𝙼𝚢 𝙲𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝙱𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚜𝚘𝚖 || 𝚃𝚊𝚗𝚓𝚒𝚛𝚘 𝚡 𝙵𝚎𝚖!𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙵𝚒𝚏𝚝𝚢 𝙾𝚗𝚎

- At the 'Kyogoku House', two days before Tanjiro and the others infiltrated the others -

There was a strange nip in the crisp and dark air. However, the Red Light District remained fully lit during the twenty-four hour period on constant human trafficking and conversations that seemed to go in forever. Although, the Kyogoku House remained somewhat quiet. That is until a woman came forward.

"Could you please cut it out?"

A middle aged woman in a dusty blue kimono stood in a dimly lit room along with the head Oiran of the House. The Oiran raised her head slightly at this sudden question. But it was mainly an order.

"Cut out what?" She asked.

The middle aged woman looked down at the Oiran who sat in front of her a ways away. The woman looked at her out of disappointment.

"There have been many girls getting hurt, loosing their footing, and even commuting suicide in this House." She stated plainly. Cutting straight to the point with where she was going with the conversation. "You have seemed to have bullied those girls to death, Warabihime."

"What a cruel thing to say, hostess." The Oiran came out. Her narrowed eyes and the candlelight casting a shadow over her pale face. Making her look even more scarier than anyone the woman had seen. "So you aren't on my side here? So you don't think the girls are at fault because they had been pissing me off?"

It was silence between the two. And intense and thin air that you could cut with a dull butter knife. The woman grit her teeth in anger and frustration. Mostly at herself. For ignoring what had been going on in this House for a long time.

"I've been ignoring everything for a while now. But you're crossing a line here... I can't cover for you."

A tick mark appeared on the Oiran's face. She tilted her head slightly to the side. Narrowing her eyes in a deadly way that screamed danger and struck fear in the woman's heart. "And who do you think made this House big and famous, Hag?"

"A long time ago... when I was still a child," the woman said. "I heard something from the elders as the tea house. Their memories were very bad, but they always told me this story of a certain Oiran. She was extremely beautiful, but also extremely cruel. They said that they saw her in their youth and middle age. They deliberately appended the name 'Hime' to her name. For if you had gotten onto her bad side,"

The woman paused for a moment. Trying to register the accusation she was about to proclaim out.

"She'd tilt her head and stare down at you. According to all them, she was the only one who did that."

The woman watched the Oiran. She observed what she was doing. The Oiran was in fact doing the exact same thing that she had noticed this whole time. That head tilt. The stare. All of it.