Roy drank his tea in silence.
Tanjiro sat restlessly, as if something were stuck in his throat.
The old woman and the other woman's faces turned terribly grim. At first, the latter hadn't realized what it meant, but now she understood. She clasped her hands together, her fingers digging hard into the hem of her clothes.
A moment later, a sigh escaped...
The old woman seemed to age ten years in an instant. She said softly, "Hirotomo was always stubborn."
"He traveled far and wide, and cared more about money than his own life..."
"He once said that unless he was gone, nobody was to touch his pack..."
Now the pack had returned, but he hadn't. The meaning was all too clear...
"Child, tell Granny the truth," the old woman said. Her voice trembled, as if she were on the verge of breaking down, yet she held herself together through sheer force of will...
"Is Hirotomo not coming back?"
The already oppressive air in the wooden house seemed to freeze. There was a brazier on the low table, yet the room felt colder than the depths of winter outside.
Tanjiro turned his stiff neck and looked at Roy as if pleading for help...
Roy noticed the little girl, Shizuki, looking first at her mother, then her grandmother, and then back at him and Tanjiro in confusion. He gestured for Tanjiro to take her outside under the pretense of having a snowball fight.
Neither the old woman nor the other woman objected.
Only then did Roy set down his teacup and say softly, "To be honest, I think it would be better if Uncle Minamino told you himself."
The old woman and the other woman both froze.
Then they felt a warm current rise from the low table, flowing up past their knees and into their eyes. Only then—
Did they suddenly realize that a familiar figure had appeared before them at some point.
It was none other than...
A mother's child, a child's father, a wife's husband—Minamino Hirotomo.
"Hirotomo!"
"Mother... Naoko..."
The Nen connecting the old woman and the other woman through the low table rippled violently.
Roy closed his eyes to rest, leaving the three of them alone. Yet he knew as clearly as if he were looking into a mirror that this was the result of the intense emotions overwhelming him.
When emotions manifested through Nen Ability, they took on different colors...
If everyone in the house had been a Nen user, they would have seen the little wooden house filled to the brim with surging emotions. These emotions were dull and gray, steeped in indescribable sorrow and pain.
"Whoosh—whoosh—" The north wind howled outside the window, carrying in the happy laughter of children...
Roy opened his eyes without thinking and looked out the window. Shizuki was running around happily with Tanjiro beside her.
Beside the snowman she and her mother had built lay the bamboo horse Minamino Hirotomo had bought her, abandoned in the snow.
She called out, laughing, bent down, scooped up a handful of snow, and threw it at Tanjiro. He forced a smile and pretended it hurt, fleeing in a comical panic and making her chase after him excitedly...
By contrast, things in the house gradually quieted down.
The water boiled, lifting the kettle lid and sending up a plume of steam.
After they had finished speaking with Minamino Hirotomo, the old woman and the other woman clasped their hands before their foreheads, prostrated themselves, and bowed to Roy.
"Thank you, Lord Eiichiro, for avenging my son/husband!"
"It was no trouble." Roy helped them up, glanced at Minamino Hirotomo, and told the truth. "My brother and I needed a place to stay anyway. The demon attacked us, so we only fought to protect ourselves."
"There's no need to thank us, Granny, Auntie."
"Lord Eiichiro is too modest." Minamino Hirotomo smiled at the old woman and the other woman. "Mother, Naoko, you may not know how Lord Eiichiro toyed with it that day..."
"I saw it all from the side. That demon was no match for him. If Lord Eiichiro hadn't wanted to give his younger brother, Lord Tanjiro, a chance to train..."
"I doubt the demon could have lasted even one exchange!"
This time, Roy didn't argue or try to be modest. He finished his tea, delivered the gift, and completed his task, then got up to leave.
The old woman and the other woman insisted that he stay, but he could see that the tears on their faces had yet to dry, and that more were about to fall...
Roy firmly declined, opened the door, and stepped into the courtyard.
The old woman and the other woman rose to see him off... Tanjiro led Shizuki over after she had tired herself out playing.
As everyone watched—
Roy handed Minamino Hirotomo's water flask, which he had been carrying, to Minamino Hirotomo's mother...
"This is where Uncle Minamino rested. Keep it as a memento, Granny."
The old woman shakily took the flask and hugged it to her chest. Her tears began to fall again...
The other woman fought back her grief and supported her by the waist, while Shizuki watched it all in confusion, unsure what to do.
Minamino Hirotomo chuckled and comforted them with a clear heart. "Don't cry, Mother. Everyone dies someday. Just think of me as having gone early to enjoy the bliss of paradise..."
As if to prove his words, Minamino Hirotomo could no longer hold his soul together. It began to dissipate...
The old woman and the other woman watched, growing even more heartbroken. They clung to his hand and refused to let him go.
Roy silently watched from the side, then seized the opportunity to ask him through Nen Telepathy, "Would you like to say goodbye to Miss Shizuki?"
Minamino Hirotomo watched Shizuki run to her mother and grandmother, wiping the tears from one face, then the other, and saying, "Don't cry... don't cry..."
With infinite reluctance, he gently shook his head...
"Lord Eiichiro, I, Minamino Hirotomo, have rarely thanked anyone. Besides my mother, I've never bowed to anyone..."
"Even when bandits stabbed me once, years ago, I didn't kneel and beg for mercy..."
"But this time, I truly thank you..."
"Thank you for bringing me home and letting me find peace..."
A gust of cold wind blew. White mist drifted from the mouth of the flask... Minamino Hirotomo's voice grew fainter and fainter, until—
He smiled and took one last, deep look at Shizuki...
Then he turned into specks of light and flew toward Roy, vanishing into his body in an instant...
[Notice: You have cleansed a soul...]
[Entrusted with its wishes and inheriting its karma, the other party has transferred their final energy to you...]
[Notice: "Life Energy" +1...]
[Host may allocate it freely to the "Constitution" panel]
Roy froze. He suddenly felt the copper coin in his arms—the one he had pried out of the snow beside Minamino Hirotomo's pack—grow strangely heavy, so heavy that—
He had to take a deep breath before he felt any better.
"So this is the real gift?"
The boy murmured under his breath, standing silently in the wind and snow for a while...
When he came back to himself, he called Tanjiro over, said goodbye to the Minamino family, and turned to press deeper into Mount Sagiri...
"Goodbye, Big Brother Tanjiro..."
"Goodbye, Shizuki..."
"Goodbye, Minamino Hirotomo..." Roy didn't look back, silently adding the words in his heart...
The Sun and Mountain Earrings swayed beneath his earlobes in the wind, gradually disappearing into the snowstorm...
"Whoosh!" The wind grew stronger, the snow fell harder... The Kamado brothers' footprints were erased. In the vast, empty world, only a fenced-in courtyard remained, along with two grieving people and one bewildered child, watching them leave and standing there for a long, long time...
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