Kitty - Sanemi x OC x Tengen

Ch. 12: Agreement

"Do you want to give up?" Tengen was sat on a tree branch as she crawled towards the tree, "WEAKLING!"

"I... am not... GIVING UP." She rolled on her back, thirsty and exhausted. It was just past noon and she'd been training for around 8 hours before that.

"I'm not recommending you if you're like this," he pointed at her, "unflashy and weak! Go crawl into a hole and wait for death, that's more honourable than this!"

"I did that and you brought me back!"

"You're not getting eaten by a demon while under my watch! Baka!"

"I'll... get better!" She tried to take control of her breathing and slow down the fatigue.

"You'll get better, what???" He held his palm next to his ear like he didn't hear it right.

"I'll get better... Tengen sama!"

"That's right! Worship me, you vermin! You'll go down as the weakest Hashira to ever exist." He groaned, "you should go back to being a Tsuchinoto or something. Did you say you defeated one of the Twelve Moons? Liar!"

"But I have!"

"Liaaarrrr~" he hooted before paying more attention to her, "oh- not bad, you took control of your breathing. You're finally using some braincells even though the words endurance or strength do not exist in your dictionary! Although I don't know how Tomioka and Rengoku approved of you!"

"I told you I'm not weak!"

"Yeah? You want to give up? Your body doesn't even match that mouth of yours. Get up or you won't get lunch!"

—————

Old lady Tsubari was worried when she saw Tengen walk inside with an unconscious Miyuki in his arms.

"Again?!" She felt terrible for her, "what training are you even doing?"

"Oh, I'm just testing her to see when she'll give up."

"Did she???" The old lady was rooting for her.

"She did not. Again."

"How long did she hold up for?"

"She's gotten better; she can stand my all-out training for, say, 12-14 hours now? It was 6 hours two weeks ago and her breathing has also gotten much better now." He shrugged before taking her to her room.

"You're horrible!" Lady Tsubari yelled at him.

"I'm horrible? She was already Hashira material when she came begging to me to train her! She didn't need this at all." He said.

"That poor girl has lost so much weight since she came here! And it's only been two weeks. She throws up all the time from exhaustion."

"She does?" He stopped and turned to look at his main house-help.

"Of course she does. How else do you think she can survive all of this? She eats as much as possible and tries to throw up as little as possible just to keep up with this unnecessary training of yours."

"Fine, I'll stop. She can take my recommendation at the end of the month and become a Hashira..." he lazily said before placing her in her bed and saw that she'd clasped a handful of his shirt. When he held her hand to remove the fabric from her hold, he noticed all the fading scars on her hand. He then looked at her legs which had a few scars too.