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Kanzaburo wakes to an empty gray blur.
He blinks. The world darkens, then returns, but nothing comes into focus. As he draws in a deep breath, his throat burns and his lungs seize up. It’s dust, he realizes—the gray shadow draped around him is dust, and ash, and smoke. With another cough, he tries to clear the prickle from his throat. He needs to get away from here, wherever here is, and find fresh air to breathe.
He attempts to move his wings, then recoils as a bolt of pain sears through the joint on his right side. A mournful huff escapes him. Where is he? What happened?
Again, he tries to move, and this time, just before the pain becomes too sharp to bear, something heavy shifts above him. He wriggles a little, his claws scrabbling into the powdery dust, and utters a frustrated caw. Then he closes his eyes, pushes his meager reserve of strength into his muscles and sinews, and shoves against the ground until the thing pinning him tips and rolls away. With his wings abruptly freed, he bursts into a short, agonizing flight before controlling his momentum and flapping back down to get his bearings.
All around him is rubble. Shattered stones and crumbled concrete fill a jagged canyon that used to be a street. From the collapsed remains of roofs, beams protrude like splintered bones. The air is clogged with the fumes of burning debris, and though Kanzaburo can’t see any active fires, thick smoke lies close to the ground like mist.
The smell of blood is thick, too—blood, and panic, and death. Kanzaburo hops a few steps forward and balances on a chunk of rubble that was once part of the facade of an elegant western-style building. From this vantage point, he can see the bodies. They are spread the length of the street, all neatly arranged and draped in white sheets. Kakushi move in groups of two or three among the corpses, occasionally lifting a sheet to observe a face, making a note, shaking their heads mournfully. As Kanzaburo watches, a pair of Kakushi hoist a stretcher loaded with a shrouded body and carry it past the upturned wreck of an automobile, to a cart where two other white bundles wait.
And overhead, the winter sun gleams like polished silver, already tumbling down the curve of the ice-blue sky.
The last thing Kanzaburo can remember, before waking up in these ruins, is hurtling through the deepest, most bitter depths of an impossibly long night. He remembers his wings burning as he fought against his own old age to continue at full speed. He remembers the dizzying labyrinth of shoji, walls slamming shut to block his passage, floors plunging away as he skimmed above them. He remembers the urgent relay of messages, his throat scraped raw as he cawed directions from the Master and passed along grim news of fallen Hashira.
Giyuu, he thinks. He last saw Giyuu sprinting away with the Kamado boy. He heard no announcement of Giyuu’s death, but as Kanzaburo squints into the sunshine, he realizes that he has lost hours and hours of time somewhere. How long was he lying in the wreckage? What was the outcome of the battle? Is Giyuu still alive?
Kanzaburo hops off the crumbling stone and makes his way to the nearest body. He plucks at the edge of the sheet, just enough to see a fringe of short, brown hair. Not Giyuu. He moves on.
As he tugs the shroud of another corpse, a Kakushi standing nearby waves his arm at him and shouts, “Hey!” Kanzaburo puffs his feathers, insulted at being mistaken for a common carrion bird.
The Kakushi realizes his error, and bows his head in recognition of Kanzaburo’s status as a Kasugai crow. Then he crouches down to address the bird. “Are you looking for someone?”
“Giyuu,” Kanzaburo croons.
The Kakushi thinks about the name for a moment. “The Water Hashira?” He shakes his head. “He’s not among the dead. Not that I’ve seen, anyway. But I’m not sure what happened to him.”
Relief and dread swoop in tandem within Kanzaburo’s chest. He bobs his head at the Kakushi, then launches himself into the air, forcing his aching wings to carry him just a little longer.
If Giyuu isn’t among the dead, then he is still among the living, and Kanzaburo needs to return to his side.
It takes Kanzaburo the rest of the day and the first hours of night to make his way to the Water Estate. The distance once would have been easy to cover in an afternoon, but his heaving lungs and leaden feathers force him to spend as much time resting as flying. More than once, he perches on a branch for just a moment and wakes up some indeterminate amount of time later, disoriented and aching. More than once, he realizes with a burst of clarity that he’s going the wrong direction, wasting his shreds of energy.
But finally, with a cold moon lighting the way, he clatters down onto the roof of the Water Estate. His legs are stiff and his claws snag the tiles, and he flops gracelessly down to the eaves before he catches himself. It’s all right, though, because from there it’s just a short hop down to the engawa, and then he can tap at the door until Giyuu hears him and lets him in and he can sleep in warm comfort at his person’s side.
