The night was pitch-black, yet fire lit up half the sky.
This was a field of burning ruins.
The flames blazed with the heat of a miniature sun, silently and violently devouring everything in their path. The redwood pillars that had once supported this elegant estate collapsed amid the inferno, while thick black smoke hung over the wreckage, carrying waves of superheated air.
It lifted the girl's bangs.
Sui stood expressionless, watching the place where she had grown up burn to nothing beneath the torch she herself had set.
Her eyes shone unnaturally brightly in the darkness. Her irises glimmered with a strange pale blue, while deep crimson light flickered within them like a torch burning across a frozen wilderness. At the corners of her eyes, a streak of scarlet extended outward, vivid as blood in the firelight.
To Sui, the world had been reduced to ruptured points and lines—nothing but black and red, things that could be cut and things that could not.
And in her eyes, those monsters were full of fractures.
She cut them apart. She killed them. And in the end, she buried the fallen beneath a single cleansing fire.
At least they had died in silence, seen by others as humans rather than as man-eating "demons."
Among them were her family—those who had cherished her, those she had cherished in return. Tonight they had become hideous demons, and she had personally driven her blade through their hearts.
"I'm the pitiful one here... You all got to die cleanly, but where am I supposed to go now?"
The girl let out a soft sigh.
She had thought it was already absurd enough that a well-adjusted young person from the twenty-first century had somehow become an orphaned little girl in Japan's Taisho era. But reality had proven even more absurd. Sui had lived here for more than a decade, only for her peaceful life to shatter in a single night.
This world really did have creatures called demons.
Stories of them had been passed down since the ancient Nara period—beings that walked in the darkness, feared sunlight, and fed on human flesh.
Sui had always assumed such tales were just inventions meant to scare children. In her previous life, her grandmother had loved telling ghost stories to frighten her when she was little, and these sounded much the same.
But tonight she had seen the difference with her own eyes.
The price had been every life here.
She exhaled, a deep weariness suddenly washing over her.
Without these eyes, she would have become one of the monsters haunting this night.
A sharp rush of wind sounded from behind her.
"Who's there?"
Sui turned back at once, alert. She could not be sure that the powerful demon who had brought disaster to this place would not return to admire its handiwork.
Her eerie ice-blue eyes locked onto the newcomer.
It was a swordsman.
He wore a haori patterned like flames and carried a white-sheathed katana. Everything about his presence was extraordinary. Compared to the demons she had cut down, there were far fewer red fractures running across his body.
Sui relaxed slightly.
As long as it was a person, that was enough.
The swordsman stopped beside her, his eyes bright with vigor.
"Girl, can you tell me what happened here?"
His voice was thunderously loud, brimming with energy.
"Why not tell me who you are first?" Sui leaned against a tree and slid the bloodstained blade in her hand back into its redwood scabbard.
Interesting. He looked steady and composed, yet he was so... energetic?
But she was too tired now to even spare him a proper glance. Using those strange eyes drained her as badly as running two thousand meters had in her previous life.
With the swordsman's arrival, it felt as though her entire body had sunk into warm water. Every nerve in her suddenly loosened.
"I am a Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps, here to exterminate demons!" the swordsman shouted, impossibly spirited.
He held that pose for a long moment and, hearing no response, lowered his head in confusion.
"Girl?"
No answer.
She had already fallen asleep against the tree.
Her black hair spilled down like ink, framing features delicate enough to seem carved from a fairy tale. Wrapped in a deep crimson kimono, her slender figure looked all the more fragile, her skin pale and luminous as snow.
The swordsman studied her and had to admit that she was a rare beauty—one who could have lived quite well on her looks alone even in the capital, where beautiful people were everywhere.
He then turned to the ruins and the corpses of the demons before him.
What an astonishing child.
She had wiped out the demons here all by herself. Yet from what he could see, although the sword in her hand was valuable and sharp, it was not one of the special Nichirin blades meant to slay demons.
So how had she killed them?
The swordsman found himself deeply curious.
He removed his haori, stepped forward, and draped it over the sleeping girl, deciding to wait until she awoke.
A single night passed quickly for a swordsman tempered by years of harsh training.
For Sui, however, it felt like an unbearably long stretch of time.
The events of the previous night battered her soul.
"Today is Sui's birthday. We have to dress her up nicely. I specially had this kimono made by a craftsman from Kyoto—go on, try it on."
"Waaah, is this really our beautiful little Sui? When you grow up, important men are definitely going to pursue you. Be careful, okay? Don't let sweet words trick you away."
"Sui! Run, hurry, ru—... no, Sui, welcome home!"
"Rare blood, rare blood! Delicious rare blood! I've never seen blood this delicious before! Hahaha!"
"I'm sorry... Sui. I want to eat just one bite of you. May I?"
This was the sound of demons roaring.
This was the sound of a blade cutting through flesh.
And this was the final murmur of that person to her.
"Sui... thank you..."
The girl opened her eyes, and the flame-patterned haori draped over her slowly slipped down.
Warm, gentle sunlight fell across her face, yet it left her feeling as if a lifetime had passed.
She stared blankly at the ruins.
The fire that had raged there all night had long since burned out, leaving behind only blackened wooden frames.
Buried there were the people who had loved her most in this world.
"Girl!"
That familiar voice again—it was the swordsman. His booming voice was probably loud enough for the entire courtyard to hear.
Sui came back to herself and only then noticed the haori covering her.
"Thank you." She handed it back to him.
"It was nothing." The swordsman draped it back over his shoulders. "My name is Rengoku Shinjuro. I am one of the Demon Slayer Corps' Hashira!"
"The Demon Slayer Corps?"
Sui had heard the story before. It had always been told alongside the stories of demons: when the sun goes down, demons appear to devour humans, and demon slayers rise to kill them and protect the people.
She used to think it was nonsense. She came from a twenty-first century world that believed in hammers and sickles, not ghosts and monsters.
But demons had appeared for real.
And she had cut down several with her own hands.
Including her closest kin.
The moment their eyes met, she had understood: once someone became a demon and fed on human flesh, death was the best ending they could hope for.
"May I join?" the girl asked.
"Hm?" Rengoku Shinjuro's swallow-tail brows drew together slightly. "A child like you could live a life a thousand times better than the one offered by the Demon Slayer Corps!"
He meant it.
The girl was exceptionally beautiful. Even if her family was gone, she could still find someone willing to cherish her, protect her, and let her live as a noble lady among society's upper class.
The Demon Slayer Corps was not the best choice for her.
If anything, it was perhaps the worst.
Or rather, when he looked at this girl—so close in age to his own children—he instinctively recoiled from the idea of someone so young being forced to accept such a cruel fate.
"That kind of choice would make me rot away, Mr. Rengoku. I think you understand that well enough."
Her voice was soft, heavy with exhaustion.
She looked at Rengoku Shinjuro, and those eerie Mystic Eyes opened once more.
"I can bring death to those monsters."
Rengoku Shinjuro met that pair of uncanny eyes, and beneath their frozen indifference—cold and endless as a wasteland of ice and snow—he actually felt the urge to flee.
Unbelievable.
So this was how the girl had slain demons.
With those eyes.
As a Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps, he had killed countless demons and witnessed countless tragedies. He understood better than most how precious such a talent was.
There was no reason to refuse her again.
"The Demon Slayer Corps welcomes you!" the man declared in a ringing voice.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 135)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 110)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter67)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter85)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 60
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 65
From Junkman to Wasteland 50
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 35
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 40
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 37
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 27
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 26
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 26
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