The tip of Shinobu Kocho's Nichirin blade hovered a hair's breadth from Doma's pale throat.
The specially prepared wisteria poison within the blade trembled faintly, as if all it would take was the slightest push of her arm to end the nightmare that had haunted her for years.
She looked at Doma, kneeling on the ground and sobbing uncontrollably.
Looked at the man who had once destroyed her entire life with a smile on his face.
"How ironic…"
A smile colder than ice curved Shinobu's lips—one uglier than crying.
"So you can cry too?
So you can feel the pain of having your heart torn apart?"
Her gaze drifted downward, landing on the boy.
Inosuke.
That arrogant, unruly kid—yet one who possessed a heart purer than anyone else's.
Now, he lay quiet, like a shattered doll.
Shinobu's heart clenched violently.
This feeling was far too familiar—so familiar it made her suffocate.
Years ago, she had been the same.
Holding her sister's blood-soaked body, feeling her warmth fade bit by bit.
That despair—
The helplessness of waking from countless nightmares, grasping at empty air, unable to hold onto anything.
"If Inosuke dies…
This demon will be heartbroken, won't he?"
"But… I'll be heartbroken too."
Revenge was the force that had kept her alive.
All it would take was a flick of her wrist—pierce his throat, inject the poison straight into his spine.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
But—
Shinobu looked at Inosuke's face, his brows still knit even in the throes of death.
At the boy who had been battered beyond recognition just to protect his companions, for those clumsy, foolish reasons of his.
"If I kill Doma right now…
What kind of expression will Inosuke have when he wakes up?"
Hatred? Emptiness?
Or the same despair she herself had known back then?
That gaze—
The gaze of a world collapsed into nothing but black and white.
She never wanted to see it again.
Especially not in the eyes of a boy who dreamed of creating a perfect ending for everyone.
"Sister…"
Shinobu screamed silently in her heart.
"I've been trying to live like you—
Trying to be gentle like you, to smile like you.
If it were you… what would you do?
Would you save him, even if he were the child of your enemy?"
The answer surfaced instantly.
Her sister would save him. Without hesitation.
Shinobu's eyes trembled violently. The blade tip wavered in the air.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
For Doma, kneeling there, it felt like an entire century.
He stared into Shinobu's struggling violet eyes.
He read the hatred within them—and the hesitation as well.
"She's hesitating…
Because she hates me…
Is she hesitating over whether to save Inosuke?"
A terror he had never known before seized Doma's heart—not fear for his own life, but fear for the small life growing colder on the ground.
"—Thk!"
The dull sound of steel biting into flesh shattered the silence.
Shinobu's pupils dilated violently as she stared at the scene before her.
Doma—Upper Rank Two—suddenly raised his hand and grabbed the razor-sharp edge of her Nichirin blade with his bare palm!
Blood instantly poured from between his fingers as the purple poison invaded his wound.
He forced Shinobu's blade toward his own neck.
The edge cut through skin, tore open his windpipe—blood spraying out, staining his priestly robes red.
"If hatred cannot fade…"
Doma's voice was hoarse, his trachea shattered.
Yet his eyes were shockingly clear.
"Then take it…
My life…
Take it to repay your sister…
I'm willing to go to hell…"
He stared at Shinobu, tears mixing with the blood gushing from his neck, dripping onto Inosuke's face.
"But all of this… has nothing to do with Inosuke…
He's just an idiot raised by a bastard like me…
Please…
Don't abandon him because you hate me…
Save him… please…"
Thud!
Kotoha—this fragile mother—finally broke.
She dropped to her knees, her forehead slamming heavily into the stone-strewn mountain path with a dull thump.
"Miss Shinobu…!"
Kotoha cried out, her voice torn and hoarse.
"Please… save Inosuke…
If a life must be paid…
If someone must atone…
Take mine instead…
I'll die for this child…
Doma-sama's sins—
I'll bear them with him, as long as this child can live…"
There was no hesitation.
Just as she had done years ago at the cliff's edge, she made the same choice again.
She was still that mother.
A demon.
A human.
Parents who, for the same child, humbled themselves into the dirt.
They knelt before Shinobu, heads bowed into the mud.
...
Shinobu stared at them.
At the blood still pouring from Doma's neck.
