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Aoi sighs, turning her head from looking at the hallway to bring her attention back to the kitchen counter. There are so many people arriving at the Butterfly Mansion, all here to see Tanjiro, that she can hear them even down in the kitchen, their feet shuffling and their voices low as the groups meet up and make their way to the private room that used to be part of the intensive care wing. Tanjiro is officially the last patient to be discharged, three months after the momentous final battle that led to the realization of the Demon Slayer Corps’ ultimate goal. He’s been well-healed for some time and will be returning home tomorrow with his sister, now fully human and working on recovering as many memories from her three year stint as a demon as she can, and his two fellow slayers Zenitsu and Inosuke.
As the name enters her mind, she looks to the side, where she’d prepared a tray specifically for the wild boy with the insatiable appetite. She had caught him stealing food from the others’ plates and the pantry too many times, including during the last few months, and decided to try a new tactic. She prepared a few items that would be easy for him to eat with his hands, since he refused to learn how to use chopsticks as anything but a shovel, and set it aside in case he showed up. Of course, before she got a chance to try giving it to him, she heard all the visitors starting to arrive and had to jump into preparing lunch.
Aoi looks up out the window into the yard and sighs once more. “It’s going to be quiet,” she muses to herself. With one more deep breath, she looks back down at the counter. Several plated meals sit on the table behind her, but with the arrival of what sounds like half the remaining kakushi and swordsmiths, she knows there are plenty more mouths to feed. It takes her mind off the upcoming change and she works almost meditatively.
A small sound breaks her concentration and she spins, wielding the knife she’d been using to slice vegetables and sees the telltale boar head poking up just above the table. At least he hasn’t swiped very much yet. “Hey!” she exclaims to catch his attention, “You’re stealing food again!”
“N-No I’m not!” he shouts back, the words muffled from his full cheeks. She points out that fact to him and Inosuke glares at her from his crouched spot by the table. Aoi furrows her eyebrows as she sighs.
She sets the knife down and grabs the tray she’d just been considering moments before. She turns and rounds the table, holding it down towards him. “If you’re hungry, eat this. This plate is just for you, so eat from it whenever you want.”
She nudges the tray in his direction again, his wide green eyes staring at it. He tentatively holds his hands up and Aoi pushes the food into them. “But stop stealing food!” she reprimands him once more, pushing her sleeves back up as she returns to the chopping board. With her back turned, she doesn’t see the pink tinge to his cheeks as he watches her walk away nor the soft smile that takes over the slayer’s face when he picks up the first onigiri.
She finishes chopping the vegetables and takes stock of what Inosuke was able to eat before she heard him, replacing it by taking a small amount from each of the other prepared meals. The rest of the meals will have to wait while a new batch of rice cooks, so she takes off the apron for now and hangs it, intending to go check on the laundry she’d done that morning. She stops in her tracks when she sees Inosuke sitting slumped against the dish cabinet, the tray in his folded lap and everything eaten.
“You’re not going back to the room?” she asks, coming to lean against the drawers next to him.
He shakes his head, the boar mask still sitting on top of his head. “Too many people,” he mutters, not putting on the gruff rumble he usually speaks in. Aoi hasn’t heard his natural voice very many times, so she tries to hide her surprise at the change.
“Lunch will be ready soon,” she tells him. He just grunts, not looking up.
Aoi sighs again, leaning her head back against the cabinet. A quiet moment passes between them before she sits on the floor next to him, her feet flat with her knees bent in front of her. She holds her hand out toward him and he looks at it, blinking. “The tray,” she tells him. “I’ll wash the plates and use them for your lunch.”
He grunts again and picks it up to pass to her. She takes it and balances it on her own knees. They sit together for a minute longer, neither speaking or looking at the other. Inosuke stands up and steps around her, walking towards the door.
“Inosuke,” she says, catching his attention. She wants to ask him to stay. She wants to ask him to make sure the hallway doesn’t go silent. She wants to finally take the chance to talk to him about more than his wounds or his appetite.
“Promise me you’ll watch over them,” she says quietly. “When you all go live on that mountain. Promise me…you’ll all do your exercises and keep each other safe. It would be stupid to lose any of you now, after everything you’ve been through.” Her eyes are welling with tears but she’s had plenty of practice at stopping them from falling since that horrible night.
She hears him tsk. “I don’t have to promise you anything,” he says roughly. Aoi’s lips pull tight and she looks even further down. “They’re Lord Inosuke’s minions, of course I’m gonna watch out for them, otherwise what kind of boss would I be? And they’ll listen to you, cause you’re higher rank than them.”
Aoi blinks, the confusion helping the tears retreat. She looks up at him now and sees his usual cocky grin, arms folded in front of his chest – unusual in that it’s clothed with the buttoned pajama top. “I’m not…” she starts but he cuts her off.
