Truth (Finale)
The train swayed gently as it cut through the countryside, the rhythmic clatter of steel against steel filling the cabin with a steady pulse.
Shinobu carefully stepped over a pair of outstretched legs, murmuring a soft “pardon me” as she made her way back to her seat. The narrow aisle was packed with travelers. Men engrossed in newspapers, mothers clutching restless children, an elderly man in traditional clothes quietly fanning himself as he looked out of a window with a thoughtful, reminiscent look in his eyes...
A bump in the tracks jolted the train, and Shinobu reached out instinctively, her fingers grazing the back of a stranger’s seat before she steadied herself. She adjusted the hem of her kimono and stepped forward, careful, measured. She felt strangely out of place… adrift among people who had never heard of the demons or the Demon Slayer Corps… She was no longer a Demon Slayer. There was no longer such a corps…
She continued to make her way back to her seat, until she found her bath blocked by the back of a broad-shouldered man standing in the aisle, his attention fully absorbed in rummaging through his travel bag.
"Excuse me sir," she said softly.
It seemed that he didn’t hear her... “Excuse me sir,” she said again. a little louder this time, but he remained oblivious, too focused on his search. For a moment, she hesitated, debating whether to tap his sleeve or simply wait…
Then, from behind her, a less quiet, and deeper voice sounded. “Excuse us”
The man turned around, to see a face with many scars, wild white hair, and buggy, almost crazed eyes. “You’re in the way”, Sanemi said calmly.
“Oh… sorry about that,” the man said, as he aligned his body to the side of the isle, allowing Shinobu and Sanemi to pass.
Shinobu did not even know that Sanemi had been there. She assumed he must have gotten up to keep an eye on her. Part of her wanted to tell him off, and assure him that she was capable of handling herself. But she reminded herself yet again that she was no longer a demon slayer. She was beginning her life anew, the way her sister wanted… the way her parents would have wanted… the way she herself also wanted to live.
And deep down, she was grateful to have Sanemi looking out for her.
She reached her seat and sank down by the window, smoothing the folds of her obi. Across from her, Giyuu lowered his newspaper, folding it neatly before setting it aside, and looking to his colleague. “Are you comfortable?” he asked.
Shinobu blinked, somewhat amused at the way her senior had asked that question. ‘How are you feeling about returning home with your sister’s ashes?’ Would have probably felt a lot more awkward, and she knew Giyuu wasn’t the best at comforting people.
Still, she was appreciative of his efforts as she offered him a small, polite smile. “Yes, I am fine. Thank you, Tomioka-san.”
He nodded slightly, as if that had been all he needed to hear. Then, he glanced toward the small pocket watch he had pulled from his haori. “We should arrive in about two hours.”
Shinobu gave a small hum in acknowledgment. “I see…” She turned back to the window, her fingers gently pressing against the cool glass.
Outside, the landscape rushed past in muted blurs of green. Further away down the fields, was a treeline of forest. And then that was broken up by a dirt path, and rice-paddies that followed.
Just rows and rows and rows of rice-paddies….
The sight was strangely nostalgic, though she couldn’t place why. Perhaps it was the familiarity of movement… the sensation of traveling toward something, of leaving something behind. She sighed quietly, allowing herself to sink into the feeling as the motion of the train carried her forward.
From his seat across from her, Giyuu watched in silence. He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure there was anything to say.
Beside her, Sanemi shifted slightly, crossing his arms over his chest. His gaze flickered to Shinobu, keeping an eye open for any subtle signs that she may need more help.
The train continued to rock gently as it chugged on, and time slipped by in quiet stretches with the rhythm of its movement along the tracks. Shinobu barely moved, her gaze still on the passing landscape, her fingers now lightly tracing shapes onto the glass.
Her lashes fluttered once, then twice. Her shoulders slackened, her body swaying ever so slightly with the motion of the train.
Sanemi, ever vigilant, gently guided her by the shoulder as she swayed, until her head rested against his arm. The light coming in through the window reflected against her new butterfly hair ornament, as her dark hair rested against the contrast of Sanemi’s white sleeve. Her breathing had evened out, soft and steady, her small frame sinking further against him as deep sleep finally claimed her.
Sanemi let out a quiet breath. “Finally,” he muttered under his breath.
Across from them, Giyuu nodded in agreement, and then looked down.
“Are you thinking about your late sister?” Sanemi asked Giyuu.
