“Okay then. Himejima.” Her voice was adorable in its solemnity. “Did a demon give you that scar on your forehead? Does it still hurt?”
“Go home,” he said, ignoring her questions. He felt unreasonably irritated and sad. “Demon slaying’s not for you girls.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “I mean, there are girl Demon Slayers, right? No point in lying. The Kakushi told us.”
He nodded. “It’s true that there are girl Demon Slayers. But they are the overwhelming minority. Most girls can’t get past the Final Selection.”
“Final Selection?” Shinobu asked. “What’s that? Is it like a test? We’ll be fine then. Me and Kanae aren’t stupid.”
“It might be hard right now, but you’ll be able to forget at some point,” Himejima told her. “Live a happy life as a normal girl. Live long enough to marry the boy you love, have children, and get wrink—”
“How could I forget?!” she shouted like the words were being ripped from her throat. Surprised by Shinobu’s cry, the birds in the surrounding trees shot up into the air as one. The branches shuddered and swayed.
“My mom and dad were killed right in front of me, okay?” she yelled. “You think I can just keep going like that never happened? There’s no way … There’s no way! You want me to live a normal life, to be happy? Lying to myself, pretending to forget—that’s what you call happy?! If that’s happiness, then no thanks! That’s the same as being dead!”
“Demon slaying is not an easy road,” he replied. “Every step is a bloody one. Do you think that’s the future your parents wanted for their daughters?”
“No one knows what they wanted now!” she shouted, tears in her voice.
Himejima was at a loss for words.
“So, could you do it, Himejima? Could you live like nothing happened after the people you loved got killed? Why did you join the Demon Slayer Corps? Why’d you start killing demons?!” Shinobu snapped the questions at him, and then ran off in the opposite direction of the house.
He stood rooted to the spot, at a loss.
“Don’t worry. She’ll be back soon.”
He heard Kanae’s voice from behind him. He guessed that she had heard them talking and come out of the house in concern when the conversation turned to shouting. She bowed quietly when Himejima looked back at her.
“Please forgive my sister’s rudeness,” she said. “She knows in her head that you’re simply and honestly worried about us, but her emotions can’t keep up. She’s always been the baby, and she adored our parents.”
“A certain physique is required for Demon Slayers,” Himejima responded. “While you can train to no end to refine your skills with a sword, you can’t change the amount of muscle you’re born with. Pure strength is in proportion to the amount of muscle.”
Kanae sighed. “I know that.”
“You’re good as of now with your stature,” he continued. “But even if that girl did become a Demon Slayer, she wouldn’t be able to cut off a demon’s head.”
The girl said nothing.
“What do you think awaits a Demon Slayer who can’t cut off a demon’s head?” he pressed her.
Kanae looked down, pained. After an agonizing silence, she opened her mouth.
“Our father used to tell us to share the load if we saw someone struggling with a heavy burden, to sit down and think with a person wrestling with a difficult problem, and to bring our hearts to anyone feeling sad.”
Considering Shinobu and Kanae, he could tell that their parents had no doubt been wonderful people. Kind, hardworking, honest, they had loved their daughters from the bottoms of their hearts.
Those loving parents had been taken from the girls. They had been cruelly robbed of their family by an overwhelming force they had no hope of resisting.
“I want to save people. And demons.” Kanae’s voice was earnest and filled with an inexpressible sadness. A little girl should never have to have such a voice.
His doubt still won out over pity. Himejima didn’t understand what she was trying to say. “Save … the demons?” he asked.
“The Kakushi told us that the demons were originally people like us.” Kanae paused and lifted her face. “They’re sad creatures. They’re people, but they eat people, and they fear the beautiful sunrise. If you defeat one demon, you can save all the people that demon would have killed in the future. You can free the demon itself from that miserable fate.”
“Are you saying,” he began, “you want to save the demon who killed your parents?”
He felt her nod. “Yes.”
“If you truly mean that, you’ve lost touch with sanity,” he told her, unintentionally harsh.
She wants to save the demons? They’re “sad creatures”?
Himejima had never had that thought, not even in passing. He still hated the demon who had taken everything from him. His most sincere desire was to kill as many demons as he possibly could. The sensation of his fists punching and punching and punching the demon’s head still lingered in his hands. He was sure it would stay with him for the rest of his life. He would keep killing demons with these hands until his own heart stopped beating.
This girl is too kind.
This kindness would be praised if she went on to live a normal life. But if she was going to go forward as a Demon Slayer, her excessive kindness would eventually be her downfall.
“You shouldn’t become a Demon Slayer,” he told her finally.
“I want to protect people whose happiness hasn’t yet been destroyed,” she insisted. “Like you did for us, like you protected Shinobu—I want to do that for someone else’s loved one. I want to stop the chain of sadness.”
“Even if you and your sister die as a result?” he demanded.
Kanae was momentarily at a loss for words. She might have been willing to sacrifice her own life, but her sister’s was a different story.
He himself knew it was a cowardly question. However …
“I’m prepared for that,” Kanae said in a trembling voice. “Shinobu and I made a promise. We won’t let anyone else experience what we went through.”
Himejima felt a grim stirring in his heart at the girl’s tragic determination. He was angry at how unexpectedly stubborn she was. But he was more angry at himself for being unable to simply accept her. He closed eyes that couldn’t see and turned his back to the girl. He swung the axe.
The log split, the crack of it echoing through the area.
As if to flee Kanae’s sober gaze at his back, Himejima chopped wood with single-minded zeal.
Just as Kanae had said she would, Shinobu returned before too long.
“I’m back,” she said, with no ill will, and pushed on Himejima the wild vegetables and mushrooms she’d collected on her way back. “For supper, I thought. I’m pretty thoughtful, huh?”
Himejima scowled as he took the mountain of foraged food. He had a bad feeling about this.
Just as he feared, the sisters did not go home that evening. Himejima wished that his Kasugai Crow would come with a mission for him, but that day of all days, the crow failed to appear.
In that area, the temperature dropped dramatically when the sun went down. Himejima threw the logs that he and Shinobu had chopped onto the fire in the sunken hearth, and the hot smell of burning wood mingled with the delicious scent of miso soup and rice.