Chapter 160: The Chapter Title Was Stolen by Ink Shadow
Taking advantage of the brief respite granted to the four exhausted boys, Akira guided Kanao and Mitsuri toward the expansive dirt courtyard dedicated to their daily training. The afternoon sun cast long, warm shadows across the estate grounds.
"Come on," Akira said, his tone laced with gentle encouragement. "Let me see the results of the practice you've been doing in secret all these years."
He walked over to the weathered wooden weapon rack, his fingers brushing against the polished hilts before he selected two training swords. With a casual flick of his wrist, he tossed the slightly shorter, lighter blade toward Kanao.
Kanao caught the weapon effortlessly. Without a moment of hesitation, she shifted her weight, lowering her center of gravity.
"Flower Breathing, First Form: Morning Dew Blooming."
This initial stance of Flower Breathing had been carefully crafted by Kanae, drawing direct inspiration from Akira's own Thunder Breathing, First Form. The dirt crunched beneath Kanao's boots as her petite figure lunged forward, closing the distance in a heartbeat. A dazzling arc of light trailed behind her wooden blade.
The fluid motion mirrored the delicate morning dew clinging to flower petals, refracting the brilliant rays of the rising sun—vibrant, beautiful, and overflowing with vitality. Yet, hidden beneath that stunning radiance lay a fiercely sharp, uncompromising edge.
In Kanao's capable hands, the technique was rapidly approaching the sheer velocity of Thunder Breathing's opening strike. It was abundantly clear to Akira; she was still stubbornly persisting in her efforts to emulate his exact combat style.
Intending to properly test her foundation, Akira refrained from using his overwhelming physical strength to simply crush her advance. Instead, he watched the approaching arc with narrowed, analytical eyes. Just as the wooden edge threatened to strike his shoulder, he flicked his own sword upward, tapping the absolute weakest point of her swing. With a gentle, calculated twist of his wrist, he guided her momentum away. Kanao's attack sliced through empty air, her entire body grazing harmlessly past his side.
"Fifth Form: Peonies of Futility."
Kanao was remarkably quick to adapt. The instant her boots skidded to a halt against the dirt, she pivoted sharply, transitioning directly into her next sequence.
This specific technique had been designed with heavy reference to Water Breathing's Third Form. While it drastically increased the user's bodily flexibility, the sheer density of the resulting strikes was exponentially higher. Kanao's petite frame seemed to blur, vanishing entirely within an illusory sky filled with a flurry of falling peony petals. From every conceivable angle, rapid-fire thrusts rained down upon Akira.
Having sparred with Kanae countless times in the past, Akira knew the fundamental mechanics of this form intimately. The original execution relied on sweeping slashes, not concentrated thrusts. Kanao had deliberately injected her own combat philosophy into the sequence, altering the attack pattern to closely mimic the piercing strikes of the Thunder Breathing, Eighth Form that Akira himself had invented.
However, because she had developed this variation entirely through secret, solitary practice, the execution carried a few glaringly unnatural hitches in her footwork and wrist rotation. Recognizing her desperate desire to imitate him—despite her physical inability to master the explosive demands of Thunder Breathing—Akira felt a helpless sigh echo in his chest.
Regardless of the flaws, she was his precious younger sister. Naturally, he was going to pamper her. If she wanted to learn his methods, he would gladly teach her every secret he knew. The rigid forms of a Breathing Style were never truly set in stone anyway; every swordsman eventually developed their own unique characteristics to suit their physique. Perhaps, through this relentless process of imitation, Kanao would finally carve out her own distinct path.
"Thunder Breathing, Eighth Form: Bōyū Rika."
Akira deliberately suppressed his blinding speed. He only raised his wooden blade to parry at the exact moment Kanao's thrusts threatened to connect. Clack. Clack. Clack. With every precise block, he exaggerated his own wrist movements and footwork, displaying the complex mechanical details of his custom form as clearly as possible for her to study.
