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The rain had been falling for hours — a steady, endless curtain of gray that blurred the forest beyond recognition. The river nearby had long since spilled over its banks, muddy water swallowing the trail they’d meant to follow home.
Two figures sat side by side under a half-collapsed shrine roof — one fidgeting restlessly, the other unmoving, gaze lost somewhere in the downpour.
Sanemi broke the silence first.
His voice came rough, strained, as if it scraped the edges of something tender.
“Tch… this rain. The more I dread it, the more it comes.”
His tone tried for annoyance, but it wavered. The water dripped from his bangs, trailing down his scarred cheek.
Beside him, Giyuu spoke softly.
“Rain isn’t always cruel,” he murmured, not looking his way. “Sometimes it’s… comforting. Solemn, in its own way.”
Sanemi turned to look at him — at the faint outline of Giyuu’s calm profile against the silver of the storm. The Water Hashira’s eyes stayed forward, watching the current where the trees bowed beneath the flood.
It irritated Sanemi, somehow. The quiet. The calmness. The peace Giyuu always seemed to find in things that should’ve hurt.
So he looked away too. His eyes followed the same direction, but his words fell heavier.
“I’ll never understand you, Tomioka.”
Giyuu finally turned then, the faintest crease in his brow.
“Why?”
The question was soft. Honest.
Sanemi exhaled sharply, voice breaking through the hum of rain.
“That day. The meeting. You said—”
His teeth ground together before the words slipped out, bitter.
“‘I’m not like you guys.’”
He barked a humorless laugh, shaking his head.
“That line pissed me off more than anything. Not because you were wrong — but because you actually believed it.”
Rain pattered harder, the sound muffling the weight in his voice.
“You always acted like you didn’t belong. Like you weren’t one of us. I didn’t get it back then. I thought you were just cold, or looking down on everyone.”
He gave a shaky laugh.
“Turns out you were just alone.”
Giyuu’s expression softened — eyes flickering like the reflection of rainlight.
Sanemi sighed.
“Then that brat— Kamado kid —told me why. Told me what you’d been through, the way you think. I didn’t know.“
He paused, fingers curling over his knees.
“If I’d known, maybe I wouldn’t have fought you so damn much. Maybe I would’ve tried to— I don’t know— just sit with you once in a while instead of yelling all the time.”
The rain softened for a moment, as if it listened.
He clenched his fists in his lap. The words came haltingly now, heavier than the rain.
“This job— this world— it keeps taking people. Leaving holes we can’t fill. Every time someone goes, it feels like the world shrinks a little more.”
He glanced at the flooded woods, where the water shimmered faintly with the reflection of lightning far away.
“But even when hope flickers, it’s never gone. You’ve got to keep moving. For the ones who’re still here. For the ones who’ll never get to move again.”
There was silence after that — only the rain, steady and low.
Then Giyuu’s voice joined it, soft but sure.
“You’re right.”
Sanemi looked at him.
“We stay and fight for those who are still here,” Giyuu said. A pause, then his gaze lowered, his tone gentler.
“So I hope you’ll keep fighting too, Sanemi. Promise me you'll keep fighting too. Until Muzan’s gone. Until it’s all over.”
The faintest smile touched Giyuu’s lips — rare and fragile, but real. His eyes were closed, his expression calm.
Too calm.
Too gentle.
Sanemi’s breath caught. His chest tightened.
That look— that smile—
He reached out before he could stop himself, his hand trembling as it moved toward Giyuu’s.
But his fingers met only air.
The outline beside him flickered. The sound of the rain grew louder, harsher.
The warmth he expected wasn’t there.
Giyuu’s image flickered— like a reflection on the surface of a puddle— and faded.
The empty space beside him told the truth.
He wasn’t here.
He hadn’t been for months.
Sanemi froze, the realization slicing through him all over again.
This wasn’t a mission.
This was the same night replaying in his mind, again and again.
The night Giyuu never came back.
He was reliving it again — the same place, the same storm, the same ghost that refused to stay dead in his heart.
He had come here every evening since — sat beneath the broken shrine, watching the same rain, talking to the same ghost.
Saying all the things he never got to say before that filthy Upper Moon took him.
His voice cracked as he whispered into the storm,
“You’re still here, aren’t you… damn it, Giyuu…”
And when his words broke apart, so did he.
The sobs came quietly at first, then all at once, rough and unrestrained, swallowed by the rain.
He pressed his palms to his face, shoulders shaking, the world around him blurring into gray.
A few yards away, the Hashira stood in silence beneath the same storm.
Mitsuri’s hand covered her mouth, trembling.
“He’s talking to him again,” she whispered, voice breaking.
Shinobu sighed softly beside her, her eyes shadowed beneath the hood of her cloak.
“He goes there every night when the rain falls. Same time. Same place.”
Rengoku’s usually bright voice was barely above a murmur. “He still carries him in his heart. That kind of love doesn’t fade easily.”
Obanai crossed his arms, his tone softer than usual. “Love’s one thing. But grief… that’s a wound that never closes.”
Muichirou, his voice low and distant, spoke without looking away.
“He’s stuck between remembering and moving forward.”
Uzui sighed, clicking his tongue.
“One of the flashiest men I know, and he chooses to sit in the rain till he breaks. Damn fool… but I get it.”
Gyomei’s hands were clasped together in quiet prayer, his tears lost to the storm.
“May the spirit he grieves for grant him peace. They fought with honor. They loved with sincerity.”
The group fell silent again, watching Sanemi kneel in the downpour — his body trembling with grief that the rain could not wash away.
Mitsuri stepped forward, her voice shaking but gentle.
“Do you think he’ll ever stop coming here?”
Shinobu shook her head slowly.
“No. But maybe one day, the rain won’t sound like sorrow to him. Maybe it’ll just sound like… Giyuu.”
The others lowered their heads — the only sound between them the steady fall of rain.
And far ahead, Sanemi whispered to the empty space beside him, his voice breaking with something that sounded like love, twinged with unbearable longing that cannot easily be eased.
“… Giyuu, I'm sorry…Come back…”
The storm carried his words away —
and the rain stayed.