“Heeey! Agatsumaaaaa! Where are youuuuu?”
“Hm? That’s Murata’s voice.” Zenitsu stood up at this familiar sound. He waved both his hands wildly in the dark in the direction the voice had come from. Murata and two other boys came running toward him carrying a large bundle wrapped in cloth, waving their own hands in turn.
“Sorry about before.”
“The former Sound Hashira’s scary.”
“Look! We snuck you some food. Eat. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Murata.” Zenitsu sniffled. “Guys.”
Inside the bundle were ten large onigiri rice balls.
“We’ve got cold water too.”
“Sob.” Handed a bamboo container, Zenitsu broke down in tears, overwhelmed by emotion.
Earlier he had been thinking things like, “They go and say that, and then run off. Those heartless jerks. You can all go to hell,” but they were good people at heart, after all.
Gratitude filling his heart, he brought the onigiri to his mouth. They were clumsily made and fairly salty, but they were perfect for his exhausted body. Inosuke was shoving two at once into his face.
“Aaah, onigiri’s so gooood.” Zenitsu was also glad for the large amount of pickled daikon and rice grasshoppers stewed in soy sauce that accompanied the rice balls. “But how’d you manage to sneak all this away?”
“Oh. We asked Suma. She’s the easiest one to ask.”
Suma was a woman with a warm aura, slightly clumsy in a cute way.
“Go on, eat. Eat and cheer up. I dunno what he’s got you working on, but you can’t do anything on an empty stomach.”
“Thank you so much,” Zenitsu said again.
“Forget it.”
“We’re friends and all.”
“We’re not gonna let that former Hashira with his hot wives beat us. No way.”
Zenitsu talked for a while longer with his thoughtful comrades, and then they left. Even after they were gone, he stared silently into the dark for a while. And then, once he finished his first onigiri, he reached out for the last one.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
The sound of the earth shaking came from Inosuke, despite the fact that he had already polished off eight of the rice balls.
Zenitsu’s hand stopped automatically. “You’re still hungry after eating all that?” he asked, exasperated. “Then go ahead and eat this one too. My heart is so full of mixed ba—the hot spring, I’m not too hungry.” He showed an uncharacteristic generosity.
Inosuke reacted oddly. “What’re you on about? That wasn’t me.”
“Huh? Then what was—” Zenitsu cocked his head to one side.
Grugrugrugrugrugrugrugrugrurrrrrrrr …
This time, he heard it quite clearly from behind Inosuke.
“No … way … Is that … ?” Zenitsu squinted nervously and saw an enormous bear standing in the dark trees. The bear, with an old scar running across one eye, was twice the size of a normal bear. Waterfalls of saliva poured from the sides of its mouth.
“Eeeeeeaaaaaaaaaah!”
“Simmer down! A bear like this, Lord Inosuke’ll make short work of it!”
His friend’s confident words did not reach Zenitsu through his own tumult.
“I-I-I-I-I-I taste bad! I’m sure I taste terrible! I! Seriously! Inosuke, too! He’s all muscles, nothing tasty there! Eeeaaaaah!” Zenitsu practically ran vertically up the trunk of a nearby tree.
“Hanitsu! That tree’s—” Inosuke called out as he grappled with the massive bear.
“Huh? W-what? What?!” Coming back to his senses, Zenitsu panicked for an instant, and then his field of view shuddered.
“It’s rotten inside,” the boar head replied.
“Maybe say that sooner?! I mean, come oooooon!” Weeping, Zenitsu fell along with the tree.
“Ow ow ow!” Pressing a hand to his shoulder, he stood up.
Bwwwwmmm …
Now he heard a somehow unpleasant sound. Clearly the sound of wings, of a certain insect. Ever so timidly, Zenitsu looked in the direction of the buzzing.
There was an enormous wasp’s nest in the trunk of the fallen tree, with several thousand furious giant hornets emerging from it.
“Gah! Gah! Gaaaaaaaah!” Zenitsu shrieked.
“Once I take care of this bear, I’ll help with those,” Inosuke said reassuringly. “So just knock ’em out of the air one by one!”
“Are you insane?! Those are giant hornets! They can kill you! You’ll die, you know?!”
“The males don’t have poison stingers. Take out the females first. Although, I mean, there are basically no males.”
“I’m supposed to know which is which?! How am I supposed to know that?!” Zenitsu shrieked this as all strength left his body. He grabbed Inosuke’s arm just as he knocked the bear flying, and departed the scene as fast as his legs could carry him.
“Huff huff huff huff.”
Zenitsu crouched on the ground, shoulders heaving as he panted for breath after racing around the mountains to escape the furious pursuit of both bear and wasps until he no longer knew where he was or how long he had been running.
“Aah, honestly. Aah, I thought we were dead. I seriously thought we were dead. It’s so good to be alive. Thank you, Nezuko. You saved me, thank you.”
“Why’d you drag me away?!” Inosuke exploded at him. The act of fleeing from an enemy had wounded his pride. Furious, he looked as though he would cut Zenitsu down at any second. “I could’ve taken out the bear and the wasps! You didn’t have to do that!”
“Oh, is that right?” Zenitsu snapped. “Actually, maybe you could have stopped them. You’re the king of the mountain and all. But those were giant hornets, and I was the one who brought down the tree, and I didn’t want you getting hurt or dying because of me, all right?”
Inosuke sniffed in sulky silence.
“So I took you and ran. Yeah, yeah, it’s all my fault. I’m sorry, okay? Totally thoughtless of me,” Zenitsu said carelessly, and for some reason, Inosuke stopped yelling at him.
Soon, however, he got angry in a new, incomprehensible way. “Don’t make me all warm and fluffy! You dodo! You, Sojiro, the both of you go and make me all warm and fluffy every chance you get! Next time you do it, I’ll kill you!”
“Huh?” The strange thing was that the sound Zenitsu heard from Inosuke indicated Inosuke was definitely not honestly angry. This bewildering sound was unstable, strangely childish, and yet impossibly stubborn.
What even is this? This guy drives me up the wall. Zenitsu slumped over. If only Tanjiro were there, he would have been able to soothe Inosuke. He was just so tired. He flopped down on his back. He could see so many stars in the gaps between the trees.
How was Tanjiro doing? Had he gotten a bit better at least?
He fought hard enough to break bones when he was supposed to be on bed rest. That guy’s really amazing.
If they managed to dig out a hot spring, would it help heal Tanjiro’s injuries? If it would, Zenitsu wanted to get him into it. As his mind drifted, he heard a faint sound, like the trickle of water.
Zenitsu yanked himself up and focused his entire being in his ears.
He was not wrong.
Something was sleeping underground only a few steps away.
This is …
Zenitsu looked at Inosuke, who met his eyes and nodded affably.
“You noticed it, Monitsu?”
“I-Inosuke … it can’t be …” Zenitsu’s voice was full of hope.
“I got it before you did.” Inosuke threw his head back smugly.
“Huh. Well, look at you two. You actually did it.” Uzui praised the two mud-covered Demon Slayers in uncharacteristically high spirits as he stood before the hot spring burbling up from the ground.
Although it was fairly shallow for a hot spring, Zenitsu and Inosuke had still dug fairly deep and now looked like filthy rats. The sky to the east had already begun to pale.