All of a sudden, Doma found this woman intensely, intensely detestable. He didn't want Kocho Kanae to utter even half a sentence more of nonsense.
Inori-sama was the mighty one who had slain Kibutsuji Muzan, the strongest being alive, blessed with perfect blood. True, she was too young right now, with a few childish streaks, immature, but given time she would one day reach heights Muzan had never even touched.
No, she'd already surpassed Muzan. It was only that she didn't yet carry the awareness of a so-called Demon King, and none of that was a problem, because he was at her side, and there were Akaza and Kokushibo, two Upper Rank demons willing to serve her as well. Given time, Inori would surely lead them, wipe out those Demon Slayers buzzing around like flies, and accomplish far greater aims besides.
How could a figure that magnificent get tangled up with some ordinary woman?
Doma didn't believe Kanae's words. Even as a joke, it was an insult to Inori.
So he unilaterally ended the conversation, deciding to make this woman quietly shut her mouth and take only her hairpins.
The temperature crashed to freezing in an instant.
Kanae could even see the warm breath she exhaled; the temperature was plummeting. It was his Blood Demon Art!
She realized that over-the-line remark of hers had truly enraged him. The man in the red robe said nothing, his face dark, and merely swept out the paired fans in his hand with speed.
In a heartbeat, countless frozen vines pressed in toward her face, and a thin layer of frost formed at once on Kanae's long lashes.
—Blood Demon Art: Lotus Vines.
...
The pitch-black night sky had taken on a blue-green cast now, a sign daybreak was near. Somewhere among the endless mountains, forests, and villages of this land, a strange black silhouette tumbled up and down, nimble as a swallow, gliding forward through the air.
Inori held Kocho Shinobu in her arms. After the Nameless Monster's evolution she'd unlocked a new flying ability, though it wasn't flight in the true sense, since she couldn't get too far from the ground; her altitude was capped. In essence it was just a temporary reversal of gravity, much of a piece with a power she'd once wielded, Kido Kenji's Void.
Shinobu had never experienced this novel way of traveling, and she couldn't help feeling nervous and afraid, clinging tightly to Inori's neck.
Her Inori-nee-san flew fast. Without enough training, Shinobu would probably have demanded to be let down partway, unable to bear the instant reversal and shift of her center of gravity.
"It's over there."
Inori landed steadily on a stretch of cliff, and Shinobu pointed down at the long, winding river below. Near it sat a village facing the far bank across the water. She remembered it clearly; she'd been here before. This was the very place Kocho Kanae had come to carry out her mission today.
"Let's go down," Shinobu murmured, staring at Inori's exquisite profile.
She was being held right now in a mortifying princess carry, but the situation was urgent; without it, traveling would have eaten up far too much time.
Inori didn't answer, didn't look at her, only gazed down calmly for a few seconds, then closed her lovely eyes and drew a deep breath, as if sensing something, or thinking.
"Inori?"
"She's not here anymore."
Inori opened her eyes and said it with absolute finality.
The Nameless Monster had long since seared the scent of demons deep into its memory. As long as nothing interfered, it could easily lock onto the exact position of every demon for miles around. Through the brief flicker of "Eagle Vision" she'd just triggered, Inori had already read the surroundings.
"Nee-san? She must have gone a long way already... but I don't know which road she'd have taken."
—What a pain. If only this era had cell phones.
Inori's heart sank a little, an uneasy restlessness spreading inside her. She really was afraid she might be a step too late. She'd warned the Twelve Kizuki, sure, but no one could guarantee they'd fall in line, not to mention two Upper Rank demons still roaming free who didn't answer to her orders.
Just as she was failing to work out the next leg of the route, the Nameless Monster gave off a warning signal. Inori felt something and snapped her head up. In the dim night sky a bird was streaking past, and her eyes, with A-rank precision, locked onto its form exactly.
Black all over, but with an obvious yellow patch near its beak. A crow, the kind the Demon Slayer Corps trained to carry messages! And by that marking, it was the one that stayed at Kocho Kanae's side!
Inori had no time to think further. A light tap of her fingers summoned two Feather Blade projectiles. One shot straight for the crow, dragging a long tail of red light; then she reached her hand into the eyeball of the second Feather Blade and, through the link of the Inner Eye, hauled the traveling crow right back.
Shinobu was stunned by the whole sequence, though having seen it once before, her shock didn't last long and she quickly took it in stride. She'd spotted the bird too. It was the crow from her sister Kanae's side!
"Upper Rank demon! Upper Rank Two!"
The crow, which looked rather like a myna, lay flapping its wings in Inori's palm, crying out its warning in terror.
"Nee-san ran into an Upper Rank demon?! Where? Tell us, quickly!"
...
Upper Rank Two. That was Doma.
The one who'd attacked Kocho Kanae... was Doma?
For a moment Inori's mind went hazy. She strained to recall the little that remained of her memory of the Demon Slayer plot. Kocho Shinobu's sister had been killed by a powerful demon of the Twelve Kizuki. Judging by the current situation, a Lower Rank clearly couldn't manage this, and among the Upper Ranks, who was the most likely to slaughter women?
The answer was obvious.
The demon who killed Kocho Kanae in the original work was Doma.
—It's not that this one you're wearing isn't lovely, but you deserve better.
—I beg you, even just to wear it once. Please, grant this humble wish of mine.
Before setting out, the things Doma had said still rang clear in her ears, every word of it pointed.
So he'd wanted to take Kanae's hair clips off her and give them to Inori... Why go to all that trouble? Given their relationship, wouldn't it take just a word from Inori?
But things were different now.
In the original work, Doma was the very culprit who killed Kanae. Inori had already passed through two different worlds, and she knew all too well how sickening a word "fate" could be.
It had nearly turned her into Eve's vessel, to be buried alongside the old world. And it had made it so that Kira Yoshikage, for all his power to rewind time, could never once escape the fate of being cut down by her hand, because some things were destined to happen, and nothing you did could change them, unless you held the power and the resolve to cheat fate itself.
—Kocho Kanae's death would push Kocho Shinobu to become the Insect Hashira, and to transform into the same gentle elder-sister figure Kanae was.
—That absolutely cannot happen. Absolutely. Must not.
Fate truly couldn't be defied, and for a Stand User like her especially, it wielded an almost curse-like authority. No matter what one did, the ending fate had allotted couldn't be avoided. Even when she'd used Yet To Come to defeat Eve, in the end she'd still been inexplicably transported to another world.
From the perspective of the people in that original world, hadn't she simply taken the whole world's Apocalypse Virus down with her? How was that any different from the ending of Guilty Crown? Inori's fate still hadn't changed.
The same applied to Kira Yoshikage. For all the effort he poured out, in the end he still had to arrive at the ending of being run over by that ambulance in JoJo.
Saving Kanae might be extremely difficult. It had nothing to do with strength; fate would always find a way to write Kocho Kanae out at this point in time, to lay the road for those who came after.