"It looks like… I really did transmigrate."
Deep in the mountains, snow fell in thick sheets. The bitter wind slipped through the torn paper window and poured into the room, bringing a creeping chill with it.
"Tanjiro" lowered his head and stared at the pair of hands in front of him—hands that belonged to a boy. For a moment, he felt dazed, as if reality hadn't caught up.
In his previous life, he had been a man named Yoriichi Tsugikuni… an ordinary human—despite possessing strength terrifying enough to seem divine. Yet his life had been nothing but tragedy.
He had failed to protect his wife and child. He had failed to slay Muzan. And even as he approached eighty, nearing the end of his years, he had still been forced to watch his twin brother fall into becoming a demon.
Was this heaven's pity—granting him another life?
"Tanjiro, are you awake?"
A gentle voice rose by his ear.
He turned toward the sound.
A brazier of charcoal was giving off warmth. A woman in a check-pattern kimono, her head wrapped in a white cloth, moved busily about the room. She looked at the boy with soft eyes and smiled. "Why are you just staring at Mom like that? Lost in thought?"
…Kie Kamado. In the flood of memories surging up inside him, the name surfaced clearly—this woman was his mother in this life.
"Big brother slept in again!"
"Big brother's a little pig!"
Two small figures charged in like tiny dragons and crashed into Yoriichi's arms, laughing and tussling.
They were Hanako and Shigeru, still very young.
Their playful scuffle yanked Yoriichi out of his long, drifting thoughts and back into the present.
His fingertips trembled—just slightly.
Even when facing Kibutsuji Muzan, even when facing any fearsome enemy, the man who stood at the pinnacle of swordsmanship had never trembled.
And yet now, when he felt the warmth of something called family, a sharp, sour ache surged up from the depths of his chest.
Just then, a small, icy hand slipped—without warning—into the back of his collar and pressed against the skin of his neck.
A girl's teasing laughter sounded right beside him. "Still going to sleep in, big brother? Your face is already turning red from the brazier."
Yoriichi reflexively turned his head.
A girl stood so close she was nearly within arm's reach.
She wore a faded pink hemp-leaf patterned kimono, the cuffs and lapels mended with dense little patches. But she was neat and clean, giving off a fresh, pure, homely charm.
Seeing her "big brother" staring at her in a daze, Nezuko seemed delighted that her prank had worked. A bright smile bloomed across her delicate, pretty face.
"Heehee. Surprised you, weren't you, big brother?"
She didn't pull her hand away. Instead she leaned in, those soft little fingers—cold to the touch—greedily soaking up the warmth from his body, trying to freeze the lazy big brother awake.
With Nezuko's hand against his skin, he didn't dodge. He didn't speak.
Four hundred years ago, no one would have dared to pull a prank like that on the man called "Yoriichi Tsugikuni."
In the deepest recesses of his memories, his elder brother Tsugikuni Michikatsu had always been stern—rigidly observant of a samurai's restraint, of hierarchy and propriety, never crossing a line. And the wife he had once loved had treated him with the utmost gentleness and respect; she had never laughed and jostled with him like this, either.
This kind of familial warmth—this teasing, playful intimacy—was a completely unfamiliar, strangely new experience for a man who had lived a lonely life.
When her brother didn't say a word and only kept looking at her, Nezuko assumed he was still half-asleep.
She tilted her head. A strand of hair slipped down across her forehead and brushed her lovely face as she smiled. "Come on, wake up. It's about time to get up and eat."
But in the very next moment, Nezuko sensed something was off.
Her brother's gaze was too focused—those dark red eyes were deep and calm, as if they could see through her body into the depths of her soul, carrying a tenderness so indulgent it made her flustered.
Under such an unfiltered stare, the confident smile on the girl's face began to falter.
Color quickly spread across Nezuko's cheeks. In a panic, she yanked the mischief-making hands back out from inside his collar.
Her long, curled lashes trembled. She lowered her head and called out shyly, "D-Don't stare… Get up already."
After saying that, she bowed her head even more, too embarrassed to meet her brother's eyes again.
Thankfully, a faint movement sounded somewhere farther inside the house, breaking the brief, delicate awkwardness.
"Everyone, come eat now."
