“Nice work.”
“Wow! This is pretty impressive. I mean, actually finding a hot spring underground!”
“I can’t remember the last time I was at a hot spring.”
“Oooh! Lord Tengen, let’s all of us get in together, okay? Okay?!” Uzui’s three wives, Makio, Hinatsuru, and Suma, cried out excitedly. It seemed that they really did love hot springs, and they appeared to be on the verge of stripping and jumping into the water any second now.
Finally … At last, mixed bathing with three gorgeous kunoichi …
Zenitsu’s heart pounded faster. If he let down his guard at all, his nose was likely to start spurting blood in his excitement.
“I’m getting in first!” Inosuke announced to the assembled party. “I’m gonna get strong and take you down, God of Festivals!” He struck a strange pose and snapped a finger out at Uzui.
“Uh, strong? What’re you on about?” Uzui looked at the boar boy dubiously. “You all right in the head?”
“What are you on about? Getting in a hot spring makes you stronger.”
“Whut?”
At this exchange between Uzui and Inosuke, Zenitsu floated down from his cloud of “mixed bathing, mixed bathing,” and all the color drained from his face. He had completely forgotten that he’d tricked Inosuke into helping him by telling him that he could get stronger in the hot spring.
“H-how about we set that aside for the moment? We have this hot spring at last, why don’t we—” He tried to intervene and cut the conversation short, but Uzui released the killing blow.
“You can’t get stronger from a hot spring. Did your tiny brain explode or something?”
Aaah! He actually said it! He totally said it loud and clear, this old dude! Read the room!
Zenitsu cradled his head in his hands. As for Inosuke, he froze silently on the spot.
“I … I-Inosuke?” Zenitsu timidly said to his friend, and the boar’s eyes shone with a hard light. “Eeeee!”
“You …” Inosuke’s voice was filled with unprecedented anger. “You went and lied to Lord Inosuke.”
“Eep! N-no!” Zenitsu winced.
“If you did, I’ll kill you right here and now.”
“I didn’t! Inosuke! This isn’t deeper than—” Completely white now, Zenitsu took a step back, a cold sweat pouring down his face. His feet slipped.
“Hey, Zenitsu. That moss under your feet’s wet from the onsen. You gotta be careful.”
Uzui’s voice sounded terribly far away. The world spun around. As he fell backward, Zenitsu had the bad luck to hit his head on a rock and black out.
“This is a hot spring? Feels a whole lot better than a bath.”
Sitting in the water up to his shoulders, Inosuke seemed to have completely forgotten about being angry at Zenitsu and was thoroughly enjoying the hot spring.
“You’ll turn into a prune if you stay in too long,” Uzui warned, having gotten out earlier.
“Shut up! You don’t get to tell Lord Inosuke what to do!” Inosuke began to splash around the hot spring.
“This jerk.” Uzui clicked his tongue, but to Hinatsuru, her husband didn’t look particularly angry. “Hey, Hinatsuru. How’s that jerk there doing?”
“He hasn’t woken up yet,” she replied. “He did hit his head, after all. We’ll have to keep an eye on him.”
Set off to one side, Zenitsu was still unconscious. His occasional moan of “mixed bathing” elicited pity.
“What about Makio and Suma?”
“They went back to make breakfast for everyone. They were talking about getting in the hot spring again tonight. Lord Tengen, you should …” Hinatsuru urged him vaguely.
“Yeah.” Uzui nodded and turned his gaze back toward Inosuke having a personal party in the hot spring. “I’m going back to train those dodos, but boar, you head out to the next training ground. And when you do, take this idiot with you.”
“Me going means you win!” Inosuke roared. “God of Festivals!”
“Hah! You’re about a million years too late to beat me.” Uzui snorted in laughter.
Hinatsuru wiped away the sweat beading on Zenitsu’s forehead with a cold cloth as she stared at her husband’s face in profile. He wasn’t in such a good mood just because he’d gotten in the hot spring.
“Lord Tengen,” she called.
Her husband looked back. “What is it, Hinatsuru?”
“Were you really using the hot spring as an excuse to get this boy to improve his foundational strength?” She had assumed he would deny this charge outright, but she was surprised when her husband acknowledged it.
“Well, you know,” he said.
The Uzui Hinatsuru knew was not the sort of man to simply nod in agreement at a time like this.
“This jerk’ll try and skip out the second you take your eyes off of him. I didn’t expect him to team up with the boar and get help, but they’re a surprisingly good combo, huh?”
Hinatsuru stared at her husband chatting happily like she was seeing him for the first time.
These three are my excellent Tsuguko!
She remembered the words she’d heard from her husband in the alley of Yoshiwara. For some reason, she had felt like crying then. Having lost an arm and an eye, and retired as Hashira, her husband had never had a Tsuguko to pass his techniques down to.
These boys had been with her husband in his final battle, after he’d spent so much time cutting down demons to save people while also shouldering the weight of the ninja world, and she thought they were truly wonderful.
“And if these boys … were actually Lord Tengen’s Tsuguko,” she murmured without realizing it.
Her husband looked at her, surprised, and then released a small smile. Hinatsuru felt something creak faintly in her heart at that smile.
“I’m not so great as to be able to raise up anyone else. I’m not like Rengoku and Kocho.” His voice was gentle and somehow sad.
Lord Tengen …
Sometimes, she wondered if he wasn’t actually a very sensitive person. If only he hadn’t been raised a shinobi. If he hadn’t been forced to kill from a young age. If he had been able to live in a place where the sun shone as a regular human being … The truth was, he was a gentle person.
Aren’t you trying to raise them up right now?
These boys who he had once fought alongside—wasn’t he trying to train them in his own way and make it so that they would survive the battles that lay ahead, no matter how fierce? Hinatsuru didn’t try to communicate these thoughts to her husband.
Before their final mission, they had sworn to each other under the burning red sky of dusk. Once everything was over, they would live out in the light, where the sun shone. They would move forward even if one of them was missing at that time.
But they had all managed to live through it. And now they were able to train the children who would bear the burden of tomorrow. That was more than enough.
“Hey, you! You’re gonna pickle yourself! Get out already! You lose your mind?!”
“Shut up … No one … gives me … orders …”
“Unh … Mixed … My … mixed bathing …”
Inosuke, red as a lobster, groaned in response to her husband’s exasperated command, and even Zenitsu muttered incoherently at the sound of his voice.
“Aah, come on! I’m done with you. Just go to Tokito’s already!”
Hee hee …
Hinatsuru giggled to herself as she closed her eyes. Behind her eyelids, she felt like she could see the smiling faces of the three boys all grown-up, even stronger, and her husband standing next to them, essentially retired, complaining.