Late spring in Hayama should have been a season brimming with vitality, but a lingering gloom shrouded the dojo.
Shinobu Kocho could no longer get out of bed. It happened suddenly, yet it seemed as though everyone had expected it.
"Sister Shinobu..." Kanao knelt by the bed, gripping Shinobu's cold hand tightly.
The young girl, who rarely showed any emotion on ordinary days, now had red eyes as large tears smashed against the bedding.
"Lady Shinobu... please drink a little more medicine."
Aoi Kanzaki held the medicine bowl, her voice carrying an uncontrollable, tearful tremor.
On the tatami mat, Shinobu had withered away until she was nothing but skin and bones.
She turned her head slightly, seemingly wanting to give Aoi a comforting smile, but the moment her lips twitched, a violent fit of coughing wracked her body.
"Cough, cough... cough!"
Blood stained the pristine white bedding, a shocking, dark purple hue mixed within the crimson.
"Don't... cry, Kanao... Aoi..." Shinobu's voice was as light as a wisp of smoke. "I'm just... a little tired."
Standing guard at the door, Inosuke clenched his fists tightly.
This wasn't the first time he had witnessed such a scene... His beast-like intuition told him—
The person inside the room was going to die.
Tanjiro pressed his lips together tightly. He stood outside the room with Nezuko and Zenitsu, watching the dying Shinobu with a heavy heart.
At the same time, his sharp nose caught a strange scent.
That scent came from the swordsman he respected most, Asuka.
It was a scent... that did not belong to this world.
On the other side of the courtyard, Asuka stood beneath the withered cherry blossom tree. His condition was no better than Shinobu's.
Massive cracks had appeared across the skin of his entire body, peeling off piece by piece alongside flickering sparks of Spiritual Pressure.
'It's time to go, Asuka.'
That inner voice became unprecedentedly grandiose in this moment, vibrating his soul until it buzzed.
'That woman's time of death has arrived. If you don't leave now, you will end up like those other souls, causing her to be unable to enter the cycle of reincarnation in this world... I cannot guarantee what she will turn into when that happens.'
Asuka closed his eyes, his fragmented hair drifting in the wind.
He felt it. In the void, a pitch-black Boundary Gate was slowly taking shape.
It sensed Asuka's intense will to return, and it also sensed the collapse of this broken shell, opening its terrifying maw.
"Everyone... is here."
Shinobu's voice was as light as a wisp of smoke. "It's so nice... to see you all... at the very end."
"Sister Shinobu! You're going to get better!" Zenitsu cried, his face covered in tears, but he didn't dare make a loud commotion, only sobbing in a suppressed manner.
"Silly child..." Shinobu revealed a weak smile.
On the verge of death, she seemed to sense something, using her dull, purple eyes to weakly search in Asuka's direction.
"Asuka... is your time... up too..."
"Farewell, idiot..."
Rumble—!
The originally clear sky instantly darkened.
Immediately after, the surrounding wind stopped. The air became heavy and suffocating.
Floating flies were frozen in mid-air, and the bubbling medicinal decoction stopped moving.
The gravity in all of Hayama seemed to vanish for a moment. Everyone felt as if an invisible, giant hand had ruthlessly gripped their hearts.
Although their minds were still working, their bodies simply could not move.
In the sky, a massive, pitch-black rift tore open without warning.
Space was ripped apart like a wound, and an eerie, purplish-red light spilled from the gap, enveloping the entirety of Hayama.
Buzz!!
The next moment, everyone regained control of their bodies. They unconsciously swayed to maintain their balance, looking up at the sky in shock and fear.
"Is... is that the end of the world?" Zenitsu collapsed to the ground in terror.
"Don't be afraid, Zenitsu. That's just the way home."
Asuka's voice sounded right beside Zenitsu, startling him so badly he shuddered.
He had suddenly appeared right in front of Shinobu's sickbed, moving so fast he was invisible to the naked eye.
"Mr. Asuka!"
Tanjiro abruptly stood up.
He smelled it—it was the scent of parting, bitter and resolute.
He wanted to step forward and grab Asuka, only to find that he couldn't get close at all.
Within ten paces of him, even the air was distorted.
Right in front of everyone, his skin had already begun to peel away, but it didn't reveal flesh and blood beneath. Instead, there was only a spiritual structure shimmering with a faint blue light.
