木漏れ日 (komorebi) | 𝐯𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬! 𝐤𝐧𝐲 𝐱 𝐟! 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

0.9

《 0.9 - 九》

A few months passed since Tanjurou died, and the Kamado family seemed to handle his death pretty well, although the youngest child had problems sleeping, which was understandable since he was very attached to his father. While some of the family members would say that they went through the mourning better than they thought thanks to [Name], she would always disagree saying that they were already strong and she was only there to help out around the house.

Autumn passed by quickly, and besides the elder Kamado's death, it was uneventful. At least it was uneventful for the Japanese family, while the duo of Lightbearer kept themselves busy.

A few days after Tanjurou's death, [Name] suddenly started having these tinglings in her gut, while she ignored it at first, it became so unpleasant that she had to do something about it, so she made a mission for both her and her small companion, discover more about this place, but instead of exploring the areas around them as they did before, this time they would use Ghost's useful data from the Tower, which he kept deep within himself under a special lock, for safety measures. However, there was a small problem, it could only be unlocked with Light signals nearby, and surprisingly they couldn't find even a small particle of Light.

The Hunter in [Name] wanted to get out immediately and adventure herself while in search of her objective, but she knew she couldn't leave the Kamado family, at least not yet. So she came up with an alternative: send Ghost on her behalf to see if he could find anything. Usually, Guardians would freak out at the thought of separating themselves from their Ghosts for a long amount of time and such a large distance, but [Name]'s own Ghost had spent years, maybe even a whole century, visiting planets and moons looking for her before he found her on Earth, so she had faith that he would be okay by himself.

Still, even though she had faith in him, she didn't feel any less anxious, she was worried sick about the small machine, they always stuck together 24/7 so it was a weird feeling for [Name] not to have him talking with her, especially during the nights. So in hopes of ignoring the feeling her inner demons would make her feel during the nights, she started sleeping as a normal person would do.

Unfortunately, that didn't work for too long because her worries would return whenever she woke up and would stay with her even when she busied herself with house chores, she tried hard not to show that she was worried, however, that wasn't unnoticed by both Tanjirou and his mom, who started questioning [Name]'s weird behavior and they would always get the same answers, that she was fine or that she was just feeling a bit tired.

The same routine repeated for the next few days until Kie couldn't take it anymore.

The next day went normally, [Name] went out to hunt for lunch and dinner (which would be hard for anyone as it was full-on winter, but as it was said many times before, [Name] was a Hunter), played a bit with the kids until it was time to eat lunch, then she helped around the house until dinner time before she went to her room to sleep. Or at least she thought she was going to sleep.

"[Name]-chan," Kie called her, finishing washing some of the dishes in the washtub after sending her children to sleep, the Guardian stopped, "Can we talk?"

Shit, she thought before turning around slowly, she kneeled back at the small table where they ate dinner as she waited for Kie to dry her hands and sit back across from her. Instead of talking as soon as she sat down like [Name] first thought, Kie unexpectedly stayed quiet, creating a quiet atmosphere between them that was a bit awkward, at least for the [hair color]-haired Lightbearer, who started to play with her fingers as she waited for the older woman in front of her to break the quietness.

Sensing that she was making [Name] nervous, Kie decided to speak, "What is troubling you?"

That was a question that [Name] was expecting to be asked sooner or later, but it still surprised her, "Nothing."