Their mother, Kie Kamado, called gently.
Only then did Yoriichi come back to himself. Watching the girl hurriedly "escape" from his side, he couldn't help but smile. He rose from the bedding.
…
Breakfast was simple: coarse brown rice mixed with a large amount of millet, served with their homemade pickled dried radish, and miso soup with a few floating leaves of wild greens.
In this era known as Taisho, the towns down the mountain had already lit electric lamps. But in these remote mountains, life for the Kamado family was still difficult.
Their father had been bedridden for years. Their mother managed the household. And with several young children below, the family's livelihood depended entirely on the money earned each time they sold charcoal in town.
It was poor fare—but sitting together and eating this rough, plain meal felt, to Yoriichi, like the most extravagant delicacy in the world.
After breakfast, the snowstorm didn't let up. If anything, it grew heavier.
Yoriichi pushed open the door. A knife-sharp wind mixed with snowflakes slapped into his face, but he didn't feel cold. Instead, a long-missed sense of ease loosened something inside him.
From a distance came the faint crunch of footsteps through snow. He looked toward the sound—and saw, in an open patch not far ahead, a thin figure dancing in the snow.
It was his father: Tanjuro Kamado.
The man's complexion was waxy and sallow, his eye sockets sunken. His body looked so frail that a strong gust might topple him.
And yet, with that sickly frame, as he moved through the dance in the snow, his breathing was long and steady. Every time he lifted his arms or stamped his feet, it was as though he had become one with the storm itself—tireless, untouched by cold.
Hinokami Kagura.
The Kamado family's prayer dance passed down from generation to generation—an offering Tanjuro performed each year for the Fire God.
When he finished the entire dance, Tanjuro gradually came to a stop. As he breathed lightly, a sheen of sweat had already formed across his forehead.
As if he'd sensed something, he turned his head. When he saw his eldest son, a softer smile appeared in his eyes.
"Tanjiro, you were watching so intently… Did you understand something?"
By the end of the sentence, there was a trace of expectation in his tone. "Come on—give it a try."
Inside the house, several children were curled up under the bedding, peeking out through the crack in the paper-covered window to watch the father and son outside.
"Waaah… Father's making big brother try again?" Takeo sighed in sympathy. "That dance is way too complicated, and the breathing rhythm is so weird. I tried it once and almost passed out. I can't understand it at all."
"Yeah, yeah…" The girl named Hanako nodded along. "I don't even know how Father remembers all those complicated moves. That's not something a normal person can memorize."
Nezuko didn't speak. She simply watched her brother with worried eyes.
In the younger siblings' minds, their brother was gentle and hardworking—but for someone without talent, that dance was pure torment.
They could already picture it: big brother holding a branch, utterly at a loss, and in the end only managing an awkward, helpless smile.
But standing in the snow, Yoriichi showed no sign of difficulty at all.
He walked to the woodpile, bent down, and picked up a dead, brittle branch.
He drew in a breath—slowly—and exhaled.
White mist spilled from his mouth and scattered into the wind.
In his previous life, Yoriichi had never even needed deliberate training. From the moment he was born, he had already stood at the summit of the sword—an altitude ordinary people could never reach, no matter how they struggled for a lifetime.
And yet, because of that, he had lived a lonely life filled with regret.
Now, reborn, he had gained what he had sought for eighty years and never once obtained: familial love.
He might have lost the swordsmanship of his former days, but… to him, it had been worth it.
As long as he could protect this warmth, what did it matter if he lived as an ordinary boy selling charcoal?
At that thought, the corners of Yoriichi's mouth lifted into a gentle curve.
He copied his father's movements. His wrist dipped slightly, and the brittle branch swept through the air.
There was no tearing of wind.
Not even the drifting path of the falling snowflakes was disturbed.
And yet, as that fragile branch cut through the air, the storm seemed to still in utter silence—then a ribbon of flowing flame abruptly blazed to life in the dim, snowy sky.
No—more precisely, it wasn't flame at all.
It was a slash that had reached the ultimate peak of the sword.
Crack.
Under the stunned gaze of the whole family—and even Yoriichi himself—
ten meters away, a thick, dead pine split cleanly in the middle, soundlessly breaking apart.
-------
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