7 Leaving

It has been several months since the first day of training, and many days have been spent swinging blades time after time until my arms were at the consistency of udon. Others had been filled with painful stretching or silent meditation for hours at a time. I have gotten better with the sword, too. I have landed several strikes on Misako, but Oji Yoriichi tells me that I still have much to learn. I sit on a rolled bamboo mat on the floor, legs crossed and mind wandering. My hands have grown worn and calloused, hardened by time and relentless training. My fingers clench. I have not seen Okaasan or my sister Akako since I left nearly a year ago.

I pray for their safety every day, and wince, because when I do venture back home, Okaasan's hand will come crashing down on my backside like a droplet of rain flies swiftly towards the ground.

I smile at the thought.

I breathe in sparingly, concentrating on having each inhalation fill my entire body and sending the oxygen through my veins. Tonight, all the tsukugo will be sent into an area on a nearby mountain surrounded by a barrier of wisteria flowers.

To tell the truth, I am nervous. Not because I am unsure whether or not I can kill the demons I may encounter, but because I don't know if I could save anyone else while protecting myself.

I have slayed two demons already, a horned one with an extremely long tongue, and another with two heads and feathery wings like a raven's.

I sense the air behind me stop in a fraction of a second, and I know before I glimpse the cherry blossoms on her haori that Misako is bending over me.

"Ohayo," she says quietly. Her voice is still as soft as the day I first met her. "Meditating I see? Your total concentration constant has been improving, I see."

"Yes," I reply, nodding respectfully. Misako told me that she has finished her training and is close on her way to becoming one of the hashira. Currently, there are eight hashira. If Misako becomes one, she will be the ninth.

Also the youngest and only hashira to invent a new breathing style since Oji Yoriichi.

I stand up. "Misako...I feel like I've known you for so long, but I don't know anything about you. Do you have any family?"

Misako looks past me and out at the sky. "Only my grandmother."

Her voice seems quieter than normal when she speaks. "My parents and my brothers and sisters were slaughtered by a demon when the wind hashira saved me. I was the only one that survived."

My back stiffens. "I-I'm so sorry. I had no idea."

Misako gives me her small smile. "It's quite alright. Sometimes I almost wish that I could forget it."

"But you can't," I say. "It's your will to slay demons, isn't it."

It wasn't a question, but she nods. I understand. I know the same pain myself.

Misako and I pack up what little things are allowed, but my pack still feels strangely heavy-the air is denser than it would normally be, even with the small number of things that I've packed into it.

I open the fabric straps of my pack.

Inside are the spare things that I've packed- enough rice cakes for about a week, a few rolls of bandages, a thick, woolen haori just in case the temperature plummets, and a small painting of my mother and father wrapped in parchment and tied with white ribbon.

But there is something else, something tucked in the space next to my spare haori, and I reach for it and pull it out.

A mask?

Made of smooth, polished cherry wood, carved slenderly into the features of a fox. The front has been painted white, and violet and blue stars twirl on its surface.

I smile at this. He remembers.

I secure the mask on my face by tying the strands of rope behind my head. Once I am certain it won't fall off, I close up my pack once more and see that Misako has an almost identical mask, with painted cherry blossoms twisting down the sides and adorning the fox's carved smile.

"Arigato, Yoriichi-san," she says quietly. She turns and smiles faintly in my direction. "Yoriichi-san asked me to accompany you this time. It won't be the same for the others."

For the first time in all the months that I've known Misako, I hear her laugh. It's a small laugh, like the tapping of glass with a chopstick or wind through a wind chime, but still.

"Yet," she says, oblivious to my awe, "I need you to survive and successfully make it to the end unharmed. After I prove that I can put my duty to help others first, I can become one of the hashira."

She pauses.

"So don't die on me, okay, Mizuki?"

I smile back. "I'll try my best not to."

We quickly put on our packs and head out into the stream of people filling the large hallway. We all channel into the main room, like a herd of sheep being corralled into a pen by their shepherd.

Misako and I sneak through the throngs of people and exit through the main door, where the substance of the Demon Slayer Corps is spilling out into the courtyard. A stream of people who have exited the main building are walking along the backside of the structure and up a path that twists up to the top of the mountain that rests behind the Demon Slayer headquarters.

When we reach the top, a vast place surrounded by thousands of strands of glowing purple wisteria blossoms that hang from delicate trees a similar shade of pale brown like the membranes of a fish tail.

Misako clutches my hand tighter. "I thought I'd never be back here," she whispers, more quietly than usual. I lean a little closer.

"You don't have to come with me, you know," I reply softly.

She looks up at me, caressing my face with her beautiful eyes. She is so elegant. So beautiful. As gentle as a falling cherry blossom and yet as lethal as snake venom.

"No," she responds firmly. I catch her smile as she looks away. "Besides, Mizuki. Like you would ever survive without me."