Chapter Text
The Butterfly Mansion was usually quiet enough to hear a pin drop, given that a serene and tranquil atmosphere promotes healing. Most patients were often too injured to cause a ruckus, so you had gotten used to living in relative peace. (Of course, this simple reality would quickly change come the arrival of an infamous trio of troublemakers, but for now, loud shouting from the courtyard was abnormal.) The sometimes comforting, sometimes eerie quiet made it ever more evident that something was out of the ordinary, then, whenever you did hear whispering and clamour.
“What’s going on?” you asked the girls as you came across them in the hall. Your hands were full with a wobbly tray that seemed to be bending under the weight of all the teaware stacked upon it, and the ceramics tinkled as your arm muscles shook with exertion.
“[Name]-san!” Kiyo gasped, the other two also turning with excitement when they saw you. Sumi and Naho ran to your side, tugging at your kimono sleeves affectionately.
“The Water Hashira is here!” Sumi chirped excitedly. Your heart dropped. Had Giyu—er, Tomioka-sama—been injured on a mission again? Was he here to pay Shinobu-san a visit? That would make sense for the others, but he wasn’t exactly the visiting type. Your mind began to wheel with shock.
“And, and…! He says he’s here to see you!” Naho whispered scandalously. The trio squealed with delight.
The tray nearly dropped right out of your hands.
“What? Me?” Immediately, you panicked about your disheveled appearance. Your hair was a mess, clipped back haphazardly for work, and your apron was mysteriously stained with various splatters of unknown medicines—you were in no state to take a visitor, much less one as important as the Pillar of Water.
Giyu was about your age. You knew him better than most, besides Shinobu-san, because he was the person who had saved you from demons. He’d saved many before and after you, of course. You were one of the lucky ones. Though your family and village had been slaughtered, you’d survived only because you had the misfortune of being a girl. The demon, obsessed with raping young children before he ate them slowly, alive, had taunted you all night—that hubris had given the Demon Corps Slayer just enough time to arrive. You’d never forget the gentleness in Giyu’s endlessly blue eyes as he wrapped you in his haori. He hadn’t said a word, but you somehow knew that you were safe with him.
The late Kanae had taken you in as an orphan, so you’d been working as an assistant at the Butterfly Mansion ever since. You knew that you’d probably exhausted all of your luck already by cheating death once so miraculously—and yet, you couldn’t help but wish sometimes that you’d be able to see him again. When you felt really brazen and selfish, you sometimes wished for his attention, too. You secretly daydreamt about the fantasy of him falling in love with you, the girl who slept by his side for nights to nurse him back to life.
But you always told yourself it was silly juvenile crush behaviour. It’d never amount to anything. You had to squash your expectations.
So why was he sipping tea on the veranda, an empty cup set aside for you, it seemed, a package sitting on the step at his side?
“Tomioka-sama?” you said breathlessly, your voice so shaky that you wanted to cringe and slap yourself silly. Calm down! Don’t make a fool out of yourself! You even walked at half the speed you normally would so that you wouldn’t end up slipping and falling on your ass or something equally as humiliating.
He turned to look up at you, and your heart lodged itself in your throat. He’d always been attractive, but he was especially handsome now as a young man. He’d saved you when you were 13, and it’d been many years since then. Though he hadn’t changed much. His eyes were still that deep, infinitely heartbreaking blue. They still drew you in, magnetically, like a high river current. His hair was coarse and bushy, dark with a cinnamon glow in the sun, still tied back like it was all those years ago, perhaps only longer than it used to be. He still wore the same haori he’d wrapped around you so tenderly. It was like he stepped out of your memories. His jaw was sharper, though, and he looked more solemn. You mentally kicked yourself for being tongue-tied and ogling him.
“[Name].”
You sat beside him in formal seiza, feeling tense. Your hands were shaking as you instinctively re-filled his tea cup before pouring yours. There had to be some important reason that he came all this way to see you. He wasn’t like the other hashira, who dropped by often for social visits. Suddenly, fear gripped your stomach into a tight vice. Had you been so incompetent to the corps that he had to come and tell you that you’ve been dishonourably discharged from your duties? Was he just waiting for the right moment to deliver the bad news while you’d been fixing your hair in the mirror—
“Happy birthday.”
The words were so unexpected that you ended up freezing, slack-jawed, only realizing the tea was overflowing from your cup and pooling all over the floor a few seconds too late. You scrambled to set the pot down and wipe the mess up with your sleeve, but your eyes felt like they were bugging out of the sockets.
You’d forgotten. It didn’t seem to matter much; not when your family had all died and moved onto heaven without you, and not when people were so much sicker than you, hurting far worse. Honestly, you hardly remembered what your actual age was these days. You hadn’t celebrated your birthday in years, never mentioning it to the others, even if you always made sure you tracked the dates to make sure theirs were special with sweet, rare treats. How had Giyuu known it was your birthday?