At Kotoha's shattered forehead.
At Inosuke, unconscious yet still sheltered between them.
The flames of vengeance that had sustained her dimmed, just a little.
"How… pathetic…"
Shinobu closed her eyes. Two streams of tears slid down her cheeks.
"Sister… do you see this?
The demon who killed you…
Has gone this far for a human child."
Click.
The crisp sound of a blade returning to its sheath.
Shinobu withdrew her Nichirin sword in one clean, decisive motion.
Doma froze, clutching his neck, staring at her blankly.
Shinobu took a deep breath.
She looked down at him. The struggle was gone from her violet eyes—
What remained was absolute disgust, and absolute reason.
"Take your filthy hands away."
Her voice was cold as ice.
"I'm saving him not for your worthless life.
And not to accept your atonement."
She crouched down and swiftly opened her medical kit.
"I am a Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps.
I am a doctor of the Butterfly Estate.
Inosuke is my comrade. My family.
I save him out of loyalty to human emotion—
Because I want him to live."
She raised her head, her gaze cutting into Doma like a blade.
"Not to grant scum like you the relief of a moment's revenge."
"Remember this."
As she rapidly examined Inosuke's wounds, her voice remained icy.
"The debt between you and me doesn't disappear because of your son.
Once he's out of danger—once everything is over—
I will personally send you to hell, inch by inch."
"Now—
Shut up. Move aside."
Doma froze for half a second.
Then, as if hearing a divine command, he scrambled backward, tumbling out of the way.
"Thank you… thank you…"
"Kotoha-sama! Press on his wounds!"
Shinobu instantly entered emergency mode.
"Heart rate faint… blood pressure critical…
Massive blood loss… multiple organ ruptures…"
Her fingers flew across Inosuke's body.
Hemostatic powder poured without restraint.
Bandages wrapped tight.
Wounds sutured shut.
For a surgeon, these were routine procedures.
No matter how severe the injuries, as long as there was a breath left, Shinobu was confident she could pull him back.
But—
When her hand touched Inosuke's chest, a bone-chilling cold shot straight into her heart.
"This is…?"
Shinobu's face went deathly pale.
She tore open the clothing on his chest.
The skin that should have been healthy flesh was now an eerie bluish-purple.
Beneath it, instead of flowing blood—
Ice crystals were slowly spreading.
"His lungs… are completely necrotized."
This was Doma's Blood Demon Art.
"No… I can't get through…"
She tried guiding medicine into his lungs with silver needles.
But the moment the needle pierced the skin, it struck a solid layer of ice.
Ice imbued with Upper Rank demonic power—cursed ice.
"It won't melt…"
She tried warm medicinal solutions.
Useless.
The ice didn't budge—
It froze the liquid instead.
Shinobu's hands began to shake.
She tore through her medical kit.
Antidote? Useless—this wasn't a biological toxin.
Cardiac stimulants? Couldn't inject—his blood vessels were frozen solid.
Heating? Impossible—forced heat would cause the lungs to rupture instantly from thermal shock.
"What do I do… what do I do…"
Cold sweat dripped from Shinobu's brow, mixing with blood on the ground.
She was the Insect Hashira.
A master of poison and antidotes.
She had devoted her life to studying how to kill demons with poison—how to neutralize demon toxins.
But faced with this…
With an injury that utterly defied medical logic—
She was powerless.
"This can't be happening…"
Shinobu collapsed onto the ground, staring at Inosuke's face as it grew grayer by the second.
Tears finally spilled free.
"I'm sorry…"
Her voice broke.
She looked up at Kotoha, whose eyes were filled with desperate hope.
"I… I have no way…
This ice… I can't dissolve it…
If… if the sun were here…"
Shinobu glanced toward the east.
Dawn was still at least two hours away.
"Sunlight might destroy the ice created by this demon art… but…"
She lowered her head, looking at Inosuke's chest, barely rising anymore.
Her voice was so soft it could be blown away by the wind.
"He…
He won't last until sunrise."
Those words fell like a final verdict.
The light in Doma's eyes went out completely.
Kotoha let out a broken cry and collapsed into Nezuko's arms.
...
Until—
A hand.
A small hand.
Gently—
Very gently—
Was placed upon Inosuke's ice-bound chest.
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