But tonight, no lights glow from the windows. The house is huddled against itself, dark and cold. Is it possible he made a mistake, landed at the wrong estate? It happens, sometimes—bits of his brain that used to be sturdy come loose these days, memories tumbling into the present. Sometimes he still thinks of Giyuu as a boy, and lands on the shoulder of the Kamado kid who feels so similar to him. Sometimes a mission from years ago slips to the front of his mind, more vivid and urgent than whatever he’s supposed to be doing, and he only realizes something has gone wrong when Giyuu looks at him with baffled concern.
But no. Tonight, he knows he hasn’t made a mistake—this is the Water Estate. In the moonlight, he can see the carved wave patterns under the eaves, and recognizes the crooked pine in the garden where he likes to sit and catch his breath.
Kanzaburo hops along the engawa, making a full circuit of the building. All of the rooms are silent and unlit. Maybe Giyuu is here, but asleep already. It isn’t late yet, but Kanzaburo knows Giyuu sleeps whenever he can, since he is used to being called to duty at any moment.
Delicately, Kanzaburo taps at the door frame with his beak. He waits a moment, listening, then taps again. And again. There is no sound of floorboards creaking, no shuffle of feet across the tatami. The house is empty.
Kanzaburo fluffs his feathers, drawing his head in against his chest. The night’s chill makes his bones ache more than usual, and lodges like a blade in his injured wing. Even as a Kasugai crow, he has lived a half-wild life, and he is no stranger to roosting in trees and foraging for seeds like any other bird. But right now, he wants more than anything to be indoors, to be warm, to be given something to eat and a place to sleep. With a brief burst of strength, he tries to slide the door open, prying his beak against the frame and shoving. It won’t budge.
Wearily, he trundles back along the engawa, to the spot where the cat tore a hole in the shoji paper last week. Giyuu hasn’t bothered to have it fixed yet. Normally, something like this would be beneath Kanzaburo’s dignity, but tonight he feels begrudgingly grateful to the cat. He squeezes through the tear.
Dizzy with exhaustion and pain, he stumbles through the dark house to Giyuu’s bedroom. The brazier is cold and the futon is tidied away, but the cushion that Giyuu keeps out for his use is there in its usual corner, waiting for him. Kanzaburo drags himself onto it and feels like he is, at last, floating. The familiar lumps of the old cushion embrace him, and he falls asleep within seconds.
When he opens his eyes again, the honey-gold of late-afternoon sunlight glows through the shoji. He slept through the night and most of the following day. Kanzaburo stretches, wincing at the stiffness in his sore joints and the jolt of pain in his wing. For a moment, he doesn’t understand why he’s hurting; then, swift as clouds blotting out the sunlight, he remembers. He climbs off his cushion, then wobbles his way to the main room.
Giyuu still hasn’t come home. The house is as silent as it was last night, and only slightly warmer, after a day of winter sunshine.
Kanzaburo wanders across the tatami. He has never been alone in this house before, and the large rooms feel even more vast in their emptiness. He wonders if Giyuu feels the same, when he’s by himself in this space. As far as he understands such things, humans like to outfit their living spaces with objects to make their lives more practical, or comfortable, or pleasing. But his human never did much of that; the furniture in this house all belonged to previous occupants, and Giyuu added nothing of his own besides the scroll above the altar.
Perhaps Giyuu has finally grown tired of this lonely space, Kanzaburo thinks, as he pauses in front of the altar. Perhaps he’s decided not to come back. But where else could he go? He has to be coming home. He is surely on his way home, even now.
Kanzaburo hops back through the house and out through the rip in the shoji. The sun is beginning to set, and the sparse winter branches in the garden are ruddy with the glow. He beats his wings and takes to the air, intending to circle out from the Water Estate and see if he can spot Giyuu, but he makes it no higher than the rooftop before he has to land. His breath wheezes from his lungs in violent gasps, and his wings feel like boulders have been lashed to them with sharp metal cords. He will have to wait here for Giyuu—his body leaves him no choice.
