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With a growl, Sanemi tackled his last opponent, sending him to the ground. His weapons went flying through the air and the man yelped in pain when he hit the ground hard. Before he had even stopped moving, he already lifted his hands in defeat, a pleading look on his face.
“I give up,” he stammered and flinched when Sanemi took a step towards him.
“Grab your weapon,” he snapped, barely able to hide his disdain. “A demon wouldn’t accept your surrender either.”
The man whimpered a bit but eventually he averted his eyes and struggled to his feet, his face twisted in pain. Sanemi watched him, void of any emotion. When he noticed the whisper of the other demon slayers behind them, he turned around and gave them one stern look. They shut up immediately and stared at the ground as if they had never seen anything more interesting. Sanemi glared at them for a moment and asked himself how long he would be able to last before he lost his patience and ripped their heads off.
Luckily, his thoughts were interrupted by the man in front of him who had gotten up and now pointed his sword at him, his hands visibly shaking. Sanemi stared at him and for a moment, he contemplated teaching the corps a lesson by showing this unlucky demon slayer what would happen if this was a real fight. He almost succumbed to the temptation until, just in time, he asked himself what Oyakata-sama would say if he stabbed one of the lower ranks just to prove a point. He raised his head and eyed his opponent whose face was contorted with terror. He seemed to have read Sanemi’s mind and what he had seen, had put the fear of God into him.
With a sign, Sanemi let his own sword sink down and gave the demon slayer a dismissive wave before he wordlessly turned away. He heard the sound of two dozen feet shuffling behind him as they all tried to get away from him as fast as possible. Without looking back, Sanemi walked towards his residence – and stopped mid-motion when he realized that he would lose his mind if he continued this day the same way he had done so for the past few weeks. He spent the whole day training useless idiots who were barely competent enough to know which end of their katana was the one they had to point at their enemy. All day, every day. Get up, have breakfast, waste your time, have dinner, go to bed. Rinse and repeat. The only redeeming feature were his nightly trainings with Obanai and Muichiro but even those had become increasingly infrequent as the training of the corps members progressed slower than they would have liked. Even though he himself was not necessarily overly worried, even he felt the tension that grew with every night the demons kept themselves hidden away. And the tension manifested in a fiery pit in his stomach that grew bigger with every frustrating day that passed.
With a start, he whirled around and marched towards the gate of his personal training ground, leaving the hushed noises and groans of the demon slayers behind that had seemingly already started tending to their wounds. With a feeling that he would explode if he stayed one more minute, he stormed through the gate. Only when he was out of sight of the training ground, the ringing in his ears finally quieted down. Sanemi heaved a deep sigh and stared at the sky while his feet carried him along one of the many paths leading away from the training ground. The horizon started taking on a shade of red, the sun quickly sinking as if it was falling from the sky. If he was not mistaken, he had less than an hour left before nightfall. More than enough time to get some distance between him and the useless demon slayers whose whiney visages slowly started following him into his nightmares.
Sanemi quickened his pace and only halfheartedly asked himself where the path he had taken even led. After a moment of contemplation, he concluded that he would find out eventually. Not that it would make any difference as he did not have a goal in mind anyways. And thus, he walked wherever his feet led him.
After a while, he noticed that the narrow path started to grow broader. With every step it looked less than a game path and more like something that at least resembled a street. This impression grew when two other paths joined this one, turning it into a street after all. Sanemi stared at the road ahead and involuntarily asked himself whether he might find a place to eat along it. Somewhere between the start of sunset and now, his stomach had started growling. Too late, he had noticed that he had not eaten anything since breakfast and even though his day had mostly consisted of beating up lower ranks, his hunger grew with every passing minute. He huffed and kicked a stone on the road harder than he should have, sending it flying. A sharp noise somewhere close told him that it had bounced off something hard and Sanemi squinted in the direction of the sound. When he could not see the source of the sound, he shrugged and continued down the road that bent around a hill.
He had not entirely passed by the hill when he saw a sliver of light, bathing the road in a peculiar pattern of twilight and deep shadows. Curious, he turned the corner and found himself only a couple dozen steps away from a house that had been hidden from view by the hill. Warm light flooded through the windows and Sanemi sighed in relief when he recognized it as one of the many buildings that belonged to the demon slayer corps. If he was lucky, he would be able to get ahold of something edible – which was getting increasingly more urgent, considering that his stomach now growled louder than he himself did when expressing his discontent with his trainees. Almost without noticing, Sanemi hurried towards the door and knocked.
