No Way, Again!?

Ever since Kiyohiko apologized to Shinobu Kocho, peace had returned to the Butterfly Mansion.

Now, in a training hall Shinobu Kocho had remodeled, a "war" of speed, reflexes, and dignity was reaching its climax-or, more accurately, a one-sided bout of "bullying."

Two low tables had been pushed together, with cups full of brown medicinal broth in the middle. This was a classic staple of the Demon Slayer Corps' rehabilitation training: splashing medicinal broth.

The rules were simple: both sides splashed broth at each other, and whoever pinned down the other person's cup or splashed them first won.

"Too slow, too slow! Sunflower Seed, have your hands rusted?"

Kiyohiko sat cross-legged on one side of the table, wearing an incredibly punchable grin.

His movements were so fast they left almost nothing but an afterimage. The instant Aoi Kanzaki's fingers touched the side of her cup, he moved after her but got there first, firmly pressing down on its lid.

Immediately afterward, his other hand shot out like lightning and snatched up the cup in front of him-

Splash!

A perfect brown arc flew through the air.

"Ah-!!"

Aoi Kanzaki let out a short shriek and instinctively closed her eyes.

The cold, bitter broth splashed mercilessly across her face, dripping down her twin tails and quickly spreading into a large dark stain across the chest of her uniform.

"Seven to zero."

Kiyohiko held up a finger and waved it in front of Aoi Kanzaki. "You think you can splash me at that speed? You're twenty thousand years too early."

He made a childish face at Aoi Kanzaki as she wiped her face with her sleeve, his eyes full of delight at his successful prank.

Aoi Kanzaki's eyes flew open, and her blue eyes seemed to blaze with tangible fury.

She wiped the droplets of broth from her eyelashes. Her whole face was flushed red with humiliation and agitation, like a cherry bomb about to explode.

"Ki!! Yohiko!!"

She roared his name through gritted teeth, her voice so loud that several sparrows in the courtyard trees took flight in alarm.

"You... you cheater! You're a demon! Your body's abilities were never something a human could match! Does bullying me with that inhuman speed give you a sense of accomplishment?!"

She trembled all over with anger, bracing both hands on the table and leaning forward. Disheveled yet full of energy, she looked especially animated.

"Eh-? That's an excuse. A complete excuse."

Kiyohiko retorted, "A while ago, when Shinobu Kocho was beating me with a wooden sword right here and sending me scurrying around with my hands over my head, I didn't make any excuses."

"And..."

As he spoke, Kiyohiko suddenly slapped the table, leaned forward, and pointed angrily at Aoi Kanzaki.

"You were the one who asked me to play this game in the first place! You said it was to help me train, but you ended up splashing me more than twenty times in one afternoon. You sure seemed to get a sense of accomplishment out of bullying me then!"

Caught out, Aoi Kanzaki guiltily turned her head away, pursed her lips, and whistled, pretending not to have heard what Kiyohiko had just said.

"Tch, Sunflower Seed, you can't take losing."

"Don't call me Sunflower Seed!! It sounds awful!"

Aoi Kanzaki grabbed a dry towel beside her and hurled it at Kiyohiko's face.

Kiyohiko merely tilted his head slightly, and the towel grazed the tip of his nose before landing on the floor behind him with a slap.

"Oh, you missed."

Now, Kiyohiko wasn't the least bit afraid of facing even Kanao, much less Aoi Kanzaki.

By day, he endured Shinobu Kocho's inhumanly torturous training, and at night, he secretly did extra training on his own.

Kiyohiko trained so hard for just one goal: to defeat Shinobu Kocho and get his revenge.

Was he not going to avenge a grudge from ten years ago? (Imagine it in a polar bear's accent.)

He was. Of course he was.

Now that he'd gotten his revenge on Aoi Kanzaki, Shinobu Kocho was next.

Kiyohiko folded his arms across his chest, narrowed his eyes, and said smugly:

"Don't worry, Sunflower Seed. That bad woman Shinobu Kocho is next. My revenge on her will be even harsher and crueler than this."

The expected bickering didn't come. In front of him, Aoi Kanzaki went rigid like a cat whose tail had been stepped on and hurriedly bowed.

"Lady... Lady Shinobu..."

She kept signaling Kiyohiko with her eyes to look behind him and even frantically made a throat-slitting gesture, but Kiyohiko was already lost in a fantasy of "punching the Beihai kindergarten and kicking the Nanshan nursing home" and failed to notice anything odd about Aoi Kanzaki.

Kiyohiko planted one foot on the edge of the low table and rubbed the tip of his nose with a swagger, a fanatical gleam in his eyes.

"That bad woman Shinobu Kocho relies on her speed and her poison to torture me like a lab rat every day. How could I possibly swallow that humiliation?"

"Next time I get the chance, I definitely won't go easy on her like I did before. I'll use my speed, which surpasses human limits, to appear behind her!"

Kiyohiko suddenly tensed and struck a strange pose with his right hand on his hip.

That's right, it was that pose, the one Kiyohiko had used to trap Kanao before. It had practically become an obsession for him.

He wanted to see what Shinobu Kocho would look like when he had her trapped, unable to move or do anything about it.

"Then, like this, I'll lock her neck and arm in a vice grip. I'll pick her up like a little chick and leave her unable to move!"

The more he spoke, the more carried away he got, even adding a detailed description of her thoughts:

"When that happens, her face, always wearing that fake smile, will definitely get very interesting. She'll struggle and shout, 'Let me go, Mr. Kiyohiko.'

"And I'll lean close to her ear and tell her in my coldest, most magnetic voice, 'Miss Shinobu, who's dominating whom now?' Hahahaha! I'll show her that there's a price to pay for bullying an innocent young man!"

Aoi Kanzaki had completely given up hope. She covered her face with the towel, crouched on the floor, and let out a faint wail. "It's over... it's all over... Kiyohiko, I'll remember to burn incense for you every year."

"Heh heh heh..."

Just as Kiyohiko let out a villain's signature three-part laugh, a familiar scent drifted into his nose, and a voice so gentle it was chilling sounded leisurely from behind him.

"Oh my, that sounds like a... very, very grand plan for revenge."

Kiyohiko's laughter stopped abruptly, like some unfortunate soul suddenly seized by the throat by fate.

There was no need to think about it. He already knew who was behind him.

Kiyohiko sometimes didn't understand. Although he talked plenty of trash about Shinobu Kocho normally, it was always when he said the kind of things that would keep him from seeing tomorrow night's moon...

That Shinobu Kocho managed to show up right behind him, like an automatically respawning NPC.

What was this? Was someone writing a novel!?

Even if it was a novel, just how second-rate would an author have to be to write such a third-rate scene!?

Kiyohiko turned his neck mechanically, inch by inch, until he found himself looking straight at Shinobu Kocho's smile, radiant to the extreme yet utterly devoid of warmth.

"Leaning close to my ear and saying... 'Who's dominating whom?' So in private, Mr. Kiyohiko harbors such 'profound' and 'perverted' expectations of me?"

Shinobu Kocho tilted her head slightly, her right hand already resting on the hilt of the Nichirin Blade at her waist.

"I'm truly flattered..."