The server clearly pushed them all the way to the hinterlands to keep them far from the other customers. This was actually a blessing at the moment, and Tanjiro was thankful.
Zenitsu took the inside seat and clutched his knees to his chest. Tanjiro sat next to him, and Inosuke across from him.
Menu in hand, the first thing Inosuke said was “I can’t read it.”
“This is ‘a’ in hiragana. This one’s ‘i.’” Tanjiro read the characters out one by one, like he used to for his little brothers. “The same ‘i’ as in your name, Inosuke.”
“Lord Inosuke’s ‘i’!”
“This is ‘su,’ here’s ‘ku.’”
“Eeeeeeeeeeee!!” Zenitsu shrieked from the chair beside him.
“What’s wrong?” Tanjiro asked, stunned.
With a trembling hand, Zenitsu pointed at a girl sitting at a table across the room. “That girl looked at me and froze. She’s fallen in love.”
“Sorry. I don’t understand at all what you’re trying to say,” Tanjiro said sadly.
Despair in his voice, Zenitsu shook his head in an exaggerated manner and said, “I mean, they’re all looking at me. All the girls in this cafe have maybe fallen for me. Unnnh … What am I going to do, Tanjiro?”
“This guy’s hopeless,” Inosuke interjected.
“Inosuke,” Tanjiro said in gentle rebuke.
“He was always a creep, but we’re talking danger zone here. He can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality anymore.”
“Inosuke,” Tanjiro said again. His friend always came straight out with things, even when he shouldn’t.
Another woman came then to take their order.
“Er … Have you decided?” Her voice was tense and trembled slightly, perhaps because she was clearly on guard against Zenitsu.
Getting the wrong idea once again, Zenitsu began to shake. “Eee! This woman keeps glancing at me. I just know she’s going to ask me out … Scary scary scary scary so scared so scared so scared so scared—”
“Behave yourself.” Tanjiro knocked Zenitsu on the head just as the yellow-haired boy was on the verge of exploding again. “She’s just freaked out. Don’t make trouble for the server!”
He didn’t think he’d hit him that hard, but Zenitsu’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell face-first onto the table like the thread of tension holding him up had been cut.
With Zenitsu finally quiet, Tanjiro bowed his head once more. “I’m sorry for all the fuss.”
“I-it’s fine.” The woman had tears in her eyes.
Tanjiro wanted to release her as quickly as he could, but he didn’t know what anything was by looking at the words on the menu.
Just when he was wondering what to do, Inosuke pointed and said, “Hey, doesn’t that thing look good?”
Tanjiro looked over and saw a girl at a nearby table eating something that looked like a white manju in a glass dish, using a spoon. From the way the girl was eating, it seemed to be extremely cold, and something long and thin like a senbei cracker accompanied it. Tanjiro was curious what it tasted like.
“Three of those, please,” he ordered.
“Right away.” The woman smiled, obviously relieved, and hurried from their table.
“Here we are. Our specialty, ais kreem.”
Their order was brought surprisingly fast, but it was yet another woman who carried it. This one looked fearsomely tough, with a physique that would make a sumo wrestler proud. Just one of her arms was more muscular than Tanjiro or Zenitsu’s thighs, or even Inosuke himself.
“It melts quickly, so please enjoy it right away.”
“Ooh! Thank you!” Tanjiro thanked her with a smile and noticed with trepidation that the woman’s proud physique had roused the fighting instincts of the belligerent Inosuke. Tanjiro’s heart was in his throat, worried that his friend would challenge her to a fight.
“Yahoo! I was sick of waiting!”
Fortunately, however, the feast in front of Inosuke’s eyes entranced him, and he had no time for fighting. Tossing his boar head aside, Inosuke excitedly grabbed his spoon and brought a heaping spoonful of the white stuff to his mouth.
“O … oh,” he moaned.
When Tanjiro looked at him, he was trembling with emotion.
“This is super amazing! What is this?!”
