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It was a calm evening, right after they had completed a round of uneventful patrol around the village. There was nothing unusual about it; they had simply done what they always did on patrol nights. The only thing different was that Kocho decided to drop by Uzui’s mansion for a quick visit.
“I’ve gotten my hands on some of the best necklaces and hairpins in the market; there’s a chance they won’t be on sale again.” Kocho told him, even though both of them knew very well he didn’t have a single clue about such things. “Uzui’s wives would love them.”
Unlike her, Giyuu was close to neither Uzui nor his women. But somehow, just like how she always managed to convince him about everything else, Giyuu soon found himself awkwardly sitting next to Shinobu on the neatly decorated mat in Uzui’s living room, nursing a tiny cup of wine while the women chatted happily and fawned over the delicate patterns of the hairpins and everything.
“I thought of you immediately when I saw this one, Hinatsuru.” Kocho was saying to one of Uzui’s wives – the blue-eyed girl with her long black hair tied up, faint crinkles gathering at the corners of her eyes when she smiled. The fact that such tiny, trivial details felt so familiar to him was oddly concerning. “Wear it like this, and it’ll suit the color of your yukata perfectly.”
“Thank you.” Hinatsuru touched the hairpins gingerly with one hand, while the other reached out to smooth Shinobu’s stray lock of hair the way an older sister would. “You don’t have to do that for us, though. You always buy us the prettiest things after your missions.”
“It’s nothing.” The butterfly girl only swatted her hand away playfully. “Just consider it a gift from a family member.”
The three quickly moved on to other topics. Yet, Giyuu’s mind seemed to be muddled by the alcohol he’d just had, because for some inexplicable reason, he couldn’t stop circling back to the last thing Kocho had said.
Family.
Of course, she must have meant it metaphorically and not literally; he wasn’t so socially inept that he couldn’t grasp something that basic.
Still, there was something about it that didn’t feel right, something that sat wrong in his stomach… The way Kocho blended in so naturally with the other three women as they all wore the same hairpins, laughing freely together; one could easily mistake them for sisters if they didn’t know them well.
And then Uzui shows up after finishing whatever business he’d been occupied with. His next words practically burst every last bubble of wine in Giyuu’s head.
“Nice to see all of my wives getting along so well.”
It had to be a joke. It obviously was. He knows Uzui; though undoubtedly devoted to all his wives, the man still sometimes made flirtatious jokes like this to women he found conventionally attractive.
Yet, to his horror, Kocho only threw Uzui a half-hearted glare before breaking into quiet giggles, followed by the blonde woman’s loud, uproarious laughter in response.
He doesn’t understand. Doesn’t Kocho always hate those belittling jokes from men she doesn’t like? Why didn’t she say anything at all, as if it were actually true?
Unless… unless it was true.
All at once, Giyuu wasn’t so sluggish anymore. It made sense now, the entire evening; Kocho buying expensive hairpins for the girls even though they were neither the Butterfly girls nor her colleagues; her calling them family; and now Uzui, finally, explaining why.
He felt like vomiting all over Uzui’s shiny, probably very expensive coat.
*
It’s not that he thinks he’s any better than Uzui. He knows how undeserving he is as a Hashira, as a person, as a living being at all.
It’s just… why Uzui? Of all people? He barely brings anything to his relationship with Kocho. Anything he can offer, Kocho is already capable of giving herself.
Kocho is perfect, Giyuu realizes, a sharp pang tightening in his chest.
Since he rarely ever brings up anything related to Kocho’s personal life, it would be strange if he suddenly started now, out of nowhere. She would know immediately what was wrong, being the more observant one between the two of them, and she would recognize the ugly, hideous dump of feeling he’d tried so hard to crush down for years.
So he doesn’t say anything at all, doesn’t ask her why she never told him. He just stands beside her like a frozen, out-of-place statue whenever they meet up with their colleagues, and politely looks away whenever Uzui greets Kocho as he passes by.
