Blossoming Fissure | Tanjirou Kamado

30. Winter

Despite the fact that the streets are busy, the red light district has never sounded more silent to Uzui.

Not even the cicadas, which he heard just as much as Zenitsu did, truly sound in his ears.

He focuses on finding the demon, but comes out with empty hands.

It must be hidden, Tengen thinks, because he doesn't sense anything at all.

"What a surprise to see you here."

Kaede Fujioka's white head of hair appears behind him. Tengen narrows his gaze.

"Aren't you a little bit too old to be up here? You're gonna catch a cold, hag."

In response, he receives a hit with her wooden arrow right on his forehead. Tengen hisses.

"This is such an ugly place, so much black," she continues, looking down at where he was previously doing the same thing.

"I don't know about the black, but in that, we can agree." Tengen stands up. This way he's much taller than her. "What are you exactly doing here?" He raises a single eyebrow. "With me?"

"You're not gonna be able to sense them," Kaede ignores him. "Not even I can see them."

"That's pretty arrogant, isn't it?"

"It's just the truth."

Tengen huffs a little, but doesn't stop talking nevertheless. "By them you mean the demons, right? Is it really more than one?"

Kaede smiles with a half lidded gaze. "I'm not telling you anything."

"What an annoying old lady..."

"Either way," she completely and utterly ignores Tengen again. It's starting to piss him off, "I would be able to see them if I were to be in front of them, but that's not the case so I'll have to trust Aya for that."

"The demons... so they're in the houses? Are they maikos? Some oiran?"

"Man, you're really lost, aren't you?" Kaede squints at him and turns to leave. Tengen tenses his jaw at that. "Good luck surviving the massacre."

"I'm not the one with a fake leg, you know," he hisses. She stops on her tracks at that, looking back at Uzui. "You kicked me in the face, how did you expect me not to figure it out?"

She scrutinizes him with a glare. "Yeah, I guess that was my mistake."

"A bow is a very bizarre weapon choice for a demon slayer."

He hears a stifled laugh coming from her. "I just wanted to pissed off my parents back then."

"You know, I've tried looking into you." Her gaze remains unmoving, Tengen wonders what it might take to make her tremble. "The Fujiokas were a demon slayer family fifty years ago, but suddenly, not only did all the children died in missions," he believes to see her breath stop, and knows he's won this one, "but the parents, who had already retired, died not much time later in a fire that destroyed the family mansion that had been passed down for generations. And only you were left."

They wait in silence, there is not a single word.

So this is what it takes.

"Am I wrong?" Kaede doesn't answer that, either. "Now you're not so chatty, huh?"

"You're an asshole," she picks up her voice again, lunging at him with much more strength than she would have in any other occasion. "Don't think I don't know you, don't think I can't guess what kind of bratty son you are. The Uzuis are just as rotten as the Fujiokas, don't forget that."