~Soft Rains Will Come After The Drought~

~Chapter Five: The Masked Tradition~

Hello everyone! And Happy New Years!

How are you all today? I hope you're all well. Anyways I have no idea when this will come out, but it's fine. And also thank you for all the love of support!

I'm honestly so overwhelmed with happiness at the thought of it, and I'm so grateful you all are here!

This also has a mention of SH too.

This chapter has a 2 year time skip, to around the final selection arc, Hanako is now 10 years old.

Enjoy!
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It's been two years since the incident... the day she lost her family and her leg. She dreaded this day for the last 2 years, even more so as tonight is the night she'll be going to final selection. This is it, this is what she's been training for.

She stretched her arms and put her hair back in a low ponytail. She managed to see the list of participants, and Tanjiro was participating this year too. She needed to hide her identity, after all she didn't want to distract Tanjiro from the main goal, survival.

Thankfully she had gotten some scent packs. 'Raspberry lemons' was its scent, and she liked it. It just smelt homely in a way.

She was preparing herself, she had the sword, she had the scent packs, and she had her prosthetic leg securely attached. The only problem was her face, Tanjiro would probably recognise her. How in the world would she be able to pull that off? She needed some kind of mask to do that.

"Hanako." Giyuu's voice broke through her train of thought, probably a good thing too, she would've been late if she kept thinking and not moving.

"Yes?" She looked at him.

"I figured I should give you this." Giyuu reaches into his haori and pulled out a wooden fox mask.

'Well that's convenient.' Hanako thought as she took the mask.

"Thank you. But why is it a fox mask?" She asked with genuine interest, out of all the animals out there, he chose to have the mask be a fox.

'why is that?' She pondered, looking at the mask. It was painted white, with a rainbow painted on the upper left side of it, eyelashes and a small sun on the slower left cheek. She liked its design, it was unique.

"When I was a student, my teacher made me my own fox mask the day I went to final selection. I thought I should continue on the masked tradition." Giyuu explain calmly, yet
his tone remained unchanged in its cold ways.

"Ah. Well, thanks again!" She managed to put the mask on, she could see out of it, and that was one of the most important things to her tonight, keeping her identity hidden.

"Don't worry about it."

They then walked in silence. Giyuu was leading her to where final selection was, or at least a mile or two away from the bottom of the mountain.

"Final selection spans over several days, don't focus on only slaying demons. Your survival comes first, keep yourself safe and needs met, and descend down the mountain into the forest of wisteria trees. That will be the area where you start and finish in, make it there within the seven days, and you've passed final selection and therefore became a demon slayer." He explained to her.

She mentally noted that down, she had to focus on meeting her basic needs such as food, water, and shelter before hunting demons during the night. During the day she's be able to sleep and descend down the mountain. That made sense at least.

"Alright." Hanako quietly agreed, just to show that she was indeed listening to what was being said to her.

They walked somewhat close to the mountain until they came to a complete and utter stop.