The demon's claws gleamed a bluish gray in the moonlight. Aiming at the young man's back, she kicked off the tree trunk with both legs and shot forward like an arrow.
But in that very instant, Sui's blade reached her throat first.
The demon froze.
Lightning illuminated her face. The centipede-like blood vessels twitching across it were pierced by the scattered sparks, bursting and spraying blood.
The white-haired young man heard the sharp scream of air being torn apart.
The crimson haori fluttered in midair like butterfly wings. Lightning burst from Sui's toes, illuminating the shadows across the entire forest. Her eyes were closed. She looked so tranquil, so beautiful, yet her hand had already closed around her sword hilt.
The demon had no time to fear.
No time to be afraid.
Because lightning was faster than everything else.
The blade passed through her neck, drawing a spray of blood in its wake, while the demon's face remained frozen in the middle of a howl.
Her severed head spun through the air. Sui landed lightly, sheathed her sword, and only after the crisp click of blade and scabbard meeting did the dull thud of the head hitting the ground follow.
"No... how did you do that?" the demon asked in a dazed voice, her final question.
No one answered her.
"You..." The young man found himself briefly speechless.
It had all happened too fast.
Everything had taken place in the space between sparks and flint.
The girl's demon-slaying姿态 perfectly matched the young man's imagination of what Thunder Breathing ought to be. A Breathing Style this fierce ought to look exactly like this. Even if its inheritors were pitifully few, as long as even one appeared, that swordsman would become the kind of demon slayer who made demons fear them to their core.
"What is it?" Sui turned her head slightly, moonlight tracing her profile with the crystalline texture of ice.
The young man stepped forward to inspect the demon's decapitated body and found that it had already lost all vitality and was beginning to burn away.
He let out a breath of relief, then drove his bloodstained iron shears heavily into the earth. Panting, he wiped his face with the back of his hand, brushing over the old scar across his nose. After such a fierce battle, he felt dazed for a moment. He had hunted many demons in his early years and had been slaying them alone even before joining the Demon Slayer Corps, so he understood these monsters well enough—but the demon they had just fought had been absurdly strong.
Leaning against a tree trunk, he caught sight of the girl who had slain it. She was using her sleeve to wipe off the scabbard, even though the white sheath with its thunder pattern had not been stained by so much as a drop of blood.
"Hey!" he called hoarsely, his throat still carrying the raw alertness left behind by combat. "With skills like that... you've killed at least thirty demons, haven't you? I heard that puts you at the higher ranks—something around Kinoe or Kinoto—and not far below a Hashira. Since when did the Demon Slayer Corps start sending Hashira candidates to act as examiners? Or did you people already know a demon would sneak into Mount Fujikasane and interfere with the Final Selection?"
His thumb ground hard over the dried blood on his chain. Compared to this woman, he felt his own weakness again, and the realization left him bitter.
Sui lifted her long sword and brushed her fingers over the gilded tsuba. Moonlight rested neatly across her brow as she smiled and said, "That's awfully harsh. I'm only an apprentice swordsman who doesn't even qualify to receive a uniform yet."
"Quit joking!" the white-haired young man snapped, drawing in a sharp breath. "That move just now was Thunder Breathing, First Form, wasn't it? With power and presence like that, you've trained for at least five years!"
Even five years was a shaky estimate.
In truth, he was judging by the standards of Wind Breathing. But Thunder Breathing wasn't even on the same level of difficulty as Wind Breathing—especially for a swordsman who had such extraordinary control over it.
At this point, his mind refused to accept that she could possibly be just an apprentice swordsman.
He had seen veteran Demon Slayer Corps members before, even some among the best of the Kinoto rank, but even the strongest among them had nothing on the sharpness of this girl's blade.
Sui covered her mouth in mock surprise and said, "My, to think the young man I just saved would turn out to be such an ill-mannered rogue."
His mind failed to catch up with her words for a beat, and then he barked, "What did you just say?!"
But as a waft of floral fragrance drifted into his nose, he suddenly realized just how close he was standing to her—close enough to see the thick lashes hanging over her closed eyes.
That fragrance felt like a kind of poison, and he jumped back instantly.
The white-haired, hedgehog-like young man turned his face aside and went silent for a moment.
"Sanemi Shinazugawa."
He spat out his full name stiffly.
"Sui." The girl returned the courtesy and gave hers.
"No surname?" Sanemi asked.
"I was raised by a shrine maiden. I was never given a family name."
"You really are a candidate swordsman?" He still could not let it go.
"I really am. It's just that Thunder Breathing doesn't have much fame in the Corps right now. As for my training..." Sui paused, then said lightly, "Perhaps the Thunder God just favors me? Just as some people are born carrying the scent of a storm."
Her meaning was pointed as she glanced toward the torn sleeve of Sanemi's uniform. Earlier, when he had used Wind Breathing, he had not only shredded the demon's arm but also ripped his own sleeve apart. The jagged tears looked as though a violent gale had torn through them.
"When I pass the selection... no, when I get my Nichirin Blade..." Sanemi said in a low voice.
