Chinatsu's gentle words struck straight at Kokushibo's heart. Until then, it had been filled with tangled emotions.
Uncertainty, confusion, anger, sorrow, resentment...
But at her gentle words, all those emotions crumbled, finally giving way to a single feeling.
[Acceptance]
At that moment, the elderly Yoriichi Tsugikuni seemed to appear before his eyes, his body gradually turning back through time until he was a child again.
Yoriichi reached a hand toward him, an innocent smile on his face.
"Brother."
Perhaps, just as Chinatsu had said, the brothers would have another chance to meet. Just as Koyuki had always been waiting for her Hakuji, Yoriichi might be waiting for his brother too.
Of course, all of this was only speculation and imagination. Chinatsu was no deity, and Kokushibo had not truly seen Yoriichi's soul. Yet at that moment, he genuinely began to hope that Yoriichi was still waiting for him.
With that acceptance, Kokushibo's once hideous face gradually grew peaceful. He looked at Chinatsu, who, unlike him, was not being burned by the sunlight, and showed only a flicker of surprise.
"May I ask your name?"
Even as his body crumbled, Kokushibo asked Chinatsu this question in a calm voice. She neither refused nor ignored him, but answered sincerely.
"Chinatsu. Chinatsu Kamado."
After hearing her name, Kokushibo murmured it twice under his breath, then gave a faint smile.
"Thank you, Chinatsu."
As those words fell, the sunlight reduced Kokushibo's body to dust before Chinatsu's eyes. She swayed, nearly falling as the support she had been leaning on vanished.
A demon's regeneration had its limits, and Chinatsu did not believe she was an exception in that regard. Although she had yet to discover where her own limit lay, she was tired now-utterly exhausted. The fatigue after her battle with Akaza aboard the Mugen