Hanging her head dejectedly, Aoi turned toward Kanao and bowed once more. “I was already plenty deadweight before, being too scared of demons to go on a mission. To think I can’t even do the shopping right … I really am the worst.”
As she spoke, tears threatened to spill out of her eyes. She desperately held them back. The base of her throat grew hot, and she felt a pang inside of her nose. “I … Even I know I’m pathetic.”
Kanao watched her in response, saying nothing.
“I’ll try asking again. I’ll see if I can bring the money tomorrow.” She was about to turn away when Kanao’s hand reached out to her. Kanao patted Aoi’s head awkwardly.
This was not a typically feminine soft hand. This was the hand of a girl who had trained and worked until the skin grew thick. This hand had fought to protect someone, and at its touch, Aoi’s tears stopped.
“Kanao?” she said, confused.
The girl smiled the tiniest bit and took Aoi’s hand. With-out an “are you okay?” or a “let’s go,” she started walking.
“Are we going back to the Butterfly Mansion?” Aoi asked the girl silently pulling on her hand.
Kanao didn’t say anything. Not “yes,” not “no.”
“But this isn’t the way back to the … And we still need the medicine.” Aoi hesitated, looking back over her shoulder at the shop steadily growing distant behind them.
But Kanao kept on walking, as though she hadn’t heard Aoi.
Aoi sighed and resigned herself to the situation. It was things like this that made her not understand Kanao.
After walking for a bit, Kanao abruptly stopped. The road was packed with people.
“What’s this?”
Aoi took a hard look. It seemed that they were doing some-thing in front of the local drinking establishment.
Maybe some kind of show? she wondered absently.
“Oh dear! What adorable girls you are,” said an elegantly dressed older woman standing nearby. “Go on ahead and watch.” She half dragged them forward.
“Oh no, we’re—”
“Now that I’m looking at you, I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere, haven’t I? Don’t be shy. Have a peek. They’re neck and neck on the sweets.”
Aoi ended up peering at the tavern through the gaps between the other spectators and saw that a number of men and women were competing in an eating contest. Now that she thought about it, eating and drinking contests had been everywhere in the Edo era, but they had essentially dropped off the map as popular entertainment these days.
Forty-five manju, seven large bars of yokan jelly, seventy uguisumochi mini-cakes, four takuan daikon radishes. Voices cried out unbelievable numbers, and Aoi doubted her ears.
The appetite of the sumo wrestler taking up center stage was especially remarkable. He polished off a yokan bar in a split second and then stuffed manju after manju into his mouth. Just watching him was nearly enough to give her heartburn, but Aoi was more curious about Kanao’s reaction.
She hadn’t heard it directly from Kanao herself, but apparently her parents had been so poor that they had sold her to a procurer. Shinobu and her late sister rescued her from that fate and brought her up as a Demon Slayer.
Aoi was worried about what she would think of all this.
“Kanao?”
She glanced at Kanao timidly and found that the girl was staring blankly at the spectacle with the same emotionless expression with which she looked at everything else. A massive amount of food was being consumed—not because the people eating were hungry, not for the purpose of staying alive, but for sheer entertainment. Looking at the girl’s face in profile, Aoi felt like she could hardly stand it for some reason.
“Let’s go.” This time, Aoi took Kanao’s hand. She gripped it tightly, and Kanao looked up at Aoi curiously, without a word. They were about to leave when several people screamed.
“Wh—?!”
Aoi looked back and found that the sumo wrestler had collapsed. A half-eaten manju dropped from his hand and rolled away.
“Unh! Unh … Unh … Unh!”
The young wrestler’s face was ashen as he groaned for a moment or two. His eyes rolled back in his head before long, and he lost consciousness. He was frothing at the mouth. The spectators screamed once more.
“W-what?”
“Did he get some manju stuck in his throat?”
“Hey! Pry his mouth open!”
“Should we give him some water?”
Aoi heard some men in the crowd talking. It sounded like they were going to take some misguided measures in an effort to help the wrestler.
