The peach blossoms along the Momoyama path were already past their finest season, and the number of visitors coming just to admire them had begun to dwindle.
The town at the foot of the mountain had likewise returned to its old quiet. The flower shop only saw the occasional visitor now, and they did not come to buy flowers, but rather to purchase fertilizer for growing food crops.
Night fell.
A figure slowly approached from the distance, drifting along the path without making a sound.
"Kagome, kagome..."
"The bird inside the cage, when, oh when will it come out?"
"On the night before dawn..."
"The crane and the turtle slipped..."
"Who is the one standing behind you?"
The voice was cool and quiet, humming an old children's song.
It was a song sung during a game. One child, playing the "oni," would crouch in the middle with their eyes covered while the other children circled around, singing the rhyme. When the song ended, if the child in the middle could guess who was standing directly behind them, that person would become the new oni. In other words, the last line of the song carried a darker meaning:
At that moment, the one standing behind the oni becomes the sacrifice who takes the caged bird's place.
Sui remembered the past.
Kannazuki Suzune had taken in both Sui and He. The children of the shrine's priests would sometimes come play in the courtyard behind the shrine, and they would play this game together as well. Sui herself had never cared much for such things, but the children would cling to her and plead, saying that the game wasn't complete without Big Sister Sui, that she absolutely had to join in, and so on. Helpless against that sort of thing, she had joined them from time to time.
Of the few games she had ever played, this one she remembered well.
Whenever she was the oni in the middle, the one standing behind her was always Little He.
He was an abandoned child. It was said that her parents had originally intended to sell her off, but she was too frail, too small, and her skin, damaged by long stretches of sleeping on damp floors, was covered in an obvious disease. No one had wanted to buy her, even at a pitiful price.
After she was abandoned, Kannazuki Suzune found her and brought her home.
When that woman had carried Little He back, her tone had probably been something like:
There's already one child at home anyway, so one more won't hurt, right? Sui-chan won't mind, will she?
Of course Sui had not minded.
After all, she had always been grateful to Kannazuki Suzune. Without her, Sui had no idea how she would have survived as a little child in such a chaotic era.
To be honest, Kannazuki Suzune had no idea how to raise children. All the children at the shrine had really been looked after by Sui.
In a way, Sui had been the eldest daughter of the shrine. If nothing unexpected had happened, she would have inherited it one day when she grew up.
Little He depended heavily on her.
Even after more than a year at the shrine, the little girl—so frighteningly thin and weak—still had not fully recovered her health. She did not want to mix with children her own age, because the marks from her skin condition had still not entirely healed. Beside her radiant older sister, she saw herself as nothing more than a rat writhing in a gutter.
Perhaps most abandoned children taken in off the streets became this sort of sensitive, self-loathing person.
Sui, by contrast, had been an exception.
She had not lacked for love, and her mature soul let her understand that none of those hardships had come from anything inherent in herself. They had simply been sufferings this era laid upon all living beings. More than once, Little He had said to her:
"Big Sister, you shine."
Sui and He had grown up together in the shrine. When Sui turned fifteen, Little He was twelve. But because the sickness she had caught as a child had sunk deep beneath the skin, one side of her face had rotted away. Not even the most skillful doctor could heal it. Kannazuki Suzune had agonized over it for a long time. Little He locked herself away in her room, speaking only with Sui, so the other children at the shrine gradually forgot that Sui even had a younger sister.
But children followed the older child they admired.
And Sui perfectly matched what they admired, so even if they knew Little He existed, they still paid her no mind.
Little He was alive.
Where had she gone?
Could she survive on her own?
Sui was nowhere near as calm as she had appeared in the Wisteria House.
She cared deeply.
And beyond that...
Little He, would you become a demon?
"Who is the one standing behind you?" Sui murmured.
When Sui passed through the little town at the foot of the mountain, someone suddenly grabbed her hand.
"Sui-chan!"
Sui lowered her head and found that it was Ayami Aya, the flower shop girl, gazing at her in a lovestruck daze while rubbing her cheek against the back of Sui's hand.
