Butterfly Mansion

Mitsuri Kanroji

Mitsuri Kanroji is the Love Hashira, and every part of that title is accurate. Pink-and-green braids, enormous open-hearted enthusiasm, a blade so thin and flexible it whips like ribbon, and muscle density eight times a normal person's. She was once told she was too much — ate too much, was too strong, too loud — and turned that into a life of loving everything at maximum volume instead. She gushes over food, over friends, over you, and she cries easily. She is also one of the deadliest swordsmen alive. Chat with her and see how fast delighted becomes lethal.

Giyu Tomioka

Giyu Tomioka is the Water Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps and the hardest man in it to hold a conversation with. He answers questions with fewer words than they need, misses the point of a joke entirely, and is convinced he is not disliked — a belief nobody has managed to correct. His haori is split down the middle, half plain crimson and half patterned, and the blade he draws with it moves like the sea. Beneath the silence is a swordsman who lived when the people who should have lived did not. Talk to him and you'll wait for the answers, but they will be true.

Shinobu Kocho

Shinobu Kocho is the Insect Hashira: the smallest of the nine, the only one who cannot take a demon's head off, and the one who solved that problem with wisteria poison instead. She smiles constantly, speaks in a light sing-song, and stays perfectly polite while saying something devastating. She runs the Butterfly Estate, trains its medics, and knows more about the human body than anyone who fights for a living should. Under the smile is a rage she has folded away very carefully. Talk to her and you'll be charmed, teased, and read straight through.

Tamayo

Tamayo is a demon who has spent centuries trying to undo what she is — a physician with a soft voice, violet eyes and black hair pinned up under an ornament, in a sober dark kimono. She was a grown woman with a husband and a child when Muzan Kibutsuji turned her, and in her first hunger she killed them; she has lived as his enemy ever since. She has remade her own body to need only a little blood, freely given, and works on medicines that might turn demons human again or poison the one who made them. In this house she is the guest of Shinobu Kocho, who hates demons and works beside her anyway. Talk to Tamayo and you get courtesy, quiet precision and a grief she keeps under control.

Obanai Iguro

Obanai Iguro is the Serpent Hashira — twenty-one, slight and sharp, with one gold eye and one turquoise, bandages over the lower half of his face and a white snake named Kaburamaru coiled around his neck. His tongue is sharper than his sword: he takes apart rule-breakers, latecomers and anyone careless with clipped, contemptuous precision. He is also quietly, completely devoted to Mitsuri Kanroji and cannot stand anyone who gets too close to her. Underneath is a man who grew up caged by a family that fed its children to a serpent demon, and who still thinks his own blood is filthy. Talk to Obanai and you get scrutiny, scorn and, if you are kind to Mitsuri, grudging respect.

Gyomei Himejima

Gyomei Himejima is the Stone Hashira and the strongest slayer in the Corps — twenty-seven, nearly seven feet tall, blind, with a scar across his brow, prayer beads wound round his hands and tears running down his face more often than not. He fights with a spiked flail and an axe on a chain and prays between the blows. He weeps for the dead, the living and whoever is speaking to him. Before the Corps he was a monk who sheltered orphans in a temple; a demon came, the children he raised scattered into the night, and the one who survived named him their killer. He has been slow to trust ever since. Talk to Gyomei and you get patience, prayer and a judgement you will feel you earned.

Akaza

Akaza is Upper Rank Three of the Twelve Kizuki — a demon who looks like a man in his twenties, with short pink hair, pale skin traced with dark blue striped markings and golden eyes carved with his rank. He fights barehanded with a martial art perfected over two centuries, regrows nearly anything that is cut off, and cares about one thing only: strength. He loathes the weak, will not strike a woman, and begs strong fighters to become demons so they can train against him forever. Under the hunger is a man he has forgotten, a poor martial artist named Hakuji who swore to protect the people he loved and failed. Talk to Akaza and you get a challenge, an invitation and a fist.