Chapter Text
As they pull apart, Mitsuri beams at him, brilliant in her kimono. His lips still faintly tasted of sake.
Her hands were trembling as they gripped his.
They had just finished breaking open the sake; drinks were being served to everyone. In their moment of joy, they were surrounded by no one but their loved ones. Everyone had come- even Mitsuri’s siblings.
“I’m,” she hiccups, “so glad we’re married.”
Their hands hold each other like a lifeline, rings pressing into the other’s hands as laughter and carousing filled the springtime air.
As Obanai presses a kiss to the top of her head, he closes his eyes.
The house was long gone, but at last, they were standing on the grounds of where once they had confessed their love, a hundred years ago.
The air hung still, fragrant with wisteria.
Using a very, very old custom, he would no longer call himself Iguro. Today he was Obanai Kanroji.
But mostly, he was now Mitsuri’s.
“Me too,” he mumbles, trying to stop his voice from cracking.
Part of him couldn’t believe it.
Her lipstick had smeared, slightly- but it was alright. He would fix it. It pleased him, wondering if she had physically marked him as hers.
Mitsuri smiles at him, illuminated against the purple flowers, and unable to resist, he dips his head to kiss her again, heart beating in his chest.
He had been so afraid then- unbearably so- to tell her he loved her. Afraid to touch her.
Sometimes, he still felt that way. But now, he was more selfish- terrified of wasting what time they had together.
Today she had chosen to wear a kimono, instead of a western dress- a fragment of a tradition she would’ve chosen, had she lived to marry him in their first life. It breaks his heart and mends it at once: if only he had been worthy of her, he would have asked her so much sooner.
He expected a sakura, or ume blossom motif- maybe with cranes, or ducks. Instead, it was entirely shibori; dyed pink and green, and scaled, like the skin of a snake.
When he asks her if it was intentional, she had told him- when a snake sheds his skin, they are reborn.
The Iguro family had been reborn and had chosen to do exactly the very thing that had led to their original downfall.
But he and Mitsuri didn’t have to go die for the greater good. They could live life for themselves, now.
It was said that during Shinto ceremonies the woman would wear white to take on the colors of her husband’s house. For them, he was heartily glad that nothing could be further from the truth.
Because ever since had met her, in a corridor where all she talked about was her cat, he had wondered what it would be like to be dyed in her colors.
“Congratulations, fuckface!” Obanai hears from behind them. When he turns, he sees several of Mitsuri’s siblings staring at Sanemi, who was beaming from ear to ear.
It was by far the happiest he’d ever seen his friend. Even happier than the day Sanemi had told him that he and Giyuu were together.
Obanai’s heart hurts.
He feels- loved . Loved beyond words.
All the suffering nearly felt worth it.
Mitsuri holds open her arms, and Sanemi, who hates being touched by anyone but for his lover, actually comes forward to wrap his arms around them both.
A broken laugh rips out of Obanai’s chest as he clutches the both of them for dear life.
Sanemi’s brawny arms tighten around them, and Obanai sinks into the embrace of the two people he loved.
“Thank you,” he croaks, and Mitsuri laughs along with Sanemi. “Of course, you idiot,” Sanemi remarks affectionately.
Mitsuri sits next to the wizened old Oyabun: upon being invited, Jigoro Kuwajima had elected to come by himself without an attendant. Obanai was talking in hushed tones with Uzui Tengen, who was in attendance with his three wives, all three watching like hawks.
She could hardly fathom how Obanai must have suffered, bearing the weight of his memories growing up. The conversation they’d had in the darkness of the karaoke room always struck her strangely, plucking at an invisible chord until it rang true.
Her heart hurt as she watched the two of them conversing. It didn’t feel so very long ago that she was overseeing Uzui Tengen’s training for the younger recruits, one hundred autumns ago. And now she was the only one who remembered, along with Obanai. Uzui’s arm was back, along with his eye.
Whatever happened to Tanjiro Kamado and his sister? She suddenly wondered. Did she ever become human again?
