Xia Xi felt as though he had heard that name somewhere before.
It sounded a little familiar.
Beside him, Shinjuro, who was soaking in an ordinary bath, suddenly smacked his fist into his palm. "Hey, Xia Xi, could she be that child who came to my house looking for you?"
The Dawn Hashira looked utterly bewildered.
Wait, how come even Big Owl knew, but I barely remembered anything?
Seeing Xia Xi's blank expression, Shinjuro reminded him rather speechlessly, "Tokyo. It was in Tokyo."
"Weren't you still in Tokyo back then, learning Flame Breathing from Kyojuro?"
"Not long after you left, two skinny little children came to my house looking for you."
"They said they wanted to properly thank you for saving their lives. They came two or three times."
"I remember one was called Yan Zi, and the other... I think her name was Sayo..."
Shinjuro gave Xia Xi a suspicious look.
"Didn't I write you several letters afterward mentioning this?"
"Don't tell me you didn't read a single one..."
Xia Xi: ...
W-was that what happened?
Xia Xi racked his brains.
At last, he dug that incident out of a corner of his memory.
Back then, he had taken Little Shemaru and Owl along, and after killing a demon that could teleport, he had treated two children from the slums along the way.
He had been treating her illness at the time.
One was a teenage street girl named Yan Zi.
The other, younger one seemed to have been called Sayo...
Gyomei had said she was a little girl of four or five before he joined the Demon Slayer Corps.
Judging by the timeline, her age seemed to fit.
Xia Xi was about to speak.
But then he heard the Great Monk's breathing suddenly change beside him.
They all