Fleeting Shadows (KNY x OC)

-16

The moon has never looked more luminous than it does rising in Sayomi's direction as she strolls along her way to the Butterfly mansion to fetch Tanjiro. She tries minimizing her pace to enjoy the firmament above her, adorned with clusters of stars as far as the eye could see, each ball of gas blazing aflame in the years they are able to only to be put out eons later with countless others born out of their flaring trails. She freezes in her tracks to let the evening breeze blow by and inhales just as it hits cool in her face.

She shouldn't dawdle, they would miss the train to Asakusa.

Sayomi hums satisfyingly at the cool feeling and resumes with her walk, her Kasugai crow descending from above and landing on her shoulder.

"Have an assignment for me?" She gives her crow a side-glance, hoping she has nothing on her agenda as of tonight.

"Caw! Nothing for you tonight!"

She chuckles and remarks. "Then what are you doing here?"

"Caw! Caw! I'm hungry!"

Poor thing. Where has he been flying off to all day? Sayomi frowns a bit at his plight and promises something for him to eat once she arrives at the Shinobu's place, the crow flapping his wings delightfully at the thought. Along the way, she encounters some of the Kakushi jogging past her with an injured hunter on one of their backs and tilts her head curiously at the sight, thinking that they must be headed to the Butterfly mansion for the hunter to receive proper medical attention.

"Takashi."

"Ahh!" A quick screech is dragged out of Sayomi at the stoic mention of her name and she whips her head to the source, finding Giyu walking beside her without having given a heads-up.

Probably a force of habit of his.

Sayomi pats her chest lightly and clears her throat, glancing at her sides. "Tomioka-san. Hi, what- where have you come from?"

He cocks his head to his left. "With the Kakushi from a mission. Where are you headed?"

She cranes her head back exaggeratedly and puffs her cheeks, her little antic eliciting a small hic of amusement from Giyu. "Butterfly mansion. Just to fetch Tanjiro and ask for some food for this fella," she tickles her crow's chin lightly and it squawks happily.

"Huh. You're off to a mission right now with Kamado?"

"Sort of? It's something," she waves her hand vaguely upon trailing off, deciding not too be that revealing. He lifts a brow at her indistinct response and shrugs, lifting his eyes up to the sky as they both walk along the trails in comfortable silence.

Well, at least for Giyu, when Sayomi is internally sweating at being next to somebody who could potentially sense what she's hiding. She swallows the lump in her throat and snaps out of her blooming anxiety when he comments out of the blue.

"That's a nice necklace."

She immediately lowers her head to give her necklace a glance and chuckles awkwardly, quite surprised that he's noticed when she tucked the pendant beneath her collar. "Oh, yeah. Thanks, it's...it's something."

He presses his mouth together in a firm line as he thinks. "From Rengoku, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Well, I," Giyu kicks a small pebble across and rubs the base of his neck, his blue eyes flicking to the right as he tries to recall, "he mentioned it to Kanroji and Uzui the morning before that train mission and I happened to be around."

Could anything be more effective in bringing more life into Sayomi's perpetually cold skin than hearing more of Kyojuro having done the most heartwarming things? At the same time, it's becoming frustrating for her, if she is to be honest with herself. Hearing of things that they could have done together and the years they could have spent with each other, reduced to ashes with his death and her unwelcomed immortality.