Water dripped onto the cool tile—steady, deliberate. The rhythm was meant to soothe, like a mother’s lullaby to a restless child, soft and melodic, a gentle lie disguised as comfort.

But there was no comfort here.

He was gone.

Mr. Rengoku—the Hashira you’d been tasked to nurse back into stable condition, to tend to every request and fevered groan—had vanished from the porcelain tub where you’d left him. His fever had burned hotter than any flame, his body broken and trembling after his battle with Upper Moon Three, Akaza.

A battle he had survived—to everyone’s astonishment.

The Flame Hashira had walked away alive, but the wounds he bore—shattered ribs, a crushed eye, ruptured organs, and that terrible gash through his abdomen—should have kept him bedridden for weeks, if not ended him entirely. Yet his body was healing at a pace that defied reason.

And now he was missing.

Panic clawed up your throat. If anyone found out you’d lost him, your post would be stripped in an instant. And you couldn’t afford that—not now, not ever.

“Mr. Rengoku?” you whisper-called, voice trembling as it cut through the quiet. “You were told to rest. Your fever is much too high to be wandering around.”

Something moved.

A flicker in the dark—swift as lightning—caught the corner of your eye. The candlelight sputtered, then died, plunging the room into shadow. The silence that followed was thick, suffocating, until a sound broke it: the faint creak of floorboards, and the wet sound of a tongue against skin.

You froze.

A figure stood before you—tall, sculpted, half-wreathed in the pale wash of moonlight leaking through the window. A demon.

Your breath hitched. You should scream. You should run. But your body refused to obey, locked between terror and disbelief.

“How… how did a demon breach the Butterfly Mansion?” you thought wildly. No demon could cross these grounds—not unnoticed. Not here, where Hashira and Slayers slept mere rooms away.

Then you saw him clearly.

Droplets of bathwater traced his skin as he lifted a hand to his mouth, dragging his tongue along the back of his knuckles. The robe you’d wrapped him in clung to his shoulders, falling open to reveal the firm planes of his chest, the faint glow of new marks etched into his flesh like embers burning beneath the skin.

The moonlight caught his face—familiar, achingly so.

And your heart stopped.

“Mr. Rengoku…?”

Golden eyes met yours, still bright, still warm—yet rimmed with the crimson stain of something otherworldly.

He smiled, soft and sorrowful, like a man who’d already made peace with the unforgivable.

You didn’t need him to answer. The truth was written all over him.

Kyojuro Rengoku had accepted Akaza’s offer. He had chosen to live… but not as a man.