He raised his eyebrow, his expression unreadable, yet soft and compelling. “It is your birthday, isn’t it?” His gaze suddenly flicked away as he asked, uncharacteristically unsure. “Fifth day of the tenth month. Did I get it wrong…?”
“Um—no, you’re right. It is! I think? I—you didn’t have to come all this way—oh—thank you so much, Tomioka-sama, for wishing me happy birthday!” In your nervous frenzy you shut yourself up by practically slamming your forehead into the ground to bow. You wonder if you did it too hard and gave yourself a concussion, because with your head down, you thought you heard him chuckle to himself.
“It was no problem. I was in the area, and… I thought of you. Have you been well?”
You raised your head, hoping the bamboozlement wasn’t showing on your face. Though you’ve known Giyu for quite some time, you haven’t actually spent much time with him before. Not while he was conscious, at least—you had spent countless nights spooning medicine into his unmoving lips after a particularly harrowing demon execution. He had more important things to do than meander the mansion for no reason, after all. He was busy saving lives, so that there’d be other people like you. In fact, if he was visiting you, he probably also visited the other people he’s saved. You had to remind yourself of your place. It was just a fantasy—in the real world, you were not special.
You heard more about him than you saw him—how he was always grouchy and averse, sometimes downright cruel or terrifying. None of that showed in his face now. In fact, he looked like he was smiling. His lips curved up, his eyes softening.
“I’ve been very well, yes. Er—and you?”
The smile faltered somewhat. You regretted asking, wishing he’d smile more. That expression seemed so elusive. So precious.
“As well as I can be, I suppose.”
The silence stretched on awkwardly before he lowered his gaze, rescuing you from the mortification by gesturing towards the package at your side with his scarred hand. It had luckily managed to avoid your puddle of genmaicha, and you’d forgotten all about noticing it earlier.
“I… wasn’t sure if you’d like it. I was given it and don’t have much use for it, so I thought you might appreciate it more than me.”
“This is for me?” you asked wondrously, picking it up and placing it into your lap. It was feather light, wrapped in heavy brown paper, bound with braided twine. You hadn’t gotten a birthday present from anybody since your beloved parents had died.
Giyu didn’t reply and nodded imperceptibly, his expression cryptic.
“Can I open it?” You felt giddy all of the sudden.
“Sure.”
When you were younger, you used to tear wrapping paper off your presents as fast as you could, always so excited to see what you had gotten for another year of getting older. Your parents spoiled you, but the absence of their enormous love left that much bigger of a hole once they were gone. You tried to control your breathing and not look too excited as you pulled the string, carefully unfolding the paper along each crease.
A hairpin revealed itself. It gleamed warmly in the sunlight, its golden hues like sun rays. Blue silk was carefully wrapped into hydrangea blossoms. Golden threads dangled from the base with pearls at the ends, looking like dewdrops of water, sparkling at dawn. It was exquisite artisan work, and it was so beautiful that you stared at it dumbfoundedly with nothing to say. You had never received such a mature gift before—it was the first hairpin you ever owned, actually. Already, tears began to well in your eyes.
“I should get going now,” Giyu said abruptly, almost awkwardly, interjecting into your stunned silence. He was inhumanly fast, of course, and was already on his feet before you could blurt out,
“Thank you! Giyuu-san. I love it. I’ll cherish it forever.”
It was bold, and you immediately felt shy after saying his first name. It felt taboo, like a forbidden word. Though you weren’t too far apart in age, it was like he was everything—whereas you were nothing. It was almost audacious to call him by his given name.
Yet you did it anyway.
The blush started at both of his ears. They glowed crimson red like autumn blossoms in golden hour that spread into a meadowfield across his cheeks, the warm red making his blue eyes glisten, looking deeper than usual. You felt like you might be the only woman alive to have seen him look so vulnerable and flustered.
“It’s no problem, [Name].” His voice was gentler than you’ve ever known it, lilting almost bashfully. He looked boyishly excited and happy. It made him look young. For once, for your eyes alone, he relaxed and acted his age.
---
“So? What did you write in her birthday card?”
The soft, feminine voice echoes down the hall, which three pairs of eager gossip-tuned ears pick up easily. A young man’s voice responds after a long, awkward pause.
“Oh. A card…?”
“Don’t tell me you forgot to give her a birthday card?”
“…I didn’t realize that you’re supposed to write a card.”
“You’re hopeless, Tomioka-san… after I finally convinced you to man up and give her that hairpin after all these years, too.”
“Shut up, Shinobu…”