Mary On A Cross ✔

V.

Chapter 5: Living Together

Sun burned your skin as you sat on the engawa, your legs crossed watching Shinjuro training with a wooden sword against another Rengoku member. The other Rengoku looked like his copy but had short hair and a scar over his lip.

You smiled as you saw your future husband beat the other Rengoku who wasn’t ranked Hashira but was a demon slayer just like the family’s tradition was. Every child – that was male, and if they wanted – would end up entering the demon slayer corps after learning Flame Breathing.

You thought that maybe there was a change that you could train with them.

The sun was high at its peak burning and giving vitamins to anything and anyone. You hissed at how hot the sun was and the kimono didn’t help to make you sweat more.

You got up and grabbed the platter filled with tea and cups before walking inside in the shade. The night normally was cold while at night it was colder than normally back home.

Your steps were silent making you almost invisible with sound. You placed the platter in the kitchen before walking to your new room. The place was big and complicated. But most rooms were vacant or offices.

Your room was on the west side of the manor, the room as big and comfy. A big double shoji door that lead to the back garden filled with roses and spider lilies. On the left side of the room here was a closet with clothes and books. Beside them there was a small low table with a mirror.

The futon as new and comfier that laid across the shoji door with a low table beside it with flowers and a wisteria candle that was on a metal plate on it.
You slowly took the upper Kimono off and place it on the wooden mannequin before relaxing that it was now cooler than the hot air outside. You used a paper fan and moved it up and down in rapid speed to give you air.

“It’s hot here.”

How could the Rengoku family live in such hot weather? Why was it so hot here either? In the last few weeks you were living as Ruka you never felt the heat rice so much to make you sweat and feel dehydrated. Did it have to do with the family being related to fire?

***

Night slowly came and people chatted in the halls with loud voices filled with passion and joy, all were males since girls were never born for the last few thousand years. All were born the same, some may have longer hair or shorter, some with wider or taller bodies.

You would mix them with each other due to them being copies of each other, it was very confusing and frustrating to figure out.

You were sitting down on the low wooden table where sat Shinjuro, his unnamed father and mother who actually were ‘Minjuro’ and ‘Temari’. Both were already of age around their fifties but look healthy as ever.

The table was filled with chatter of many males that spoke over woman or their experience with demon slayers.

Unlike back in the Kamado Manor that was dull and silent the air tense between them, the air felt light and calm making you feel better of sitting there as the only woman. Across you at your fiancé, due to tradition the broom and bride weren’t allowed to sit together or in the same room alone until marriage.

It was a tradition of the Rengoku family.

The Kamado Clan didn’t have much rules around that area aside from the bride or groom of their side has to be virgin and pure and has to have white pupils to get married.

It wasn’t understandable why, but it was there.

The virgin part was understandable, but the white pupil? You were lost.

“Ruka-Sama,” you turned to see a man with the same looks as any other but had a small mole under his left eye and was around his twenties, “can you dance Himinokami Kagura?”

Right, you didn’t, you weren’t sure if Ruka could. But you just knew of it from when you watched the anime and wrote the manga, even as the author there were bits and pieces that you didn’t know of.

You realized that as you lived here for the last few weeks that the world has built its own side stories something you were amazed of.

“no I don’t,” you were honest, after all if you lied they would’ve asked you to perform dance until sunrise and you knew you’d die before midnight.

Minjuro’s eyes rose up to look at you, but you weren’t paying attention to him as he stared. He wondered, how you were more open than when he first met you. How were you more happy then when the news came to you like a bomb.

Your eyes shone with life, unlike when you lived in the manor.

(Did something happen?)

Maybe it was a good chance to make her see her life different than how she was forced to see them as. He knew that she couldn’t perform the Dance of the Fire god after the incident, that you couldn’t even use the breath.

Each time you tried you started to vomit blood. So automatically made your brother the heir of the family and made you the outcast of that branch. Reason why they wanted you to marry off, to get a ‘burden’ out of the Kamado house.

Not like Minjuro ever was in agreement with the head of the Kamado Clan.
It wasn’t her fault.

She didn’t do anything to deserve that horrible treatment, before the incident back then she was like a queen, she was all high and mighty until what happened. Resent was something that was seen from afar with her. Minjuro would see those changed in her and the family when he came to visit.

And then everyone was having a wonderful meal. One filled with chatter and laughter, aside from Minjuro who had a mind filled with thoughts and doubts.