They can’t.
The moment she had the thought, her body was already moving.
“Excuse me! Excuse me. Please let me through! Let me through!”
She forced her way to the center of the crowd and knelt down beside the sumo wrestler. She checked his breathing, his pulse, his pupils, the inside of his mouth, and the sound coming from his stomach, in that order. The color drained from her face.
I knew it. This is more serious than him simply having something stuck in his throat.
To be blunt, his condition was rather serious. Shinobu would have been able to help him if she had been there, but the only one there now was Aoi.
Could she do it? Take someone else’s life into her hands? After all, she couldn’t even face a demon. But if I don’t, he’ll …
Aoi bit her lip hard and recalled the emergency procedures written in the medical books she’d read. She took a deep breath and called out to the spectators surrounding them, “This man could die unless we take action right now! Please, someone hurry and get a doctor!”
“G-got it! I’ll go!” a man shouted and ran off.
Then Aoi looked at Kanao beside her. “Kanao, go talk to the owner of the tavern and get the following items.”
Impatiently, she listed the bare minimum of things she would need to treat the wrestler. And then she remembered that that wasn’t enough to set Kanao in motion.
“Your coin—”
She looked over her shoulder and saw Kanao’s back as the girl raced inside the building. She paused.
It hadn’t been an order from Shinobu, their superior, and Kanao hadn’t tossed a coin to decide. She’d listened to Aoi and was doing as she asked. Confused and moved, Aoi turned back to her patient.
“Hey, you!” came a voice from the crowd, and a man with his hands stuffed in his pockets stepped forward. It was clear at first glance that he was no upstanding member of society.
“What’s going on, little lady? I bet a fair chunk of money on this sumo wrestler. If he’s got something stuck in his throat, get him to chuck it up, and then he can keep going. Don’t go making out like it’s some huge deal and getting in the way of my win. Got it?”
His breath reeked of alcohol. In all likelihood, he’d been placing bets with his friends. Unhappy at the abrupt interruption to the contest, he reached out toward the wrestler. Aoi stiffened and slapped his hand away.
“Did you not hear me?” she said. “This man’s life is in danger. He needs immediate treatment.”
“Hnh?” He arched an eyebrow at her.
“You’re in the way. Please get back.”
“What the—you little—” The look on his face changed, and he tried to grab her.
Aoi deftly dodged, caught hold of the man’s arm, and flipped him onto his back. Even if she was a failure as a corps member, she had still made it through that training hell. A man like this was nothing to her.
“I believe I said to get back.”
“Y-you … !”
“If you will not kindly cooperate, next time I will break your arm,” she announced coolly, narrowing her eyes. The man gulped loudly.
Perhaps her threat worked. The man left, albeit cursing the whole while and spitting out the standard “I’ll get you for this!” before vanishing.
To the suddenly excited crowd, Aoi said, “Everyone, please be quiet.”
Having driven her point home, Aoi shifted the wrestler’s body. When she had secured his airway, she saw Kanao racing toward her with all the things she needed.
“If this girl hadn’t been here, this sumo wrestler might well have died,” said the doctor who came running over at last. The remaining spectators let out a cheer.
“You did it!”
“Nice work!”
Aoi could hear people shouting here and there in the crowd.
“Aah, you girls are really something.” The old woman who had urged them to the front earlier was one of those people.
She looked at them admiringly and then slapped the plump shoulder of the tavern master and sponsor of the contest.
“Come now, Yoshitaro. You make sure you thank these girls properly. If you’d had someone die on you, you’d be in a real tight spot right about now, hm? Give them a generous reward.” Her attitude was friendly, and it was clear that the two of them knew each other.
“I will, fine. Honestly, I’m no match for you, Okayo.” The master turned to Aoi and Kanao. “Thank you so much for your help. Please, take these with you as a small token of our gratitude.”
Aoi was taken aback when he held out a cask of sake and a barrel of rice. She found she couldn’t respond.