If he has to wait, then he needs food. His stomach growls as he tries to recall when he last ate, so, guiltily, he goes to the kitchen and upends a jar of rice. As he plucks the grains off the floor, he notices the cat crouched on the cold stove, staring at him. Kanzaburo eyes her warily. He is too large to be easy prey for her, but in his current state, she could do serious damage to him. He’s seen the dismembered remains of smaller birds left behind by her in the garden. She lets him eat, though, giving him a long, slow blink before wrapping her tail around her toes.
With his hunger soothed, he heads out to the engawa. He hunches into himself and stares at the path to the main gate. The pale sun sinks into a bank of clouds and the wind picks up, scattering sparse snowflakes that cling like ash to Kanzaburo’s feathers. He withstands the sting in his eyes until the last of the daylight disappears and he has to believe that Giyuu won’t be coming home tonight, either.
He’s numb with cold after his vigil, and he totters straight to his cushion, only to find the cat curled there. Her head and limbs are tucked into a seamless ball, but her ears twitch when Kanzaburo’s feathers drag along the tatami.
His body is a burden, and all he wants to do is set it down for a while. He approaches the cat. With a wide yawn, she uncoils languidly and regards him with amber eyes. Then she blinks. Kanzaburo reads no danger in her posture, so, ignoring the prickle of his pride, he clambers up onto the cushion beside her. When he pushes against her flank, she curls up again, her face pressed to his side, and starts up a rumbling purr.
Dimly, Kanzaburo registers surprise. All of the years she’d lived here, he’d considered her a potential threat, a natural enemy; but now he tries to remember if he’s ever heard her so much as hiss at him. It doesn’t matter, he decides. She’s warm as an oven, softer than the threadbare fabric of his cushion, and he’s so tired. He tucks his head beneath his wing, sighs out a long, slow breath, and sleeps through the entire night.
He wakes to an empty room—no cat, no Giyuu. He waits, tucked into the crevices of his cushion, and stares at the lifeless brazier, and listens to the noises of old wooden beams whispering to themselves. He goes to sit on the engawa until the sun disappears, and warms himself against the cat all night, and wakes alone again. Time is measured by the watery light seeping across the floor, the diminishing pile of rice in the kitchen, the growing mounds of snow in the garden. He doesn’t know how many days he’s waited. Whenever he thinks of it, he stretches out his wings and gives an experimental flap. He wants to believe he’s healing, even though the pain still flares like hot coals. He thinks he could fly now, if he had to. If he knew where to go.
This is the longest Kanzaburo has gone without seeing Giyuu. Since the morning he landed on his boy’s arm on Mt. Fujikasane, they’d never been away from each other for more than a day or two. From the very beginning of Giyuu’s life as a Demon Slayer, Kanzaburo has always been there, just over his shoulder.
From the very beginning—the past beckons to him. The beginning, when Giyuu was grief-shattered, wrapped in bandages and clutching a haori that had belonged to someone else. The beginning, when Kanzaburo followed Giyuu’s dragging steps home to his mentor’s house at the foot of Mt. Sagiri. When Giyuu spent a week crying, and Kanzaburo and Urokodaki sat side-by-side in the yard and listened to his broken heart.
Urokodaki’s house. Kanzaburo tilts his head.
Perhaps if Giyuu was given some time off to recover after the battle with Muzan—perhaps if he yearned to be fed and cared for and kept warm the way Kanzaburo had when he struggled into the Water Estate—then he would go to Urokodaki’s house.
Kanzaburo scrambles out of the ripped shoji and launches himself off the engawa. The pain rides him, digging in its claws with each flap of his wings, but it’s not so bad. He can ignore it long enough to get to Mt. Sagiri—to find Giyuu, and then he can rest.
As he reaches the clearing where the small house stands, Kanzaburo realizes something has gone wrong. No smoke rises from the chimney, the door is shut tight, and a dusting of snow lays undisturbed across the path. No one is here—not Giyuu, and not even the home’s owner.
Confusion swirls in him. This was his mission, wasn’t it? Someone told him to come here. Someone told him he needed to be here, some message had to be delivered, but… No. As clarity laps at his mind again, he remembers that he came here on his own. He’s looking for Giyuu. And he still has no idea where Giyuu is.