Kocho has worked so hard just to get him to open up even a little, for them to even be able to call themselves friends. He won’t throw away their hard-earned friendship, or the familiarity and comfort he’d eventually learned to associate with her warmth, just because she’s about to be married to some rich man like how girls her age are expected to be.
*
But in hindsight, Kocho is to blame as well.
“Go with me.” She’d said it casually, not even looking him in the eyes as she tied up her hair in front of the mirror. She must have expected him to accept without a word, the way he always did.
“Why.” He asked, stupidly. It wasn’t, in fact, the first mission that required them to pretend to be newlyweds, and they’d completed one together just last month. But now, he honestly couldn’t understand why she couldn’t just call Uzui to play the part – they wouldn’t even have to pretend, really, Giyuu thinks bitterly. Was Uzui away on a mission of his own?
“Yes, or so I heard.” Kocho answers when he voices the question out loud. “Quite a tough one, actually, so he’ll have to invest a lot into it. Why do you ask, though?”
Giyuu says nothing. Kocho doesn’t push.
The summer festival is at its peak, fireworks continuing to boom across the night sky amid people’s laughter and ecstatic cheers.
Apparently, the demon they were supposed to look for doesn’t even show up tonight, so they don’t really have to be here. But Kocho just has to squeal delightedly in that cute, girlish voice he always likes when she spots a small jewelry shop on the corner, and so after a bit of shopping, here they are, strolling down the street among families and husbands and wives, as if they were normal people living a normal life.
Kocho looks as though it’s the first time she’s ever seen fireworks; he knows that isn’t true, but it’s likely been a very long time since she last saw any. She tilts her face up like a child in wonder, the fireworks reflected in her purple orbs like tiny stars.
He keeps staring at her, no longer bothering to hide it, not even able to stop when she finally tears her eyes away from the fireworks to look at him.
Her eyes look the same, two beautiful, bottomless ponds he wants to keep sinking into, and yet they hide so much. He could never understand what she was thinking.
Maybe she moved first, or maybe he did. He doesn’t remember. All he knows is that her lips feel soft and pliant against his, warm and yielding as her tongue peeks out to sweep lightly across his lower lip, shyly asking to be let in. He lets her, sliding his hand around her waist and pulling her petite body so flush against his he could imprint every curve of her into his memory.
His conscience tells him what he’s doing is horrible, that he’s sinking to the lowest of the low, becoming the kind of man he’s always despised. But just for tonight, he promises. After this mission, he’ll make sure everything goes back to the way it was.
*
“I’m really sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Uzui raises his eyebrows. Hinatsuru, the woman Kocho talked to the most that night she brought them gifts, is serving tea to both Giyuu and her husband. The other two women are in the kitchen making dishes, bickering back and forth as they work.
“For making an advance on one of your wives the other day.” Giyuu said, eyes fixed on the ground, still forcing his back straight through his shame.
A loud “clunk” sounds as Uzui drops his cup. The bickering in the kitchen dies instantly.
*
“You silly goose. You could’ve asked me right away, you know.”
“I know, Kocho, and I’m sorry, okay?” Giyuu mumbled. It had been days since he went to Uzui, and the embarrassment still hadn’t died down, made worse by the fact that both Kocho and Uzui just couldn’t stop bringing it up.
If there was anything to make up for it, it was how much he liked Kocho’s laughter whenever she retold the story. It’s carefree, soothing, more like her younger self back then, no longer the restrained, polite mask she always wears around people.
He loves it even more when she only laughs like that when he’s around.
Kocho slips her fingers between his and leans her head onto his shoulder.
“Not to boost your ego or anything,” she mumbles. “But since the day I met you, I never thought about anyone else.”
The happiest days in his life were when his parents and his sister were still alive. That would never change.
But if you asked him to choose the second happiest day, then the day Kocho confessed that he had always been her choice would come very, very close.