Time, that little thing, always managed to slip far away when no one was looking.
In the blink of an eye, it had already been a month since the Demon Slayer Corps announced its disbandment.
The blazing midsummer sun hung high overhead, and waves of cicada calls rose and fell, adding a few more degrees of heat to the already scorching noon.
For one household, though, the chorus of cicadas was a little noisy, but not irritating.
After all, such a deafening chorus meant there were bound to be plenty of cicada molts nearby.
Those were excellent medicinal ingredients.
The all-natural kind, with no technological tinkering.
It was a small courtyard home not far from town, with a little less urban bustle and a little more warmth and tranquility.
A modest patch of farmland surrounded the courtyard, planted with an assortment of herbs, vegetables, and fruit.
There were not many, but their arrangement had clearly been carefully calculated. They would not interfere with one another's growth, and the land was put to sensible use. Some of the taller fruit and vegetable plants could even shield the more delicate medicinal herbs from some of the blazing sun.
At that moment, the man of the house was carefully washing a large bag of cicada molts he had just found in the nearby woods.
It had to be said that all life in nature had evolved various strategies to protect itself and survive.
Just as chili peppers had evolved pain-inducing capsaicin to keep themselves from being eaten, eucalyptus trees had evolved toxins to ensure their survival, while koalas, to avoid being poisoned by their favorite eucalyptus leaves, had evolved digestive systems that could metabolize those toxins at the cost of excessive sleepiness...
Cicadas, too, had evolved a unique growth mechanism to ensure their