smelled it. When she’d sat atop the roof that night, he’d pointed it out. He told her that he could smell that there was an underlying sense of rage simmering within her. He said that there was sadness too, resentment. Everything under the sun.
She wished he was wrong. She wished she didn’t lose her sister, didn’t lose her parents, hell, she wished she wasn’t even here. She’d thought about killing herself a long time ago, back when the pain first started--back when she lost her sister. She knew it wouldn’t take any of it away completely, just pass it on to other people. She’d leave Kanao behind in the dirt with no one left, and, surprisingly enough, she’d leave Giyuu behind. So instead, she’d opted to have poison circulate through her veins, slowly killing her--paling her skin and scarring the inner workings of her body with dark splotches like bruises. She’d become weaker over the years since she’d started the practice, but her body was kind enough to withstand seventy-times the lethal amount for a normal human. Was she even a normal human? She was missing an eye from an unfortunate demon encounter in her early days of being a slayer, and her knees went weak on her more often than not.
Giyuu was the one person she could call a friend. Sure, she talked to Mitsuri often, but Giyuu and her had been there for each other since the beginning. Since she was a kid, just over the age of fifteen after she had lost her sister, she’d met Giyuu when they were both Hashira. Though there was some teasing quite often and annoying poking, Giyuu dealt with it all. He dealt with her. There were moments of genuine happiness she felt with him--she wondered if he’d realized the same.
Giyuu would never approach her intentionally, however. Not even to check up on his own wounds (she knew he would’ve rather gone untreated anyway, but she still applies personal care to him), much less for something like this.
“I would like to go on a walk with you.” He proposes, and Shinobu’s eyebrows raise. “Are you busy?”
She shakes her head, “Sure, I’ll come. What’s the occasion?”
“I want to ask you something.” He says, and it’s then she notices that he’s left his sword behind. It’s not clasped on his hip like it usually would be. It gives her the impression that he’s not there for ill manners (not that she thinks he’d intentionally hurt her, of course--she could read people like a book), or that he intends to fight. For a Demon Slayer to be required to be on guard all the time, he seems pretty lax. Though, he always had that dead look on his face.
Recently, he has been looking brighter.
She offers a smile, “Go ahead.”
They open the door and step into their shoes, pressing against the soft grass outside of the Butterfly Estate as they walk through the wisteria-lined path. Shinobu looks around and smells the outside air of spring, how the cherry blossoms bloom. How pretty it all looks--and she realizes she’s been outside at night so many times and cooped up inside during the day that she forgets how beautiful the world looks shining under the sun.
“Forgive me for intruding, but, what is your relationship with Rengoku?”
She almost stops in her tracks, but keeps moving when a coincidentally orange-patterned docile butterfly lands on her finger. It reminds her of Kyojuro, almost.
“He is my friend,” She declares, and both of them know she’s lying. Sure, Kyojuro was a friend, but he was also a lover. He was a man. He was strong. He was her life.
Kyojuro shined with a light greater than the sun--fitting of the role of the Flame Hashira, despite retirement. After that gloomy day when he returned with a hole in his stomach greater than the hole in her heart, it almost made her collapse. He’d returned smiling, unconscious, and with a weeping Tanjiro, Inosuke and Zenitsu at his side before they’d been whisked away to check for injuries of their own. Even then, he radiated a subtle light that she could see.
Kyojuro was an enigma. He was straightforward, brazen, wide-eyed and dark skinned. He was kind, courageous and gentlemanly. He had a laugh that compared to the thumping in her heart every time they locked eyes. But he was also vividly mysterious. His owl-eyes hid something akin to shame behind them--and it was later she learned about his father and his own past. He’d opened up to her like how he had no one else and she’d listened with soft eyes and held his hand as he weeped in the infirmary. Despite her comprehension skills, he was difficult to read.
“Are you sure?”
The question makes her stop, and Giyuu stops too. He looks at her with curious eyes, the reflection of the falling cherry petals like fishes swimming in the ocean.
“No,” she replies honestly, and redirects her gaze to the floor. A bench lies nearby on the path.
