Shinobu said nothing. She was looking at him bitterly from her sister’s side.
Feeling her presence behind him—angry, on the verge of tears—Himejima headed out on his mission.
The girls would leave before long, discouraged and indignant. Cursing his name.
And then he would never see them again. With this thought in his head, he felt a hole open up in his heart, and a cold wind blew through it. This was a hole that would take time to fill. But …
It’s better this way …
Having known sadness, the girls would grow into strong and kind adults. He wanted them to have children and be connected to life instead of death. He wanted them to somehow live the years ahead of them that the children who died at the old temple couldn’t.
That was all he wished for. Even if this was only him lying to his own weak self …
When Himejima finished his mission and returned home after a lengthy absence, the house was empty, but he could sense people in the back.
This aura … It can’t be, he thought as he went around the house to find the two girls sitting exhausted beside the rock. Kanae and Shinobu. Their breathing was ragged, like they were horribly worn out.
Himejima hurried over to them, and Shinobu lifted her face, noticing him at last.
“Oh, Himejima. Welcome home,” she said, sounding utterly spent.
Beside her, Kanae staggered to her feet and quietly bowed, the same way she had when he left on his mission. “I hope your work went well,” she said. “We’re so glad you returned safely.”
“Girls.” Have you been here this whole time? he started to ask, and then frowned, sensing something was off.
The position of the rock had changed. It was far from a block, but the rock had indeed moved. For all that Himejima was unable to see, he had absolute confidence in his senses. How … ?
While he was at a loss for words, he felt the girls smiling at each other, full of satisfaction. Then Shinobu took his hand and gently set his palm on a cylindrical object that extended from beneath the rock. Himejima guessed at its purpose.
“A lever?”
“Yup.” Shinobu nodded.
They had dug out the earth beneath the rock, pushed in a stick to create a point of action, and inserted a log from nearby to create a fulcrum.
“Did the two of you come up with this?” he asked.
“I told you, didn’t I? My sister and I are smart,” Shinobu replied smugly. “But, well … We failed a bunch of times.”
Her hand on his was covered in dirt. The blisters on her palm had burst, and the skin was thick and hard. Kanae’s hands were likely in the same state.
“What?” Shinobu said grumpily when Himejima said nothing in praise of their efforts. “You got a problem with this?”
Her tone hid the fear on the other side of her words.
“You never said once that we couldn’t use a lever or something.”
She was worried about what they would do if their promise was broken and an unfair, hardheaded grown-up scolded them.
“A promise is a promise,” he said at last.
“Mm-hmm. That is correct,” Shinobu said as a challenge.
Himejima put a hand on her head, his cheeks softening into a smile. “I accept you.”
The tension finally drained from Shinobu’s small body. “Really?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So will you introduce us to a Trainer?” she asked eagerly.
“I will not shirk my duty,” he replied. “I will introduce you to Trainers of great skill.”
After this bit of negotiation, Shinobu cried out in joy, and Kanae let out a sigh of relief. Something warm filled Himejima’s heart after long years of cold.
“Kanae, Shinobu. Well done. You did it.” He called them by their names for the first time.
The younger girl sniffled, while the older smiled gently.
The next morning, the sisters set out on their journeys to their respective Trainers.
“Well then, each of you determine the details of your training and make your preparations.”
With that, the Hashira Meeting came to an end. As the Hashira—excluding Tomioka, who had left early—marched out of the tatami room, Shinobu came over to him.
“Himejima.”
“What?” he said.
“I can’t take part in the Hashira Training,” she told him. “I have something urgent to attend to.”
“Poison?”
“Yes.” She nodded coolly. “It will likely take a bit of time.”
“It will?”
Her voice was as it ever was. No tension, no enthusiasm. Not even the slightest hint of emotion. It was simply calm like the light of the spring sun, and endlessly kind.
It was almost exactly that of her late sister.
Shinobu had changed with Kanae’s death. The mannerisms, tone, bearing, and personality of her excessively kindhearted sister who cared for even the demons she was to defeat—Shinobu adopted all of it. And after the kind of training that made a person vomit blood, she had made it all the way up to the rank of Hashira. Anyone who had known Shinobu well in the past would have been unable to hide their surprise at how she was now.
You … Would you not have been able to go on had you not changed like this? Was it that painful? Was the agony that great?
Himejima no longer knew if his decision that day had truly been the right one. The two girls had worked hard under the Trainers Himejima introduced them to, survived the Final Selection, and wept when they were at last reunited.
But a few years later, Kanae died, and Shinobu lost her beloved sister. Himejima lost them both. The little girl who had come to him that day burning with rage, hatred of demons on full display, was gone now.
Regret was the one thing Himejima could not permit himself. No. He couldn’t regret his choices. Regret would have meant a denial of the way Kanae lived, true to herself to the last, dying heroically as a Demon Slayer—and of Shinobu’s feelings as she tried to carry out her late sister’s dying wish.
“Well then, if you’ll excuse me.” Shinobu dipped her head and turned her back to Himejima.
In that moment, he was overcome with an indescribable anxiety. He felt as though he would never see this girl again.
“Shinobu.” Unconsciously, he called out to that small back that carried so much on it, like he had when she was little.
She stopped, the air around her the slightest bit disturbed.
For the most fleeting of moments, he could sense a little girl on the verge of tears before him. This quickly faded, replaced by her usual calm aura, and she looked back at him. “What is it?”
Don’t go dying on me. He swallowed the words that were on the tip of his tongue.
The sisters really had been so close. They had loved each other from the bottom of their hearts, worked for each other, believed in each other, and each cared more for the other than either of them did for their own selves.
Shinobu no doubt lived now with nothing but vengeance for her sister in her heart, and there was no one in this wide world who had the right to try and stop her.
“Oh. It’s nothing,” he managed to say.
“You’re a funny one, Himejima.” Shinobu smiled, the slightest bit perplexed.
The same smile as her sister. Himejima couldn’t stop her from walking away now.