“Excuse me.”
“Oh, Tomioka! You’re late. Well, come on in.” Uzui looked back and called out casually when the late arrival, Tomioka, opened the fusuma sliding door.
Tomioka’s gaze silently traced the room, a curious look on his face—and that was no wonder. Shinobu sympathized with him in her heart. Meeting despite the fact that there was no official Hashira meeting, the Hashira were for some reason arm wrestling. Anyone would be perplexed—she certainly was.
At the three low tables set up in the center of the room, the contests of Muichiro versus Mitsuri, Shinazugawa versus Iguro, and Himejima versus Uzui were just ending.
The one who had proposed this arm-wrestling tournament was Uzui. Naturally, it wasn’t a serious competition. They were going to let Tomioka win and put him in a good mood. It was a simple strategy, but not a particularly bad one. In fact, for Uzui, who lived by the creed of the flashier the better, it was an extremely common-sense plan.
Uzui shook out his right hand after Himejima slammed it into the table. “Lord Himejima here’s strong as hell. You give a splashy battle a go too,” he urged Tomioka.
“I’ll be on my way then,” Tomioka said evenly, having recovered from his shock. He turned around to leave.
Shinobu grabbed hold of her colleague’s coat. “You’re the same as ever, hmm, Tomioka? Deepening the bonds between Hashira is important, you know.”
“You can deepen them all you want. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“If you leave now, everyone will say that Giyu Tomioka was afraid of Gyomei Himejima and ran off with his tail between his legs. You know? Is that what you want?” Shinobu said. Tomioka’s face clouded over faintly.
He was a surprisingly sore loser at times. Knowing this, she lit a little flame under him.
“Come on now, you can do this, Tomioka. I’m rooting for you.” Shinobu smiled brightly and pushed him forward. She kept pushing him into the center of the room, where Himejima was waiting. Uzui stood up and yielded his place to Tomioka. At the next table over, Rengoku flashed his bright white teeth.
“All right, Rengoku here will be the referee!” he declared. “Both of you, fight with your heads held high like true men!”
“Understood,” said Himejima.
“Himejima!” Uzui called out nonchalantly. He didn’t follow up with any further spoken message, but the meaning he packed into the name alone was “make it look good, but lose.”
Himejima nodded, as if to say that he was on the same page. He set his rock of a hand on the table, and Tomioka gripped it with no expression on his face.
Then …
“What on earth is going on?” Shinobu asked Uzui in as quiet a voice as she could manage.
The strategy, supposedly, was to let Tomioka win a fixed bout of arm wrestling to put him in a good mood. If they were lucky, that would get a smile out of him. But once the game started, not only had Tomioka been destroyed in seconds by Himejima, he’d even lost to Uzui, Rengoku, and Shinazugawa. Uzui was one thing, blessed with a good physique like he was, but Rengoku and Shinazugawa had builds similar to Tomioka’s. Although Tomioka barely beat Mitsuri, a girl, that wasn’t going to produce a smile or anything. When Shinobu glanced over at him, he was sitting on the floor cushion with a face like a Noh mask.
“You’re just winning against him like normal,” Shinobu rebuked Uzui, lowering her voice even further.
With an annoyed look on his face, he scratched a spot near his collarbone. “I mean, yeah, what d’you expect? After Himejima went and won like that, I mean, I couldn’t go losing on purpose.”
“And what’s going on with you, Himejima?” Shinobu pressed the Stone Hashira this time.
“Was that the point of the arm wrestling?” he whispered.
“Did … Did you not understand that?” she responded, stunned.
“Namu.” He gently clasped his hands together in the air.
Why had he nodded so certainly when Uzui called out to him? Shinobu cradled her head in her hands in her mind. Uzui patted her hair with a hand as if he wasn’t a part of this at all.
“Kocho,” he said, “don’t be mad that you ended up going last.”
“I’m not angry about that.” She managed to keep from yelling the words. “I’m exasperated.”
“Thing is, ya got weak arms, you do. You really oughta train more? I mean, look at those limp-noodle arms.”
“Actual battle is not about arm strength.” Annoyed, Shinobu brushed Uzui’s hand away, a pained smile on her face.
Mitsuri came over, looking excited. “It’s okay, Shinobu. I’m up next.” Her voice was quiet, but she was clearly raring to go.
“Kanroji …”
“So, like, I’m actually really good at making people laugh. Leave this one to me!” she said. Mitsuri thumped her chest with satisfaction, cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling. So full of assurance … She was a being of pure self-confidence. “I’ve made my brothers laugh a million times when they were peeving.”
“When they were … peeving?” Shinobu furrowed her brow at the incomprehensible word.
Wait. Kanroji’s little brothers are … A terrible feeling came over her as she tried to remember the ages of the boys Mitsuri had told her about before.
“To. Mi. O. Ka!”
The Love Hashira was already approaching Tomioka.
“Tickle tickle tickle tickle tickle tickle!” she said, as she began tickling his sides. “Give up? Give up yet? I’m gonna keep tickling you until you give up!”
Tomioka was silent.
“Tickle tickle tickle tickle tickle!”
Kanroji …
Shinobu unconsciously looked off into the distance. It was true that people laughed when they were tickled. Children in particular loved to be tickled. If this had been Tanjiro or Inosuke, they might have laughed themselves senseless. Inosuke might have gotten angry and yelled, “Stop! Don’t go making Lord Inosuke all warm and fluffy!” And Zenitsu would have squealed in ecstasy, “Aaaaah! I’m so happy!”
This was a full-grown man. And this was Tomioka.
“Oh … I-I’m sorry.”
Just as Shinobu had feared, Tomioka did not crack the tiniest smile and seemed to pull back slightly—no, he was even afraid. Seeing this, Mitsuri came back to her senses and pulled away from him, her face bright red, as she curled into herself in despair.
“I’m … really sorry … I wish I could … disappear …” Her embarrassment was so acute, she was on the verge of tears.
Iguro stood up as if to protect her. “Tomioka. Do you not have a heart?” He glared at Tomioka, eyes harboring hatred. “I’ll never forgive you for trampling all over Kanroji’s honest efforts. Not now, not ever.”
His voice trembled with anger, and a number of blue veins popped up on his temples. Their mission to make Tomioka smile was completely gone from his head. He looked ready to draw his sword at any second.