Sunlight slipped lazily through the half-open shoji, turning the floating dust into a soft, luminous haze. The air itself felt quiet—peaceful, almost unreal.
Inside the Butterfly Mansion, a boy and a girl sat facing each other.
Between them, the table was crowded with stacks of empty bowls—dish after dish piled into small towers.
A breeze drifted through. A few strands of Shinobu Kocho's deep violet hair—dark as night—fell across her forehead. Her long, curled lashes fluttered as she tilted her head slightly. The signature haori on her shoulders, thin as butterfly wings, rose and fell with her breathing, tracing the delicate lines of her small frame.
Most people knew Shinobu as someone who always wore a gentle smile, fragile and sweet.
But anyone who truly understood her knew better.
The Insect Hashira was a flower with thorns—undeniably so.
And yet, at this moment, that thorned flower looked… lost.
Her brilliant purple eyes blinked, wide with disbelief, fixed on the boy in front of her.
Revenge…?
To take revenge with her own hands—against Upper Rank Two, the demon who had stolen her sister's life?
Of course she had imagined it. Countless times.
From the moment she had watched Kanae fade away in her arms, Shinobu had sworn it—no matter what it took, even if it meant going to hell with him, she would kill him.
But—
Even with that resolve, reality was cruelly clear. It left her with little reason to believe.
Upper Rank Two stood at the very summit of demons. Ordinary poison—no matter how cleanly it struck—would be broken down in an instant. And she, small enough that she didn't even possess the strength to sever a demon's neck…
In a conventional fight, defeating Upper Rank Two was close to impossible.
Her only chance lay in the information Kanae had left behind in her final moments:
Upper Rank Two was monstrously twisted. He enjoyed playing with human hearts—and he preyed specifically on young, exceptional women.
So if Shinobu turned herself into poison…
If she infused her body—her blood, her bones, her organs—until she became a living doll of concentrated wisteria toxin…
And then allowed Upper Rank Two to eat her—
That was the only path to revenge she had ever been able to see.
…Or at least, it should have been.
But ever since this boy appeared, everything that had once been "common sense" had started to collapse.
He looked fifteen or sixteen at most—still growing, still in that awkward stage between boyhood and adulthood…
And yet he could cut through a demon's neck with ease.
A talent with the blade beyond reason. A realm of skill beyond imagining. And those eyes—eyes that seemed capable of seeing straight through the world itself.
At first, she had doubted him.
But from the moment Upper Rank Three fled, abandoning an arm behind him—
From that instant on, the dead stillness in Shinobu's heart had begun to shake.
Was it possible…?
Was there truly a way to defeat that demon without sacrifice?
The thought echoed again and again inside her head.
Silence gathered between them.
Their gazes met, and in the quiet she could even hear the wind outside, the rustle of leaves shivering against one another.
After what felt like an eternity, Shinobu tugged at the corner of her mouth, forcing her familiar gentle curve into place. With a soft smile, she said lightly,
"Tanjiro-kun… as a joke to tease an older woman, that really isn't very funny—"
"I'm not joking."
He cut her off with calm certainty.
Those clear, dark red eyes—so transparent it felt like looking into still water—moved over her without haste.
Beneath the loose haori, her body looked especially small and slight.
Her slender waist, bound by the Demon Slayer uniform, seemed so fragile it could break in a single hand. The collar revealed delicate collarbones, pale and vulnerable, and faint blue veins could be seen beneath her fair skin.
A woman's body—beautiful enough to make one's breath catch.
But in his Transparent World, what he saw was something else entirely.
Inside that graceful shell, the blood vessels, the bones— even the edges of her heart—were stained by a deep violet poison. Every cell cried out in silent agony.
This was a body committing slow suicide.
He stared for a long time before speaking again.
"If that is what you truly want… then I will help you."
Shinobu froze.
She had intended to smooth it over again—to laugh it off with that flawless, practiced smile, as she always did.
But under his unwavering gaze, the playful words jammed in her throat. She couldn't force them out.
His eyes were too clean.
So clean it made her own little calculations and disguises feel childish—clumsy, even shameful.
At last, her smile crumbled, piece by piece, until what remained was a vulnerability she had never shown anyone. Confusion. Fragility. A kind of quiet despair.
"Why…?"
The whisper was so faint it seemed it might dissolve into the air.
No one had ever known her secret—not even Giyu, not even the Master.
And yet this boy had noticed from the beginning. He had seen through her body. And even after hearing the name "Upper Rank Two," he hadn't flinched.
As though, in his world, "Upper Rank Two" was not some invincible god at all.
Then his voice came again, more serious than before.
"After I warned you last time, you reduced the amount of poison you were putting into your body… but you still haven't stopped."
"If you continue, you will die. Not by a demon's hand—by your own poison."
Without thinking, Shinobu lifted a hand and brushed her cool cheek, dazed. Her lips pressed together, dry.
"You don't want to die. So why force yourself to go that far?"
Shinobu took a slow breath.
Almost immediately, she put her mask back on—her perfect smile returning, her tone turning teasing, lightly mocking as if to widen the distance between them.
"My, my. What a worrying child you are. You're this concerned about me—could it be you like your big sister Shinobu… and you can't bear the thought of me dying?"
It was a joke meant to push him away.
At his age, a boy should have flushed and denied it.
But—
"Yes."
No hesitation.
He nodded, calmly.
The air seemed to harden into silence.
Shinobu's smile froze on her lips. The purple eyes she usually kept half-lidded to hide everything inside her opened involuntarily, wider and wider.
She looked up.
What met her was not embarrassment, not flirtation, not the slightest hint of frivolity.
Only a gaze so intent—and so matter-of-fact—that it felt as though the entire world had narrowed down to her alone.
In those dark red eyes, her stunned reflection was perfectly clear.
There was no boyish shyness. No romantic heat. No suggestive lightness at all.
Only something purer than any of those.
A simple, unwavering reverence for life.
"Why…?"
After an unknown stretch of silence, Shinobu's voice returned—dry, trembling, barely steady.
He looked at her as though he could see beyond flesh, beyond poison, beyond hatred—into the soul that kept smiling through pain, still reaching out to treat the wounded.
"Even while carrying pain that would crush most people… you still show kindness to others."
His tone remained calm, certain—each word striking like a quiet knock against her heart.
"Someone like you should never wither away like that… I just want you to live."
He paused, then asked softly—as if the answer were self-evident.
"…Do you need any more reason than that?"
-------
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