Shinobu Kocho's pupils shrank to two black pinpoints.
She hadn't seen it.
Less than half a second had passed between drawing her blade and being seized by the throat. Her reaction speed ranked among the top three of the Nine Hashira, yet this boy had lifted her like a chick before even fully pulling his hand out of his pocket.
The five fingers around her neck didn't tighten. Their pressure could even have been called gentle.
But the thumb resting against her carotid artery pressed lightly every two seconds, as though he were toying with a piece of porcelain he could crush at any moment. That effortless control was more suffocating than actual killing intent.
Shinobu Kocho made her assessment in a fraction of a second.
Her feet moved.
Her left foot slammed toward the inside of Yaha's knee, then her right snapped upward, its toe aimed precisely at his elbow joint. Both kicks had one purpose: force him to let go.
At the same time, she twisted her right wrist. Her specially designed, slender Nichirin Blade remained in her grip, its tip tracing a bizarre reverse arc through the air. The wisteria poison coating the blade gleamed an icy blue in the moonlight.
No need to sever his head. She only needed to break the skin.
Even a wound the size of a fingernail would let the deadly poison paralyze her opponent's central nervous system within three seconds. This was the unique fighting philosophy of the Insect Hashira, Shinobu Kocho: make up for a lack of strength with absolute speed.
Yaha released her.
Shinobu Kocho's heels touched the ground. Before she could regain her balance, she saw the boy pull his right hand from his pocket.
His index finger curled slightly.
His knuckle flicked the blade sweeping back toward him.
Clink.
A sharp ring burst through the woods. It wasn't loud, but it made Tanjiro's scalp prickle ten paces away. The sound was wrong. That wasn't the clash of a blocked blade, but the discordant resonance of some power operating on the level of fundamental laws colliding head-on with steel.
Shinobu Kocho's right arm instantly lost all sensation, from fingertips to shoulder.
The specially forged, barbed Nichirin Blade flew from her hand. It spun three times in midair before burying itself deep in the trunk of an ancient tree more than ten meters away. Its hilt still vibrated rapidly, giving off a muffled hum. The blade had sunk a full four inches into the wood.
Shinobu Kocho looked down at her numb right hand. Her five fingers twitched faintly, like the lingering spasms after an electric shock. She tried to make a fist. Her finger joints clicked softly, but she couldn't have mustered enough strength to crush a grape.
Yaha slipped his hand back into his pocket.
"Poison." He tilted his head, his voice languid. "A trick for the weak."
Shinobu Kocho raised her head.
Her lips still held their practiced curve. But the edges of that smile were visibly crumbling.
The speed she took pride in had been utterly disregarded by someone standing perfectly still. The poisoned blade she depended on had been flicked away with one finger. From the start of her lethal strike to the moment she lost her weapon, he hadn't even shifted his feet.
Shinobu Kocho bit the tip of her tongue. The taste of rust spread through her mouth.
Her left hand slowly clenched. Her fingertips caught the two spare poisoned needles hidden in her sleeve, their tips pointing outward. She lowered her body and shifted her weight forward.
Yaha glanced at her.
That look froze every movement Shinobu Kocho was making.
It wasn't killing intent. It wasn't a threat. It was the utterly dispassionate scrutiny of someone examining a specimen in a museum.
"How much wisteria poison have you accumulated in your body?"
Shinobu Kocho's pupils blew wide.
Yaha's tone was as casual as if he were discussing the weather. "Given your weight and metabolism, if you started taking poison after your sister died, it's been about three or four years now. Three or four years of highly concentrated doses would be enough to destroy an Upper Rank's digestive system from the inside."
He pulled his right hand from his pocket and pointed his index finger through the air toward Shinobu Kocho.
"You plan to turn yourself into a poison bomb and let that Upper Rank swallow you whole."
The wind in the woods stopped.
Shinobu Kocho stood rooted to the spot. Her left hand released the poisoned needles. The two slender silver needles fell onto the dead leaves with a barely audible tinkle.
Her smile vanished.
Something deeper overlaid the lingering curve of her facial muscles. Not fear, not anger. It was the naked, inescapable suffocation of having a secret she had hidden for years unwrapped before her eyes.
"How did you know?"
Shinobu Kocho's voice had changed. Gone was the gentle, polite tone, replaced by a rasp forced from the bottom of her throat.
