Another half month passed.
One evening after dinner, Cold Cry made his way to the lab in the back of Butterfly Mansion, where Kochou Shinobu was at work in her white coat.
The door stood open. He knocked twice, and at her "Come in," he stepped inside.
She straightened up, let out a long breath, and gave him a gentle smile. Outside of her missions, this lab was where she spent most of her time.
"There you are. You've practically moved in by now. I don't need to tell you where to sit, do I? Edge of the bed, please."
Something about her cheerful tone put him on edge, though he couldn't have said why. He sat on the edge of the bed and started on his buttons.
Today was stitch-removal day.
With his left wrist still in a cast, he wrestled with the buttons for a while, sweating through the effort, and got nowhere.
She turned, caught his frustration, laughed softly, and leaned down to undo them for him herself.
Underneath, his chest was a patchwork of old and new wounds, skin still tender, black thread crisscrossing over scar tissue like he'd been stitched back together one too many times, something worn out and mended past the point most people would bother.
Her smile stayed gentle, but something sad crept into it. The marks from his last round of stitches hadn't even faded, and here he was again, barely a month later, with fresh ones. The boy in front of her couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen.
In all her years running Butterfly Mansion, she'd never had a patient quite like this someone who'd come this close to dying twice in under two months and kept coming back anyway.
They said even the unluckiest could survive if their will was stubborn enough, like a weed pushing up through rock, thriving in soil that should never have supported anything at all.
She pulled a chair up in front of him, tweezers in one hand, scissors in the other, and worked through the stitches with practiced ease. Her fingers were cold against his skin, and every touch sent a small jolt through him.
Uncomfortable as it was, he couldn't help but notice, looking down at her working, just how striking she was.
Full lips curved slightly at the corners, and those deep violet eyes seemed to carry a faint haze of purple smoke behind them. Combined with the wisteria scent that always clung to her, the whole moment took on a strange, charged sweetness.
"You did remarkably well out there, Cold Cry. I've never seen a recruit make this kind of impression. The Love Hashira asks after you every few days, and even our lord personally checked on your recovery. That's no small thing."
Grateful for an excuse to look away from her face, he asked, "My lord? You mean the head of the Corps?"
She nodded.
"Who's this 'Love Hashira'? Why would she care about me?"
He'd only met a handful of Corps members during his recovery, and he was fairly sure he'd never crossed paths with anyone holding that title.
She looked up, surprised. "You didn't know? Noe never mentioned it?"
"Mentioned what?"
"The Love Hashira is Noe's older sister. Kanroji Mitsuri."
"Wait, that girl's sister is a Hashira?" This time it was his turn to be caught off guard. He'd known Noe had a sister in the Corps, but he'd never guessed she held a rank that high.
Hashira. That put her sister near the very top of the entire organization.
Love Pillar. The character on her title, the name of the technique it all lined up at once.
Watching his reaction, Shinobu perked right up, sensing there was clearly more to this story than he was letting on.
Cold Cry stayed cool and distant with every girl in the mansion, and yet the mention of Noe alone had visibly rattled him. There was definitely something there worth poking at.
"A mess? Is that really how you'd describe her? I think Noe's lovely, sweet, thoughtful. I heard she even gave you her first kiss, in a manner of speaking, to save your life..."
"That's enough."
Cold Cry shot upright, didn't even bother grabbing his shirt, and bolted from the lab, face burning, Shinobu's laughter chasing him out the door.
"Noe's coming to visit in a few days, Cold Cry! Better be ready!"
The next morning, just before dawn, Xiao Qing got up for the washroom and, passing the front courtyard, caught a glimpse of someone slipping out the gate in a hurry.
She thought nothing of it at the time.
By the time the others gathered for the morning meal, Cold Cry still hadn't shown up. A check of his room found the bed made, everything folded neatly, and a note left on the nightstand.
"Don't tell her where I went."
Nobody could say for certain who "her" was meant to be, so the note and the news of his disappearance both went straight to Shinobu.
She read it and laughed all over again, picturing him bolting out that gate before sunrise.
He'd fled back to White Dragon Mountain.
Before he'd left for the assessment, Roubee had asked Shinobu to pass along a message: if he passed, he should pick up a bag of rice on his way back up the mountain, since there wasn't any food left there. But newly recruited and short on funds, he had nowhere to get the money for it. He remembered the message perfectly. He just couldn't do anything about it.
So he went back empty-handed and, fortunately, Roubee never brought up the rice.
Settled back on the mountain, he threw himself into the rehabilitation training Roubee had laid out for him before the assessment.
Fujikasane Mountain had shown him exactly where his limits were, especially in that last fight against the Hair Demon. If the sun hadn't broken through when it did, he'd almost certainly have died there.
---
At the Oyakata Estate, Ubuyashiki Kagaya sat on the veranda, a peaceful smile on his face; it was hard to imagine the warmth held inside a body that fragile.
Below him, kneeling on one knee, were the Insect Hashira, Kochou Shinobu, and the Water Hashira, Tomioka Giyu, both solemn, both respectful.
"Kochou. How is the child doing?"
"He's recovering well, my lord, though his left wrist still hasn't fully healed. Two days ago he slipped off on his own, back to White Dragon Mountain, to keep training under Master Qingyan."
Kagaya nodded, satisfied. "A good boy. Tomioka, what have you found?"
"My lord, there's something genuinely strange happening on Fujikasane Mountain. We found the remains of several missing Contestants, along with demon remains, at the bottom of a lake near the summit. Every set of bones showed the same fine strangulation marks. We never found the fully-haired demon the Contestants described, but we did find a cave on the mountain's north face that runs straight down to the base. And according to our records of demons released onto that mountain, there's no account of a Hair Demon, or anything mutated like it. How it got there, or how it changed, we still don't know."
Kagaya was quiet for a moment. "It's not hard to guess, really. Fujikasane Mountain is where we draw in new blood; it's our lifeline, in a sense. Cutting that off is the same as cutting our supply lines. Without recruits, the Corps can't keep growing."
"Yes... It has to be him. Kibutsuji Muzan."