The end of spring at Hayama should have been a season full of life, but the dojo was shrouded in an inescapable gloom.
Shinobu could no longer get up. It was sudden, yet somehow expected by everyone.
"Shinobu-nee...." Kanao knelt by the bed, tightly clutching Shinobu's cold hand.
This girl, who usually showed almost no emotion, now had reddened eyes, her tears falling in large drops onto the bedding.
"Shinobu-sama..... please drink a little more medicine."
Aoi held the medicine bowl, her voice carrying an unstoppable sob.
Shinobu on the tatami was now nothing but skin and bones.
She turned her head slightly, as if trying to give Aoi a comforting smile, but the moment the corners of her mouth moved, she was seized by a violent fit of coughing.
"Cough, cough.... cough!"
Blood stained the pure white bedding, the blood tinged with a startling dark purple.
"Don't..... cry, Kanao.... Aoi..." Shinobu's voice was as light as smoke. "I'm just.... a little tired."
Inosuke, standing guard at the door, clenched his fists tightly.
This wasn't the first time he had seen such a scene..... His beastly intuition told him—
The person in the room was dying.
Tanjiro pressed his lips tightly together. Standing outside with Nezuko and Zenitsu, he looked with a heavy heart at the dying Shinobu.
At the same time, his sensitive nose caught a strange smell.
The smell came from the swordsman he respected most, Taka.
It was a scent.... that did not belong to this world.
At the other end of the courtyard, Taka stood under the withered cherry blossom tree. His condition was not much better than Shinobu's.
Large cracks had appeared all over his skin, peeling off in flakes along with flickering sparks of spiritual pressure.
"It's time to go, Taka."
That inner voice, at this moment, became unprecedentedly loud, shaking his soul with a buzz.
"That woman's time of death has come. If you don't leave now, you will end up like those souls, preventing her from entering this world's reincarnation.... I can't guarantee what form she might take then."
Taka closed his eyes. His disheveled hair fluttered in the wind.
He could feel it. In that void, the pitch-black realm gate was slowly taking shape.
It sensed Taka's intense will to return, and also felt the collapse of this broken shell. It was opening its grim maw....
"Everyone.... is here."
Shinobu's voice was as light as smoke. "To see you all.... at the end.... it's good."
"Shinobu-nee! You'll get better!" Zenitsu's face was covered in tears, but he dared not speak loudly, could only sob quietly.
"Silly child...." Shinobu revealed a weak smile.
At the moment of death, she seemed to sense something. Her once-lustrous purple eyes struggled to search for Taka's direction.
"Taka.... has your time also come...."
"Farewell, you idiot...."
Rumble—!!
The previously clear sky instantly darkened.
Then, the surrounding wind stopped. The air became heavy, suffocating.
Floating insects were frozen in mid-air. The boiling medicine also stopped swirling.
It was as if gravity throughout all of Hayama had disappeared for a moment. Everyone felt their hearts squeezed by a massive, invisible hand.
Though their minds still worked, their bodies could not move.
In the sky, a massive pitch-black crack opened without warning.
Space was torn open. From the crack shone an eerie purple-red light, enveloping all of Hayama.
Hum—!!
The next moment, everyone regained control of their bodies, unconsciously swaying to keep their balance, looking at the sky in shock and fear.
"Th-that.... is that the end of the world?" Zenitsu collapsed to the ground in terror.
"Don't be afraid, Zenitsu. That's just the road home."
Taka's voice sounded beside Zenitsu, making him jump with a start.
He had suddenly appeared at Shinobu's sickbed, his speed too fast to see.
"Taka-san!"
Tanjiro abruptly stood up.
He could smell it—the scent of parting, bitter and resolute.
He tried to step forward and grab Taka, but found he couldn't get close at all.
Within ten paces of him, even the air was distorted.
Before everyone's eyes, his skin was already beginning to peel away, but no flesh was revealed… only a spiritual body structure flickering with a deep blue light visible within.
Taka silently crouched down.
