Yoshiwara’s pleasure district.
The lanterns along the street swayed softly. Beneath the red lights, Daki watched Kokushibo with careful eyes.
She stood there as if she did not know what to say, unable to bring herself to approach him lightly. His presence was too heavy, too deep, as though even a single word had to be granted permission before it could be spoken.
“Do you need… more information about that flower?”
Kokushibo did not answer. He only nodded.
“Yes. Muzan is searching for the Blue Spider Lily with a feverish obsession. He has ordered me to find it as well.”
Daki drew a breath and slowly parted her red lips.
“What I gave you… was not the real thing. But… the scent was definitely strange and different. A bizarre flower growing in a dark ravine connected to a river, near a temple ruin. I only took what humans had already found…”
“Daki.”
That short call began to dominate the outskirts of the pleasure district, where human presence was sparse. If the men who had been driven away were here, that one voice alone might have turned them stupid.
Daki trembled all over and lowered her head. She would never dare meet those six eyes.
He was frightening. He was terrifying. And yet Daki’s affection for him was subtly different from what she felt for Muzan.
Only after a beat did she respond to his low call.
“Y-yes… Lord Kokushibo.”
“You know Muzan’s temperament. Your excuses keep getting longer. You should correct that habit. Muzan is not so merciful.”
“I-I will keep that in mind.”
Kokushibo’s six eyes pierced through Daki. That gaze was not a blade, but a weight colder than any blade.
Daki let out a suppressed breath and bowed deeply.
“Yes… I will keep it in mind.”
Her voice trembled, but within that tremor there was a strangely warm current. A light close to affection, something she could never reveal before Muzan.
But Kokushibo neither rejected that feeling nor pushed it away. His attention had already turned elsewhere.
The air shifted in an instant.
The outskirts, which had been wrapped in silence and stillness, began to stir.
Between the scents of alcohol and perfume, an alien resonance slipped in like a thin thread. Even in the heart of the pleasure district, where laughter and whispers filled the air, the texture of every human presence stood out sharply.
Those six eyes widened in a way that was almost unnatural. His senses caught a presence moving through the pleasure district, excluding Daki entirely.
“—A strong human has entered.”
Daki jerked her head up in surprise.
“Are you speaking of my territory?”
At his words, veins stood out sharply at Daki’s temples. Her once-docile expression became that of a demon in an instant.
Her skirt fluttered as her voice shook with both disgust and rising unease.
Kokushibo nodded with calm indifference. His six eyes remained fixed and unmoving.
“He has erased his presence to a degree you would not notice. He is suppressing the traces of his breathing in an unnatural way. That is what sets him apart from ordinary humans.”
As Kokushibo’s voice sank into the ground, even the street lanterns seemed to tremble as if they might go out at any moment.
Daki’s chest tightened coldly. He had identified a trace Muzan himself might not have noticed.
Kokushibo’s figure carried both awe and an inexplicable sense of stability.
Watching him, Daki erased the unease that had been building in her mind in an instant.
§§§
“Be careful. Don’t drink any alcohol the women offer you.”
I warned my subordinates in a low voice. Walking among the human crowd on a road lined with red lanterns looked ordinary enough from the outside.
But my hand was already feeling for the hilt of my Nichirin sword.
“Water Hashira-sama, are you all right?”
The young subordinate beside me asked cautiously.
I forced a brief smile.
“I’m fine. It’s just… the air is different here.”
Alcohol, perfume, the laughter of humans. This should have been a street overflowing with pleasure and greed. But now, behind that brilliance like a mask, something was quietly writhing.
The footsteps were too even. The breathing was far too subdued. And beneath it all, I could feel a heavy, sharp presence pressing down from some time ago.
I instinctively felt cold sweat trickle down the back of my neck. In the years I had lived as a Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps, I had faced countless demons.
But this pressure was different.
“Water Hashira-sama...”
Another subordinate called to me. His face had gone pale.
I narrowed my eyes and looked toward the end of the alley.
There, in the darkness beyond even the reach of the lanterns, six eyes were slowly opening.
In that instant, the air collapsed. Even the noise of the humans talking blurred into nothing. As if the lanterns had been snuffed out, the world went dark for a heartbeat.
This presence was an Upper Rank. An overwhelming aura that transcended the realm of ordinary demons.
I felt a strange sensation seize my entire body, as if pain were screaming through every limb and rushing straight into my head.
The Upper Ranks, said to possess strength on an entirely different level from the Lower Ranks.
My lips trembled as I forced out the words.
The ominous kanji were carved clearly into those six eyes.
“U-Upper Rank One.”
My voice shook against my will. This body had cut down countless demons over a long battlefield life, but the existence before me now carried a weight from an entirely different dimension.
My subordinates held their breath. Some had already started to back away, and the youngest one clutched at my side with a face gone white.
“W-Water Hashira-sama… th-that…”
I raised a hand briefly to stop him.
“Don’t move. You could lose your life just from a single trace of his presence.”
From the darkness of the alley, six eyes advanced slowly, glowing with a sinister light. There were no footsteps.
And yet the space itself seemed to cave in under his presence alone.
The street, once full of human bustle, was instantly swallowed by a dense darkness.
When the shadow brushed between the lanterns, the humans who had been laughing drunkenly fell silent at once. Without even knowing why, they shivered and stumbled backward.
That was how strongly this monster’s presence stirred human instincts.
I tightened my grip on the sword hilt. Sweat gathered in my palm. I had lived for years as a Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps, but this was the first time I had felt pressure like this.
In the darkness, six eyes glowed ominously. They were not the usual red eyes of a demon. They were a gaze like a fractured sky, impossible to explain by human senses.
“Demon Slayer Corps… that haori… a Water Breathing user. The Water Hashira.”
A low, deep resonance spread through the alley. Just one voice was enough to split the air.
My subordinates flinched as if they had swallowed a scream. I gritted my teeth.
“You… Upper Rank One. Why are you here?”
Even as my lips trembled, my voice came out clear. Just that one sentence made my subordinates’ eyes shake wide.
To them, he was the symbol of terror.
But I did not know his name.
Upper Rank One. Only those characters pressed down on me.
When that being stepped out of the darkness, the lanterns trembled and the surrounding area sank into even deeper shadow. I could not hear his footsteps. But each step seemed to carry the weight of a world being crushed beneath it.
I let out a cold breath and steadied my heart.
“...This is probably the end. My sword is already growing dull. And yet… my duty as a Water Hashira remains.”
Beside me, the young subordinate whispered in a trembling voice.
“W-Water Hashira-sama… you have to run. This is… not an opponent a human can handle.”
I shook my head.
“The Demon Slayer Corps does not run. At least not until my eyes close for the last time.”
The shadow stopped. Six eyes fixed directly on me.
“Your breathing is ragged. Keep your breathing steady. A single misstep will change your fate.”
That voice sounded as if metal were grinding against metal in some unnatural way.
I clenched my teeth and answered.
“I have no intention of taking advice from a monster like you. I’ll cut off your head and stop the disaster that will befall humanity.”
The darkness deepened further. My subordinates were trembling, but my gaze remained locked only on the Upper Rank One before me.
At that moment, the corner of his mouth twitched faintly.
“...Interesting. You choose to fight even with death before you.”
The air split. The battle was now inevitable.
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