Zenitsu sourly suspected he'd been assigned a sparrow in order to deliver bad news more adorably. Even so, Chuntaro reported the orders for his latest solo assignment with wary chirps.

"What?!" yelped Zenitsu, totally breaking Total Concentration from his perch on the fence. Teetering, he lost balance and planted himself beside the peonies. Aoi threw him an exasperated look from where she was stringing laundry along the line and surreptitiously monitoring his progress. "Not there! Anywhere else! Why me?"

But he knew full well 'why him' and Chuntaro spared him the tweets. Still... "Can't anyone else do it?" he complained.

Chuntaro primly reminded him there were quite a lot of demons to go around at the moment.

"What's the problem?" said Aoi, frowning. She could fold linen more aggressively than anyone he had ever met. "You've been going on missions alone."

"Not to there," wailed Zenitsu. Chuntaro chirped reproachfully. He had all the attitude of a crow. Zenitsu regretted with all his heart that he had learned bird language as he could no longer reasonably claim not to have understood orders.

"Where?"

"Dusky Town," Zenitsu said miserably, standing and wiping flower stains off his knees. And he'd been doing so well. He'd completed several missions without blacking out. Could he just sleep through this one? Let his subconscious take over? Wake up when Dusky Town was a greasy spot on the horizon?

"That's a city," said Aoi. Confusion overcame her usual reluctance to engage him in small talk and for a moment the laundry lay forgotten. "What's wrong with it? Are there a lot of police there?"

Police were a sure wrench in the works when it came to hunting demons. Most of them were (blissfully) unaware of the demon threat and seemed to regard wandering swordsman as the real concern, which Zenitsu considered a fine thank you for all the work he did. There were a number of police in Dusky Town, as an outlying metropolis, but Zenitsu didn't care about that. He wasn't conspicuous apart from his hair, because he didn't wear a boar hide everywhere and attack machinery. Or bow to it.

"I don't care about that."

"So what's the problem?"

"I'm from Dusky Town," groaned Zenitsu.

"Oh." Aoi looked puzzled. "So what's the big deal? You know your way around. That's probably why the Master's sending you."

Duh. Zenitsu knew that. He couldn't bring himself to be sarcastic to a girl.

"Aoi, do you want to go home?" he said instead.

She paused, taken aback. No, of course she didn't. And for a second there was actual sympathy on her face as she reconsidered him. No one in the Demon Corps had a home they wanted to go back to. Except maybe Inosuke if he heard an ant hill was setting up on his turf or something.

He sent Chuntaro a despairing look which rebounded ineffectually off the little sparrow's iron-walled pity. "Fine," he grumbled. "Fine! I'll probably die anyway and won't they be sorry." He went inside to wrap up his meager possessions.

Aoi sighed behind his back.

.

Tanjiro was still asleep. Here he was again, a mummy in bandages and dead to the world until he recovered. Zenitsu had been the first to recover after the battle in the entertainment district. Now he had his own nook in the butterfly mansion, but often dropped in on what he thought of as "Tanjiro's Bedroom": the hospital wing.

Inosuke plagued him. He'd tentatively begun missions again but got hurt right away (or had faked the extent to which he'd really healed to start with) and had to return to the butterfly manor. He was most lethal when stir-crazy. Thankfully the pig was up and running, which usually meant up and running on the ceiling, which usually meant Zenitsu could expect a surprise attack every time he headed to the privy.

On the lookout for wildlife, he padded over to Nezuko's little cave of a room. The sun bore determinedly through the curtain and Zenitsu decided he'd find a thicker blanket to drape behind it. The box sat forlornly against the wall and the little room felt very empty to the unwitting observer.

Nezuko slept so much Zenitsu told her she was like a cat, which she liked. He could hear she was awake now.

"I'm going on an assignment," he said to the box, crouching down. "Tanjiro's still sleeping. Sorry I can't take you to the flowers tonight. But the girls said they'd go with you."

The little butterflies of House Shinobu were touchingly fond of Nezuko. With Tanjiro incapacitated Zenitsu worried she'd be bored and lonely, but Aoi told him haughtily he wasn't the only one concerned about that and they cared quite as much as he did. He wasn't sure why she thought that would annoy him.