"I smelled Sui-chan's scent. I knew it—Sui-chan's come back!"
Sui fell silent.
There were too many things wrong with that statement. What did she mean, smelled her scent?
"Oh my, Sui just doesn't understand. As the daughter of a flower shop owner, I've trained my sense of smell to an astonishing level, so I can judge whether flowers are fresh and whether their quality is good!"
Aya kept nuzzling against her hand.
"So soft, so fair, so smooth... heehee."
"Oh wow, there's dew on Sui-chan's eyelashes. Did you come back by the mountain path?"
"Did you see any fireflies on the way? They've been saying the fireflies in the mountains are especially beautiful lately." She rose on tiptoe and leaned closer, and Sui caught the scent of fragrant hair oil in the girl's hair.
"You... what happened?" Sui asked.
Aya's eyes were red, on the verge of tears. Sui had no idea what had happened, so she simply reached out and patted Aya on the head.
"It's just that I missed Sui-chan too much," Aya said awkwardly, scratching her head. "And business at the shop's calmed down a lot lately. When I'm bored, all I can do is think about Sui-chan to pass the time."
The stone paving glimmered in the dusk. A little weather doll hanging from the flower shop's eaves clinked softly in the evening wind.
"Oh no, I hope Mom doesn't see this," Aya muttered, ducking behind Sui and hurriedly wiping away her tears.
The flower shop door opened. The landlady, wearing a white headscarf, swept her gaze over the street and immediately locked onto Aya hiding behind Sui.
"Aya! Really now, it's so late—you shouldn't be sneaking out like this. You've troubled Sui again, haven't you?" the woman sighed.
"But Sui-chan came back," the girl said, her silver-bell laughter sweetened by the night breeze. "I've been worried sick. Mr. Jigoro said the place she went to was dangerous."
Sui froze for a moment.
So she had gone to the old man.
Most likely she had pestered him to death until she learned about the Final Selection.
Jigoro was not very good at dealing with girls.
Sui lowered her raven-feather lashes.
"I'm sorry for worrying you, Mrs. Ayami. I'll take good care of Aya."
"You child, you're still as polite as ever." The landlady shook her head lightly. "Sometimes you can afford to be a little childish. You're too well-mannered—it makes people your age feel distant from you."
"But that's exactly my type," Aya muttered under her breath, arguing with her mother. "Gentle, polite, just a little melancholy... and best of all, always keeping her eyes closed with that whole vulnerable, pick-me-up sort of allure..."
Sui fell silent.
Aya clearly thought Sui could not hear her.
But Sui's hearing was absurdly sharp, and every single word landed in her ears without missing a syllable.
Was she... that alluring?
She knew perfectly well what she looked like, but this point—that sort of allure—made even Sui waver for once.
"Oh, right, Sui-chan! I prepared a gift for you!"
Aya suddenly remembered something and hurried back into the flower shop.
A moment later, she returned holding out a bouquet of Chinese milk vetch still beaded with dew.
The stems were wrapped in washi paper, tied with a faded golden sash. At the end hung a little fox-shaped bell engraved in tiny characters with Sui. Beside the fox bell was a clover ornament, engraved on the reverse with Aya.
Sui was a little startled.
The whole thing looked alarmingly like a token of affection.
Pale purple blooms trembled in the night wind. The landlady had already gone back into the shop. As Aya's mother, she knew her daughter had fallen into a hopeless, unsalvageable one-sided love.
A girl like Sui was not someone who would stop walking for Aya's sake.
Aya had only seen Sui's striking beauty, never noticing that Sui's hand never strayed far from her blade. Sui did not belong to their world.
Still—
Falling for someone like that isn't necessarily a bad thing, is it? the landlady thought.
From the window, she watched as Sui lightly accepted the gift. Then Aya stood there, watching her walk away into the night, a bouquet of purple milk vetch in one hand and a white-sheathed long sword in the other, her crimson haori swaying in the wind.
Like a butterfly flying back into the mountains.
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! (Chapter100)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 60
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 60
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 50
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 50
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 50
The Way the Umamusume Look at 31
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 26
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 26
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