“Yes,” Giyuu answered. “But Shinobu is different from me… My older sister, Tsutako…” he betrayed a melancholy smile. “I wonder if she and Kanae are now…”
He stopped, and noticed the flash of pain on Sanemi’s face when he mentioned her. Simultaneously, both of their gazes drifted down to the peace of Shinobu’s sleeping face.
Sanemi adjusted his position slightly, allowing her weight to settle more comfortably against him…
***
Sasori stood beneath the overhang at the train station dressed in a western suit and hat, with a maroon cape draped over his shoulders. The iron rails vibrated beneath the approaching train, but he remained still, unconcerned with the shifting energy around him.
A presence loomed at his back. Large. Uncertain. He did not react.
Genya Shinazugawa stood just a few paces behind him, silent. His posture was tense, his usual scowl more subdued than hostile. He knew exactly who stood before him, yet neither man acknowledged the other. Sasori did not even turn around.
He had nothing to say to Genya, and Genya could think of no words to offer him.
The train’s whistle cut through the air, followed by the screech of metal against metal as it slowed into the station. Doors hissed open, and among the first to step onto the platform, was Shinobu.
Sanemi stepped out beside her, scanning the area with natural vigilance. Giyuu followed closely behind, carrying her belongings.
Shinobu gave a small smile that lasted for a second when she saw him waiting for her on the platform, then she stepped forward, crossing the short distance between them. Sasori observed that she wasn’t as wobbly in her step as she was before the wake. She walked with a delicate and mature grace, the kind Kanae had previously walked with… It gave Sasori pause, and in that moment, he felt his age… It had been four years since he was brought into this world. Four years since he had become trapped in this human body… an eternity. And one he had finally accepted.
Shinobu stopped in front of him, tilting her head slightly to meet his gaze beneath the brim of his hat.
A pause.
A long one.
“…Sasori-san,” she finally said, her voice soft, steady.
Sasori inclined his head ever so slightly. He did not say anything, but his eyes met hers.
She exhaled softly, as though she had been holding something in.
Then—
Sanemi stiffened. His eyes had caught something... Or rather, someone. Genya, who had hung back behind Sasori, stood awkwardly, his eyes flicking toward his older brother for the first time in far too long...
Sanemi’s jaw tightened. His expression did not shift dramatically, but his entire presence shifted. “I’ll catch up,” he muttered to Shinobu. Then, without waiting for a response, he turned and walked past Sasori, stopping only when he was close to Genya. Genya, taller but unmistakably younger, hesitated. Sanemi’s gaze flickered, unreadable. Then, he jerked his head slightly to the side. “Lets go. We need to talk for a bit.”
Genya hesitated just a second longer before nodding. Before following, Sanemi cast Sasori a brief glance, and gave him a nod, before turning away with Genya.
As the Shinazugawa brothers walked away, Giyuu was the one to step forward. He set down the bags he carried, and exhaled through his nose. “Thank you for being here,” he said, quiet but firm. It was not just an acknowledgment of presence. It was an acknowledgment of purpose.
Sasori did not answer immediately. His gaze flickered toward Giyuu, then to Shinobu, whose fingers were subtly curled into the fabric of her sleeve. “…I said I’d be.”
A brief silence settled over them after Sasori’s words. The station’s noise filled the gap.
Giyuu nodded, as if that was all he had needed to hear, then turned his gaze toward the departing figures of Sanemi and Genya.
Shinobu followed his gaze. The two Shinazugawa brothers, now walking side by side, spoke in low voices—Sanemi with his usual sharp gestures, Genya with his head slightly bowed, though not in submission. They weren’t arguing. They weren’t fighting… They were just talking.
A soft realization settled over her. “They will be alright.”
It was a small mercy, a quiet relief amid everything else that still felt so uncertain.
A train whistle cut through the air, pulling her thoughts back to the present. She noticed how her right hand still clutched the left sleeve of her Kimono.
“We should get moving,” Giyuu said simply…
The crowd around them thickened as they made their way out of the station. Passengers weaving through, vendors calling out their wares, the scent of grilled food and faint traces of tobacco lingering in the air. To Shinobu, the station felt busier than she remembered from her childhood, and even then… Kanae was old enough to remember a time before the train station was built…
To Sasori, Takinogawa had no meaning. It was no more than what he had expected it to be based on his observation of the Kocho sisters whom it had produced. A beautiful clean river flowed through the town-center, and the people seemed cheerful and youthful.
“Its changed so much,” Shinobu said dreamily. “Its become much bigger. I don’t recognize many of these new buildings.”
“Is it difficult for you? To see it this way?”
