He withdrew the Nichirin Blade from the man's body and sheathed it. Blood gushed out in torrents. The man clamped both hands over his wound, desperate to stop the bleeding, but his efforts were futile.
Feeling his life ebb away, he looked at Su Mu again, driven by his desire to survive. All he found was cold indifference, so he turned to his daughter with that same desperate yearning to live.
If his daughter took him to a doctor in time, perhaps he still had a chance.
"Help... help me."
The man pleaded with his daughter.
Su Mu had already set Kanao Tsuyuri down. She stood quietly, watching the man kneel on the ground with his hands pressed over the wound in his chest. She did nothing but watch.
As the life of the person her blood ties called her "father" slipped away, not a flicker of emotion stirred in her lovely pinkish-purple eyes.
Just as learning that her parents had sold her had brought her no sadness, their deaths would not stir so much as a ripple in her heart.
Throughout those cruel years, the affection a girl should have felt for her father had long since been beaten out of her, one blow and one bout of pain at a time.
Whenever she cried, her father kicked and stomped on her, and her mother grabbed her by the ears and forced her into a water vat. If she failed to follow her father's swinging fists, she could easily be struck somewhere vital. Several of her siblings had been beaten to death through that same violence and abuse.
She did not know how she had survived. She only knew that, when she watched her father's fists come down, she seemed to see the path they would take. Then she shifted slightly to take the blows on parts of her body that could better withstand them. Dodging was impossible. Dodging only brought harder blows. Holding back her tears and enduring the pain, she had lived in terror, barely clinging to life until now.
She endured hunger, pain, emptiness, and loneliness, until one day she heard the sound of a rope snapping inside her head. After that, pain, sorrow, joy, and happiness gradually drifted away.
The girl tilted her head, watching the man called her father collapse onto the ground, his face full of despair. She watched him look at her with pleading eyes. That look was so familiar. Her older sister, whom her father had beaten to death, seemed to have looked at him the same way in her final moments. Then, in the cold depths of the night, the light in her eyes had slowly faded, and her body had gradually lost its warmth.
Kanao Tsuyuri simply watched in silence as her father lay on the ground and slowly stopped breathing. Then she tilted her head and looked at Uncle.
Compared with the numb emptiness in her eyes when she looked at her father, a faint light glimmered in them as she gazed at Su Mu.
Su Mu reached out and gently rested his hand on the girl's head.
Without thinking, she lifted her little head and nuzzled against the large hand stroking it.
"I killed your father."
Su Mu said it to Kanao Tsuyuri very calmly.
Those should have been terribly cruel words to a child. Surely any child who heard them would find them unbearable.
But Kanao Tsuyuri merely tilted her little head and looked at him, the light still glimmering in her eyes.
Su Mu quietly met Kanao Tsuyuri's gaze. He saw no sadness in her eyes, nor any trace of hatred.
Even her father's death brought her no sorrow, and she felt no resentment toward the person who had killed him.
As he looked at the girl, who seemed to understand nothing and only gazed up at him in silence, pity rose unbidden in Su Mu's heart.
He smiled. "It's better this way."
With that, he turned around and shut the front door, then picked up the man's body and threw it into the woodshed.
Kanao Tsuyuri followed quietly behind Su Mu, watching Uncle toss her father's body into the woodshed like a dead dog.
After throwing the man's body into the woodshed and locking the door, he turned to look at the girl trailing close behind him. Taking in her grimy little face and filthy clothes, he reached out, took Kanao Tsuyuri's small hand, and led her into the room.
He searched through the cupboard, hoping to find a few changes of clothes for Kanao Tsuyuri, but there was not a single piece of clothing for her.
"Wait here in the room. I'll go out for a little while and be right back."
He spoke to the girl.
The girl merely blinked. Her little hand, which had been gripping his large one tightly, reluctantly let go.
Smiling, Su Mu patted Kanao Tsuyuri's head and walked out the door, soon disappearing into the night.
Kanao Tsuyuri curled up quietly in a corner of the room. She sat there with her arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes fixed silently on the outside.
Before long, Su Mu returned with several pieces of girls' clothing he had stolen from homes in town.
Even after returning to the room, Su Mu kept glancing over his shoulder. Sneaking into people's homes late at night to steal girls' clothes made him rather uncomfortable. Although no one could possibly have discovered him, he still felt guilty.
The instant Kanao Tsuyuri saw Su Mu, she darted out of the corner where she had been huddled, ran up to him, and wrapped both arms around him.
"I'll heat some water for you in a moment. Then you can change your clothes."
Looking down at the girl hugging him, so clearly dependent on him, he gently ruffled her hair.
Kanao Tsuyuri was a very well-behaved little girl. She was nothing like those obnoxious brats who got on people's nerves.
He went to the kitchen and lit the firewood.
After heating a large pot of water, Su Mu scooped it into a wooden tub with a dipper, then added some cold water. He tested it with his hand, and once the temperature felt about right, he carried the tub into the room. Kanao Tsuyuri followed obediently behind him.
"After your bath, change into these clothes."
Su Mu pointed to the clean clothes at the head of the bed as he spoke to Kanao Tsuyuri.
Kanao Tsuyuri tilted her head and looked at him, blinking blankly as though she did not quite understand.
Seeing her reaction, Su Mu paused.
"Have you never had a bath before?"
He asked softly.
The girl watched him quietly, seemingly unable to understand what he was saying.
Su Mu found it rather hard to believe, but when he thought of Kanao Tsuyuri's cold-blooded parents, it no longer seemed particularly strange.
He could not help recalling scenes from the anime. After Kanae Kocho and her sister rescued Kanao Tsuyuri from a slave trader, Shinobu Kocho had been the one to bathe her. Even when washing Kanao's hair, as the water poured down over her head, Kanao had simply stared blankly, not even
closing her eyes, letting the water splash straight into them.
Clearly, Kanao Tsuyuri did not understand even something as simple as taking a bath.
It might have seemed rather funny, even unbelievable, but to Kanao Tsuyuri, it was perfectly normal.
Not everyone had parents to care for and cherish them from birth.
Some children had parents who taught them how to bathe from an early age. For others, though, even that was something forever beyond their reach.