"Stay here."
Those were the last words Ayaka told Zenitsu, and as the mountain's forest became darker as she, Inosuke and Tanjirou went deeper, a small worried frown couldn't help but appear on her face.
They had left behind him like it was nothing, like a crumpled paper on the floor one shouldn't look at twice.
She wasn't hoping Zenitsu would go in voluntarily, but he was under her care just as much as Tanjirou and Inosuke were, at least on the back of her mind like a constant reminder that all of them were weaker than her and as such it was her duty to protect them, and that was okay because she could do it and on her would that burden fall, so what had at first been a fleeting thought, Zenitsu going in, alone and helpless into the Natagumo Mountain, then being harmed because she wasn't there to protect him, was starting to slowly her mind.
«He'll be okay», she had thought at the start, avidly brushing away the many spiders that fell on her shoulders like orange leaves in plain autumn.
«Unless he goes into the mountain nothing will happen, and there's no way he will», she thought later, trying to push down the anxiety bubbling on her chest. «The demons won't go down the mountain.»
She unconsciously bit her lips, with the still present frown, dodging a branch she was close to crashing against for being so distracted.
"Wake up already, Yana Kamishiro! You're gonna end up dead!" Inosuke yelled, fed up, when Ayaka crashed against his back for the fourth time since they had gone into the forest.
She blinked, getting rid of her thoughts.
"Ah, sorry, Inosuke, I've just been thinking about what that guy said," Ayaka tried to excuse herself, vaguely waving his hand to dismiss the thought. "Before he was sent flying, you know, that weird, incident, haven't you thought about what he meant?"
"They have us tied up."
What the hell did that mean? That they were in danger because of the demon's strength? That it had hostages?
She would have wished him to say more, but it wasn't like she could ask him, he was probably dead by now. Ayaka had prayed for his soul, just in case he had no one to do so and for him to rest in peace in the afterlife.
However it was, she wouldn't let the effort he had put into trying to get out of that mountain to be in vain, she wouldn't allow it.
"I don't think!" Inosuke answered cunning, showing off his chest in a way similar to how chickens showed off their feathers.
"You're impossible," Ayaka muttered to herself.
Something she had noticed about him was how pride appeared to course through his veins, every gesture or movement Inosuke made was soaked on arrogance. It was just like seeing her grandmother, just… more exaggerated and energetic.
As her grandmother's ego was cold and elegant, that didn't need to say anything to make clear she considered herself better than anyone else, Inosuke's was the kind to be explosive and sizzling, that he threw at your face and made burst in flames with every word that came out of his mouth.
But who was she to judge them? She wasn't the most humble nor the most collected.
"What about you?" Ayaka asked, turning around to face Tanjirou. "I'm sure you must have noticed something with that sharp nose of yours. Just by looking at you I can tell there's something on your mind."
Tanjirou looked at her, slightly opened his mouth to say the thoughts imprisoned against that thick forehead of his, and then suddenly closed it, acquiring a frown and fixing his gaze somewhere else.
«What the hell?», she thought.
Ayaka put herself in front of him that time, repeating the question, maybe he hadn't heard it. Tanjirou turned to the side. Ayaka put herself in front of him again, Tanjirou turned to the other side. Ayaka put herself in front of him for the last time, Tanjirou turned backwards.
The twitching on her eyebrow appeared again.
"Gods, don't tell me you're still angry," she said somehow bitter, crossing her arms over her chest.
Tanjirou copied her, a solemn "hmph" to remark his determination:
"Apologize to Zenitsu."
«This has to be a joke», Ayaka thought, small annoyance starting to grow into something bigger.
"I'm not going to do that!" She said, fists tight at both sides of her waist.
"Apologize to Zenitsu," Tanjirou stubbornly insisted, and Ayaka wasn't so dumb to think he would change his mind.
"How do you want me to!? We're in the middle of the mountain!" She yelled, throwing her fists up. The twitches of her eyebrow grew faster..
"Well then apologize to him when we finish this mission," Tanjirou simply offered, looking somewhere else to avoid her gaze. "You said very mean things to him, that was wrong."
Ayaka clicked her tongue in annoyance, fastening her pace and reaching Inosuke's side, who lead the way. If this was what he wanted she wasn't going to oppose.
"Ignore me all you want, stupid Tanjirou," she said through gritted teeth.
«Dumb. Moron. Fool. Idiot. Wide-forehead.»
If Tanjirou didn't want to see her again then okay! It didn't matter to her, why should it? It was what she had wanted in the first place. To Hell with Tanjirou, as if she needed him!
