"It'll do."
By the time Sui was on her way back, evening had already fallen.
She casually swung the wooden cane in her hand, and each sweep tore through the air with a sharp whistle. After she told Ayaumi Fei that the old man's cane had broken and that she wanted to find a sturdier replacement, the girl had immediately invited her to sit at her house for a while, claiming she had connections.
Since Ayaumi Fei had volunteered so eagerly, Sui naturally saw no reason to refuse. The girl had contributed the labor, while Sui had merely stood in front of the flower shop for a short while, so that counted as fair exchange.
After all, according to Ayaumi Fei, if Sui stood there for the length of one stick of incense, it would be enough to match the shop's entire sales for a day.
Besides that, Sui could also sense the inexplicable pity people felt toward her—perhaps because they had mistaken her for blind.
Ayaumi Fei's parents had shown the same feeling when they hosted her before, sighing from the next room about how such a beautiful girl had lost her sight and so on. Sui knew it was a misunderstanding, but explaining that misunderstanding would be extremely troublesome.
And Sui hated trouble.
She passed through the dense peach grove and followed the winding mountain road deeper inward. When she had first come here with the old man, she had been breathless and stumbling every step of the way.
Now she moved with complete ease.
She was clearly walking, yet her speed was strangely swift—like wind and thunder in motion—her crimson haori swaying like the heart of a flower.
Before long, Sui could make out the courtyard ahead. By now, warm orange lamplight had already been lit within.
"Old man, I'm back."
Sui stepped into the yard and slid the door open.
Jigoro was seated upright on the tatami. At the girl's arrival, he slowly opened his eyes.
"Your new cane." Sui handed it over.
"Good quality." The old man accepted it and examined it thoughtfully. A moment later, his gaze shifted from the cane to Sui herself. "During the afternoon you were down in town, Kaigaku has already passed the trial I set for him. His talent qualifies him to become an inheritor of Thunder Breathing. From now on, he is your junior apprentice brother. I hope you will treat him properly."
"Don't bother trying to sense where Kaigaku is right now. Under my arrangement, he's in the back mountain training."
The old man's voice deepened, interrupting Sui's quiet probing of the surroundings.
"Your request poses no problem, of course." Even after her little scheme was noticed, Sui remained expressionless.
"Bullshit. You haven't put your junior apprentice brother in your eyes at all!" the old man roared, his white brows and beard twisting together. This was the first time since Sui had begun training that Jigoro had truly gotten angry at her.
"Why do you act so utterly indifferent? Do you think he isn't worthy to be your junior apprentice brother, brat? Listen carefully. You are indeed the most talented person I've ever seen, but the Demon Slayer Corps is not a battlefield for one person alone. Swordsmen must cultivate not only skill, but also respect and trust. And the comrades who train alongside you are the very people most worthy of that trust!"
After venting the frustration in his chest, Jigoro looked at Sui, who still stood motionless, and frowned. He cared deeply for the girl, but on matters like this, he would not allow her to do as she pleased. The Demon Slayer Corps had survived from generation to generation precisely because of the trust between its members.
"I don't dislike him," the girl said softly.
The old man's heart had barely begun to settle when he heard Sui continue.
"But I don't like him either."
"You—!" Furious, the old man raised his cane as if to strike.
Yet after holding the tip of the cane pointed between the girl's brows for quite some time, he ultimately let it fall with a heavy sigh.
"Forget it. That boy should be coming back soon. Go rest first."
As the girl slid the door open to leave, Jigoro's voice came from behind her, old and resonant.
"Remember this: both of you are inheritors of Thunder Breathing."
Sui paused for a moment, then pushed the door open and left.
At the same time, a figure outside swiftly ducked into an overlooked corner, staring at Sui's back with a vicious light in his eyes.
Night fell. The bright moon hung high overhead.
At this very moment, it was just as it had been back then.
A black-haired boy with thick, rugged brows was sprinting through the forest. He gasped for breath, yet still kept glancing behind him. There was clearly nothing there, only the deep blackness of night, vast as the maw of an abyss, but it terrified him so badly that his whole face twisted.
"Hah... hah..."
Damn it, damn it.
A man-eating demon.
He had actually run into a man-eating demon.
And those things from legend really existed.
Blue-faced, fanged, with horrifying crimson eyes—yet even worse than its appearance was the demon's strength. That creature could shatter tree trunks with a single punch.
He could not imagine what would happen if such force landed on a human body.
All the bones in a person would probably be smashed to pieces.
His first instinct was to run back to the temple, only to realize in horror that it had been the children there who had driven him out.
That place had shut its doors to him forever.
Damn them!
He screamed inwardly through clenched teeth.
All he had done was steal a little money—what right did those brats have to drive him out? They hadn't even gotten the blind monk's permission. If they hadn't kicked him out, how would he have run into a demon tonight?
"Well now, little brat, you're way too slow~"
A hoarse, mocking voice suddenly sounded behind him, along with a suffocating reek of blood.
In an instant, he felt weightless.
Even the darkness before his eyes began to spin.
"Honestly, don't go injuring yourself so carelessly. It ruins the meat."
