"Excuse me?"
Kanae's eyes narrowed slightly — those fine willow-leaf brows drawing fractionally together.
—This girl just... said what? Did she actually use that name?
"I said, I'd like you to take me to find Muzan Kibutsuji."
Inori knew it was a lot to ask of a Demon Slayer, so she looked Kanae in the eye and repeated it plainly.
"Hey! Do you have any idea who that is?! That's the most powerful demon alive!"
Shinobu couldn't stay quiet either.
Just hearing the name sent a chill down her spine. And now this person was calmly saying she wanted to find him?
"You're not the only ones who want him dead."
"I have my own reasons."
Inori hadn't assembled a clean explanation yet — any real justification would start brushing against her origins, and she couldn't run the standard "I lost my memory" or "my family was killed by him" script again; she'd worn those out in too many worlds already. Especially looking like this. Nothing she said was going to come out tidy.
So she left it deliberately vague, and let them fill in what they liked.
"I'd love to help you, but... I'm afraid I don't know where Muzan is hiding either."
"Oh."
Inori was mildly surprised.
"You don't know?"
She'd forgotten this particular detail. She only recalled, in broad strokes, that the Demon Slayer Corps and Muzan's forces were mortal enemies — most of the specifics had faded.
"Killing Muzan Kibutsuji has been this organization's founding purpose since the day it was established! And yet all our predecessors before us couldn't manage it — did you think finding him was like stopping by a neighbor's house?"
Shinobu planted her hands on her hips, exasperated.
"It's all right."
Inori gave a small nod, a faint smile.
"We'll find him. It'll just take a little time."
A morning breeze moved like a gentle hand across their faces, and from somewhere above came the calls of birds Inori couldn't name. In the air, the lingering smell of blood was thinning. The sun's warmth fell across this battered stretch of mountain forest — on the flowers, the trees, on the ash that had been a demon... and on the ground where Demon Slayers would never wake again.
The monster girl with the pink hair and two demon-hunting swordswomen turned their steps toward home.
They buried the fallen, recorded each name in careful detail, and then Kanae assembled her people and left the mountain.
It hadn't exactly been a fruitful outing, by any honest count. Too many of those young people had barely arrived in the Corps — hadn't had the time to grow. But they had taken down a member of the Twelve Kizuki, and that, for the entire organization, was genuine cause for hope — even if the one who had actually done it wasn't Kanae herself.
The Demon Slayer Corps had a medical facility they called the Butterfly Mansion — the rear logistical arm of the organization, handling recovery and supply, staffed largely by swordfighters who lacked the gift for the blade. That didn't make them a weak point. The principle was the same as in ancient warfare: supply lines always carried heavy protection. The Butterfly Mansion sat close enough to headquarters that reinforcements could arrive at a moment's notice.
And the woman who ran the Butterfly Mansion was the Flower Hashira herself — Kanae Kocho.
Inori pulled the butterfly-wing haori tight around herself, covering the unusual things she was wearing, and walked with the others into the compound. All the swordspeople here were Kanae's personally trusted corps — no word would get out. Even as young as she was, Kanae Kocho held a prestige within the Demon Slayer Corps that yielded to no other Hashira. No one was going to question her judgment.
—Though a fair number of them were quietly wondering how a demon could just stand in sunlight like that.
...
...
Green mountains. Clear water. And homes.
A proper Japanese-style residence — a large two-story main hall at its center looking almost lavish, a neat stone path running through the grounds, strange flowers blooming everywhere she looked, a lakeside bamboo path—
Standing there, Inori felt with some clarity that she had left the steel jungle of the city behind.
Japan in this era had begun to show the first stirrings of modernity in certain cities, but the Demon Slayer Corps still held to its ancient ways. Firearms were rare within the organization, and the most obvious reason was simple: guns couldn't kill demons.
This was the Butterfly Mansion, under Kanae Kocho's care. Normally a place for treating the wounded. Inori kept the haori close and followed Shinobu through a series of small gates, head down, until she was shown to a room and told to sit.
"Wait here. Onee-san is going to find you something to wear."
Shinobu left that behind her and hurried away.
The quick, light sound of footsteps faded into the distance. Inori smiled to herself, then looked around the room — it had an old warmth to it, simple and genuinely comforting. She thought, not for the first time, that a room like this in modern times would cost a small fortune to book for a night.
Morning light came through the latticed windows and landed on a very low table sitting on the floor, with a few small clay dolls arranged on top of it. No bed. No chairs. Sleeping here meant unrolling a futon on the tatami — the kind of arrangement Inori found herself oddly curious about. She crept over to the table and crouched to look at the dolls. Carefully carved little figures. Taken back to a modern antique market, they'd probably fetch a real price.
"Achoo!"
The morning sun caught her full in the face, and she sneezed before she could help it, the tip of her nose going pink.
She rubbed her nose, then gave in to laziness and sank forward until she was resting on her folded arms on the edge of the table, staring at her own fingers — still in the elbow-length gloves — tapping an idle rhythm on the wood.
A pointless little habit. But it felt good.
Sitting there, she realized she badly needed to rest in exactly this kind of quiet place. Not because her body was depleted, or her mind frayed in any ordinary sense — but in the way that eventually requires something like a proper holiday. No one could sustain the pace she had kept indefinitely. And what she'd been doing was life-and-death combat, every time — living on the edge of a blade.
It had probably started when she infiltrated the Ivory Christmas Tree to steal the Void Genome. After that — Funeral Parlor, a double life, two identities running simultaneously to protect her cover. Then the Oshima mission. Then the truth came out, and she became the organization's leader. At the end of it, she put down Shuichiro Keido, and the Apocalypse Virus dissolved from the world.
She had thought, after all that — finally, she could rest.
Then she was in Morioh. Matching wits with the serial killer Yoshikage Kira, that long careful dance. And just when she'd finally settled that account and was looking forward to a real vacation in Italy — maybe taking it out on Diavolo for her own amusement — she was here instead. In the Demon Slayer world. With new enemies.
If she could just wake up still asleep in that truck leaving the Ivory Christmas Tree, and find out all of it had been one long vivid dream — that would be nice, she thought. That would really be nice.
—This place is wonderful, Inori-chan. Why don't you want to stay? Besides, this time our opponent is that Demon King called Muzan, right?
Mana Ouma felt the drift of her thoughts and gently spoke up.
—Look, even if we don't know where Muzan is hiding right now — if you work with the Demon Slayer Corps, step by step, make enough noise to draw his attention, eventually he'd have to show himself. Kill all the Twelve Kizuki, maybe. If he loses every capable subordinate, he'd have to come out.
—On paper, maybe. But Muzan doesn't value his subordinates. He's a lousy boss.
Inori couldn't be bothered to speak aloud, answering through thought alone.
—And besides, Mana... my reason for wanting to find Muzan isn't just to kill him. He's just a landmark I'm setting for myself. Something to keep me from losing my way.