After three rounds of drinks, the night had deepened.
Kirishima Bupai set down his cup and stood. The coat he had changed out of at the tearoom earlier should have been washed by now. It was time to pick it up.
"Where are you going, Mr. Kirishima?" Tanjiro gathered his courage to ask, his nose sniffing instinctively.
Rolling his neck, Kirishima Bupai glanced at him and replied evenly, "To pick something up."
He did not specify what, but he was already heading toward the inn's entrance.
Though everyone was curious, no one asked anything further.
"Come to think of it, Mr. Kirishima wasn't wearing that coat today... He must be going to pick it up?" Studying Kirishima Bupai's clothes, Tanjiro hazarded a guess.
Outside the warm inn, the mountain night wind carried a damp chill.
A descending path paved with bluestone slabs stretched from the inn's entrance toward the river below, passing yesterday's tearoom along the way.
Thin clouds veiled the moon, leaving the light dim. Only the glow of the lanterns outside the inn cast wavering shadows across the stone steps.
Kirishima Bupai walked slowly down the steps, his footfalls unusually distinct in the quiet night.
After descending a short distance, beyond the inn's light, he paused slightly at a bend in the steps.
Beneath the shadows of the dense bamboo beside the path, something reflected the faint moonlight.
It was a pot the size of a basketball.
Its shape was peculiar, its contours winding and twisted, unlike ordinary pottery.
Most striking of all were the dense, intricate, eerie patterns covering its surface.
They were not simple geometric designs or flowers, but resembled the scales of some twisted creature, deformed eyeballs, and tendril-like lines that constantly coiled and stretched.
In the dim light, they seemed to writhe slowly, exuding