Makomo was wounded

"Speaking of which, I'm a Hashira now. Don't you have anything for me, old man?"

After helping Zenitsu up from the ground, straightening his slightly disheveled clothes, and patting the dust off them, Kanzaki Kumo sidled up to Kuwajima again.

"Hmph! A Hashira, that's all. As if I haven't been one myself!"

Kuwajima snorted irritably and turned toward the kitchen. Only when he reached the door did he speak without looking back. "Still... well done, kid. You haven't disgraced your teacher."

What a prickly old man, Kanzaki Kumo muttered inwardly.

Turning to Zenitsu Agatsuma, who was still looking at him with admiration and gratitude, Kanzaki Kumo walked over with a smile.

"Come on, Zenitsu. Let your big brother tell you all about the glorious deeds that made him a Hashira."

"Yeah!"

Inside the kitchen, Jigoro Kuwajima heard the voices outside and couldn't suppress the smile tugging at his lips.

After spending a night on Mount Momiji, he visited Mount Sagiri and thoroughly flaunted his status as the Rumble Hashira in front of Sabito and Giyu.

Only for Giyu to petrify him on the spot with, "Do you think you're really something?"

Giyu: Mr. Kanzaki became a Hashira → Mr. Kanzaki is amazing → Mr. Kanzaki is sharing this happy news with me → I should offer praise and congratulations → Would praising him too directly be bad? → I'll ask him instead.

Just like that, a single sentence from Giyu Tomioka transferred the smile from Kanzaki Kumo's face to Sabito's.

Of course Sabito was happy that his friend had become a Hashira, but Kanzaki Kumo's smug attitude made it impossible for him to smile. After Giyu's remark, however, he grinned with delight.

Sabito: See? Isn't Giyu pretty good with words?

Kanzaki Kumo: Heh...

Giyu: What's wrong with them? Mr. Kanzaki seems unhappy, but Sabito seems really happy. So was the way I put that good or bad?

After spending some time having fun on Mount Sagiri, Kanzaki Kumo set off back to the Butterfly Mansion. His only regret was that Makomo hadn't been there, leaving the visit feeling somewhat incomplete.

It was almost evening when he returned to the Butterfly Mansion. A few more wounded patients had arrived in the first-floor wards, where Butterfly Zemu and his wife were treating them, while nursing staff hurried along the corridors.

Suddenly, a female Kakushi approached Kanzaki Kumo. He recognized her as the woman he had saved the first time he slew a demon, and the Kakushi who had coordinated with him on his first mission.

"Lord Rumble Hashira, the girl who went on a mission with you is in ward two..."

Before she could finish, Kanzaki Kumo vanished from the spot.

Since joining the Demon Slayer Corps, Kanzaki Kumo had gone on a mission with one and only one other Swordsman-Makomo.

And since the Medical Department had only just been renamed the Butterfly Mansion, there probably hadn't been time to change its internal arrangements.

In the former Medical Department, the individually numbered wards were observation rooms for more seriously wounded patients after treatment.

The people in the corridor merely felt a gust of wind laced with sparks flash past them. By the time they reacted, Kanzaki Kumo had already stopped outside ward two.

Knock, knock, knock.

Even the rhythm of Kanzaki Kumo's knocking carried an unmistakable urgency.

"Come in."

The voice from inside the ward wasn't Makomo's. It was Kanae's.

Kanzaki Kumo grew a little more worried.

Makomo had probably been wounded last night and should have reached the Butterfly Mansion by this morning at the latest, yet she might still not have woken up.

Suppressing his unease, Kanzaki Kumo gently pushed open the door. He glanced at Kanae standing beside the bed, not even noticing the somewhat unusual look in her eyes, and walked straight toward the bed beside her.

Makomo lay quietly upon it.

Her eyes were lightly closed, her breathing steady. Her face was a little pale, but she showed no signs of excessive blood loss. His preliminary assessment was that her condition should be fairly stable.

Bandages wrapped around the left side of her forehead and the right side of her neck. Though the blanket covered everything else, he could already tell that the wound was near her right collarbone, a dangerous location. He couldn't tell the specifics or whether she had any other wounds.

That was what Kanzaki Kumo had discerned at a glance upon entering.

When he reached the bedside, Makomo's eyelashes fluttered a few times before she opened her eyes.

The first thing she saw was Kanzaki Kumo's concerned face.

"You came. Being able to see you again at a time like this... I'm so glad..." Makomo's voice was terribly weak. The smile on her pale face looked so feeble, and she seemed to struggle even to lift the arm she extended from beneath the blanket.

Besides, spoken in that tone under these circumstances, those words sounded like a final farewell no matter how he listened to them.

Kanzaki Kumo instinctively began to doubt his own eyes, along with the judgment he had made using the first-aid knowledge he had acquired over the past six months.

Without time to think further, he took Makomo's slightly cool little hand, bent down, and pressed it to his cheek.

His eyes should have been perfectly capable of discerning her intentions from her slightest movements.

"How are you feeling?"

Feeling her fingers gently stroke his cheek, Kanzaki Kumo spoke with a barely perceptible tremor in his voice. At the same time, he placed his other hand on her wrist.

Her pulse was a little weak, but steady.

At the same time, he saw the playfulness she could no longer hide in her eyes, and the widening smile on her lips.

"All right, all right, I'll stop teasing you. You're the Rumble Hashira now. You can't go crying, you know."

Makomo's tone no longer sounded anything like she was about to breathe her last at any moment. As she spoke, she took advantage of Kanzaki Kumo's stunned pause to brush her hand across the corner of his eye, wiping away a trace of moisture he hadn't even noticed himself.

Kanzaki Kumo closed his eyes briefly and steadied his breathing before opening them again.

"Phew... That sort of joke isn't funny, Makomo."

"Mm. I'm sorry. I won't do it again." The playfulness had long since vanished from the girl's eyes, leaving only a tenderness too deep to dissolve and a slowly spreading sheen of tears.

"It's only been six months since we met. I'm still struggling along as an ordinary Swordsman, having to be so careful on every mission, but you've become a Hashira in the blink of an eye... It's such a huge change that I didn't even know whether the Kumo you are now was still the Kumo I knew..."

"I'm sorry for playing such an awful joke. But I'm really happy."

"You..." Kanzaki Kumo looked at Makomo's pretty face, still a little pale but wearing such a pure smile, and the deep tenderness and affection in her tear-bright, dark green eyes. In the end, he merely reached out and lightly tapped the right side of her forehead twice.

The more lonely and bereft someone's upbringing was, the more insecure they would be, and the more they would worry that those around them might one day leave them.

Kanzaki Kumo and Makomo were both such people.

But what Kanzaki Kumo feared more was the people he cared about being wounded or even dying, which was why he improved his strength as quickly as he could.

What Makomo feared more was those close to her growing distant and unfamiliar.

That was why Kanzaki Kumo had failed to see through Makomo's act immediately, and had even begun doubting the eyes he took such pride in.

That was why, even knowing how awful the joke was, Makomo had still wanted to do it-to find out whether the boy in her heart had grown distant from her, whether he had become an exalted Hashira who no longer cared about the girl desperately trying to catch up yet still lagging so far behind.

"But Kanae, you actually went along with a joke like this?"

Kanae, who had been standing to the side watching the scene with relish, suddenly found herself singled out and immediately tried to explain in a fluster.

"No, I... she... I just..."