Nezuko scratched her understanding. Zenitsu beamed and patted the box. He left a couple of wildflowers in front of it so she'd see them first that night. Aoi better not sweep them away.

On his way out he ran into Inosuke, who was being lectured desperately by the girls on how to hide his katanas better. Naho was practically begging him with tears in her eyes not to shove the swords down the front of his pants again. This was not a discussion Zenitsu wanted to hear and he was considering escaping through the window when Inosuke accosted him.

"Ha!" the pig bellowed. "I'll be going on assignments again! See if I don't hunt more demons than you!"

"You know you can't eat them, right?" grumbled Zenitsu. He wouldn't put that law of nature past the pig. One day Zenitsu fully expected to hear Inosuke tried to spitroast a demon.

Inosuke huffed and the girls took the opportunity to try a force a shirt over his head. Zenitsu would take a demon any day. He escaped past the ruckus and glanced over his window at Nezuko's shuttered window before turning down the dusty road with a sigh.

.

Dusky Town had a proper name that nobody used. Originally the city sprang from the optimism of an old shogunate who conceived of a paradise on Earth. In the richer areas that vision was still just discernible through the drooping cherry blossom trees and genteel mansions, but cities sprawled and the extremities never resembled the heart's intent.

Wires crossed like nerve endings above the dusty, near-deserted street. Awnings gaped over shuttered storefronts. This outermost part of the city, where Zenitsu had grown up, truly came alive at night. Zenitsu reflected bitterly it was not the only thing Dusky Town had in common with a demon. No wonder one had shacked up there.

According to Chuntaro's heartless instructions, a demon was prowling the night markets and devouring artists. Zenitsu could never figure out what determined a demon's appetite. Some ate up girls, some only devoured men, and others, apparently, ate cheap actors and penniless musicians. Wouldn't be his preference.

At least a dozen artisans had suddenly disappeared from the area over the last six weeks. Ubayashiki always seemed to know when a demon was involved. Only the confused testimony of bystanders who didn't understand what they were seeing was any guarantee they dealt with a demon at all, and not some disgruntled maniac who really hated the arts.

He nervously glanced around, edging as if into battle. Would he recognize anybody? Would they even recognize him? His hair was different now and his haori was nicer than anything he'd owned before. He looked like a different person. Maybe he was a different person.

Zenitsu's sword lay wired by its sheath to the underside of the shamisen slung behind his back. Instead of the distinctive Corps uniform he wore his usual haori layered over typical, slightly more modern street clothing. He didn't like undercover work (or any work) and he'd curse Uzui Tengen with his dying breath but it beat wearing the Corps uniform around. The 'Destroy' character on the back might as well have read demons, please come sharpen your teeth on me.

It wasn't just one establishment the demon haunted. The monster seemed to range all over the night markets. Its last victim had played the shamisen for a theater off the main marketplace, and Zenitsu headed there now. The sooner he did this, the sooner he could get the heck out before anyone recognized him.

Being back here felt surreal. He passed the fruit stall he'd stolen from when the meat stand got wise to him. He'd never been caught—he was too fast—but the threat of the triple-stripe tattoo had terrified him out of hitting the same place too often.

Just there, next to that potter's shop, he'd given a girl a flower for the first time. At that moment he'd been sure she was the most beautiful girl in the world, but Nezuko would have to forgive him his unworldliness.

This was a bad idea. Zenitsu felt jittery and upset. Master Ubayashiki should have sent someone else. He really had worked to become a different person—he had!—and Fate had sent him right back to the place that made him the person he didn't want to be. It was depressing.

Dusky Town was a curious mix of modernity and tradition. Streetcars ran the ways closer to the heart of town and Zenitsu passed a telephone office, a new addition to the outskirts since he'd left, but most admissions to the modern era were crammed between layers of the market that had built up over centuries.

(Personally, Zenitsu thought Master Ubayashiki should get a telephone, or at least use telegrams, but if anyone was mired in tradition it was the Demon Slayer Corps and Zenitsu wasn't going to be the one dragging them kicking and screaming into the Taisho era.)

The entrance to the theater was heralded by a gaudy sign painted with kabuki masks. This place was old Nitta's pride and joy and probably the tiniest kabuki theater in all of Japan. It was certainly the shabbiest.

