The villagers looked at one another, then turned their eyes back to the pot.
"Uh..."
"Yes, Lord Void Hashira!" In the end, however, they scratched their heads, answered, and went out to fetch his coat.
After washing the grime and blood off his body, Kirishima Bupai returned to his room with the pot.
The air inside was as heavy as a congealed block of ink, thick with the lingering reek of purplish-black blood and pungent urine.
The smell came from the pot on the floor beside him, covered in twisted patterns and sealed with layer upon layer of gray-black tape.
Occasionally, an extremely faint, almost imperceptible, spasmodic shudder ran through the pot before it immediately fell deathly still again.
Kirishima Bupai sat back in the shadows near the paper door, Yamato laid across his legs, his coat collar stirring gently in the breeze.
His hazy gray eyes were half closed, as though he were dozing-or waiting intently for something.
His fingertips unconsciously brushed the cool, smooth scabbard, the movement as slight as a breeze skimming the water.
The faint bustle and clatter of dishes from the inn's main hall sounded distant and indistinct through the thick wooden boards.
Only a silence stretched to its limit remained in this space.
Tanjiro and the others' room was not far away.
He could clearly smell the boy's restless unease as he tossed and turned, Zenitsu's rapid heartbeat like that of a startled bird, and Inosuke's heavy, restless breathing even in his sleep.
Clearly, they had all noticed something unusual about tonight-the suffocating presence lingering in this guest room at the end of the corridor.
Kirishima Bupai's ears caught an extremely faint sound, almost completely drowned out by the night wind.
"Shh... shh, shh..."
It came not from inside the inn, but from beneath