“Fine venue you’ve picked,” Jigoro remarks gruffly, and she beams at him. “Somehow, this place feels nostalgic. I feel like I’ve been here before.”
She freezes. Jigoro’s face was screwed up in concentration, as if trying to pull a memory out of the recesses of his soul.
You would’ve fought here, a generation before me. You would’ve come here with bitter, furious hope under your tongue and left with nothing but resigned ash, doomed to outlive your comrades. To teach and to love, and send into battle more young children.
You never married.
Finally, that grizzled mouth works and pulls to the side in frustration. “Ah, it’ll come to me,” the elderly man remarks, waving a hand in dismissal. “My parents had a spring wedding too, though that was a long, long time ago.” He laughs, rusty-sounding. “They wanted one just like my grandparents. My grandparents were a really loving couple, you know- I was fortunate to have known them growing up. Did you know yours?”
My mother and father are dead, Mitsuri swallows. Even in her previous life, though, she hadn’t been so fortunate to know her grandparents. She shakes her head.
“Ah, well. You know, my grandfather was supposed to be a swordsman, but I’ve never known a bigger coward. Still, he made enough time for me, though my family was big- really big, you know?”
An affectionate smile spread across the wizened face of the old oyabun. “I’m not so sure he would’ve approved of the lifestyle I came into, but it was him who taught me how to value others. Him and grandma Nezuko.”
Nezuko-
Mitsuri feels the impact of the name like a gut punch. She remembers, clearly, the sweetness of the girl who couldn’t rest, even as a demon, until she knew her brother would be okay.
The way she had carefully folded, with pointed claws, an intricate Sakura tree, just for Mitsuri.
Oh, Tanjiro. You’ve done it. She was okay. She got married, and had lived to see her grandchildren-
Heart pounding in her chest, she asks: “What was your grandfather’s name again?”
It couldn’t be. She remembers a young boy with cherry red cheeks, a loud voice and bright, bright orange hair, with a sword draw like a thunderclap-
“Zenitsu,” Jigoro replies, his eyes misty with memory. “Grandpa Zenitsu.”
“Was he the one who named you?” She asks, so fast that her words nearly slur together. Oh, oh, and it was so heartbreaking- did Zenitsu know?
With his gruff demeanor, she was almost sure that her former student’s teacher was sitting across from her. But he died from seppuku.
From the guilt of his student, Kaigaku transforming into a… demon…
Kaigaku had become Jigoro’s son.
And now Kaigaku was dead all over again.
But he had died as a human man.
A lump rose in her throat as the oyabun nodded. “My name, Jigoro, yes. And you know, I had the pleasure of watching him practice a sword as a young boy. He could move, even in his old age, like lightning.”
Kaminari; thunder. A kami’s voice.
Thank you for telling me, Mitsuri thinks to herself, trying to not let the tears fall. Thank you for being their voice.
*
“Are you really going to be okay?” Mitsuri asks, worried, and Shinobu stifles a smile as she pats Mitsuri’s back. Mitsuri was holding onto her in the manner that children did to their parents before being left at the daycare for the first time.
She could hardly blame her. Even when they were at their busiest, they would make time to see each other at least every two weeks, no matter how tired they were. The exception had been the job Mitsuri had undertaken.
Meanwhile, she could practically feel Ume boring a hole into the back of her head. Mentally, she thanks every kami out there that she had enough sense to not tell Ume that Mitsuri was her first lesbian crush.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured Mitsuri, trying not to smile. She was moving together with Ume to Osaka to open up another branch of medical practice owned by her family. They were planning to oversee construction of the newest hospital for at least the next three years.
A year ago, she never would’ve dreamed she would have loved someone so much as to move out of Tokyo with them, away from Mitsuri.
Lots of people knew that Ume, as Daki, had killed Douma. Living together in the city was no longer an option.
Besides, she had friends in Osaka to catch up with. One of them was even in the process of some exciting research- creating blue spider lilies.
As Mitsuri draws back, Shinobu is struck, once again by how beautiful her friend was. Eyes red-rimmed, clad in a conservative black dress from the funeral, despite it all, Mitsuri’s beauty couldn’t help but radiate from her.