He plunges down to the roof, sliding to a bruising stop against one of the stones. The mountain wind has left him numb, but at least that quiets the pain. He’s made the journey from the Water Estate to Mt. Sagiri so many times, carrying letters between Giyuu and his mentor, and he’s sure that not long ago, the flight was easy for him. But now, as he gasps on Urokodaki’s roof, exhaustion pounds him with monstrous fists. He should try to find a way into the house, to shelter himself from the frigid night and perhaps find some food, but all he can bring himself to do is curl against the roof, supported by the stone. His eyes close and he plummets into sleep like a rock tossed into a pond.
Sudden as a sword stroke, he’s wrenched awake by pain. A watery dawn is leaking between the pine branches, and the air in his lungs is brittle and sharp. He tries to fluff out his feathers, and finds he can barely move; the joint of his right wing feels swollen, encased in hot, aching bands. His stomach is empty, but he knows that if he gets down from the roof, he won’t make it back up again. On the ground, unsheltered, he’ll be easy prey for whatever fanged, clawed creatures lurk the edges of the clearing.
He’s made a mistake, coming here. He underestimated his injury and overestimated his feeble, decrepit body, and made a mistake worse than forgetting his mission or calling the Kamado boy “Giyuu.” This mistake is likely going to kill him, but… Shame trickles along his spine as he acknowledges that maybe it’s time. He served Giyuu as steadfastly as he could, but he’s failed too many times now. Giyuu deserves a better, younger, smarter crow. He’s sorry that he won’t get to see his person one last time, but maybe this is what’s supposed to happen.
His consciousness flickers as the wind murmurs around him. He closes his eyes for a moment, and opens them to the moon pouring liquid silver across the clearing. He watches the shadows until they turn into his own dreams. A crust of ice forms on his beak, and when he blinks, snowflakes melt against his eyelids. Briefly, the dazzling winter sun prods at him.
Hours or days or moments later, something moves in the clearing—green and yellow, out of place in the colorless woods. Kanzaburo stirs. Green and yellow, like the left side of Giyuu’s haori. His heart lurches in his chest. Giyuu is here, finally. He’ll get to see him after all. Kanzaburo wants to get to his feet, to fling himself towards his person, but his body ignores him. As he stares desperately at the green-and-yellow blur, it wavers like mist disturbed by a breeze, and he feels something of himself drift away with it as it vanishes. When there’s nothing left to see, he closes his eyes with finality and falls into himself.
A voice reaches him, down at the bottom of his mind where he rolls like a dead thing lost on a riverbed. It’s not a voice he knows, but still it tugs him up and into what’s left of his consciousness. He cracks his eyes open and sees no one; he’s still on the roof, alone except for the moon sliding behind the treetops. Wincing at the scrape of frozen muscles, he turns his head slightly, then pauses. A handful of seeds is piled on the stone closest to where he is sitting.
Kanzaburo stares, waiting for the hallucination to dissipate. The seeds remain, and his stomach rumbles, so with shaking steps he crawls over to the next stone. He plucks a seed into his beak and it cracks with a reassuring firmness, and abruptly he’s alive again. He gobbles down the seeds until his stomach feels tight, and then he sits back and cocks his head.
The voice comes again, and this time the words ring clearly. “Were you going to just lie there and starve to death on Sensei’s roof?” Kanzaburo looks up the slope of the roof. There, where the moonlight drapes across the peak, he sees the green-and-yellow haori again. Not Giyuu—it’s a child, light-haired, eyes like stream-polished pebbles. Kanzaburo doesn’t recognize him, but he knows that haori must be the one that Giyuu cradled to his chest and then made his own.
“Giyuu,” Kanzaburo says. The name creaks from his throat with the sound of old pines leaning into the wind.
The boy shakes his head. “He isn’t here.” A sad smile tugs at his scarred cheek. “I haven’t seen him in a long time. And I think it will be a while before I do.”
“Then, where?”
The boy shrugs. “You probably have a better idea than I do, don’t you? Isn’t it part of your job to know that?”
Kanzaburo fluffs his feathers. The reminder of his failure aches as much as his other wounds.
“Don’t give up. That’s inexcusable,” the boy tells him. “You have to recover your strength and go find him. There’s still life left in you, isn’t there?” With that, the figure grows fainter. Kanzaburo stares as it fades like dwindling smoke.
Between the seeds and the shame that the ghost boy offered him, the next morning, Kanzaburo finds the strength to stretch out his wings and take to the sky. He circles the clearing twice, then lands again on the roof, pretending not to be winded by that effort. But though he may be able to fly, more or less, he still doesn’t know where to go.