Less than ten minutes later, Sanemi sat at a narrow table, a bowl of soup in front of him. The elderly woman that had given him the soup vanished back into another room after giving him a kind smile that he returned with a curt nod. He inhaled the hearty smell of the soup when he heard steps somewhere behind him that abruptly stopped. Sanemi did not bother turning around but he did pause, the spoon hovering somewhere between the bowl and his mouth. He waited for a moment, annoyed at the disturbance and just when he had gotten enervated to a point that he set the spoon down, preparing to turn around, the person started moving again, their steps hesitantly coming closer. And then, the person came into his field of vision.
“Shinazugawa-san,” a distressingly familiar voice said, “what a surprise to see you here.”
Sanemi froze and stared at the spoon that reflected his bewildered face. He stared into his own bloodshot eyes and asked himself silently what he had done to deserve this. It took him all of his strength to raise his head and meet the blue eyes looking at him expectantly.
“Giyuu-san,” Sanemi said through clenched teeth, holding onto his spoon as if it was about to stab him should he let go of it. For a moment, he contemplated getting up and leaving but since the elderly woman had led him into the first story of the building, his way out was blocked by Giyuu who conveniently stood between him and the stairs leading down.
Giyuu stood there for a moment, looking at him blankly. Sanemi felt increasingly uncomfortable under his gaze and shifted his weight into a different position, waiting for Giyuu to make a move that would hopefully lead him somewhere else, as far away as possible. But when Giyuu stayed completely still for another minute, he had enough and huffed, pulling away from the look out of those blue eyes. He stared at his soup, intently ignoring Giyuu’s gaze. He picked up the spoon and slowly started eating. To his surprise, the soup tasted better than expected, almost good enough to make him forget that the Water Hashira was still standing next to him, staring at him relentlessly.
He had emptied half of the bowl when he finally registered a movement next to him. His muscles relaxed in relief – until Giyuu moved past him and slowly sat down across from him. For a moment, they stared at each other silently. Sanemi’s skin started crawling as he waited for Giyuu to say something and he caught himself wishing he had never left his training ground. A few hours ago, he had thought nothing could be worse than having to spend another minute with his trainees but he now realized that this had been nothing compared to his current situation. Sanemi was used to people being upset or angry around him but he had no experience with the eerie silence that grew between them.
Giyuu’s unmoving face became more unsettling by the minute and Sanemi wanted nothing more than for him to vanish into thin air. But since he had never been the type to shy away from confrontation, he aggressively returned the stare while continuing to eat his soup, internally struggling not to choke on it. When he finally finished the bowl, his whole body felt hot and the nails of his left hand had dug deep into his skin. He felt something boiling in his stomach and he was not sure whether it was the soup or his rage. But since he was not about to show any weakness, he kept a straight face.
When he finally pushed the bowl away and decided to get up and leave without a word, Giyuu started moving again. He looked down for a moment and reached for his right sleeve with his other hand. Sanemi froze and watched him as he pulled a small package with a blue ribbon around it out of his sleeve. Giyuu looked at the package and then at him before he slowly extended his hand and held the small box out to Sanemi. Sanemi stared at it, asking himself whether he was stuck in some sort of fever dream and just had not realized yet that this was not reality. This had to be it as there was no other explanation for this entirely surreal situation. He stared at the small box in Giyuu’s hand, asking himself if this dream would get even crazier, should he accept it.
“Take it,” Giyuu said so suddenly that Sanemi winced. “It’s for you.”
And before he knew what he was doing, Sanemi took the small box, careful not to touch Giyuu’s hand in doing so. He regretted accepting it almost instantly but since it would be even worse to admit his mistake, he opted for the flight forward and instead tugged at the blue ribbon that kept the box closed. With a sensation of him standing somewhere beside himself, looking down at his body, he pulled the ribbon away and opened the box.
The lid came off and revealed two beautiful rice cakes covered in bean paste. Sanemi’s ears started ringing again and he looked up automatically when Giyuu spoke up again.
The smallest smile appeared on Giyuu’s face when he nodded encouragingly. “I remembered that ohagi are your favorite food. I made them for you.”
Sanemi stared at him, frozen in place. He heard his own blood rush in his ears as he struggled for a coherent thought. But all that came to mind was the entirely dissociated thought that the ohagi did in fact look very appetizing.
Giyuu’s smile slowly faded away and gave way to a concerned expression. He tilted his head and looked at Sanemi contemplatively. Suddenly, his face lit up and he carefully grabbed one of the ohagi. Sanemi watched entirely bewildered as Giyuu’s hand came closer, the ohagi between his thumb and forefinger. He only realized what was happening when Giyuu smiled at him and said, “Open your mouth!”