To her relief, she felt unmoved by it. Once upon a time, her heart would’ve foolishly leapt, eager for punishment.
But she had met someone who had, at long last, truly completed her.
Being able to finally attend Mitsuri’s mother’s funeral felt like a good closing to the chapter of her life. Mitsuri was surrounded by her siblings, was supported by a loving husband, and…
though they would always be friends, Shinobu didn’t need to worry about her anymore.
A great gust of wind comes, heralding change, and slowly, the Shinkansen comes to a shrieking halt.
*
Their car was almost empty. Ume and Shinobu rolled their suitcases into the car with little interruption: the only other occupant in the green car was asleep.
As the scenery passes them by, a strange expression culminates on Ume’s beautiful face. Even out of the Shinjuku scene, most days, she continued to adopt that fierce flamboyance.
Some part of Shinobu was relieved: that softness she would glimpse in their private moments together would remain hers, and hers alone.
But she admired that ferocity, that bald-faced, silent defiance of the status quo. In a society that was so concerned with the appearance of women, Ume appeared to hold up a kind of mirror, forcing it to hold a kind of reckoning with itself.
More recently, though, she had dyed her white ends green. Shinobu wasn’t sure what to make of it- part of her was afraid; afraid, like Douma, Ume was trying to replace some part of Mitsuri in her heart.
But Ume had never made an untoward comment towards her friend. Except to give sparse acknowledgement, she hardly admits that Mitsuri even exists to Shinobu.
Then she sees Gyuutaro, and understands.
They had both dyed their hair green together.
Gyuutaro’s hair had previously faded to a yellow-green, the kind that begged for a fresh dye job. They had gotten it, seemingly together, before Ume’s departure with Shinobu.
Shinobu wasn’t the only one saying goodbye to someone that she had hardly spent any time away from for most of her life.
“Any regrets?” Shinobu asks quietly.
Without a word, Ume leans forward, and cups Shinobu’s face.
Her fingers are slightly damp, and she stares at Shinobu with such intensity that for a moment, Shinobu is lost, drowned.
Then Shinobu frowns in realization.
“You weren’t sure I’d come,” she breathes, and Ume looks away, eyes darting briefly away from her lover’s face.
Shinobu holds Ume’s hand in place, afraid that she would let it drop. “Why?”
“You have to understand,” Ume’s voice sounds unsteady, “I never imagined that there would be a happy ending. Not for someone like me.”
Ume takes a breath.
“You could have had it all. You could’ve faked it- married a man, had children, been a wealthy heiress. You didn’t need to be exiled from half of your family.”
Shinobu has to resist the urge to look away too, now, under the intensity of her lover’s gaze. She had come out to her parents, and… while they had been surprisingly accepting, they hadn’t been nearly discreet enough.
There had been… controversy in the larger clan.
When she had proposed overseeing the new Osaka branch, she could see the guilty relief in her parent’s eyes.
“How stupid,” she finally finds her voice. “Ume, you really don’t think I’d be the type to suffer fools, do you?”
Ume looks nonplussed.
Shinobu finds her smile, and it feels icy. “Suffering some bumbling idiot that I’m not even attracted to, shutting me in the house just to keep in contact with family members I don’t even like? I’m not a coward, Ume,” she leant closer to Ume, who’s mouth had fallen open, slightly. “And I’m greedy.”
At that, Ume’s eyes blew black and wide.
Shinobu knew that she was thinking just how greedy she was.
“What makes you think I’d ever give you up, now that I’ve found you?” Shinobu whispers, and a predatory grin stretches across Ume’s lips. All unsureness had fled her: in its place was a dark want.
“You have no idea what you’ve done, Shinobu,” her lover whispers back. Her nails dig into Shinobu’s flesh, sharp, pointed, and Shinobu’s eyes flutter shut. “Because I won’t rest until you’re every bit as insane as I am.”
“Oh, so you’re going to take a nap now? That’s disappointing,” Shinobu quips, and Ume laughs.
