"Thank you, Inori-chan—for staying to keep me company through all this."
A few days later, Kocho Kanae had more or less recovered. She left the sickroom and moved back into the little wooden cottage in the rear courtyard.
She knelt on the soft tatami, folding paper cranes with quiet focus, and let her mind drift back over the brighter days of her past. Everything amusing she could dredge up, she recounted to the girl inside the room, and she was especially eager to introduce her own Oyakata-sama, along with the personalities and quirks of each of her companions.
"Saying it all out loud... it really does feel like ages ago. Even though it was only a year or two."
She carefully folded another pink crane—this one she deliberately pinched the wings smaller, and the longer she looked at it, the more exquisite it seemed. It suited the image of Inori she carried in her heart: a soft, pink little pet.
"Getting it off my chest has honestly lightened me a lot. Maybe I've always pushed myself too hard. What do you think, Inori-chan?"
"—Mmn."
It was a vague, meaningless little moan.
Kanae's smile froze. Slowly she turned to look. The girl's long pink hair spilled across the floorboards, strand layered over strand, gleaming where the brilliant sunlight fell in through the window.
Her eyes were half-lidded and unfocused, her soft pink lips slightly parted, her chin propped in one hand, her head bobbing—she was nodding off.
"Are you even still listening?"
Kanae's delicate brows drew together, just a little.
"Hm? Hm? Of course!"
The girl's eyes flew open, her face blank and flustered, as if her mind hadn't quite climbed out of the dream. She answered on reflex.
"What were you saying just now?"
"Inori-chan... did you fall asleep?"
Kocho Kanae was a touch put out. She'd poured her whole heart into telling Inori these things, and here the little minx was, dozing off. Was what I was saying really that boring?
"No. I just drifted off for a second."
Inori pressed her lips together, answering with a guilty conscience.
"From what point did you doze off?"
"Around when you said you were retiring."
Kocho Kanae set down the pink paper crane in her hand and looked at her properly. The smile was still there, but a vein was starting to stand out on her forehead... she was angry.
"So—you weren't listening at all, then?"
"I'm sorry, waah QAQ."
Inori was on the verge of tears without a single one to shed, utterly wronged. She didn't understand it herself... she'd just suddenly spaced out and dozed off.
The thing was, as a non-human creature, her body clock was thoroughly out of order these days. Sometimes she went days without sleep; sometimes she slept for days on end. Just now, the moment Kanae began listing off this Hashira and that Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps, she couldn't hold back the drowsiness... all those "this pillar, that pillar," the names crowded with obscure characters. She couldn't remember a single one after hearing it.
—Mm.
Kocho Kanae was clearly still too young. Watching that pitiful little look Inori put on, her heart nearly melted on the spot.
But in the end she held onto her reason and didn't sink into the sweet trap. Because she knew that this little girl with tears welling up and hurt written all over her face was, in truth, the highest sovereign of the night, the ruler of demons.
"As long as you come visit me lots from now on, I'll forgive you."
"That's not really a good idea."
Inori sat on the floor, hugging her knees, entirely at ease.
"I'm the boss of the demons now. If I come play at your place every day and somebody sees, what then?"
In fact, that very matter was what Inori had come to talk to Kanae about. But because of the injury, the Butterfly Mansion had been crowded with too many eyes lately, so she'd had to bide her time for several days, slipping in only after most of the visitors had gone.
The words had barely left her mouth when they heard a faint sound, threaded through with the whisper of breathing. Inori and Kocho Kanae both went wide-eyed with alarm... their conversation had been overheard!
Inori was the more decisive of the two. Without hesitation she flicked her hand back and launched a scarlet feather-blade throwing knife toward the corner outside the window where the noise had come from...
The eavesdropper was so frightened she slumped straight to the ground—but the flying blade halted, hovering at the center of her brow, and went no further.
"Inori-chan?"
Kocho Kanae was in a panic, not knowing where to even put her hands. She'd deliberately chosen the most secluded room in the whole Butterfly Mansion precisely so no one would disturb their time together, and yet an accident had happened anyway... What now? Silencing the witness was something she absolutely could not do, and yet letting her go would only bring harm down on herself.
Inori merely shook her head, helpless. Then she rose, walked to the window, and reached out—like a fisherman hauling in his catch—and scooped some small thing straight up.
Glossy black hair tied into a neat little side ponytail; a soft, slight frame that made her look even younger than her actual age. Tsuyuri Kanao dangled in midair from Inori's grip, her limbs hanging loosely.
Those big, innocent rose-red eyes were full of bewilderment, making her look more like a porcelain doll than ever.
"...If you wanted to listen, why not just come inside, Kanao?"
Looking at how small and helpless she seemed, Kocho Kanae didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Kanao was normally quiet and reserved, and now she buried her head in shame, saying nothing at all.
"If you wanted to see me you could've just said so. You were hiding out there—I nearly didn't pull the blade in time, and you'd have died, you little dummy."
Inori set her down on the ground slowly, then crouched and helped Kanao straighten the clothes she'd rumpled. They were grubby and smelled of soil—clearly she hadn't had a key to the courtyard, so she'd climbed over the wall from the side and tumbled to the ground on the way in.
Kanao's fingers pinched the hem of her clothes tight, her breathing still a little quick... She gazed at Inori's kind face, and then, from some unknown well of courage, she quietly threw her arms around her.
"She's missed you a lot, Inori-chan."
Watching the tender scene, Kocho Kanae smiled too.
—Inori-nee-san, Kanao's really, really missed you... Please don't ever leave me again, okay?
That was the mischievous little scene Inori imagined running behind the silence of the expressionless sweetheart Kanao.
"I'm really sorry. I left in too much of a hurry last time, without saying goodbye." Inori wrapped her arms around Kanao's small body too, feeling the warmth and trembling of the little girl in her embrace, and for a moment her own nose stung. "I'm sorry, Kanao."
"Stay..."
A soft, sweet voice reached her ear, faint and fine as a thread.
It was probably the first thing Kanao had said to her since that day's introduction.
Inori's heart felt as if a hand had pinched it hard. She really, really wanted to just say yes and make Kanao happy... but she still had more important things to do, and in the end reason won out.
"Kanao, promise me you'll keep working hard from this day forward. All right?"
Inori let her go, reached out again to knead her soft little cheeks, and smiled.
She hadn't spelled it out, but Kanao wasn't slow. She understood what Inori meant, and she understood the bind she was in now... Inori-nee-san had exposed her identity to protect her, and now everyone treated her as an enemy.
"Kanae is retiring now because of her injury, so from here on the Demon Slayer Corps is going to need you to shoulder the weight. Promise me—by the next time we meet... you'll have become the new Flower Hashira. Can you do that? For me personally, I can't accept anyone but you standing in that position."
"...Mm!"
She nodded with all her might, agreeing to it, light shifting and shining in her clear eyes.
"Wait—Inori-chan."
Kocho Kanae was suddenly struck still.
That encouragement was sure to make Kanao work even harder from now on. But Kanae hadn't missed the meaning buried in that last line... By the next time they met, she wanted to see Kanao become a Hashira. Which meant—they wouldn't be seeing each other again for a very long time?
"Where are you going?"
She came over, watching Inori nervously.
"That's the other thing I came to tell you today."
Inori rose slowly to her feet.
"For some very important reasons, I have to go somewhere far, far away for a while. I don't know when I'll be able to come back either... so I wanted to say goodbye."