Kaigaku barged into the Butterfly Mansion's depths—only to discover that what looked like a modest compound from outside held considerably more space on the inside.
He blundered around like a headless fly for a few minutes and realized he couldn't find his way back to the entrance. Frustrated and increasingly annoyed, he happened to spot a group of children hanging laundry nearby.
"Hey."
He had no patience for children, but he needed directions.
"Do any of you know where Zenitsu Agatsuma is? I'm his senior disciple. I can't find him."
"Zenitsu-san?" One of the younger girls answered with a slightly uncertain look. "He should be at Inori-nee's place? He's been training in that small courtyard every day."
"What? You've got to be kidding. That guy doesn't train on his own."
Kaigaku dismissed this outright.
He can't even stay focused in front of his teacher. Why would he voluntarily train during what's basically a vacation?
"Believe it or don't—stop bothering us while we're working."
The girl wrinkled her nose and issued her dismissal with complete composure, not the least bit intimidated by the unfriendly young man standing over her.
She was the only one among them willing to talk back. The rest had retreated behind her, huddled and trembling.
The Butterfly Mansion's male visitors were all faces they knew. This one was a stranger—scowling, radiating hostility, with a sword at his hip.
"...Which direction is that?"
Kaigaku paused, then asked.
"Straight ahead through the courtyard gate, turn left into the bamboo path, follow it to the end. First small gate on the east side."
"..."
He nodded and walked away without another word.
"Honestly. Not even a thank you," muttered a boy of six or seven, once he was safely out of earshot.
"He looked so scary," said another little girl, worried. "He's not going to pick on Kanao-nee, is he?"
"Don't worry about it," said the older girl, patting the younger ones on the shoulders. "Inori-nee is not the patient type, remember?"
Anyone that close to Kanae-sama and Shinobu-sama was not someone to underestimate.
...
...
Kaigaku followed the directions and found the place. He didn't announce himself—he wanted to see first whether what that girl had said was actually true.
What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
—...Is that actually Zenitsu?
The space ahead was open ground, fringed at the edges with scattered flowers and grasses, a small wooden building at one side. In the middle stood two young figures facing each other down with wooden swords.
The one with amber-gold hair was obviously his junior disciple. His opponent: a girl with her hair in a ponytail, cute-looking at a glance.
One look told Kaigaku who was winning.
Zenitsu was filthy, hair plastered to his face with sweat, a visible bruise already darkening under one eye, his sword hand trembling, breath coming in ragged gulps.
The girl breathed evenly. Her clothes were spotless.
Kaigaku's gaze sharpened with contempt. Of course. True to form—can't even beat a little girl.
"Come on, Kanao-chan! Again!"
Zenitsu had caught his breath enough to shout. He charged forward with the wooden sword raised high.
Kanao moved without appearing to hurry. She brought her sword up in a clean block, redirected the momentum at a precise angle, and smacked him hard on the shoulder.
Zenitsu shrieked. Kaigaku watched with growing amusement. This was exactly what he enjoyed most when he sparred with Zenitsu—hitting him without holding back and watching him crumble, plead for mercy, make a spectacle of himself like the loser he was.
Kaigaku was half a step toward calling out to him when Zenitsu raised his sword again—demanding another round with the girl.
He stopped dead. Both feet rooted to the ground, unable to move.
—Something's wrong.
He knew exactly what Zenitsu was. As he'd thought before—how could someone who couldn't stay disciplined in front of his own teacher be training voluntarily during his recovery? And take a hit, then ask for more?
Unless... is it this girl who changed him?
—Wait. Wasn't he the one who got swindled out of money by a woman? Now he's here, meets a girl about his own age, and suddenly he has something to fight for?
No.
I won't let Zenitsu make friends. Or a girlfriend. I will not let this girl be his reason to keep going.
Kaigaku clenched his jaw. He swallowed the anger, turned, and slipped quietly back the way he'd come.
...
...
"Kanao... I... I want to try one more time..."
Zenitsu hauled himself up off the ground, his reasonably good-looking face now a patchwork of welts and swelling—his jaw so puffy his own voice came out garbled.
Kanao's expression softened into a faint smile. She set down her wooden sword and walked toward the gate.
"Don't—don't go... ow, my legs..."
Zenitsu might never in his life have trained this hard in this short a span of time.
Inori's words had cracked something open in him. After their conversation, he'd asked her seriously about the right approach to training—and she'd said nothing, just told him to train alongside Kanao. That was how it had started.
Mornings: sword swings with Kanao. After breakfast: mountain runs until late afternoon. Evenings: upper-body strength work. Barely a moment to breathe between.
Today's sparring match had been his own idea—he wanted a concrete sense of the gap between them. The result was concrete and not kind. He couldn't even graze the edge of Kanao's sleeve. This wasn't a spar; it was purely one-sided—Zenitsu just taking hit after hit.
Different training regimens, compounding into a physical gap. By end of day Kanao's strikes still carried full force. Zenitsu could barely hold his stance.
"Ugh... Jii-chan, I really miss you..."
Lying there in the dirt, Zenitsu became aware all at once of what two days had done to his body. Every muscle had seized into a dull roar of ache—a full-body burn from skin to bone. His cuts and welts were raw and stinging. And yet somewhere underneath all of it, he felt something he hadn't expected: a sense of fulfillment so deep he almost didn't recognize it. Two days—he genuinely believed he'd outpaced the version of himself that had arrived here, and by a wide margin.
Kanao set down her sword, looked once at the boy lying flat on the ground—something like quiet approval in her eyes—and left. Training done for the day.
The evening sun was reddening now, stretching Kanao's shadow long across the earth behind her.
Today's sparring had broken her schedule, but breaking rhythm once in a while wasn't a bad thing. And soon there would be the special pickled cabbage soup Inori made—Kanao was looking forward to it.
She was still smiling faintly to herself as she turned the corner.
Then someone stepped into her path.
A man, considerably taller than her.
"Hey now. You're... Kanao, right?"
"Looks like you and Zenitsu get along pretty well."