“Not at all, Sasori-san.” she replied gently. “Its been so long since I’ve been here, I am honestly quite relieved to see so many people who wouldn’t recognize me.” She frowned, as she realized she hadn’t chosen her words carefully enough. “Everyone I remember from my past was lovely to me. Nee-san and I.” Her face crumbled, as though she was fighting back tears. “When Nee-san fell and scraped her knee one day while we were out playing one day as I recall... Nee-san was crying because she was in pain, and I was crying because I didn’t know what to do.”
Shinobu sniffled and laughed. “The Ito brothers from our class came to our aid, and wrapped a bandage around Nee-san’s knee, before they walked us back home.” She started to giggle through tears. “Daigo-san carried Nee-san home on his back, and Bensuke-kun kept making me laugh so that I wouldn’t be scared…. And then there was Junko-chan, from Nee-san’s class. Nee-san almost never got in trouble, but whenever she did, it was always with Junko-chan.”
Sasori noticed to his surprise that Giyuu smiled when Shinobu said this. As if the thought of a young Kanae getting into trouble was so absurd that it made him laugh.
“That house over there,” Shinobu said pointing as they walked, “belonged to Sasaki-obaa-san. Nee-san and I would often accompany our parents to delivering her medicine, since she had difficulty getting around… She loved to spoil us, and always had sweets and treats waiting for us when we came by. These are the kinds of memories I have of this place.” Shinobu gave a nostalgic sigh. “I loved it here, and now that everything is over, I would want to return here…”
The three of them soon arrived at the upper-middle class home Shinobu grew up in. She folded her hands in front of her as she prepared to walk inside, with Sasori and Giyuu following behind her.
But when they opened the door, Shinobu was greeted not only by her fellow demon slayers and the nurses from the clinic. Not only by the Shinazugawa brothers who had arrived ahead of them, but the Ito brothers as well, now grown-up, and Junko, and so many others who remembered her and Kanae. The house was full, and quiet, but once Shinobu entered, and was immediately recognized, it overflowed with warmth.
Sasori, was unrecognized. He was assumed to have been just another one of the friends Shinobu made while she was away. Neither demons nor the corps was ever mentioned.
“I’m so sorry for asking, but they told me your name was Sasori?” Asked Junko, a vivacious girl who would have been Kanae’s age. “It can’t be your real name can it?”
Sasori’s eye twitched. “Is it a nickname?” Junko asked. Sasori who had been avoiding her gaze, now turned to her, and when she saw the look in his eyes, she was gripped by fear.
“”I’m so sorry sir! I didn’t mean to offend you in any way.”
Sasori let out a sigh, and contemplated whether to say anything or not, before he finally said; “You’re forgiven.” Junko reacted like a child who just found out they weren’t in trouble, and smiled as she thanked Sasori… Kanae had had a similar childishness about her.
Across the room, he watched as Shinobu wrapped her arms around another well-wisher, right before introducing her to Kanao, who in-turn, introduced Tanjiro, while Muichiro showed some of the younger children how to fold origami, and an older lady, who must have known Kanae, tearfully embraced Shinazugawa Sanemi.
There were smiles, and there were tears. Everyone had come to say goodbye to Kanae.
For Sasori, the time went by slowly. He did not agitate in it…
Kanae’s ashes were laid at a family grave, between her father’s and her mother’s, and at noon the next day, Sasori was prepared to leave.
The sun was warm on their backs, and the train station was quiet. Only a ticket salesman was in their line of sight.
“Thank you again for being here Sasori-san. I know this kind of thing is out of your comforts zone, and I appreciate that you made this sacrifice… When you see Oyakata-sama, please tell him how happy we are to hear how his condition has improved, and that we all continue to pray for him.”
“There is something else you also want to tell me,” Sasori said. “What is it?”
“Well,” Shonobu continued, a bit hesitantly. “I know that I will no longer need to fight demons, but I learned a lot from you. Takinogawa is a nice place, and now that the butterfly estate has been donated to a staff who will make good use of it nd its clinic, I'd like to stay here... If you wanted to stay too... I still have plenty from Oyakata-sama. There would be no problem in setting up a research-center if you wanted…”
Sasori scoffed. “Do you really want to return to those days? I wasn't exactly a nice teacher.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Shinobu said defensively. “We no longer face the same pressures, and you yourself have changed, Sasori-san.”
Sasori turned to her with a stern look. “In that case Shinobu, let me put it to you this way. Are you asking me to do this because its what you want? Or because its what you think Kanae would have wanted?”
Shinobu’s gaze dropped to her feet... “Can’t those two things be true at once?”