On the way back from the train station, Mitsuri’s heels clack along the silver pavement of the quiet street. Their hands swing slightly together, bringing a smile to his lips as she hums a child’s folk song beside him.
At times like this, he could think about nothing more than how much he loved her.
Obanai had been worried about her; during her stint as his bodyguard, Mitsuri had adopted a more sober persona in public, afraid of reflecting on him. In private, she was just the same as he had remembered, slowly removing doubt that it was, indeed her along the way.
But ever since the police station, an invisible burden seemed to have sloughed off, leaving that bright, eternal optimism in its place.
But just as it was before, that gladness was hard-earned: she was kind because she had known suffering, chased joy because she had known despair.
And at night, sometimes the past rose up as nightmares: sometimes he woke to her whimpering in her sleep. Or she would get to her feet to fight some invisible opponent.
Sometimes she woke to find him trying to pull his feet away from some invisible person. Or half-awake, certain that someone was outside the door with a sniper.
And she dreamed, as he did, of the car crashing through, or the house full of blood.
Sometimes it would be about the past, where she was holding onto him for dear life, dangling off of the edge of the abyss in a castle that went on for infinity. Where she fell, and kept falling, hearing all of the people she failed dying along the way.
It was a side effect of remembering he had never considered; in those moments, he wished nothing but for her to not bear those burdens any longer. Surely, by defeating Muzan, she had done more than enough.
But then he remembers, even as she died, he had promised her that she had done more than enough, that he would hurt anyone who dared say otherwise…
But no one else was alive to remember.
So after the nightmares, they would tell each other things: reminders of every good thing in the world.
Sometimes, Obanai would wish Kaburamaru, his ever faithful friend, was there.
Miruki was sweet- she had come to accept him with surprising ease, scenting him at every opportunity after moving into their apartment. But still, a Kaburamaru-shaped hole was there.
It was funny; in this life, Mitsuri and he had switched roles. He did not begrudge her it, nor her cat- they had come a long way to be together again, after all- but he did miss her.
“I remembered something from a long time ago,” Mitsuri offers.
Obanai hums in curious acknowledgement, running his thumb over her hand. “I went to a shrine with my parents when I was younger. It’s around here!”
That piqued Obanai’s interest: eyebrows raising, he watched her head Bob around, looking for signs of her destination. He had blindly followed her out of the station, uncaring of where they were going, so long as they were together.
It didn’t particularly matter to him if they hadn’t had a destination. the relief he felt that he could walk together without an ounce of surveillance still felt novel to him.
“Aha!” He hears, right before he’s pulled along in her wake. They run along the street, clad in funeral attire, uncaring of any who would see them.
They skid to a stop, and oh-
A gigantic carving of a snake stood beyond the entry of the shrine.
It could be any white snake; white snakes were holy, after all. But he already knows.
As if in a trance, he walks forward, Mitsuri no longer pulling him.
“Oh!” He hears, and turning, they see the shrine’s shinshoku:
Kanao’s face stares out of the robes of the holy man. But no, as he looked a little closer, somehow, it reminded him a little bit of Tanjiro Kamado, too…
“Welcome to Kaburamaru shrine,” the man greets, and Obanai’s heart stops.
How…?
“Our kami was a great snake who dedicated her life to the defeat of the demon kind. If you wish to be purified…?”
A bizarre desire to laugh bubbles up. He’d always wondered what happened to her, and he now had his answer. Kaburamaru was being worshiped.
“Yeah,” he replies, ignoring how his lips were twitching upwards.
*
They buy a snake figurine. Of course they do; bringing a little piece of Kaburamaru with them.
He’d lied to Uzui Tengen when he said he had spent the family fortune bailing out all of the family members. There were many members he simply chose not to bail out- some people were too dangerous to allow to continue to walk the streets.
After the funeral, Mitsuri and he had been left to drift, existing peacefully for once, never more than arm’s length away from each other.
One day, the fear would ease. They would be able to go without seeing each other for an hour or two, then four or more. But right now, they were content as they were.
Giyuu and Sanemi were in their honeymoon period, too. Though his friend wasn’t one to admit such things candidly, he knew Sanemi was euphoric to not hide his relationship with the former yakuza member.
