Kanae's training ultimately could not follow exactly the same approach as Makomo's had.
She simply lacked too much actual combat experience.
So, after considerable thought, Kanzaki Kumo still chose to have Kanae carry out missions.
However, he would accompany her the entire time.
During that period, Gyomei and Shinjuro would each look after part of his patrol area.
Though this would seem like putting personal interests before his duties, those things did not matter compared to Kanae.
Kanae had wanted to refuse, but she could not win against Kanzaki Kumo and could only obediently accept.
Still, she resolved to reach the goals Kanzaki Kumo had set as quickly as possible and finish this training. She could not let the other Hashira gossip about him behind his back because of her.
In reality, however, neither Gyomei nor Shinjuro would resent Kanzaki Kumo over occasionally working extra hours.
Shinjuro even wrote him a letter specifically to tease him, asking when he would invite him to his wedding feast.
And just a few days after the letter arrived, Shinjuro came to the Butterfly Mansion.
Of course, he had not come for a wedding feast.
Shinjuro brought a small, thin boy with a snake.
Obanai Iguro came from a family controlled by a demon.
For generations, his family had worshipped a snake demon, relying on it to tyrannize an island.
Obanai was the family's only male child in hundreds of years. The snake demon had set its sights on him from birth, and he had been imprisoned since childhood.
It was not that he had never tried to resist, but the price had been a beating that weakened the sight in one eye.
When he was twelve, the snake demon ordered the Iguro family members to slit Obanai's mouth into the shape of