“I see trouble with women in your future.”
“Huh … ?” Tanjiro stopped in his tracks at the ominous voice he heard above the hustle and bustle of the city.
Zenitsu and Inosuke came to stand beside him.
He whirled his head around in search of the voice’s owner and spotted a small, elderly woman in the crossroads. She was clad in a lavender kimono and covered in wrinkles, with a head of magnificent white hair.
Tanjiro turned questioning eyes on her.
The old woman shook her head slightly. “Not you,” she said curtly.
Tanjiro looked toward Inosuke.
“Not that pig head either. The fellow with the yellow hair there.”
“Huh?” Zenitsu, oblivious to the proceedings up to that point, looked shocked and pointed at himself. “What? Y-you can’t mean me?”
“Mm.” The woman nodded wearily.
“Ma’am, what do you mean, ‘trouble with women’?” Tanjiro asked.
“I mean the disaster that befalls a man because a woman finds him favorable,” the woman replied in a solemn tone. “I can see that fortune on the young man’s face.”
“What are you talking about, old hag?” Inosuke snorted. “You not in your right mind?”
“Inosuke!” Tanjiro chided him.
“Insolent child! I’m not an old hag!” the old woman roared.
Tanjiro and Zenitsu jumped the tiniest bit, but Inosuke was indifferent to her anger.
“So old geezer, then?” he said. “Guess it doesn’t much matter. Old is old.”
“I’m telling you for your own good.” The old woman had apparently decided to ignore Inosuke. She stared hard into Zenitsu’s eyes, boring holes into them, and sternly ordered, “Don’t go near any ladies today. Avoid them to every extent you can. If possible, it’s best not to even speak with one.”
“That’s just ridiculous.” Zenitsu smiled knowingly at Tanjiro. That smile froze on his face, however, at what the old woman said next.
“You will die,” she intoned.
“Ngah?!”
“If a lady starts to think kindly toward you, make no mistake, you will die—and in the most horrible way you can imagine. I pray you bear that in mind.” The old woman dug around in the deep sleeves of her kimono. She retrieved a beat-up paper charm. The characters written on the yellowed, torn scrap were essentially impossible to decipher.
“Won’t do much besides give your heart some peace, but take it.”
She pushed the charm into Zenitsu’s hand and walked away. She didn’t even press the boys for some outrageous sum as payment for the fortune or the charm. That made the whole thing more disturbing.
Zenitsu froze. He stood rooted to the spot as though his soul had fled his body.
“Zenitsu?” Tanjiro asked timidly.
“Aaaaiiiiiieeeeeeee!” Zenitsu shrieked with a high-pitched, annoying nasal whine.
The unbearably ugly scream, like that of a stuck pig, echoed through the crowd.
“What, what, really … What the heck? Me dying? I mean, that’s scaryyyyy.” Zenitsu clutched Tanjiro’s jacket as he completely lost his head, all kinds of fluids flowing freely down his face. “And we were just about to go home … Why did she have to tell me I’ll die? I don’t get it! It doesn’t make sense!”
“Zenitsu.”
Tanjiro had an inkling of how his friend felt. Having completed their mission outside of town the previous night, they had rested at a nearby Wisteria House and were just buying some treats to bring back to the Butterfly Mansion.
“If you can, please pick up some cakes or something on your way back.”
Shinobu Kocho, the master of the Butterfly Mansion, had made this request of them. She had perhaps been trying to give them a bit of a break, concerned that the three Demon Slayers had spent all their time training frantically ever since their mission on the Infinity Train.
This town was a rather large one, so everything they saw was new and strange. At first, Inosuke had hidden behind Tanjiro, frightened of the unfamiliar crowds, but he was soon chatting excitedly about everything that caught his eye.
“Hey! What’s that?” “That horse is hauling a huge box!” “Why are they dressed so weird?” “Doesn’t something smell real good? Is it that one with the little coat?!”
Zenitsu, the only one of them accustomed to the city, looked exasperated—“You’re so embarrassing”—but he put real effort and interest into selecting what they should bring back for the girls at the mansion.
As they considered which snacks were often set out at the Butterfly Mansion, they went back and forth with each other. Not that, not this one either …
Eventually, they settled on the safe choice of manju. At a shop popular with women they purchased enough of the tasty buns for everyone, and had been just about to start out on the road home when the old woman proclaimed Zenitsu’s sudden death sentence.
That would have thrown anyone into a panic.
“Noooooo … Why only me? Seriously, why? Come on, tell me! Aaauuuuugh!”
“Zenitsu, calm down.”
Zenitsu crumpled into sobs, and Tanjiro tried to console him.
“Meep, meep, meep, meep. You’re so loud,” Inosuke said coldly. “A man doesn’t shake in his boots. Ya gotta stand up and fight!”
“So mean!” Zenitsu opened his eyes wide in horror. “You’re so mean, Inosuke! I mean, I knew that, basically. But still, this is too much, you know? I might die here, you know?! And she said it would be a really horrible death too!”
“Inosuke, just think a minute about how Zenitsu feels,” Tanjiro interjected. He did actually feel bad for Zenitsu. “I mean, anyone would be shocked and scared if they got told out of the blue they were about to die.”
“Even from just some old hag’s ravings?”
“She wasn’t raving. She told his fortune.”
“Same difference,” Inosuke said flatly.
Thinking that Inosuke might not know what a fortune was, Tanjiro tried to teach him from scratch. “Listen, Inosuke. When we say fortune, we mean—”
“Like they say, fortune-telling’s hit or miss,” Inosuke cut him off. It appeared he was surprisingly versed in exactly what a fortune was.
Tanjiro opened his eyes wide in surprised admiration. “You really know your stuff, Inosuke.”
“Well, y’know, I am the boss and all.” Inosuke threw his chest out. “It’s real rough having such sloppy minions.”
Normally, Zenitsu would retort with something like “What are you the boss of, exactly?” or “I told you I’m not signing up to be your minion!” Instead, he simply pricked up his ears to listen and shook all over, looking like a cornered rabbit.
After thinking for a minute, Tanjiro nodded and turned to his friend. “Inosuke’s actually right here, Zenitsu.”
At the sound of his name, Zenitsu’s shoulders jumped up. He silently turned frightened eyes on Tanjiro.
“There’s not a fortune-teller in this world who always gets it right,” Tanjiro said. “There’s no way there could be.”
If there existed such a person, then they would be a god. They wouldn’t be human anymore. The frightening message had shaken more than just Zenitsu. Tanjiro had lost his head a bit too. But if they dealt with it as a fortune—nothing more, nothing less—then it was nothing to get unduly upset about.
“I … I guess so.” Relief gradually spread across Zenitsu’s face, and he sniffled loudly. “Now that you mention it, that granny seemed pretty dodgy, right? She’s got to be a fraud—”
“There’s a fortune-teller at the crossroads whose fortunes always come true?”
A woman’s happy voice drifted toward them, as if to drown out Zenitsu.
“Wha?!” Zenitsu shuddered and ducked behind Tanjiro.
Tanjiro and Inosuke turned toward the voice to see a pair of young women dressed in showy kimono, chatting and laughing as they approached.
“Yes. The old woman with the white hair and lavender kimono.”
“And she’s really never wrong?”
“As far as I know. A friend of mine did what the woman told her, and she was engaged to a wonderful man two weeks later!”
“Aah, how delightful!”
“But I heard there are people who didn’t do what she said and were seriously hurt.”
“Goodness! How frightening!”
“You just have to follow her instructions, and you’ll be fine.”
“Oh dear! But there’s no old lady in a lavender kimono here now.”
“Goodness, you’re right. I wonder where she went.”