“She said it’s called ‘ais kreem.’” Tanjiro told him the name he’d heard from the server. And then he took a bite himself. “So good!”
His eyes grew round in surprise. It tasted totally different from a manju. Whatever this “ais kreem” was, it was surprisingly sweet and cold. But in his mouth, it melted and disappeared almost immediately.
“Yum yum yum, yum yum yum,” Inosuke said loudly, scarfing the treat down. Inosuke was essentially harmless when he was eating delicious food. Plus, beneath that boar head, his face was unimaginably handsome, and he was quite the attractive, fair-skinned young man. Maybe that was why the eyes of the girls in the cafe were focused on him.
For some reason, that was the moment Zenitsu chose to wake up.
“Ah?!”
“Oh, you’re awake, Zenitsu?” Tanjiro sighed with relief. “Your ais kreem’s here. It’s really good. I’m sure eating it will take your mind off things.”
His words didn’t reach his friend’s ears. Zenitsu was as pale as a sheet of paper.
“I feel eyes on me …”
“Huh?” Tanjiro glanced at him.
“Not ‘huh’!” Zenitsu cried. “Can’t you feel how passionately these girls are looking at me? What am I going to do? I’ll die, you know! I’ll die in the most gruesome way anyone could think up, okay?”
“Calm down, Zenitsu,” he said soothingly. “You’re bothering people.”
“Nooo! Nezuko, Gramps, save meee! I don’t want to dieee!”
“Zenitsu!” Tanjiro snapped at him.
“Excuse me, sir, but I’ll have to ask you to step outside if you continue to make such a commotion,” the tough woman warned softly.
Zenitsu stared at her. “Huh? What? Did you just say, ‘Sir, I love you. I’m shy, so would you mind stepping outside’ … ?”
Mishearing her in an impossible way, he immediately began to shake. “Eeeeeeee! A confession of love! She’s going to ask me out, this is how it starts! Noooooooooooo!”
Shrieking at the top of his lungs, Zenitsu pushed Tanjiro out of the way and fled the cafe before Tanjiro even had the chance to call out and stop him.
“Zenitsu …” He stared after his friend, dumbfounded.
Maybe because Zenitsu was that upset, he had forgotten the paper charm he’d gripped so tightly.
Across from Tanjiro, Inosuke was absorbed in his “ais kreem” and hadn’t noticed Zenitsu’s departure. Tanjiro gently picked up the charm Zenitsu had left behind.
“Sir, that charm … Where did you get it?” the woman asked in a stern voice, frowning.
“Now what? Where did you go, Zenitsu?”
Tanjiro looked for his friend on the busy streets. If they were on the mountain, his yellow hair would have been easy to spot, but the town was filled with all kinds of color. People were dressed in an array of outfits, so finding Zenitsu would be a bit of work.
According to the server at the cafe—her name was Saya—there was a fake fortune-teller who passed herself off as the real famed fortune-teller of the crossroads. She had her fun scaring passersby with evil pronouncements. Saya said she’d had another customer come across this fake, and the charm they’d shown her was exactly the same as the one that Zenitsu had received. When Tanjiro told her about what had happened, Saya was deeply sympathetic.
“I’m off work in a bit here, so I’ll help you look for him,” said the kindhearted girl. “I know this town pretty well.”
Tanjiro was delighted to have an extra pair of eyes on the job, but they still couldn’t seem to find Zenitsu. Zenitsu couldn’t have fallen into despair and … No, he wouldn’t do that. Tanjiro was clearly flailing. All these terrible images kept popping up in his mind.
“Can’t you smell that dodo?” Inosuke asked.
“I’ve been trying for a while, but there are so many other strong smells getting in the way. I can’t pick out his scent.” Tanjiro frowned.
Something Saya had told him was “perfume”—some kind of smelly water, apparently—wafted up from most of the women. This sea of scent confounded his nose, and his abnormally keen sense of smell was of no use.