And with him would go his shining smile, and his soft voice and constant chattering she had gotten used to, along with his insistent but nice worry for her.
«To Hell with that! It doesn't matter to me at all! He can die for all I care!»
It wouldn't take much time for Zenitsu and Inosuke to abandon her too.
Zenitsu, with his obnoxious sweetness and his high pitched voice and his unbreakable loyalty and his contagious laugh.
Inosuke, with his cheerful yells and his improvised competitions and his beaming confidence and his amusing stupidity.
«To Hell with that! As if I cared!»
For Ayaka Iwamoto to need someone? That wasn't going to happen, because she was better than them, that was obvious, because they should need her, not backwards. She was going to become a pillar, pillars were the embodiment of power, of the strength in the demon slayer corps, she couldn't get distracted with such ridiculous things, and she had yet to become a "tsuguko".
Maybe that was why she felt that pain on her chest the more she distanced from Tanjirou, or when she thought about Zenitsu's expression in that bizarre silence that fell over him. Maybe this was all because she wasn't strong enough, it couldn't possibly be love, she had stopped loving long ago.
With a frown (this time it wasn't out of worry) Ayaka gestured for Inosuke to stop and took out her sword out of her sheath. With a flick of her wrist she tore the spider webs Inosuke had been unsuccessfully and clumsily getting out of the path all the way there.
"Use your sword, they are everywhere, " she drily advised."You'll only get them in your hands like this, stupid Inosuke."
"Don't tell me what to do, Yuno Kamemo! I already thought about that!" In an irritating challenge he imitated her, grabbing both his dual swords as he cut through the spider webs that were generously scattered across the forest without rest, on the trees, in between branches, hidden inside the bushes.
"Tch," Inosuke silently complained by her side, once he tired himself out on his quest to get rid of some miserable spiderwebs.
"There are a lot of spiders, can't you see them? There are more of them than webs," Ayaka explained deadpan, head leaning to the side. Her eyes travelled to a branch nearby, following closely one of the many spiders that seemed to invade every corner of that forest.
She raised her arm towards Inosuke, the handle of her sword secured between her fingers, and sinked her blade next to the boar's head, burying itself on a spider that could be the size of her fist.
Inosuke looked at the sword by the corner of his eye, not daring to move.
"See?" Ayaka pointed out in an obvious manner, not flinching at the sight of the transparent liquid that spurted out now by her sword.
With the same impassivity she took it out the tree trunk, letting the corpse of the spider fall to the ground.
For a moment, Inosuke had believed Akiko Kamui was really going to stab him with her nichirin sword, to pierce through his eye with it. He had never felt such an intense battle spirit before.
It didn't take a minute for that fear to turn into excitement. Skillfully, Inosuke threw one of his swords to a tree near Tanjirou, there it sank in the abdomen of a spider that could have easily been the size of a head.
"Ha! Bigger and further away! I win!" Inosuke yelled, puffing out his chest, once again, like chickens.
Ayaka was excitedly going to follow his example because she had taken a certain taste to competitions against Inosuke when Tanjirou interrupted them:
"We should be careful, there's something on this place that's making me uneasy."
Inosuke and Ayaka exchanged a look between them, only a thought in their heads.
"Whatever it is, I'll defeat it!" They both yelled in perfect synchrony, as Tanjirou only chuckled.
"That strangely makes me feel better," Tanjirou said, gentleness in his eyes. Ayaka saw his body relax, and hers did too, without explanation. "Despite everything," he looked at Ayaka for a moment," I wanted to thank you for coming with me, I feel safer because of your confidence, even if there is a reeking scent, I'm glad I'm with you both."
«Wasn't he mad?» She thought.
A small kid held her hand by her side. All skin and bones, short hair and wrapped by purple kimono, she looked up at her. Ayaka looked back.
«Weren't you mad too?» Ayaka asked her. «You were cursing his name a second ago.»
«I can't get angry with Tanjirou,» she offered as an excuse, a pitiful grimace on her face as tears endlessly fell down her eyes.
«Yeah, I guess we can't... Maybe he already forgave us for being like this, maybe if we get stronger...» Ayaka stopped, humming in thought. The tears shone brightly under the moonlight. «We are so weak.»
«We are» the kid nodded.
Because for some reason that stinging pain on her chest disappears, any kind of annoyance fading away, and both of them, her and Inosuke, stay still for a moment.