Looking up, Zenitsu was immediately transported back to late, smoky nights; of crowding shoulder-to-shoulder with an audience that sweated and fanned itself to the thrums of a shamisen and a wailing chorus, neither of which ever quite managed to drown out the street noise. In the harsh light, on that tiny stage against painted backdrops, even the crude actors in their shabby costumes assumed a kind of magnificence.

Afterwards they would spill out of the theater into the night markets. The scents of plum blossom and fresh bean cakes lay like a thick canopy above the winding streets, lined with lanterns and ringing with the sounds of flutes and vendors hawking their wares. Sipping chrysanthemum tea and munching on sunflower seeds, watching women stroll in their brightest kimonos and the grandsons of samurai swagger around like they still wore katanas on their hips, it was easy for anyone to forget they lived a miserable life.

The world of the markets, night after night, unfolded like an endless kabuki play. The nights then felt as alive as the days were dead.

Zenitsu, weirdly, missed it.

"Anyone here?" he called upon entering the empty foyer. The sunlight invaded the interior and he shut the rickety sliding door against the blinding light.

"Yes?"

A harried-looking man shuffled in from a cramped side corridor and peered owlishly at him through thick lenses. His knot was slicked against a flat-domed head. Zenitsu guessed the establishment had changed hands since Nitta ran the joint.

"I'm, uh—Zenitsu. Agatsuma." He'd been tempted to use a fake name, but it would have complicated things if he were recognized. "I'm the new shamisen player? I wrote a letter..."

"Ah, yes, come in, come in. I'm Ishii, I'm the proprietor." He took a closer look at Zenitsu. "You look hardly old enough to have finished your apprenticeship."

"My master said all musicians are apprentices for life," Zenitsu said with a straight face.

"Our actors certainly are," grumbled Ishii. "Well, normally I'd give you a trial, but we need someone for tonight anyway and you can't be any worse than the last one."

"Yeah? What happened to him?" asked Zenitsu as the manager led him up creaking wooden stairs.

"Chiba? He up and left, is what," snapped Ishii. "Can't remember the compositions half the time and thinks he's good enough for Tokyo. Players have a high turnover rate around here."

I'll say, thought Zenitsu.

Ishii threw open the screen to the theater. It'd been an airless box of a theater in Nitta's day and it hadn't gotten any larger. A cramped stage sat opposite some far windows, which faced the street and were thrown open to admit the afternoon light. Some dormant electric lamps spotted the stage. There was the barest nod to a hanamichi walkway and the chorus was separated from the crowd by a screen, rather than ensconced in a side room. "Well, here it is." Ishii pointed at a spot to the side. "That's where you'll sit."

Zenitsu had been there before but nodded as Ishii led him around, muttering condemnations on the (probably dearly) departed Chiba, and finally thrust a sheaf of papers into Zenitsu's hands. "You can read tablatures, right, Asakata?"

"Agatsuma. And yes."

"Whatever. These are for tonight's show. It's called 'The Night Ends with the Sun' and it's a piece of crap but the music's not bad. It's about a samurai who falls in love with the moon. My brother-in-law wrote it. His plays are always about samurai who fall in love with something weird." Ishii rattled on and on about the dying art of kabuki falling before the tide of Western entertainment.

The problem with exceptional hearing was that it was that much harder to tune someone out, but Zenitsu did his best.

He'd learned to read compositions one hot summer he'd spent reciting for a koto player recently blinded by age and one too many drunken tipples. The old bat had never treated him like an apprentice (and certainly never paid him like one) but it enabled Zenitsu to get work in theaters and a few dives around the markets—some more respectable than others.

"Curtain's up in five hours," said Ishii.

"Sure. So, about Chiba..." Zenitsu began, failing to sound casual, "I heard a lot of players are disappearing around here. Actors, too. Is there something that—"

"What, you nervous? Go play in the city heart if the night markets scare you. Maybe a bureaucrat will take you into his household. But go there tomorrow. We have a show tonight."

Ishii scuttled away and Zenitsu rolled his eyes.

.

.

Hope this provides a little entertainment if you're in isolation (like me.)

Would appreciate your thoughts! Sorry for any mistakes regarding Japanese cultural history.