Sakiya Aikawa was a girl with tragedy flowing through her veins and fury muted beneath her skin. She was living proof that a shattered heart could still beat. She had spent her entire life chasing one purpose after another. She was not born strong...
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The burial grounds slept in their usual hush, all pale smoke and paper prayers and sunlight slanting through wisteria and pine that shivered whenever the wind remembered to breathe. The grass out here always felt softer, like the earth itself was trying to be gentle with the dead. Sakiya sat cross-legged in front of the small lacquered shrine she'd made for her family, the one she maintained with a stubborn kind of tenderness: new incense each week, fresh water every morning, white pebbles rinsed and lined the way her brother used to sort beans when they had nothing else to eat.
Rui curled in her lap like a cat, head against her stomach, fingers tangled in the edge of her haori. He was quiet today. Bathing in the golden sunlight that had once burned him at its gentle touch yet now lovingly embraced him in its warmth.
Sakiya watched the smoke drift lazily upwards towards the sky and tried—really tried—not to think about the child-shaped beast Muzan had made just to get to her. She had been inside that thing's storm, and it had been inside her, and now she couldn't get the taste of it out of her mouth. Fear-anger-sadness-pain had not arrived as separate tides; they'd come as one black surge, slamming into her ribs until she thought her sternum would crack. The sound those children made when they weren't making sound—she still heard that. They were erased and still screaming.
"This is not yours," she told herself, watching a bird land on a nearby branch. "You know whose it is."
But Muzan's voice floated up anyway, oily and ever persistent. You foolish girl, you forgot, didn't you? If you had surrendered yourself to me, they wouldn't be dying now. It hooked perfectly into the oldest, cruelest groove in her: If you had watched them better. If you had controlled them. If you were strong enough. The words Muzan spoke wore her mother's mouth for a second, and she felt her throat try to close.
Rui's hand flexed. He didn't look up, but she felt him notice. He always did. She slipped her fingers over his knuckles, pressing until he relaxed, until her own breath stopped stuttering.
"I know," she murmured, unsure if she was talking to the graves or herself. "I know better."
Knowing better didn't stop it from hurting like it was brand new. That was the worst part. She had wrestled that ghost and seen it kneel and still it learned how to get up wearing a different face. And beneath all that fresh ache there was the old ache—the moment she'd felt Kokushibo teeter on the edge of vanishing, the way Rui had gone limp in her arms two days ago and for a heartbeat she'd thought she was back in a winter forest with a body cooling under her fingers and despair fresh on her tongue. She could still hear Muzan's laugh folded inside the sound of Rui's breath faltering. If she hadn't gotten there—if they had burned—
