Kyojuro would never forget the words his mother spoke to him from her sickbed, her voice gentle but firm:
"Helping those weaker than you is the duty of those born strong."
"And Kyojuro, your mission is to shoulder that duty and see it through."
What is "weak"? What is "strong"?
Ruka never gave him a strict definition—but Kyojuro knew this much: people like himself, like his father Shinjuro, were not "weak" when compared to ordinary folks just trying to survive in a cruel era overrun by demons.
He also knew his father had once read the Record of Successive Flame Hashira and, in a drunken rage, spat out his resentment over and over:
"People's talents are decided from birth. True geniuses are rare. Everyone else is worthless trash."
There was a time when Kyojuro had almost believed that too.
His little brother Senjuro, those so-called "genius swordsmen" who came hoping to be his father's successor—none of them had much talent for the blade. But that didn't mean Senjuro and the others had no way to contribute to the demon-slaying cause.
Rengoku Kyojuro pushed the door open with his sword hand and stepped into the small courtyard.
For a moment he seemed to see the old scenes overlapping the present—the younger him chasing butterflies with Senjuro and their mother, his father ruffling his hair.
He drew a deep breath, pulled his sword free of its sheath, and pointed the tip straight at the man sitting on the wooden veranda, sake bottle in hand.
"Father, please stand back up!"
Fire should burn. People like him should speak straight from the heart. Hearing the door, a small Kyojuro peeked around the frame, looking timidly between his brother and father.
Shinjuro tipped back the bottle, took a gulp of sake, and glared at him coolly.
"Get out."
Kyojuro stepped forward. Nen flowed over his Nichirin blade, flames flaring to life along the edge. His eyes were unwavering.
"Please pull yourself together, Father!"
"Clang!"
The sake bottle flew. It whistled past Kyojuro's ear and exploded against the wall behind him, sake splashing down the plaster.
Shinjuro's eyes burned with anger as he snarled:
"Ohh, so you think a few scraps of paper and the title of Hashira make you amazing now?"
"Senjuro. Bring me your sword."
Fueled by anger and alcohol, Shinjuro rose unsteadily to his feet. For a moment, some of his old aura seemed to return.
Senjuro clung nervously to the doorframe, looking from his brother to his father, his face twisting into an even more miserable "囧" than usual.
"Give it to him," Kyojuro said, turning with a gentle smile. "Trust me."
"…Yes." Swallowing hard, Senjuro cradled his sword in both hands and offered it to their father.
Shinjuro grabbed it in one hand.
It felt strange—foreign—but after a few test swings, his grip began to remember. Kyojuro simply waited in silence until his father stopped moving, then watched him hop off the veranda in three quick strides and casually slash down at him, flames trailing from the blade.
In that instant, Kyojuro understood why, beneath the wisteria trees at the Ubuyashiki estate, Roy had been so unconcerned when facing his own full-strength strike.
Too weak. Too slow. The heat is too low.
Kyojuro was disappointed.
With a single light stroke, and a layer of en wrapped around him, he knocked Senjuro's sword right out of Shinjuro's hand—and in that same motion, set his own Nichirin blade at his father's neck.
"Wh—?"
It was over in an instant.
Senjuro had always believed that his father would explode in rage at any attempt at "admonishment" from his elder brother—that he would beat him bloody again.
But the result in front of him was simple and brutal:
His father had lost.
Yes, there's a saying that a student needn't be inferior to their teacher, nor a teacher always superior to their students… but for Senjuro, raised on Shinjuro's overwhelming strength, this was earthshaking.
This was the former Flame Hashira—the true Flame Hashira who had fully mastered all forms of the Flame Breathing.
Kyojuro had become Flame Hashira with only three tattered pages of notes and self-study—"half-baked" by comparison.
Yet today, that very "half-baked" son had defeated his once-unstoppable father in a single head-on exchange.
"—"
A servant who'd happened to peek in froze, eyes going wide.
In the courtyard, two almost identical faces stared at each other.
One disappointed, the other stunned.
At last, Shinjuro seemed to snap back to himself. His dry voice clawed its way out of his throat.
"You're not the son I know."
For the first time in a long time, he truly focused. His gaze sharpened as he stared into Kyojuro's eyes.
"This power. This flame. They're beyond anything Flame Breathing can achieve."
"Who… who taught you?"
Shinjuro's descent into despair hadn't just been about Ruka's death. The deeper cause was the brutal truth he'd found in the Flame records: Flame Breathing's ceiling wasn't enough to reach Kibutsuji Muzan.
Even at their peak, the Flame Hashira had failed to kill certain Upper Moons.
That realization had shattered something inside him.
"It was the sun," Kyojuro said, returning his blade to its sheath. He pressed his palms together and looked up at the sky.
The evening sun leaned toward the horizon, not yet sunk, casting red light that set half the sky on fire and cloaked him in a robe of dusk.
He smiled at his dumbstruck father.
"Father, I saw the sun."
Shinjuro: "…"
The words caught in his throat. For a long beat he could only stare.
A breeze rolled through the courtyard, making the three of them—father and sons—each with their golden hair, sway like flames.
Silence stretched.
Eventually, Shinjuro spoke:
"What name does this sun have?"
Kyojuro answered honestly.
"Roy Kamado."
White haori edged in red at the bottom, Kyojuro echoed the words Roy had once given him, offering them back to his father.
"The sun can be me, it can be you, it can be him. It can be anyone who carries justice and strives upward."
For a heartbeat, Shinjuro just stared.
Then he laughed.
Senjuro froze beside him. Since their mother's death, this was the first time he'd seen that expression on his father's face.
The laugh grew louder, wilder, until Shinjuro was throwing his head back, hand on his hip, tears glinting in the corners of his eyes.
"Interesting. Too interesting. Kyojuro! Ask him—ask this sun of yours—if that really goes for me too!"
"If I can, you can. And Senjuro can too."
"Hahaha…!"
That evening, the air above the Rengoku household was filled with bright, rolling laughter.
The servants who knew how things had been stared like they'd seen a ghost, dizzy with disbelief.
They muttered and whispered, trading little scraps of news as they tried to parse what had happened. That name surfaced again and again—
Roy Kamado-sama.
None of them had any idea that this mysterious, unfathomable Roy Kamado had already placed one foot on the floor of a speeding train.
That night—
After slipping through the rainbow-hued tunnel of his dream passage, Roy emerged onto the familiar shore of his inner sea.
He didn't linger.
He opened the Demon Slayer gate and stepped through.
Following the leads Ubuyashiki had given him, he moved from car to car until he reached Car No. 7 and dropped into a seat directly across from Enmu, Rui—
—and Upper Moon Three, Akaza.
Smiling as if they were just strangers sharing a ride, he asked:
"Gentlemen, mind if I sit with you?"
~~~
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