Simultaneously, he was methodically pushing against her limits.
He knew Kanao possessed an extraordinary, almost terrifying talent when it came to dynamic vision. Long before she had ever learned to cycle oxygen through a Breathing Style, her naked eyes had been capable of tracking the majority of his high-speed movements.
It was an unspoken truth that within the walls of the Butterfly Mansion, only his own superhuman kinetic vision surpassed hers. Now that her physical attributes had been drastically amplified by Total Concentration Breathing, Akira was deeply curious to discover exactly how far her ocular prowess had evolved.
Once he confirmed she could comfortably track his current pace, Akira began turning the dial. He increased his swing speed fraction by fraction. The sharp cracks of colliding wood echoed across the courtyard in a rising crescendo. Kanao, who had initially dominated the offensive rhythm, found herself gradually forced backward, her aggressive thrusts melting into desperate, passive deflections.
Neither of them spoke a single word, yet Kanao instantly understood his silent instruction the moment the pressure spiked. She had several brief windows to transition into an evasive maneuver or completely disengage from the exchange, but her pride and determination refused to let her take the easy way out.
Her beautiful pink-purple eyes widened to their absolute limits, straining to process the blurring afterimages of his blade and coordinate her bodily responses in real-time.
Eventually, as Akira's onslaught crossed a critical threshold, a minute fracture appeared in her ironclad defense. It was not a failure of her vision—her eyes were still perfectly tracking the trajectory of his weapon. The failure lay in her musculature; her slender arms simply could not twitch fast enough to intercept the blow.
Watching the wooden edge sweep toward her ribs, Kanao realized her stubborn refusal to retreat had finally cornered her. It was far too late to backstep. Left with no other viable options, she kicked hard off the dirt, launching her petite frame high into the air to narrowly evade the sweeping strike, instantly converting her upward momentum into a fierce aerial counter-offensive.
"Sixth Form: Whirling Peach."
Her brilliant adaptability caused a spark of genuine admiration to light up Akira's eyes.
To achieve such a seamless, instinctual transition between complex forms entirely through solitary, secret practice was nothing short of miraculous. Her raw talent was arguably on par with Kanae's own prodigious skill. Kanao's body spun like a top suspended in the sky, her blade carving a captivating, circular trajectory downward. The visual effect mirrored a magnificent peach blossom unfurling its petals—breathtakingly gorgeous, yet saturated with lethal, unyielding intent.
"Thunder Breathing, Fifth Form: Heat Lightning."
Under normal combat circumstances, whenever the physically weaker combatant was forced into an aerial position without any solid ground to use their strength, the outcome of the duel was already set in stone.
But Akira had absolutely no intention of letting her assessment end on such an abrupt note.
As he raised his weapon to intercept her descending strike, he deliberately softened his grip, absorbing and cushioning the heavy kinetic impact of her fall. The moment her downward velocity stabilized, he smoothly pivoted out of her landing zone, clearing the space. He watched with keen anticipation, eager to see if she could maintain the fluidity of her sequence the second her boots touched the earth.
"Second Form: Honorable Plum."
Kanao did not disappoint him. The very millisecond her soles met the dirt, she hijacked the lingering rotational inertia from her aerial spin, whipping her blade outward in a devastating circular slash that perfectly married offense and defense. The sweeping trail of her weapon manifested the vivid imagery of a blooming plum blossom, wrapping around her petite frame to form an impenetrable shield.
Playing his part flawlessly, Akira kicked backward, gliding smoothly out of the technique's lethal radius, his posture relaxed as he awaited her follow-up.
"Third Form: Blooming Peony Wave."
Refusing to surrender the initiative, Kanao instantly shifted her stance and surged forward, chasing his retreating figure with relentless aggression.
The continuous, overlapping arcs of her wooden sword mirrored the rolling waves of an endless sea of flowers swaying violently in a gale. Embedded within the rapid strikes, Akira could clearly detect subtle shades of the Eleventh Form created by Giyuu—or perhaps, it was more accurate to say that Giyuu's Dead Calm possessed shades of this very technique.
