To The Stars | Tokito Muichiro x OC

10 • The Star and The Wind

"Inori-chan, can I ask you a question?" Inori paused the book she was reading, looking up at Shinobu who didn't lift her head from the paper she had been writing.

"Sure?"

"Have you ever met someone named Kocho Kanae?"

Inori's breath hitched in her throat. This was the part she hated most about her ability to see the dead. The people who knew about her ability either mocked her or demanded she became a medium between the living and the dead.

When she first heard Shinobu's name, she had hoped the pillar wouldn't question her relationship with the pretty lady she met a few months before her life went downhill. There were, after all, many Flower Breathing users who had passed long before she met Kanae. Though it was Kanae who guided her during her confrontation with Lower Moon Six.

"I only met her once," Inori mumbled the answer, but she knew Shinobu heard her loud and clear. "Sorry for not saying anything."

"It's fine." But from the way Shinobu gripped her pen, Inori knew it wasn't fine. "I was just wondering whether Nee-san managed to go to the stars or not...I guess she didn't. Nee-san died with regrets."

The originally comfortable silence turned suffocating. Inori tried to focus on the book she was reading, but found that the only thing she could see was Kanae's smiling face. Swallowing the lump in her throat, Inori forced herself to speak. "It's not a sad regret."

"What?"

"Kanae-san." Inori determinedly stared at the book. "She wanted you to have a normal life as a normal girl, but she knew that you wouldn't be able to live or die peacefully like that. Kanae-san didn't stay because of a sad regret, she stayed because she wanted to watch over you until the very end."

"I see." Shinobu smiled bitterly. "I guess you know about my plan." Her plan to consume wisteria poison daily and let Upper Moon Two eat her. Her plan to avenge her sister. Her suicidal plan of vengeance.

"Yes." Inori remembered how Kanae cried because she didn't know whether she should stop Shinobu or let her continue. "Kanae-san asked me to stop you. She asked me to talk you out of it if we ever have the chance to meet. I told her that such a chance will never come, but here I am."

"Are you going to stop me?"

"I won't stop you." Inori shook her head because she would never let anyone die with regret. "It would be nice if you would stop, but I know you won't. Kanae-san knows that too, that's why she wasn't mad when I told her dying with regret is much more painful than just dying." Then again, the only time she saw Kanae slightly mad was when she gave up before even attempting to run from Lower Moon Six. "I told Kanae-san that should a day come when I do meet you, I will tell you that your sister is waiting for you, so don't you dare cry and give up."

Inori lifted her head, staring straight into Shinobu's eyes. "I used to think that demon slayers exist to protect the weak, not to fulfill their own revenge with their deaths. But that would be hypocritical of me." Because she, too, only has revenge in her mind. "In a way, I guess the Demon Slaying Corps is just a big group of vengeful people who put their lives on the line to avenge the people who were killed by demons."

She let out a bitter chuckle. "I'm just the same, I want to grow stronger so I can kill Muzan, so I avenge my family, so I can help all those poor souls go to the stars, so I can protect the weak, so nobody needs to go through what I've been through." She gripped the book until the pages crinkled. "No matter how noble my reasons are, I won't deny that the main reason I'm training so hard right now is because I want to avenge my family."

Shinobu reached her hand out but stopped. She didn't know what to say. What was she supposed to say when she could relate so much that it hurt her to the core?