The lantern light in the Japanese-style room was warm.
The red carpet, the paper doors, the gentle sound of water drifting in from the lotus pond outside-everything was as soft as a dream.
Shinobu Kocho stood in the center of the room.
Her sword hand hung naturally at her right side, her fingers relaxed, her breathing even, her heartbeat held steady at sixty-two beats per minute.
Doma sat three meters away, opposite her.
His golden fan rested on his knees, his rainbow irises shifting in the warm light, that sickening, signature smile curling his lips.
"Your sister tasted so very special."
He tilted his head. Blood streamed down from the top of his head, slipping along his pale nose and into the creases of his smile.
"Sweet, with the delicate fragrance of flowers. When I ate her-"
"Doma."
Shinobu spoke evenly, without the slightest tremor or rise at the end of her words.
Doma paused for half a beat.
Rather than being annoyed at the interruption, he felt a fresh spark of curiosity. He watched her with his head tilted, waiting for her next curse or desperate scream.
But Shinobu said nothing more.
She was thinking about something else.
What flashed through her mind was not her sister's face in death.
It was a hand covered in dark red scorch marks, and the mass of reverse cursed energy it had dragged out when it was roughly withdrawn from her chest.
It was that impatient bastard throwing his coat in her face, calling her "pitifully stupid," while applying such precise force with his hands that he could reconstruct the toxin molecules in every one of her cells.
Before, when she stood here, her heart held nothing but a last testament.
It held the tragic calculation of *Make my poison concentrated enough