"These are your two new apprentices?" the visitor asked, turning to look at the pair coming up the path.
"The girl's mine. The other one's a beggar I'm stuck with." Roubee's double standard couldn't have been more obvious; he looked at Noe like she was his own granddaughter and at Cold Cry like something the cat dragged in.
"Come here, come here, little Noe."
He waved her over, ignoring Cold Cry entirely even though he'd been walking a step ahead of her.
Cold Cry didn't bother responding. He gave the masked old man one look, held the sharp gaze aimed back at him for a beat, and walked straight past into the cabin.
"This is my new apprentice, Kanroji Noe. Little Noe, this is Haganezuka Hotaru, a swordsmith out of the Swordsmith Village. He forged both your blades himself and made the trip out to White Dragon Mountain to deliver them in person." Roubee made the introductions with real enthusiasm.
"Hello, Grandpa Haganezuka." Noe bowed politely.
"Hello there," Haganezuka replied, warm enough despite the wooden Hyottoko mask covering his face.
"So how long's it been since Gyomei, and now suddenly you're taking on apprentices again? What brought this on? I hear there's a Kanroji among the current Nine Hashira, too. Don't tell me..."
"To answer you, Grandpa Kanroji Mitsuri really is my older sister," Noe said.
"Ha! No wonder. I hear the Love Hashira has quite the constitution; her muscle density can spike to eight times normal in an instant. Seems I've struck gold with this one."
Noe smiled, a little shy, at his booming laugh.
"Come here, girl, try out what I made you. The first word I got from the Corps was they wanted a flexible blade, same as the Love Hashira's. Had me stumped for a bit, thought maybe hers had broken. Then I realized: they're building themselves a second Love Hashira."
Haganezuka pulled a wrapped bundle from behind him and set it on the table, unfolding the cloth to reveal a brown wooden box. Inside, resting side by side on the padding, were two blades, one pink, one silver.
"Cold Cry! Come see, Grandpa Haganezuka brought our blades!"
Noe called toward the cabin before he'd even had a chance to come out, already reaching for the pink one.
It felt heavier in her hand than she expected and, strangely, unaccountably familiar.
The scabbard was pink. The hilt, a warm tan, was wrapped in a woven wheat-ear pattern, and the tsuba was tan as well, shaped like a six-pointed star.
She drew it carefully. The blade itself was thin as an insect's wing, whip-flexible, and yet clearly tough, a folding, extendable weapon that could stretch out to two and a half meters at full length.
As she watched, delighted, the blade slowly bled to pink.
"Cold Cry, look! It turned pink!"
He glanced over at the strange thing in her hands; it looked less like a sword and more like some kind of whip. *Fitting,* he thought. *A weapon that's as much of a mess as she is.*
He lifted the silver blade from the box instead and looked it over.
Its scabbard was silver, the hilt white, wrapped in a wisteria pattern so detailed it looked almost alive. The tsuba, also white, was shaped like a six-petaled snowflake.
He drew it in one clean motion, steel rasping against the scabbard. The silver blade shifted, right there in front of everyone, into a color as white as fresh snow.
"White." Haganezuka tilted his head. "A blade's color says something about the person carrying it. Can't say I've made one that color before."
Cold Cry gave it a few practice swings, the air whistling faintly along the edge.
"Well, that's my delivery. Time I got moving."
Haganezuka packed the box away, wrapped it, tied it to his back, and stood, looking between the two of them. "Use these blades well. Kill plenty of demons, protect plenty of people. Don't let the work that went into them go to waste."
"You can count on it, Grandpa Haganezuka. Noe will take care of this blade." She held it close with both hands and bowed.
Cold Cry sheathed his and offered a simple, "Thank you."
"Staying for dinner, at least?" Roubee asked.
"Can't. I've got another stop to make this afternoon, so I packed my own food for the road so I wouldn't lose the time. I'll be off."
Haganezuka waved to the three of them and started back down the mountain.
Once he was gone, Roubee had Noe bring the food to the table.
Over dinner, he mentioned that the Corps had delivered their team uniforms that same morning. Uniforms and blades arriving together, three months in, meant one thing: a mission was coming.
Sure enough, partway through the meal, both Kasugai Crows swept in from opposite directions, each carrying the same notice.
The hot spring town of Qingshui had been losing tourists to a string of disappearances. Local patrols, day and night, hadn't slowed it down. Panic had settled over the town, and with it, a steep drop in visitors and mounting economic damage.
According to the Corps' Kakushi investigators, demonic activity was the likely cause, and the Corps was dispatching help. Mizunoto-rank members Hyouka Kanenaki and Kanroji Noe were being sent to Qingshui to investigate and ease the town's fears.
Noe had been anxious about it at first; she'd only just joined, barely knew the ropes, and the idea of a solo mission had unsettled her.
Then she heard she'd be paired with Cold Cry, and her whole face lit up.
He wasn't nearly as pleased.
He'd been counting on this mission as his chance to finally shake her loose, and instead, through some administrative fluke, they'd been paired again.
He couldn't decide whether the Corps had done it on purpose, or whether there just weren't enough hands to spare.
The next morning, the two of them dressed in their brand-new uniforms, haori over top, blades at their waists, and said their goodbyes to Roubee before setting off for Qingshui.
Qingshui was a well-known hot spring destination, ranked among the ten most popular tourist towns in the country for years running, drawing tens of thousands of visitors annually.
Tourism had made it one of the wealthier towns around, which made the sudden wave of disappearances, and the fear that came with it, all the more damaging. The tourism industry was the town's entire economic backbone. Lose that, and Qingshui wouldn't just struggle. It would collapse.
After a hard few days of travel, the two of them finally reached Qingshui on the evening of the third day.
The town that had once buzzed with life now sat still and quiet. It was barely seven in the evening, and the wide main street stood empty.
Along both sides, the scattered shops still had their red lanterns hung out front, meant to signal good fortune and celebration, but looking, now, faintly unsettling instead.
A cold gust swept through, kicking up a few stray plastic bags off the pavement. Under the moonlight, they twisted and spun like children chasing each other in the dark, a strange, small detail that only made the empty town feel eerier.
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