"I haven't told anyone about this."
Yaha's eyelids hung half-lowered.
Of course he knew. Every manga panel he had read in his previous life was etched clearly into his mind. Shinobu Kocho had spent years turning herself into a walking poison stockpile, with only one target: Upper Rank Two, Doma. The demon who had killed her sister, Kanae Kocho.
But he couldn't say that.
"The concentration of wisteria poison in your body has already seeped into your capillaries." Yaha stuck out his tongue and absently licked the thumb that had just held Shinobu Kocho's neck. "Even your sweat is full of it. A normal poison user wouldn't saturate herself to this extent. Unless, from the very beginning, the goal wasn't to kill an enemy with poison, but to serve herself up as the main course."
Shinobu Kocho clenched her fingers inside her sleeve, her nails digging into her palm.
Yaha took a step forward.
The distance between them narrowed to less than two paces. He stood more than half a head taller than Shinobu Kocho, his gaze falling onto her pale face from above.
"With that little poison, you wouldn't even count as dessert to a real monster."
Shinobu Kocho gritted her teeth. Her lips blanched with the strain.
"You want revenge." Yaha's voice was flat. "Fine. But with a pathetic trick like trading your life for his, the only result will be your death. That thing will spend a couple of days digesting you, suffer a stomachache, then go right back to eating people."
"If you want to kill a demon at that level, live a little longer. Don't be an eyesore."
Shinobu Kocho stared at him.
An intensely complicated swirl of emotions churned in her purple eyes. There was the terror of having her hidden trump card exposed, the anger of having her consuming purpose dismissed, and a faint wavering she hadn't even noticed herself.
Yaha paid no attention to that look.
He turned away, the hem of his black clothes lifting in the night wind. His military boots stepped over the fallen leaves as he headed toward the woodland path.
"The next time you bother me with a test like this..."
He didn't look back. His voice drifted on the wind.
"I'll cut you into a specimen and hang you on the gates of the Butterfly Mansion."
Shinobu Kocho remained where she stood. Moonlight fell across the side of her face. That face, so accustomed to smiling, was now expressionless, like a shattered mirror someone had barely managed to piece back together. The cracks remained, but its surface was smooth again.
She watched Yaha's retreating figure.
His black silhouette gradually dwindled among the trees. His bearing was languid, his steps casual, and the Black Blade at his waist had never once left its sheath.
Shinobu Kocho slowly raised her left hand and touched her fingertips to her neck. A faint trace of warmth still lingered there.
Her heartbeat faltered.
Not from fear. That erratic rhythm was the tremendous upheaval of her deeply buried stubbornness intertwining with an unfamiliar sense of danger, after those cold eyes had forcibly shattered her resolve to die.
She forced that strange feeling down, turned toward the ancient tree, and pulled out the Nichirin Blade buried deep in its trunk. She sheathed it with a crisp, decisive motion, but noticed that her hand was still trembling slightly.
Just then, a frantic flutter came from inside the front of her uniform.
A gray-feathered Kasugai Crow crawled out from inside her uniform, its wings flapping noisily. Its voice was shrill and piercing, especially jarring in the night.
"Urgent orders, urgent orders. Mount Natagumo, heavy casualties among lower-ranking members, suspected presence of the Twelve Kizuki. Hashira support requested, Hashira support requested."
Shinobu Kocho's gaze instantly turned cold.
Mount Natagumo. She knew the place. Of the Demon Slayer Corps members who had disappeared over the past two weeks, more than half had last been active around that mountain.
She raised her head and looked in the direction Yaha had gone.
The boy's black-clad figure was heading north along the woodland path. That was precisely the direction of Mount Natagumo.
Shinobu Kocho tightened her grip on her sword hilt.
Ten paces away, Tanjiro stood up with Nezuko's wooden box in his arms. He had also heard the Kasugai Crow's message. The wound on his forehead was still seeping blood, and the sun designs on his earrings swayed in the moonlight.
Three people, three directions, one destination.
Heavy storm clouds were gathering above Mount Natagumo. A shaft of moonlight slipped through a gap in the clouds, illuminating the dense mass of white-gleaming spider silk halfway up the mountain.
At the ends of those threads hung human corpses, each wearing a smile.
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