“You’re Shinobu’s minion, that means you’re higher rank than them. Kanao too.”
Aoi chuckles. He’s avoiding addressing her directly, but she notices he said the other two women’s correctly. She thinks about asking him if he even knows her name, but decides not to press her luck.
Inosuke takes a step toward her and holds his hand out, his pinky extended. Aoi looks at it, seeing the callouses that still remain from his extensive training and rough play in the forest. She timidly reaches up to link her finger with his and they both flinch with a jolt of static electricity when their skin meets.
“What was that?!” Inosuke shouts. “How did you do that?”
Aoi laughs now. “I didn’t do it on purpose. It was just static.”
“Static? How do I do that? I wanna do it too!”
Aoi can’t remember the last time she laughed this much at once. “It’s hard to do on purpose,” she tells him. She thinks for a second. He’s not wearing the furry waist sash, or else she would try using it to create another shock for him. Her eyes fall on his mask, still perched atop his head. “Grab your mask in your hands,” she tells him.
“Hn?” he looks up toward his own head. He reaches up and takes the boar head off, holding it in front of himself.
“Can I hold it for a second?” she asks. Inosuke hesitates but lets her, remembering that she took special care of it twice before – when the dried blood from his crushed throat crusted the inside and when it was damaged during the fight at the Entertainment District. He can still see the patches where she mended it with fur that to anyone else would look exactly the same.
Aoi holds the mask by the bottom edge, the snout facing her, leaving as much fur exposed as possible. “Rub your hands all over it,” she tells him. He looks at her with his eyebrows furrowed, confusion clear in his expression. “It might make the shock again.”
He gently puts one hand on the top of the mask and ruffles the fur a bit.
“More. Keep doing it until I tell you to stop.”
For some reason, it doesn’t feel like a command, so he does as she says. He rubs his hand across the top for a couple minutes, back and forth.
“Rub the back too,” she tells him.
He listens and does it, rubbing from side to side. The fur is soft and clean. She had given him a small container of shampoo a couple months ago and said she made it specifically for the mask and to let her know if it worked. He can’t remember if he told her yet and opens his mouth a little, wanting to tell her it did.
“OK, now hover your hand over it. See if the fur tries to follow your hand.” Her voice breaks into his thoughts and he blinks. He lifts his hand a little and moves it around, breaking into a wide smile of wonder when the fur waves under it despite not touching his skin. Aoi smiles too, caught a little off guard by how young he suddenly looks. She shifts the weight of the mask so she can hold it in one hand. She lifts the other and points one finger out toward him.
Inosuke grins when he touches her finger and feels the jolt again, giggling deeply. He grabs the mask back and rams it on his head. “I’m gonna show Nezuko!” he says excitedly. He takes off out of the kitchen but suddenly stops and comes back just as quickly. He holds his pinky out toward Aoi again. “I promise,” he says, his voice softer again.
Aoi links their little fingers with no shock this time and shakes his hand twice. “Thank you,” she says, smiling at him. His face heats up under the mask and he pulls his hand away a little more roughly than he intends.
She listens to his footsteps, racing down the hall again, and giggles when she hears his shout of “Comin’ through!”
She grabs the tray and stands back up, going to the sink to wash the small plates and check the second batch of rice.
A little over a month later, Inosuke is walking the long road between the Butterfly Mansion and the Kamado mountain, Nezuko resting her feet as he carries her in piggyback. Nezuko wants to visit with Kanao, but it hasn’t been the agreed on month’s length between their medical check-ups, so only Inosuke is coming along with her, contrary to the many quiet protests of Zenitsu. The young woman is humming as they walk, holding onto a handful of acorns and pinecones he’d collected while she ate a snack on the roadside earlier.
“Oi, Nezuko,” his voice interrupts her improvised melody.
“Hm?” she hums, showing that he has her attention.
“That blue girl,” he says slowly. “At the Butterfly place.”
“Aoi?” Nezuko asks.
Inosuke nods and continues walking in silence.
Nezuko waits a moment, but she’s not as patient as Tanjiro. “What about Aoi?” she asks.
“Nothing,” he replies.
“Then why did you mention her?”
“I…” he starts to answer but scoffs. “No reason.”
Nezuko pouts, putting her head on top of the boar mask. She tries a few more times to ask why he brought up Aoi, but he refuses to answer. When they arrive at the Butterfly Mansion, he grabs her elbow to stop her from running up to the front door. Still silent, he reaches into her hand and picks up two of the acorns. The front door opens and the three young nurses rush out to hug Nezuko in welcome, Kanao standing at the front door.