"So thank you," Tanjirou repeated one last time, softly smiling. But it was different from all the other smiles he had given them before, if Ayaka believed Tanjirou held the warmth of the Sun, this only confirmed it. Because all his prior smiles were mere bonfires compared to that one, of a summer sun.
«Warm» Inosuke and Ayaka thought at the same time.
A blush on her cheeks flooded every rational thought that could have been on her head.
«Warm» that bizarre pair of dumbasses thought again.
"Wait!" Tanjirou suddenly warned with a hand wave. That made both brainless idiots stop on their dreams and look at where he pointed.
Ayaka cleared her throat, letting go of the kid's hand wanting to get rid of that hellish blush.
Her eyes followed Tanjirou's hand to find the back of a demon slayer's uniform. And it turned out to be nothing less than a demon slayer (alive, which was less common).
"Tanjirou Kamado, rank 10!" He introduced himself when, in between hissing whispers and silent steps (which weren't so silent thanks to Inosuke and Ayaka) arrived by the boy's side.
He didn't seem to have heard them coming, in some kind of miracle, because the boy turned to them in a small jump.
"We're here for support, he's Inosuke Hashibira and she's Ayaka Iwamoto, rank 10 as well," Tanjirou continued waving over at them.
Ayaka looked at the boy, half closed eyes fixed on him that made the boy flinch in fear. Not a sound coming from her, she checked he wasn't the boy that was sent flying, and accepted that boy was probably dead already.
Her eyes squinted further, making the boy swallow as beads of sweat ran down his forehead.
«Tell me all you know», she thought, pressing the weight of her glance further against him. Living with someone like Genya for two years had taught her one or two things about intimidating people.
"Ten?" The boy questione in whispered urgency. Then he panicked. "Ten!? Why didn't they send a Pillar!? It doesn't matter how many of you they send! It's pointless if a Pillar doesn't come!"
Inosuke's fist skillfully crashed against the face of the boy whose name Ayaka still didn't know, and pulling the demon slayer by his hair, he brought him to his face, as Tanjirou yelled at Inosuke to stop and Ayaka looked at it all with wide opened eyes.
"So annoying! If you keep insisting on that things are pointless then your very existence is pointless! Hurry up and explain the situation you coward!" Inosuke threatened, probably too close for the boy's comfort.
«That was... unpredictable», Ayaka thought, eyes still widely open out of surprise. She noticed the blood freely flowing from the boy's nose, feeling a certain kind of "dèja vu" that made her insides churn.
She brushed it aside as her face went back to her usual intimidating expression, fixed on the foreign boy as she noticed just how tense he was. He must have been scared to death, one only had to look at the way he flinched every time there was a sound too loud nearby.
"After… after receiving our commands from the crows, ten members got here" He started as best as he could, as he cautiously eyed Ayaka by his side and tried for Inosuke not to pull his hair out of his scalp. "However, after entering into the woods… The other demon slayers… They started to…"
He stopped, too weak to continue. He swallowed when Ayaka's eyes insisted.
"Kill each other," he finally said, making Inosuke harshly let go of him.
«They must have been unrelated, if not this guy would be more of a sobbing mess», she thought, taking her gaze off the boy now that she didn't need him. «They wouldn't have started a fight just like that if they didn't know each other, not everyone is like Inosuke»
It was weird not for one demon slayer to turn against other partners to the point of killing, but for an entire group to do so. How unnatural, everyone usually knows it's a violation of the rules to fight with other members of the corps.
The gears on her head started to spin, fast and quickly, as she went through every possibility of such a weird incident that didn't include demons, but they were too remote, too many outside factors to have a safe conclusion.
And if the boy wasn't wrong there must have been a bunch of demon slayers that turned their swords against other demon slayers they would surely have to defeat before killing the demon behind it.
Even if they were reckless, Inosuke's methods were effective. So if she got to make him dance the way she wanted him to, things would be easier for her. And even if Tanjirou may have been still mad, he was the kind to use his wits in a battle. She would have troubles commanding him more than Inosuke since he wasn't as easy to manipulate, but she'd manage.
"Ayaka Iwamoto, you are gonna end up dead at this rate!" Inosuke yelled to warn her. But she hadn't noticed the demon slayer behind her, sword out of its sheath ready to cut off her neck.
She had no time to get out of her thoughts (nor to get surprised by the fact he had finally called her by the right name) as Inosuke quickly threw her into his shoulder. He kicked the stomach of the demon slayer that had been so dangerously close to murdering her and jumped back in a series of twirls. All of it with Ayaka on his shoulder, who was now struggling to tell apart left from right.