At one go, Sanemi threw himself backwards, away from Giyuu and his still outstretched hand. He sprang to his feet, his heart racing in confusion and fury. He glared at Giyuu who looked up to him in utter confusion. “If you ever do that again, I’ll throw you out of the fucking window, you –“
Sanemi stopped mid-sentence when Giyuu carefully set the ohagi back down in its little box and got up. He watched speechlessly as Giyuu walked towards the window and peeked out into the darkness.
“What are you doing?” Sanemi asked, feeling like he was about to lose his mind.
Giyuu kept looking out of the window, a pensive expression on his face. “I’m checking how high it is and whether it would be worth it.”
“You … what?” The floor suddenly felt like it was pulling Sanemi down. He leaned against a wall, the room spinning around him, his gaze fixed at Giyuu who now turned back to him.
Again, Giyuu gave him this small, goofy smile that made Sanemi want to jump out of his skin. “Would it make you my friend if I let you throw me out of the window?”
And at this point, Sanemi’s mind gave up. He heard a weird cracking sound somewhere inside of him and he slowly let himself sink down, his back against the wall. He was fairly certain that he was either in a fever dream that he probably would not survive considering how trippy it was – or this was reality and Giyuu had entirely and irrevocably lost his mind.
“My … friend?” he asked weakly, hoping frantically that he had misheard Giyuu’s words.
But Giyuu nodded earnestly, a hint of concern in his blue eyes. “I hoped that we would become friends if I gave you ohagi as a gift. That’s why I made them for you.”
Sanemi stared at the ground exasperated, desperately trying to make sense of what was happening. And of course, it was this exact moment his stomach chose to produce the loudest rumble he had ever heard. His face started feeling hot and he stared intently at his hands. He closed his eyes when he heard movement next to him.
“Would you … would you like to eat an ohagi?” Giyuu asked, this time sounding almost timid.
Sanemi opened one eye and to his relief, Giyuu had sat down at an appropriate distance. He again offered the ohagi to him, but this time he only held out the box to him. Sanemi was about to shut his offer down when his look accidentally grazed the ohagi. And these ohagi did in fact look very good.
His thoughts were interrupted by another set of steps that slowly came up the stairs. Sanemi looked in the direction of the stairway and his eyes widened when the elderly lady appeared in the doorframe, carrying two tea bowls. “Matcha for you two, my dears,” she said with a warm smile and handed each of them a tea bowl before she quietly left for downstairs again.
Sanemi stared at the matcha and without being able to do something about it, he looked at the ohagi again. His stomach growled again and his mouth started watering. And when his nose caught a waft of the characteristic matcha smell, he broke.
Without looking at Giyuu, Sanemi very slowly reached for the box sitting in Giyuu’s palm. And with the feeling that he was starting on a path of no return, he carefully took one of the ohagi. It had just the right texture and he could not resist any longer. He took a bite and shivered when the heavenly taste filled his mouth.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Giyuu did not move a muscle, staring at him with widened eyes. Sanemi sighed and grimaced, not able to believe what he was about to do. “We’ll share,” he finally said through clenched teeth. “You eat the other one.”
Before he had even closed his mouth, he quickly turned his attention back to his matcha and ohagi that made for a combination straight out of paradise. And only a moment later, he heard the soft rustling of the box when Giyuu took the second ohagi.
They sat next to each other in silence, quietly drinking their matcha, interrupted only by them taking bites of the ohagi. And even though he would never admit it to Giyuu, the ohagi were indeed delicious. Sanemi dreaded the moment when he would have finished eating it. When he sensed Giyuu moving a bit next to him, he paused and waited.
And after what felt like an eternity, Giyuu spoke up again. “So, do you think we could be friends?” he asked, his voice so quiet that Sanemi had to listen closely. “Or do you still want to throw me out of the window?”
Sanemi thought about it. The mental image of throwing Giyuu out of a window did seem enticing still. But then he looked down at the rest of the heavenly ohagi and grudgingly admitted to himself that sending Giyuu flying through the air would drastically reduce his chances of getting a taste of these ohagi again. Maybe Giyuu was not that bad after all, he concluded hesitantly.
“Will you make more ohagi if I don’t throw you out of the window?” he asked reluctantly, still avoiding to look at Giyuu.
But when Giyuu spoke, he heard the small smile in his voice. “I’ll keep making ohagi until you agree to be my friend.”
“That might take a while,” Sanemi quickly said, in a last attempt to deter him.
For a moment, Giyuu kept quiet. Then, he shifted to the side so that he could look at Sanemi. The movement caught Sanemi’s eye and before he could stop himself, he returned Giyuu’s gaze. And this time, the smile forming on Giyuu’s face was as bright as the sun when he said, “We have a deal.”