Obanai wasn’t the only one who had given up power for love. From the moment he’d disclosed his plans with Giyuu, he’d never looked back.
Giyuu had been recruited unwillingly, but he had never uttered a word of complaint in all the years he’d spent in the family, and had grown powerful indeed. Upon realizing that he and his lover couldn’t coexist as they were, he often even planned around things that Obanai could not foresee.
And now Obanai was free to do what he had always wanted to do.
He stares down at the piece of tempura frying inside of the pot, and swallows. This was something he had tried the hardest to get past, growing up- food involving grease. Old memories still lingered in the back of his mind, haunting him.
He didn’t have to get past it, he knew. No one he cared about would judge him for his dislike.
But he wanted to. He wanted to prove to himself that he had made progress, that he was bigger than his trauma. It had become a personal challenge to himself over the years, trying to make a kind of tempura even he would like.
He hadn’t been entirely successful, but this was the first time in both lives he’d tried to make tempura for Mitsuri. That he remembered, anyway.
Heart beating, he brought out the plates of food to the table, where Mitsuri waited for lunch.
As Mitsuri took the first bite, euphoria blossomed across her face. She stares at the piece of food like she’d experienced something profound, and without another word, begins wolfing it down.
“It’s so good,” she makes out between bites. Obanai smiles at her with irrepressible fondness, leaning on the little table they shared together, and knows that he’d made the right choice. No amount of power or money would satisfy him the way that this moment did.
In the back of his mind, the memory of grease and fat echoes, but slowly, it washes away in the face of her joy. It was a hundred years ago, and finally, in this little apartment, he feels like he might be able to allow it to remain a hundred years ago.
As he reaches forward to wipe off a grain of rice off of her face, she remarks: “You could open a restaurant with this,” Mitsuri tells him, earnestly. “Even though I’ve lived two lives now, I still haven’t found anyone who can cook like you!” she finishes passionately, grinning shyly at him.
Obanai’s heart swelled, painfully soft and sweet. He didn’t have to enjoy eating tempura to watch other people enjoying his tempura, he realized. In this, too, there was a kind of healing. But inadvertently, she had just given voice to a thought he had been nursing. “Do you want to open a restaurant?”
Mitsuri’s mouth falls open slightly as she stares at him with wonder, and realizes that he was serious. After a brief pause, she smiles. “Yes!”
“What do you think we should make?”
“Oh, well, you’re going to have to teach me how you make it, but this,” she points her chopsticks towards the tempura, “ has to be on the menu! I’ve never had tempura so light and fluffy and crispy! It’s divine! How did you even get the eggplant to not be so oily? Usually it’s drenched in oil-”
For a time, Obanai watches her with soft adoration as she rhapsodizes about his cooking. He didn’t need to kill, didn’t need to live in fear of his family. As he thought, dreaming about a life where he would cook for her was bliss. A soft life where he would get to watch her smile every day.
Beside him, his phone buzzes, causing Mitsuri to pause. “What’s that?”
Puzzled, Obanai picks up the phone, only to start grinning.
Sanemi:
HEY FUCKFACE!!!! LOOK!!!
And on his finger was an engagement ring.
About time!!! Congratulations!! Obanai texts back. “Sanemi and Giyuu just got engaged,” he explains to Mitsuri, who lets out a short shriek and a fist pump. “ Congratulations!!” She exults, scrambling over to his side, abandoning her food.
Sanemi fires back a text almost immediately:
We’re having dinner with Genya later tonight! Are you free?
“ I don’t know, are we free tonight?” Obanai asks Mitsuri cheekily, who lightly pushes at him. “Down, boy,” she laughs. “Yes! Of course!! Tell him we’re free!”
After texting in the affirmative, Obanai receives: Hawaii’s legalized gay marriage, so guess where we’re going, fucker! Pina fucking coladas and mai tais on the beach! Let’s have a freaking vacation for once!
Mitsuri laughs. “We didn’t travel anywhere yet for our honeymoon,” she replies, clearly considering, and heart full, Obanai kisses her.