Having spent a long time by Haruto's side, Genya was very familiar with the starting movements of each technique of the Breath of the Stars.
The moment Tanjirou raised his hand, he understood his next move.
Genya braced himself with his hands on the ground, nimbly flipped backward, easily dodging the starlight that slashed before his eyes.
Then he stretched his body and sent Tanjirou flying with a powerful spinning kick.
"Is that all? You practiced for three months, and this is the result?"
Genya pounced, slamming his fist heavily on the ground next to Tanjirou's head, and roared, "If you don't work hard, you'll only waste your talent!"
Tanjirou struggled to bend his leg, kicking Genya in the chest.
"You really are Genya, aren't you!" Tanjirou raised the nichirin blade in his hand, "I'm holding a real nichirin blade! It will hurt you!"
"Idiot! You didn't even touch me!"
"It really will hurt you!"
"Come at my head!"
...Meanwhile, at Tamayo's residence in Asakusa, Tokyo, after Haruto drank a pot of oolong tea, he felt his heart pounding fiercely in the quiet.
Tamayo and Yushiro sat opposite him, their expressions equally solemn.
Yushiro was somewhat confused.
He knew what Lady Tamayo was developing; it was a drug that transcended the understanding of both humans and demons, full of uncertainties and dangers.
Such a potent medicine would only lead to two outcomes: either a painful death, or the creation of a new species between humans and demons.
But if new species were that easy to create, Kibutsuji Muzan wouldn't have spent such a long time searching for the blue spider lily... Wasn't it better to just live?
Haruto remained silent for a long time, then looked up and asked, "What do I need to pay attention to?"
"Listen to me, Haruto, we don't have to be so rushed..." Tamayo, who had called him here, lowered her eyes, and her gaze surprisingly revealed a divine pity: "I spent 500 years hating Kibutsuji Muzan, but I found that what I accomplished in those 500 years was less than what I've done in the past two or three years. Do you know what this means, Haruto? This isn't a gradual pace; this is history suddenly accelerating—something will go wrong."
"Ah." The young man's thoughts seemed to have drifted somewhere else, and after a while, he looked back: "So, what do I need to pay attention to?"
For the first time, Yushiro wasn't angry that Haruto had disregarded Tamayo's words.
This man was already mad, beyond saving.
"Tell me how you feel after the injection, any physical changes... In short, whatever happens afterward, please remember it firmly and tell me, alright?"
Haruto nodded.
Then he took the brand new nichirin blade from his waist and placed it on the table, drawing it halfway out. The blade was exceptionally dazzling under the light.
His new nichirin blade was still as beautiful; Haganezuka Hotaru had ingeniously imprinted a spread-winged parrot on the blade just below the tsuba.
"If..." Haruto pursed his lips, "If I turn into something else, please immediately... sever my head. That is my only request."
Yushiro stared blankly at the blade; the bright gleam of the nichirin blade almost stung his eyes.
Haruto felt somewhat parched, but he didn't drink any more water.
It was just nervousness—and fear.
Aside from needing to calm down, he needed nothing else.
Tamayo washed her hands and took a syringe from the cabinet.
That syringe was filled with a dark red medicine.
Haruto took out the Kochou hairpin from his pocket and wrapped it in his palm.
"What is that?"
"Perhaps it's an anchor point," Haruto replied.
Perhaps it would pull Haruto back to the origin of time.
Next, only Tamayo was speaking.
"Place your hand on the soft pad."
"Do you want something to eat?"
"This medicine has many ingredients; perhaps it shouldn't have been produced at all."
"The injection process will be a bit painful; this is normal. My... former patient told me so; the medicine stung his blood vessels."
"And then? What happened to him?"
Haruto finally spoke, his lower eyelids twitching slightly, indicating that the medicine was also wreaking havoc in his blood vessels.
"Like a tube of chili oil... hot and painful."
"He stopped breathing within an hour after the injection."
"...Oh."
"He had cancer, was beyond medical help, and lived in great pain every day," Tamayo slowly pushed the syringe, watching the dark red medicine spread like a spiderweb through the blood vessels in Haruto's fair arm.
"I gave his family a sum of money. Because of that money, his son went to school, and his wife didn't have to suffer as much. For that money, he cooperated very well with my research. Being sick was painful every day, even morphine didn't work anymore. Even on the day of the injection, he happily ate a meal. 'I'm finally going to die,' he said."
"Miss Tamayo."
"Hmm?"
"You will cut off my head, won't you."
"..."
"Don't turn me into a demon. I'm very gluttonous; how miserable would it be if I could only eat human flesh?"
"...I will, I promise."
Buzz—
A long, sharp sound came from his ears, and Haruto's breathing suddenly quickened.
He spoke rapidly: "My ears are ringing, my eardrums are bulging as if they're about to burst..."
"My vision suddenly became colorful and blurry, I can't see things clearly..."
Pain flooded from every bone, every cell in his entire body; they seemed to be proliferating, dividing... Haruto sat there, unlike the swift and decisive death of old; the medicine brought him boundless agony and a slow demise.
Tamayo's voice rang in his ears, hazy and unclear to Haruto.
Haruto asked her what she was saying, so Yushiro loudly roared into his ear instead.
"Restorative experiment, good!"
"Tissue proliferation Type III!"
"Consciousness unclear!"
Haruto desperately tried to engrave these observations into his mind; he needed to tell Tamayo these things after he died.
Something seemed to roll down his face, brushing against his cheek.
Yushiro's voice stopped; he seemed stunned, then after a moment, he loudly declared, "Thirty-eighth minute, eyeball detachment!"
Was that an eyeball that just fell off?
Ugh, he thought it was just skin flakes from his face. How ugly must it be if his eyeball fell out?
He quite liked his eyes, a misty blue, like a sky about to rain.
As Haruto thought this, he suddenly couldn't hear anything anymore.
Something seemed to flow down, blocking his ear canals.
Tamayo stopped her recording, looked at the unidentifiable mass of proliferated tissue on the floor, and closed her eyes.
"Lady Tamayo..." Yushiro's eyes were a little red.
Tamayo took several deep breaths before opening her eyes, standing up, and drawing the nichirin blade from the table... Haruto suddenly awoke from the darkness, his left palm burning intensely.