Blossoming Fissure | Tanjirou Kamado

25. Potatoes, lily bouquets and shamisen

From the start, things weren't going well.

The strategy her grandmother had established was simple. There were three houses Uzui suspected of holding a demon, and each boy would be sold individually to investigate them all.

Her grandmother, instead, insisted the demon hid in the Kyogoku house and that it would be easier to sell them all there. Ayaka pressured her into not being so careless, so in the end she chose the same strategy as Uzui (to her displeasure) and decided to send each girl, too, to a different house.

But when the madame of the Kyogoku house eyed Kanao and Ayaka and offered to buy them both, her grandmother accepted so quickly it was hard to believe she didn't plan on following any other plan that wasn't hers from the start.

Aoi, instead, was forced to be sold to a different house with a familiar face.

"I already told you I have an eye for these things," the madame exclaimed, wiping away the makeup from Inosuke's face, who was the most still and quiet he had ever been in his entire life.

Despite the fact that they had both been sold the same day, everyone fluttered around Inosuke and complimented his beauty, as Aoi was pushed back to the shadows and forgotten about completely.

"Huh, Aoi is here," Inosuke said when seeing her in the kitchen a few hours later, where they had sent her to peel potatoes. The workers in the house had already cleaned all the makeup off his face and had put on some new one, they had even washed his hair! Aoi had to wipe off her own by herself and had gone back to her usual pigtails, but her everyday looks weren't as wonderful as Inosuke's and she was assigned kitchen labour.

"They think you're gonna become an oiran." Aoi cut down on a potato too harshly when saying that. "But we are leaving once we finish our mission, so don't give them too much hope." Throwing a potato at his face that he caught mid air with his teeth, Aoi brought her hands to her waist. "And don't talk, or else they'll find out you're a boy."

"Shit, that's true, the flashy guy told me not to talk," Inosuke cursed, mouth open in a way that she could see the disgusting potato in between his teeth.

'And they think that this guy can become an oiran...' Aoi thought in annoyance.

"Hey, hey, maybe this mission will be so long I'll be able to defeat that other oiran." Inosuke took another few potatoes by his hand this time.

"If the mission takes that long, I will have left by then," she added, letting go of the knife and surrendering before his friend, who jumped at what little was left of what she had been cooking. Was that really what she was there for? Doing the same thing she did in the Butterfly Estate?

"Do you really wanna leave that bad?" Inosuke looked up, make up ruined, rests of carrot all over his face and eyes as wide open as a deer's who was taken by surprise. "Now that I think about it, you never go on missions."

"Well, what's wrong with that?" Aoi bit, sounding particularly bitter. "If I suddenly wanna go on a mission without a reason, it's my decision."

"But when that guy took you, it didn't look like you wanted to go with him," Inosuke continued, suddenly getting so close to Aoi's face that she stepped back. "Something happened in between, didn't it?"

She rubbed her arms, frowning, but Inosuke just went back to the food:

"Or maybe I'm just stupid," he said, swallowing an entire boiled egg before Aoi's disgusted expression.

"Right..." Aoi whispered, without trying to push him away from the counter. "Stupid..."

"My best friend, that's who's super smart," Inosuke muttered, tapping his chin. "Twenty... twenty... something... November? How was it?"