"Taka! What are you doing! Leave this place immediately!"
The inner voice became stern, clearly not expecting Taka to suddenly do this. "You cannot take this woman! Her soul belongs to this world. Forcibly interfering will have unpredictable consequences!"
At this moment, Shinobu's breathing had completely stopped.
Her soul was slowly seeping from her remains, a faint clump of Reishi with a light purple glow, so tiny in this death-filled room.
Taka looked at that clump of light as it slowly rose, many memories flashing before his eyes.
The bloody night in Sendai, the bamboo grove at the Butterfly Mansion, the abyss of the Eternal Paradise Faith.
This woman, gentle yet with a hint of mischievousness, was finally leaving this world.
[Don't be foolish, Taka! For one soul, you might die in the Dangai! It's not worth it!] Tonan, deep within his soul, spoke up at the right moment.
"Is this the first day you've known me?"
The moment he said this, Tonan knew something was wrong.
This kid always seemed to like doing the opposite of what it said.
"There's no such thing as 'worth it' or 'not worth it' for what I want to do. There's only whether I want to do it or not."
He smiled. Slowly extending his left hand, now completely shattered and existing entirely in a state of pale blue spiritual energy, he reached firmly towards Shinobu Kocho's soon-to-be dispersing soul.
"I'll take you with me."
He promised softly, then pulled her close in one swift motion.
Boom—!!!
The two-world gate fully opened its ferocious maw. A pillar of black light, reaching to heaven and earth, enveloped Taka.
"Taka-san—!" Tanjiro lunged forward against the raging wind, but his fingertips couldn't even brush the corner of Taka's flying haori.
A flash of black light. Space collapsed.
When the light faded, only an empty butterfly-wing-pattern haori and scattered broken tiles remained on the tatami.
The figures of Taka and Shinobu had vanished without a trace.
Kanao knelt on the ground, staring blankly at the empty void, completely unable to understand what had happened, and let out a heart-wrenching cry.
And Tanjiro looked up at the slowly closing crack in the sky, his eyes moist.
He realized that these two people no longer existed in this world.
Only the wooden butterfly carving on the cabinet remained, proof that Taka had once been there.
.....
Pain....
Like having one's soul repeatedly ground on a whetstone… boundless, excruciating pain.
The moment he entered the realm gate, Taka felt his body shredded by thousands of blades simultaneously.
This shell, which had fought for years in the Taisho era, rapidly turned to dust under the scour of the chaotic temporal currents.
But when that burdensome flesh completely dispersed, a strange sense of fullness filled his body. Still, the process was so painful he couldn't speak.
The Reiatsu, no longer forcibly suppressed, surged from the depths of his soul, filling the gaps left by the disappearance of his physical body.
Strong muscles, perfect bones, tough skin.
Inch by inch, it was reforming.
When the black Shihakusho re-materialized on him, he was reborn, restored to his healthy appearance.
And in his arms, Shinobu was undergoing the same transformation.
The flame of her life, already extinguished, had miraculously restabilized under the protection of Taka's overpowering Reiatsu.
Her physical body as a human had dissipated.
But as a [Plus], or rather, a spiritual body, she was reborn.
"Mm...."
Shinobu let out a soft moan.
She felt that suffocating sensation that had always plagued her.... that burning pain from the slowly corroding poison… all gone.
An unprecedented lightness filled her entire body. She was no longer the Insect Hashira burdened by hatred and responsibility, but a butterfly truly emerged from its cocoon.
She slowly opened her eyes.
"Taka?"
Shinobu exclaimed in surprise. She could see.
No longer blurry shadows, no longer chaotic blocks of color.
She clearly saw the face of the man before her… handsome, stern, carrying an aloofness that kept others at a distance, yet with a hint of clumsy warmth.
He was no longer the maimed figure covered in scars and missing an arm. He was as whole as when they first met.
"I can see clearly..... and I can move?" Shinobu reached out in disbelief and touched her own face.
But the next moment, she let out a piercing scream.
"Pervert—!!!!"