Even the demon had not expected its prey to trip over a rock and tumble straight down the mountainside. Scratching its head, it followed after him.
The boy gradually regained consciousness. He did not even dare check his own condition. The only thing he cared about was where that demon was now.
"That's..."
Firelight appeared ahead of him.
Familiar firelight.
He was back at the temple.
The scent of wisteria enveloped the temple where the monk and the children rested, and everything seemed so peaceful, except for him.
"Heh... hehehe... so that's how it is..."
The boy grinned viciously. He failed to notice that, at this moment, his expression looked even more frightening than the demon's.
He glanced back once at the darkness up the mountain, then stepped forward and extinguished the wisteria incense burner at the entrance to the temple.
"If it weren't for you people, I never would've ended up like this!"
The boy ran off into the distance, and the demon pursuing him merely watched his retreating figure before walking into the temple.
There was no reason to give up a whole temple full of food just to chase a single brat. It could already smell the scent of many children inside, all more delicious than that boy.
The scent of wisteria gradually faded.
A crimson shadow crept upward, swallowing the entire temple whole.
Wait!
Why was there still that damned scent of wisteria incense?
And why was it growing stronger, mixed with some strange, uncanny floral fragrance he had never encountered before—like walking through a peach grove in the heart of spring...
Kaigaku jolted awake.
Before him was darkness, and above him, the unfamiliar outline of a ceiling faintly visible under the moonlight.
A dream.
Right. He remembered what had happened before.
The dream had been so vivid it made Kaigaku feel sick.
Then he remembered something else.
He had successfully entered the old swordsman's household. From now on, he counted as a swordsman too.
At the same time, a face surfaced in his mind—perfect, exquisitely beautiful, cold in expression, eyes closed.
The moment that face appeared, the delight in Kaigaku's expression vanished.
That woman who looked down on him.
He would make her regret it.
"Sui... was it?"
He muttered the name he had heard from the old man.
A lowborn nobody without even a family name.
Kaigaku bared his teeth in a grin. His head swarmed with crazed thoughts. She had merely trained longer than he had. A blind woman—what use could training possibly be? Her shamelessly beautiful body was far more practical than anything else about her.
"Had a nightmare?"
A calm voice cut through the madness in Kaigaku's mind.
"Huh?"
He froze and looked toward the source of the voice.
A slender figure in a crimson haori sat in the shadows. If she had not spoken, Kaigaku would never have noticed she was there.
"You—!"
He realized at once that this woman had invaded his room.
Perhaps out of wounded pride, perhaps inferiority, perhaps guilt—Kaigaku let out a hoarse yell and took an attacking stance, like a snarling stray dog straining with everything it had not to look pathetic.
And then he stopped.
Because a cold blade had touched his throat.
The sword reflected the cold moonlight from outside the window, and the chill seeped straight into his bones, freezing him in place.
The woman still looked at him quietly.
Kaigaku was stunned.
This woman was not blind at all.
Those inhuman eyes were bright even in the dark, strange幽蓝 waves of blue rising and falling within them, while flames that could burn all things blazed in her uncanny irises.
"You were the one outside the door, weren't you?" Sui said.
"I..." Kaigaku wanted to argue—say he had just happened to come back and overhear it, or something like that—but Sui's blade pressed a fraction closer, and he forcibly swallowed the words back down.
"Shh." Sui raised a finger to her lips and smiled lightly.
"You just listen to me."
"I won't be taking the Final Selection until around April, which means I still have to live with you for about another month. But you're just too disgusting. Seeing you ruins my appetite. So for this next month, I hope you'll behave yourself, hm? And above all, remember not to look at me with those nauseating eyes of yours."
Sui suddenly leaned in close, and the scent of peach blossoms in warm spring rushed over him.
Only then did Kaigaku realize that the strange floral fragrance from his dream had come from her.
She extended a finger and traced it across a concealed spot on the boy's body. At first, Kaigaku only felt something cool and smooth—but in the next instant, overwhelming pain swallowed him whole. The place her finger had touched split open, flesh tearing apart, and then began to fester, as though days of infection had struck all at once.
Fear of the unknown flooded Kaigaku's heart.
And it succeeded in making him stop staring at Sui.
"I know what happened to you. So while you're under the old man's roof, keep yourself under control. Understand?"
Sui sheathed her sword, and her figure disappeared back into the shadows.
It was a full ten minutes before Kaigaku dared move.
The pressure she had exerted was simply too terrifying. She had not treated him as a human being at all. Those inhuman eyes were not something any normal person could possess. She was like a demon from some ancient song or legend, and the emotion in those eyes had been that of someone looking at livestock waiting for slaughter.
And then there was what she had said.
She knew what had happened?
How could she possibly know?
Even that monk who had become a Hashira did not know what had happened that night.
Kaigaku's heart was pounding wildly now. He even wanted to flee this place immediately.
But that was impossible.
That woman would never let him go.
The only solution was to wait until she left for the Final Selection.
The Final Selection...
Deep into the night, the boy's face twisted hideously as he endured the pain of his wound and began plotting for the future.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 150)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 110)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter69)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter95)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 55
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 45
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 32
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 31
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 31
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