“To the irrational mind of a human,” Sasori said matter-of-factly, “yes. Deep down, you still share your late sisters dream of making peace with the demons. But there are no longer any demons around. You don’t really want to suffer the harshness of my lessons again do you?” He paused to let those words sink in. The question was purely rhetorical, and his tone was once again the tone he had used when teaching her.
“Deep down Shinobu, you only want me around, because you think you can help me. I am like a demon that doesn’t need to kill humans in order to survive. In your mind, I am the perfect candidate for achieving that pipe-dream, of becoming friends with a demon.”
Shinobu’s voice quivered. “But… Sasori-san, whats wrong with that?”
“Do you think that you can consider a man like me to be your friend?”
“I already do,” Shinobu insisted.
Sasori heaved a sad sigh “Now that I think about it more, your late sister’s dream, of becoming friends with the demons, made more sense.”
“You misunderstand!” Shinobu cried. “Nee-san just wanted to save people! So that one day, no one else would have to experience what we did… when the demon killed our parents… and you're not a demon Sasori-san. You're human.”
Sasori gave a smile that was halfway between melancholy, and a smirk. “Guess how many people I’ve killed Shinobu.”
Shinobu looked down, and her eyes shifted to the left. “f-fifty people?”
“Go higher.”
“It's in the hundreds?”
“I estimate that its at least a thousand,” Sasori said. He paused, and watched the change in Shinobu's facial muscles, and body language as he allowed that to sink in. “When I was younger, I was fighting a defensive war. Every person I killed was an enemy invader, but when I left my country, and joined the Akatsuki, I began to do the invading myself. Some of them would have been civilians, just like you and your sister. Do you really think that you can become friends with someone like me?”
Shinobu looked down. She opened her mouth to answer his question, but only the first syllable of the word came out. “N…”
It was barely a whisper, and yet she scrunched her eyes in pain as she released it from her lips. Her desperate desire to believe in Sasori, lost to her acceptance of the truth; It was not logical. It was not rational. It was the understanding that somewhere… there were more human lives destroyed because of this man.
Sasori looked over his shoulder as the sound of a train coming to a gradual stop grew nearer. It was his train. “I'll relay your message to Ubuyashiki when I get back, and then you probably won’t see me again after that. Fare well, Kocho Shinobu.”
Shinobu looked up one last time to watch him hand his ticket in at the ticket booth, and walk through the ticket gate, just as the train began to pull into the station.
***
The sun cast a warm glow over the Ubuyashiki estate, filtering through the trees and painting dappled patterns across the wooden engawa. A faint breeze carried the scent of wisteria and fresh earth, rustling the neatly tended garden behind Sasori, while the stillness of the mansion loomed behind Kagaya. They sat across from one another in perfect calmness
“Your disease appears to be in remission,” Sasori said evenly “I am sure your swordsmen will be pleased”
Kagaya’s ever-gentle smile deepened, though there was a distant, almost wistful quality to it. “For generations, my family has carried this curse, our punishment for the creation of Kibutsuji Muzan. Every male born into this lineage has lived a short life, our bodies withering away before we could ever see our children fully grown. I was no exception. When my symptoms first manifested, I resigned myself to the knowledge that my days would be numbered, as had been the case for every Ubuyashiki before me.” He inhaled slowly, the scent of wisteria lingering on the breeze, then exhaled with quiet gratitude. “But now, it seems that curse is broken. I am the first to see my disease go into remission. I know I am getting ahead of myself, but I am already looking forward to running after my grandchildren…” He paused. He was serene, yet as tranquil as he was, he radiated joy. “...and I owe it in part to you, Sasori-san.”
Sasori’s reply was equally calm in his reply. “You owe me nothing.” He reached forward and placed a scroll in between himself and Kagaya. “You may not find me should your disease come back. In which case, give this to your physician.” After a pause, Sasori rose to his feet. Kagaya’s eyes followed him as he stood up.
“Sasori-san,” he began sympathetically, “the situation you find yourself in is one unprecedented. You are unable to return to your world, and you have foregone your original plan of transferring your consciousness into an inhuman body. What will you do now?”
He paused as a breeze blew past them, signifying the end of summer. “Now that you have a new life, how do you intend to live it?”
Sasori looked over the edge of the engawa. From this point of view, he could see a line of trees, and over the trees stretch the endless sky.
A larger gust of wind blew in from the direction of the forest, and the smell of leaves went past with it.
As it blew past his hair, Sasori gave Kagaya his answer to his question.
“Who knows?”
..........