Asuka silently crouched down.
'Asuka! What are you doing! Leave this place immediately!'
The inner voice grew stern, clearly not expecting Asuka to suddenly make such a move. 'You cannot take this woman with you! She is a soul belonging to this world. Forcibly interfering will cause unpredictable consequences!'
At this moment, Shinobu's breathing had completely stopped.
Her soul was slowly overflowing from those remains. It was a faint cluster of Reishi glowing with a pale purple light, looking so insignificant in this room filled with the aura of death.
Asuka watched that cluster of light slowly rise, memories flashing before his eyes.
The bloody night in Sendai, the bamboo forest at the Butterfly Mansion, the abyss of the Eternal Paradise Cult.
Was this gentle yet somewhat sly woman finally leaving this world?
[Don't be stupid, Asuka! For the sake of one soul, you might die in the Dangai! It's not worth it!] Nugata, deep within his soul, also spoke up at the right moment.
"Is this your first day knowing me?"
As soon as these words left his mouth, Nugata cursed inwardly.
This kid always seemed to love doing the exact opposite of what it said.
"The things I do are never about whether they're worth it or not, only whether I want to or not."
He smiled, slowly extending his left hand—which had completely shattered and was entirely in a pale blue Reishi state—and firmly reached toward Shinobu's dissipating soul.
"I'm taking you with me."
He promised softly, then pulled her into a fierce embrace.
BOOM—!!!
The Boundary Gate completely opened its ferocious maw, and a pillar of black light that pierced the heavens and the earth enveloped Asuka within it.
"Mr. Asuka—!" Tanjiro lunged forward against the gale, but his fingertips couldn't even brush the hem of Asuka's fluttering clothes.
The black light flashed, and space-time collapsed.
When the light dissipated, all that remained on the tatami mat was an empty butterfly-patterned haori and shattered roof tiles scattered across the floor.
The figures of Asuka and Shinobu had vanished without a trace.
Kanao knelt on the ground, staring blankly at the empty void. Completely failing to understand what had just happened, she let out a heart-wrenching wail.
Meanwhile, Tanjiro looked up at the slowly closing rift in the sky, his eyes wet with tears.
He realized that those two people no longer existed in this world.
Only the wooden butterfly carving resting on the wooden cabinet proved that Asuka had once been here.
...
It felt like his soul was being repeatedly crushed on a whetstone, an endless, boundless agony.
The moment he entered the Boundary Gate, Asuka felt as if his physical body was being shredded by thousands of sharp blades simultaneously.
This shell, which had fought and slaughtered its way through the Taisho era for years, rapidly turned to dust under the scouring of the space-time turbulence.
Although a bizarre sense of fullness flooded his entire body when that burdensome flesh and blood completely dissipated, the process still left him in too much pain to speak.
The Spiritual Pressure that was no longer forcibly suppressed surged out from the depths of his soul, filling the deficits left behind by the destruction of his physical body.
Sturdy muscles, perfect bones, resilient skin.
Inch by inch, he was being reshaped.
By the time that black Shihakusho condensed back onto his body, he had been completely reborn, restoring his healthy appearance.
And in his arms, Shinobu was undergoing the exact same metamorphosis.
The flame of her life, which had originally been extinguished, miraculously stabilized once more under the protection of Asuka's overbearing Spiritual Pressure.
Her physical body as a human had dissipated.
But as a [Plus]—or rather, a spiritual body—she had gained a new life.
"Mmm..."
Shinobu let out a soft moan.
She felt that the suffocating sensation that had been plaguing her... the burning pain of being slowly eroded by toxins, had all disappeared.
An unprecedented lightness filled her entire body. She was no longer the Insect Hashira who needed to shoulder hatred and responsibility, but a butterfly that had truly broken out of its cocoon.
She slowly opened her eyes.
"Asuka?"
Shinobu was surprised to find that she could see.
No longer blurry shadows, no longer chaotic patches of color.
She clearly saw the face of the man in front of her—handsome, stern, carrying an aloofness that kept strangers away, yet also bearing a touch of clumsy warmth.
He was no longer the incomplete figure with a face full of scars and a missing arm, but whole, just like when they first met.
"I can see clearly... I can move too?" Shinobu reached out in disbelief and touched her own face.
But the next moment, she let out a piercing scream.
"Pervert—!!!!"