She sits, and explains. She tells him how he’s like the sun; no--how he is the sun. How he sees so much of Tanjiro in him, and Kyojuro in Tanjiro, like they were brothers. She tells him how she’s always admired Kyojuro for his indomitable will, his admiration for his father despite him being a total asshole, how he’s selfless and heartfelt. How he’s everything she’s not. Kyojuro had the will to live, but he wouldn’t mind giving up his life for those he cared about. She tells him about the headband made of three lavender flowers he had made himself and gifted her for her birthday--and how she’d genuinely smiled and laughed as she put it on her head, explaining how she was going to treasure it.
Kyojuro had laughed, and she’d fallen in love.
“Can I be honest with you?” She asks, her head in her hands. Giyuu’s never seen her so discombobulated.
“Are you not?” He asks playfully, a cheeky grin on his face and Shinobu rolls her eyes through her fingers.
“I am in love with him.” She confesses, and it doesn’t surprise Giyuu in the slightest. Through observing eyes, he’d been watching them steadily interact. Moreso, he’d been watching Kyojuro. He already knew what his friend (what a weird term) was thinking most of the time, considering they’d known each other for well over three years, but Kyojuro was like a ball of sunshine contrasting almost everyone around them. Shinobu was the moon; dark when she was new and unsure about her position as a Hashira, but in time she shined bright. She pulled Giyuu in like how the tides were dragged by the moon’s gravity, forcing them to become friends and adhere to his new position as a Demon Slayer. She had craters--not physically, but there was an emptiness in her heart that he knew all too well.
And then there was Kyojuro. He didn’t speak to man much, but when he did it always felt like he was around a bright sun during the summer. There was this particular warmth that radiated from him and Giyuu actually enjoyed his presence most of the time. It seemed like Shinobu did too, because the way she talks fondly about the man she loves says almost everything.
In Shinobu’s words, Kyojuro was the sun. He wasn’t just like the sun, no, a simile would be underestimating him. He was the sun, the epitome of brightness. He had golden hair like the sun, with red tips like how a star burned red when it got hotter. His hair framed him like a halo, basking him in this holy light like he was an angel. His eyes reminded her of the sun, how they were impossibly big and how they contrasted his dark skin like the sun to the night sky. She said he had the darkest of freckles on his skin--and how he was just so cute.
It was almost sickening watching her gush about him, but he couldn’t even blame her. There weren’t enough words to describe the greatness of Kyojuro Rengoku.
“You seem to love him.” Giyuu comments. Shinobu looks up, about to reply with a snarky yeah, of course I do, when she finds him genuinely smiling. Soft eyes and a soft chuckle, he rubs her back with one hand. “I’m happy for you. I’ve never seen you so happy when you’re with him.”
“I-- Yeah, I guess.” She says, “He’s just-- I don’t know? I wish I knew how to talk to him.”
“I could say something.”
Shinobu laughs, “We both know how that would go. You’d be blunt and upfront about it, spilling my confession before I could tell him.”
Giyuu chuckles in response, “Yes, you’re right.” He pauses, thinking, and then turns back to her. Blue eyes study her. “Would you like to tell him?”
“I would love to.” She says dreamily, “I’d never thought about getting married or having a family with our profession, but if I wanted anyone to live a future with, it would be him.”
“That’s really lovely.” Giyuu says blankly. He’s almost jealous of her due to his strict attraction to the same gender, but he’d never imagined starting a family anyway, so it didn’t matter too much. He would, however, like to see his best friend happy.
She chuckles, “Thank you.”
And happy she is, standing at the altar with the remainder of the Demon Slayers there. Her unmasked Kakushi and servants in the back of the crowd and her former Hashira friends in the front. Kanao cries tears of joy--the first time she’s seen her sister smile in ages. Giyuu and Sanemi place next to each other as they smile fondly, and Kyojuro elopes with her.
Kiriya hosts the wedding, and the two share a kiss under the stars.
She gives birth to their first of three kids the next year, and it is then she finds true happiness.
Kanae, she asks kneeling at her grave. Her three children kneel beside her at their Auntie Kanae's grave. Are you happy for me?
Of course I am, she replies.
The stars twinkle just a little bit brighter at the end of February, and spring comes early.