If Giyuu isn’t at his house, and isn’t at his teacher’s home, and isn’t among the ghosts waiting to see him again, then where is he? Where is there even left to go? The Corps headquarters was destroyed in the blast that initiated the final battle. Kanzaburo doesn’t know which of the other Hashira might still be alive; one of the last things he recalls from the battle is the news that the Mist Hashira was deceased, so soon after the Insect Hashira’s defeat.
The Insect Hashira. Kochou Shinobu. The one who stitched Giyuu’s wounds and teased him with a prodding fingertip and smiled when she talked to him. She had been one of Giyuu’s people, like the boy in the haori—one more of the people who had now become ghosts.
Kanzaburo blinks. He knows where to go.
The pain in his wings is a ravenous, roaring flame. His eyelids sag with exhaustion. All that distinguishes the muddy swirl of his memories and dreams from reality is the sickening swoop of lost altitude jolting him awake. Each icy breath scratches at his throat on its way in and leaves him choking as he exhales. This will be his final journey for a long time. Whatever he finds at the Butterfly Estate, it will be the end of the road for him.
He doesn’t think about what he will do if he discovers that it, too, is abandoned. He doesn’t think about what state he might find Giyuu in, if he is really there. He doesn’t think at all, beyond forcing each wingbeat out of his wretched body, ripping past the crunch in his joint. A little farther. Just a little farther.
When he clears the pine forest surrounding the Butterfly Estate, he wobbles with relief to see that its windows are glowing. Drawing nearer, he spots two people standing in the snowy gardens, surrounded by a flock of Kasugai crows. He aims for them, trembling so hard he can barely stay aloft.
The two humans look up, and Kanzaburo recognizes them both, though their forms waver as he stares at them. One is taller than most other humans, broader in the shoulders, and wears a glittering band covering his left eye—the former Sound Hashira. And the other man wears a red tengu mask. Urokodaki.
“Hey there,” the Sound Hashira calls to him. He lifts his arm, offering Kanzaburo a perch. The other crows, who are gathered on the ground snapping senbei crackers between their beaks, pause and stare up at him, then begin to squawk in recognition.
Kanzaburo pitches down to them, scrabbling for purchase as he collapses onto the Sound Hashira’s arm. The man tilts his head to study Kanzaburo with his good eye. “I’ll be damned,” he says. “Is that you, Kanzaburo?”
He nods weakly as the other crows caw up at him.
“Where on earth have you been?” Tennoji Matsuemon demands. “Why didn’t you report in after the battle?”
“We figured you had finally dropped dead,” Sourai adds, cracking a senbei for emphasis.
Kanzaburo ignores them. He looks up at the Sound Hashira and says, “Giyuu?”
Urokodaki answers. “Your timing is good, Kanzaburo. He finally woke up this morning.”
“He’s here?” Kanzaburo wheezes.
“He’s here.”
Kanzaburo goes limp. The Sound Hashira shifts, rebalancing the crow on his arm to keep him from plummeting to the ground.
“Would you like to see him?” Urokodaki asks.
“Yes.”
“Have something to eat first,” the Sound Hashira says. “You weigh next to nothing, and you look like you’re about to keel over.”
Kanzaburo turns away from him, staring at the dark eyes of the tengu mask. “Giyuu,” he insists.
The two men exchange a glance, then the Sound Hashira shrugs and holds out his arm to Urokodaki. Kanzaburo stumbles onto the old man’s forearm, snagging his sleeve with his talons. Carefully, as if he understands just how much old bones can ache, Urokodaki tucks him against his chest for stability. “All right,” Urokodaki tells him. “We’ll go see Giyuu.”
The man carries him into the infirmary, through a long hallway that smells of antiseptic and human stress. Urokodaki’s steps are smooth, but Kanzaburo still lurches and shakes against him. He flinches as his throbbing wing bumps against the man’s chest.
Urokodaki pauses and stares down at him. “You’re badly hurt,” he says, tracing a careful finger along the swelling that has consumed Kanzaburo’s shoulder. “How did you manage to fly here?”
“It’s not so bad.”
The expressionless mask continues to contemplate him, and Kanzaburo hears a slow sigh of breath behind it. “I’ll ask one of the girls to look at you. Perhaps they can splint it, or at least give you something for the pain.”
“It’s not so bad,” Kanzaburo repeats. He doesn’t want to stand in the hall talking about his wing. He wants to see Giyuu.