Dead leaves drifted through the silence. One landed on the haori draped over Sui's shoulder as she sat there listening to Sanemi inhale.
"Your address!"
"Hm?"
"I said your address!" Sanemi said grimly. "You're the disciple of the former Thunder Hashira, so that means you live at old man Kuwajima's dojo, right? Once these damned seven days are over... I'll come to your door with a wooden sword and repay what I owe you from today!"
"So you're asking for a girl's address?" One sentence from Sui shattered whatever momentum he had built. "I never expected you to be this bold, Mr. Shinazugawa."
Sanemi Shinazugawa hated owing anyone anything.
He wanted to come personally and repay the debt.
Sui, on the other hand, did not consider her intervention a favor at all, so she refused him in the gentlest possible way.
"What I mean is..." Sanemi began.
He grew visibly frustrated. The usually hot-tempered young man felt as though he had punched a wad of cotton and gotten absolutely no response in return.
"Once I'm officially accepted, I'll naturally be sent out to hunt demons. Even if you go to the old man's dojo, you won't find me there."
Before Sanemi could react, Sui had already risen and set off again.
...
Eyes full of hatred carved into the bone...
Sui recalled the look in Sanemi Shinazugawa's eyes.
Under all that seething fury was also a lonely sort of grief.
That kind of gaze was not uncommon within the Demon Slayer Corps, but Sanemi Shinazugawa was different.
Sui did not need to look with her eyes; sensing with her heart was far more useful. She had seen through the man whose exterior was as violent and unruly as a gale. Buried inside Sanemi was a terrifying potential, a storm capable of tearing everything apart.
But in the heart of every storm there was often the quietest, most fragile eye.
Sui wandered the mountain for a long while, and not a single demon appeared until sunrise.
The white scabbard of her Nichirin Blade paused in midair, catching a single drop of dew that trembled but did not fall.
Not far behind her, Sanemi Shinazugawa had three demons bound in his chain, hanging from a tree branch.
This had been the method he used before joining the Demon Slayer Corps. Without a Nichirin Blade, he could only subdue demons, bind them, and wait for sunrise to let the sun burn them to death.
Now his iron shears had been reforged with Nichirin ore mixed in, allowing them to effectively injure demons, but Sanemi still preferred the old method.
Because for demons, being scorched by the sun was ten thousand times more painful than decapitation.
He liked standing there at dawn and listening to them scream.
He kicked aside a broken branch in his path, dragging the iron shears along the ground hard enough to throw sparks.
"There aren't any demons left on this mountain. What you're looking for is in the southwest!"
Sui's crimson haori swayed lightly. The serene line of her brows contrasted sharply with the savage scar carved across the young man's brow ridge. By chance, the two of them stood facing each other—Sui bathed in the morning sunlight, Sanemi still in the shadows.
"Whatever do you mean, Mr. Shinazugawa? What is this thing you say I'm looking for in the southwest?"
"Drop the act, you black-hearted woman!" Sanemi snapped. "You're trying to investigate why a demon of that level showed up during the Final Selection, aren't you? Too bad you spent the whole night circling the mountain and got nowhere. Then, by coincidence or not, you ended up where I was hunting demons. Weren't you just using my Wind Breathing to determine the demon's location?"
"I've been found out." Sui smiled. "Then would you like to team up with me, Mr. Shinazugawa?"
"Don't flatter yourself!" Sanemi smashed his fist into the tree beside him, shaking leaves loose and letting the sunlight spill over the demons hanging there. As their screams rose, he went on, "I hate people like you nobles more than anything!"
"A shrine maiden counts as nobility?" The girl looked genuinely startled for a moment.
"You spoiled shrine girls really have no self-awareness! People like you spend all day sitting in shrines, doing nothing but waiting for villagers to bring offerings, gold, and silver. You've never once thought about how people like us are supposed to survive! If praying to gods actually did anything, then my bastard of a father would've been dead a long time ago!"
After those words left his mouth, Sanemi received no reply.
Even after the demons had melted in the sunlight for some time, the response he had expected still never came.
Something inside him sank.
He realized those words had gone too far.
That girl had done nothing wrong. She did not deserve to be treated like that. If anything, she had just saved his life...
Damn it.
He had never known how to deal with people like her.
Sanemi took a deep breath and tried to recall how he usually spoke with Masachika Kumeno, hoping to smooth the edge out of his voice, but the harder he tried to calm himself, the more agitated he became.
"Yes," Sui said softly. "Praying to gods is useless."
Her tone remained as gentle as ever, as though nothing anyone said could truly wound her.
"So... why not try praying to me instead? After all, I really can kill every last one of those demons."
That's a hell of a boast, Sanemi thought, but he kept the words to himself.
He looked up.
The girl stood with the light of sunrise at her back, her haori and hair rimmed in gold.
"Would you like to witness it?" she asked. "No exaggeration—I'm the spokesperson of death."
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 150)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 110)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter69)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter95)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 55
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 45
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 32
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 31
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 31
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