Inosuke walks past the embracing girls and smiles under his mask as Kanao greets him. He holds out one of the acorns and she takes it, holding it up close to her good eye. Kaburamaru pokes out of her shirt shoulder and inspects it as well, tasting the brown seed with his flicking tongue. Inosuke continues down the hall to the kitchen. He looks around, but Aoi isn’t there. Beside the sink, he sees the round tray Aoi had given him that afternoon before Tanjiro’s discharge, saying it was for him. There’s some dried meat, a handful of nuts and berries, and a small bowl of pickled vegetables on it. He takes the tray and leaves the acorn in its place, heading back toward the front of the large house, feeling that same heat in his cheeks and a fluffiness in his heart.
That night, when Aoi is making dinner, she finds the small gift and turns it over in her fingers, wondering where it came from. Kanao comes into the room to help, eager to learn from the older woman, and sees it. “Oh, Inosuke gave you one too?” she asks.
Aoi jumps, not having heard her enter. “Inosuke left this?”
“He gave me one today when he and Nezuko arrived.”
Aoi looks at the acorn and smiles as she slips it into her apron pocket.
“Haomi!” his voice shouts suddenly from down the hall. They hear his heavy footsteps approaching. “When’s dinner? I’m…” he stops, seeing her stern face.
“So you don’t know my name after all,” she says darkly, turning back to the counter.
At their next medical check-up visit, Inosuke abruptly dashes out of the room where Aoi is examining him. She shouts after him but he runs out to the yard and vaults the fence, going out to the woods. Tanjiro and Kanao, over in the next room doing the same thing, poke their heads out and ask what happened.
Aoi sighs, her shoulders slumping. “I don’t know,” she says quietly. “I was checking his scars and he flinched. I asked if it hurt, but he yelled at me and then he just…ran out.”
Tanjiro frowns. The air hitting his nose is heavy with conflicted emotions. “I’ll see if I can talk to him,” he offers. Aoi nods a little and goes back into the room, gathering up her supplies.
Tanjiro returns a couple hours later. He reports that he found Inosuke and everything should be fine, but he doesn’t think the boar-headed slayer will come back to the Butterfly Mansion on this visit. Aoi leaves the round tray of food out overnight for him, just in case. When she wakes up the next morning, the plates are clean and there’s an acorn and a wide leaf on it.
Inosuke walks alone into the clearing of their mountain several hours after everyone else has gone to bed for the night. Instead of going into the small house, he settles under a large tree with a thick canopy. His chest tingles when he thinks of how Aoi’s fingers brushed over what remains of the X-shaped scar. He puts his fingers on his wrist where she’d taken his pulse and feels the heat in his cheeks again. He can still feel a trace of her aura and it makes his stomach squirm in a way it never has. He leans his head back against the tree and wracks his brain for words to describe the feeling, coming up empty-handed.
He wakes up the next morning to Tanjiro shaking his shoulder, embarrassed to be caught off-guard like that. At breakfast, Zenitsu tactlessly asks why he ran away from Aoi the day before.
“You weren’t even there!” Inosuke shouts, his temper rising quickly, even for him.
Nezuko reaches over to put her hand on his shoulder but he pulls away. “Why do you care if I ran away from Kaboi? I do what I want.” He stands up, leaving half a fish and a few mouthfuls worth of rice on his plate. He stomps out of the house, jamming the mask over his face, and off down the path by the river.
Tanjiro lets out a deep breath through his nose, not quite a sigh. “I’ll talk to him this time,” Nezuko offers. “I think I know where he’s going.” Her brother nods. Zenitsu doesn’t acknowledge the comment, scooping the remains of Inosuke’s rice onto his own plate.
As she expects, she finds Inosuke down by the small waterfall a distance from their house. She’d played here as a young child and since returning home found that the rush of the water was enough to distort conversation so that even Zenitsu couldn’t overhear.
“What do you want?” Inosuke asks sourly, looking at the water, the mask in his lap. Nezuko blinks at his rudeness, not used to it being directed at her.
“Can I help?” she asks, sitting on a boulder near the river.
He huffs. “Help what?”
Nezuko shrugs.
They sit in silence for a minute. “Her name is Aoi,” Nezuko says. He looks at her then. “It’s like…” she thinks for a second. “It’s like haori, but without the ‘huh’ or the ‘err’.”
“Aori.”
“Aoi,” Nezuko corrects him again.
“Haoi.”
Nezuko smiles and tries again. “Ao, the color blue, like her eyes. And ee, like the first part of your name.”
“Ao-I,” he says with a slight pause between the syllables. Nezuko nods. He looks at the water again and says it under his breath a couple times, trying to connect the parts better.
Nezuko hops down off the boulder and pats Inosuke’s head lightly. She heads back to the house and leaves him alone.
Tanjiro looks up when his sister returns. “I think he’ll be fine,” Nezuko says, smiling brightly.