“Ah, Kanzaburo.” Urokodaki shakes his head slightly, but he walks on, stopping a moment later outside a closed door. Kanzaburo trembles as the man slides the door open to peek inside.
“He’s asleep again,” he tells Kanzaburo, as he opens the door wider and steps into the room. “He was in a coma since the final battle, but Aoi thinks he’s out of danger now. It will be a while until he’s on his feet again, though.”
Giyuu is here. He is lying on his back in a stark white infirmary bed, his head and face swathed in bandages, a crisp sheet pulled up to his chin. His hair hangs loose and lank against the pillow, and his skin is pale, and his mouth is slack. Kanzaburo has never seen him look so close to death. But his chest is steadily rising and falling as he breathes. He’s alive, and he’s out of danger, and Kanzaburo has finally found him. The relief he feels is sweeter than the most buoyant pocket of warm air, more delicious than any effortless glide he’s ever enjoyed. He pushes urgently against Urokodaki, desperate to flap over to his boy.
A quiet laugh rumbles from Urokodaki’s chest, and the man carries him to Giyuu’s bed. Gently, he maneuvers Kanzaburo onto the mattress. “I’ll leave you here,” he says. “You both need to rest.” After a lingering glance at Giyuu, Urokodaki slips back out of the room.
Kanzaburo bends his head and presses against Giyuu’s shoulder, feeling the living warmth of him. He doesn’t want to wake him; he just wants to stay tucked against him like this. This is where he’s meant to be. Here, at Giyuu’s shoulder, and maybe they are both half-dead but he’s still Giyuu’s Kasugai crow and Giyuu is still his person.
He feels Giyuu stir, and looks up at his face. Giyuu’s chapped lips part and let out a sigh, vaguely formed around the shape of a word. Then his eyelids twitch, and Kanzaburo watches as his eyes open, and find him.
“Kanzaburo,” Giyuu whispers.
“Giyuu.” Kanzaburo butts his head against Giyuu’s shoulder again, then takes his sleeve in his beak and tugs at it, overcome.
“Kanzaburo,” he says again, as if he can’t quite believe it. “I thought you were dead.”
“No,” Kanzaburo croons. “I’m here, Giyuu. I’m here.”
“You’re here.” Giyuu shifts, struggling to sit up.
That’s when Kanzaburo realizes something is wrong—something worse than the fatigue clinging to Giyuu’s body, worse than the bandages and the lingering smell of scabbed blood. Giyuu’s right sleeve is empty. As he moves, putting all his weight on his left side, it shifts lifelessly.
“Giyuu.” Kanzaburo’s voice is a hoarse croak this time. “Your arm.”
Giyuu looks down at his right side. “Muzan,” he says. “He moved faster than I could see, and…”
Kanzaburo clambers onto Giyuu’s lap, tilting his head to look into Giyuu’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. Many people made far greater sacrifices.”
Giyuu seems calm, but tears thicken his voice as he speaks, and Kanzaburo aches for him. His own pain dwindles into shameful insignificance as he thinks about how his person must have suffered. He bumps his head against Giyuu’s chest. With his left hand, Giyuu strokes the side of his beak.
“I’ll help you,” Kanzaburo says.
“Help me?”
“Help you. Help you pick up things, carry things. Whatever you need.”
Giyuu draws in a sharp breath, but his hand continues to stroke Kanzaburo in a steady and familiar rhythm. “Thank you, Kanzaburo,” he says, “but you don’t have to stay with me anymore. It’s over. It’s all over.”
“No, Giyuu. I’m still your crow,” Kanzaburo tells him. “I’m here. Of course I’ll stay.”
A warm drop splashes the crown of Kanzaburo’s head. Giyuu’s fingers wipe the tears along the crow’s feathers as he pets him. Kanzaburo hasn’t seen his boy cry since those first days after Final Selection, but he supposes he has a lot to cry about now. He coos, deep in his throat, and presses closer. His own vision is blurring, gray clouds rolling in and dimming his sight, but it’s all right. Giyuu’s heartbeat throbs beneath him. The swell of the breath in his lungs lulls Kanzaburo like placid waves. Giyuu is here, and Kanzaburo is here with him, and they’re both alive, despite it all. Giyuu is warm and breathing and holding him, so Kanzaburo lets his eyes close. He can rest now.