Moonlight

Twenty-Four

Muichiro and Sara entered Tanjiro's room together and found them asleep on the tatami mat. Lightly, Muichiro bent forward and pinched his nose.

"Do you know the swordsmith Kanamori?" He asked monotonously.

"Whoa, Tokito-kun!" Tanjiro sat up quickly. "Did you pinch my nose?"

"Yeah. That was a really slow reaction."

"No, no! I mean, I'd notice if you had malice or something."

"Well, I wouldn't pinch you if I had bad intentions."

"Ehh?? Then what would you do?"

"I dunno, probably slit your throat in the middle of the night or something."

"EHHH?!?!"

Getting back to the original topic, Tanjiro said, "Well, I do know Kanamori-san, but why? I thought he was Yuhiko-san's swordsmith."

Sara shrugged at the mention of her name. "I don't know where to find him."

"Oh, I think he's with Haganezuka-san."

"He's my new swordsmith." Muichiro explained with his usual bored expression. "Where Haganezuka?"

"Wanna look for them with me?"

"..." Muichiro paused for a second. "Why are you so concerned? Don't you have something else you should be doing?"

Tanjiro smiled warmly at the Mist Hashira. "Helping other people also ends up being beneficial to you at the end of the day."

Muichiro's eyes widened. Wait... huh? Someone's said that to me before.

"And I wanted to check up on them, so nice timing."

"Wha?" Muichiro short-circuited while trying process the information of that one sentence. "What did you say just now? Now, now..."

"Huh? Nice timing- Ow!!" Tanjiro shrieked when Nezuko suddenly sat up. "Nezuko! You're up!"

Yuhiko looked on, slightly amused at the relationship between the two siblings. When Nezuko calmed down, she stood up. "Come on Muichiro-kun, let's go look for Haganezuka-san."

"That's one strange creature there." Muichiro commented suddenly, referring to Nezuko.

"Oh! Is she?"

"Yeah, really weird, I can't put it into words... Have I met her before? Must've been some time ago, why..." His voiced trailed off and the four stiffened when they felt a presence at the door.

Oh, crap. Is Tamayo-san's cat back? Tanjiro wondered. I asked her to investigate Nezuko's blood change. I hope it won't show up in front of them...

"Looks like we have a visitor." Sara commented.

"Looks like it." Her fellow Hashira agreed.

She was about to say something along the lines of, "You can come in," but the door opened in its own.

And the creature that crawled in was a demon.

No one noticed... not even Yuhiko-san. Tanjiro realised.

The most shocking part was the skill needed to hide his presence. Although they had noticed someone there, neither Tanjiro, Muichiro nor Sara had recognised it as a demon.

They couldn't see the number since it was inside out, but they realised it was an upper moon. In that moment, not even lasting the blink of an eye, the three Demon Slayers assumed battle stances.

An Upper Moon, so he must have fast reaction speeds. Sara analysed the situation. He took us by surprise and there is little distance between us, meaning the best move to go for here is...