After all, back when Kanae had originally conceptualized this form, Giyuu hadn't even passed Final Selection to become an official swordsman. However, unlike the absolute, impenetrable defensive void that defined Dead Calm, the sweeping arcs of Blooming Peony Wave were purely offensive in nature, designed to drown the enemy beneath a suffocating deluge of continuous strikes.
While no single slash within the sequence carried overwhelming, bone-crushing power, the technique excelled through sheer, suffocating volume. It was a torrential downpour of steel. If a defender lacked the absolute physical strength required to forcefully shatter the attacker's rhythm, the user could effortlessly manipulate the opponent's own defensive momentum against them.
Of course, there was always a secondary method to dismantle such an overwhelming assault: pure evasion.
Relying entirely on his monstrous speed advantage, Akira danced backward and sideways, weaving effortlessly through the razor-thin gaps in Kanao's attack radius. He wanted to push her stamina to the absolute brink, eager to see just how far she could sustain the barrage.
Several intense moments later, the illusory waves of blooming flowers finally dissipated into the afternoon air, revealing the two figures standing at the center of the churned dirt.
Kanao was pressed flush against Akira's chest, her small shoulders heaving as she panted for breath. Her eyes were peacefully closed, a soft, contented smile gracing her lips as she quietly savored the warm, secure embrace she could never quite get enough of. Her wooden training sword lay forgotten in the dust a few feet away, completely ignored.
A deep sense of affectionate helplessness swam in Akira's eyes.
Near the tail-end of her final sequence, he had clearly noticed her stamina bottoming out. He had fully prepared to step in, gently interrupt her waning momentum, and officially conclude his assessment of her current strength.
But the exact second he planted his boots to halt his evasion, Kanao had simply let go of her weapon. using the very last dregs of her physical strength, she launched herself forward in a completely different kind of final offensive—hurling her exhausted body directly into his open arms.
Had his reflexes been even a fraction of a second slower, the poor girl wouldn't have been greeted by his warm embrace, but rather by the blunt edge of the wooden sword he had just raised to parry her.
"Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?" Akira whispered, his deep voice carrying a rich mixture of mild reproach and utter defeat as his large hand gently stroked her trembling back.
"But I was tired..." Kanao murmured, her usually quiet voice taking on a rare, shamelessly coquettish tone. She nuzzled her cheek against the fabric of his uniform, shifting her head slightly to find the most comfortable spot against his chest.
She didn't need to finish her sentence. Akira knew exactly what those unspoken words meant. She possessed an absolute, unwavering trust that her beloved older brother would never, under any circumstances, allow her to get hurt.
Faced with this rare display of spoiled affection, Akira found his defenses completely shattered. He was utterly incapable of resisting her. It had been exactly like this since the rainy day he had first bought her freedom and carried her back to the Butterfly Mansion. Ultimately, he could only surrender, letting out a long, fond sigh as he tightened his arms around her.
A short distance away, the four younger boys sat by the engawa, watching the spectacle unfold.
Initially, they had been left completely speechless, deeply shocked that a girl as young and quiet as Kanao possessed such terrifying martial prowess. However, their martial awe was abruptly shattered, leaving them caught completely off guard as they were ruthlessly force-fed a massive, suffocating mouthful of romantic PDA overload.
Tanjirou and Muichiro stared at the embracing pair, a quiet, wistful longing for that kind of warm, unconditional familial bond reflecting in their wide eyes. Beside them, Zenitsu was practically vibrating, frantically taking mental notes of the entire interaction, fully intending to review Akira's flawless execution later and learn the secrets of his obvious charm. Yuichiro, on the other hand, looked absolutely sickened. Imaginary dark lines of disgust draped over his face before he finally scoffed, turning his back entirely to spare his eyes from the blindingly sweet display.
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