Chapter 22 — Brothers at Odds × The First Appearance of Posthumous Nen
"You talk too much."
A soft sput — and Roy appeared out of nowhere. A single hand-chop split Tsuchihara's skull. He flicked his hand, letting brains scatter across the snow.
Then he turned, coldly looking at Tanjiro. "Do you know what you were doing?"
"I— I know…" Tanjiro stammered.
"Then why didn't you move?"
"I… I don't know," Tanjiro whimpered, unable to meet Roy's eyes.
Roy didn't waste words. He drew his axe, set the blade against Tanjiro's throat, and inched it forward five millimetres. Five millimetres more and the skin would part, an artery would be severed—life taken.
"Don't know? Fine." Roy barked with a humorless laugh. "Since that's the case…"
He stepped closer. "Instead of watching you get eaten whole by a demon next time… I think it'd be kinder to finish you now. At least then I could leave you intact."
Sympathize with a demon—who did Tanjiro think he was?
In the original tale, Tanjiro's hesitation once nearly cost him the chance to be trained by Urokodaki. Now Roy felt Tsuchihara had spoken truth: being too soft often gets you a knife pointed at your throat.
"I… I just felt a bit sorry for him," Tanjiro mumbled.
"For the man whose guts he pulled out? For the people he's eaten over the years?" Roy's anger flared. He spun his hand and lashed out with the axe, catching Tanjiro across the face with a heavy, precise blow.
Thud. The strike sent Tanjiro flying ten metres; he slammed into a tree and slid down its trunk.
"Remember my words," Roy said while shouldering his basket. "If it happens again, if a demon doesn't kill you, I will."
He left the shrine. A single small lamp inside threw a faint orange halo over his retreating shoulders.
Tanjiro sat on the snowy ground, legs splayed, his right cheek swollen into a grotesque lump. He stared at Roy's back in a daze.
As a boy, his father had always taught him to be kind and help those in need—but today, that kindness had been misplaced. People and demons were different; pity meant courting death. Tsuchihara's mindless body, bereft of a brain, turned to ash and scattered in the wind. The snow began to fall harder.
After a long while, Tanjiro came to his senses and felt the burn in his cheek. Training at the hands of a merciless household had its lessons: being hit teaches you how to be hit. Roy's strike had only bruised skin; it had not shattered bone.
So although Tanjiro looked battered, he was able to pick himself up. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed a broom from the shrine and, kneeling in the snow, shouted apologies through clenched teeth.
He was still young; there was time to improve. Had this been an adult, Roy would not have hesitated—he'd have ended them outright, rather than be dragged down by weakness.
Roy snorted without looking back. "Do you want me to fetch you up?"
"Can't roll by yourself?"
He set the basket aside, took a broom from the corner by the door, and started sweeping up the remains and the blood.
Given Tanjiro's relief at being spared, he hurried over, grabbed the broom from Roy and offered, obsequious: "Let me do it, Niisan. Go rest. I'll clean it until there's no smell left."
Roy had no reason to doubt Tanjiro's dogged devotion; the boy's nose for scents was reliable. Since Tanjiro volunteered, Roy let him have the task.
Tanjiro went behind the small altar and froze. He saw a pile of bones stacked into a small mountain.
Then he finally understood why Roy would never give Tsuchihara a chance. These demons—every single one of them—deserved no mercy.
"How could I have believed a demon's lies?" Tanjiro's face contorted with shame and grief. If he could turn back the clock, he would have slapped himself. But time doesn't reverse. These bones could not be revived.
Roy had already seen the scene with—he'd watched the bones pile up. He said nothing. In his chest, something blocked out like the moon behind cloud: a dark, heavy shadow.
The Zoldyck-like training Roy had endured—his family's brutal discipline—taught a certain brutal calculus. Even their ancestor, Jeeg, spared targets one favor: a quick, painless end. Whether Jeeg himself, Gigda, or the always-silent old man who never struck in public—when they killed, it was to spare pain; to close a life cleanly.
But there was a difference. The world they lived in was a merciless arithmetic: some lives had to be ended to save others. And Roy—raised on that grim ledger—could not afford the luxury of mercy when the ledger was already stained.
He swept in silence, while Tanjiro knelt and cleaned, repenting and learning a hard lesson the forest had been trying to teach him all along: in a world where certain lives end others, pity can be the most dangerous thing of all.
Roy could scarcely imagine the agony and despair of being eaten alive, piece by piece.
The sunlight-and-mountain motif of his ear ornaments swayed gently as he stood in silence. Then he moved again, reaching into the basket for the worn hoe his father Tanjuro had given him.
The old man had once noticed the blade was dull and told Roy to find a smith in town to sharpen it. Now, though dulled, it would serve a grimmer purpose.
Hearing footsteps, Tanjiro turned. His eyes fell on the hoe slung over Roy's shoulder, and at once he understood. Wordlessly, he lifted a lantern and followed.
The brothers circled to the back of the shrine where mountain met forest, and in the bitter wind and snow, they dug. By the time they returned inside, they had carried out the skeletal remains, laid them in the pit, and given them the earth's cover.
The snow now fell in heavy goose-feather clumps.
By lantern light, Tanjiro clasped his hands and murmured a prayer:
"May the Fire God bless these poor souls, grant them peace in the afterlife, and guide them swiftly to reincarnation…"
Only after Roy pressed the last shovelful of earth into place did Tanjiro dare to ask, softly, "Niisan… should we go inside now?"
Roy leaned on the hoe, standing immovable in the storm. He stared at the fresh mound, silent.
What Tanjiro couldn't see was the milky-white layer of Nen forming across Roy's eyes.
Tanjiro, mistaking his brother's silence for lingering anger, wisely held his tongue.
Then—out of the grave drifted a pale-white glow.
Roy clasped his hands and bowed toward the mound. "Forgive me for meeting you in this way," he said. "I am Kamado Sumihiko. May I ask your name?"
A faint, hollow voice answered through the wind:
"I am Minami no Hiroshi, of Koneda Village, beneath Mt. Sagiri. My thanks, Lord Sumihiko, for avenging me."
An icy gust rose, whipping snow into Tanjiro's face. He blinked hard and rubbed his eyes, baffled.
Roy laid a hand on his forehead, channeling a thread of Nen into his little brother. The boy's amber eyes shimmered, a new layer overlaying his sight.
At last, Tanjiro saw it:
A blurred human figure kneeling at Roy's feet, bowing low in a full dogeza, his form pressed into the snow.
Tanjiro gasped. "Isn't that… the man the demon tore apart just now?"
Yes.
It was him—the merchant whose guts had been ripped out—now returned, manifesting for the first time in Roy's life…
A Posthumous Nen.