He finally left her on the floor and Ayaka stumbled in dizziness, only Inosuke's cackles on her ears.
"Thank the great Inosuke-sama for saving you from certain death!" Inosuke proudly bragged about saving the strongest person he had ever known, so then, he was the strongest person out of the two.
"Aya, are you okay!?" Tanjirou asked not too far away from the place he was defending himself from other demon slayers that had appeared, just like the first one, out of nowhere.
Ayaka gave herself a moment to blink, this time it was another group of demon slayers who attacked them, no demons.
She kicked the hand of one of them, making sure it crashed against the suneate so they loosened up their hold and let go of the swords. Just as she predicted, the sword fell to the floor, the sound of metal clicking against the floor muffling her ears.
"No problem!" She answered Tanjirou in between huffs, dodging once again another demon slayer.
"These people are all idiots! Don't they know it's forbidden for members to kill each other!?" Inosuke exclaimed, as he tried to avoid the sword of one of them.
«No, it's not that! The spiders!», Ayaka realized, seeing the shining of the threads tied to the limbs of the demon slayers.
They were much more smaller than the ones her and Inosuke had been killing before, nearly the size of a rice grain (she knew how small it was, she knew that perfectly). But the spiders that she had seen were brown, common and hairy, these ones where the colour of bones and had on their backs small red circles adorning them.
"Their movements are very strange,I think they're being controlled by something!" Tanjirou said, trying as best as he could not to hurt any of the demon slayers that threw themselves at him, sword in hands.
«He's noticed too», Ayaka thought, without stopping to look at Tanjirou a second time.
"Then I'll chop them in half!" Inosuke proclaimed, pulling up his sword towards the sky in pure arrogance.
"You can't do that! There are still people alive between them!" Tanjirou warned, raising like the voice of reason in between the chaos of battle. "Besides you mustn't harm the corpses of our companions!"
"Do something already goddamnit!" Ayaka yelled at the boy whose name she didn't know, as she jumped against the back of one of the three demon slayers that circled him. Tanjirou and Inosuke threw themselves at the other two. Ayaka smashed him with her feet, making him fall head first against the ground centimetres before he could touch the boy.
With her shoe prints on his back, Ayaka snatched away the sword off his hands in a kick, checking more intently if her conclusion had been true.
"Inosuke, don't hurt them!" Ayaka commanded, announcing her support to Tanjirou.
She firmly grabbed the threads tied to the demon slayer and tried to slash them with her sword. They faded away at the mere touch of her blade, to which Ayaka smiled in satisfaction.
"They're threads, Tanjirou! They're being controlled by threads!" She yelled without being able to put off the smile on her face. Tanjirou nodded, because he had noticed too. How sharp of him, the thought made her happy, because Tanjirou wasn't someone she had to compete against, he was simply that… Tanjirou.
"I noticed a sweet essence behind them," Tanjirou started, as Ayaka joined his side cautiously, glancing around them at the demon slayers starting to circle them.
"Yes! I saw the threads against the moonlight too" Ayaka clapped cheerfully. "We'll end this in no time."
"I already noticed that!" Inosuke claimed, voice filled in with effervescence, jumping through the air above the heads of all those demon slayers.
«How exciting!», Ayaka couldn't help but think, as she followed Inosuke's example. She cut more of them, by the way.
One of Tanjirou's arms mechanically raised, and there was a totally different feeling coursing through her because of it. Fear, sharp and in pangs flew straight to her chest and pierced through her throat.
«Spiders, I forgot about the spiders!» She thought as horror squeezed her chest. She clumsily and hurriedly cut the threads attached to Tanjirou's arm.
She then grabbed his arm, more harshly than usual on her, and plucked the spiders that showed her their bright red circles. Without any hesitation, she crashed them with her fist.
"I forgot to bring that up! The threads are attached to the spiders," Ayaka said to a confused Tanjirou, not letting go of his arm.
She sighed in relief and made Tanjirou spin, looking cautiously over to other parts of his body.
"You don't have anymore, right? Have you felt any other tug?"
Tanjirou shook his head still with confusion written all over his nodded in content, Tanjirou was smart, he must have noticed the spiders too.
"Aya," he called, raised eyebrows. She looked up at him, ending the last inspections of his haori. "Were you worried?"
Ayaka pinched her nose, then proceeding to insistently poke his chest.
"I refuse to drag your corpse back to your house to bury you with your family. It would take me days to get you there, do you know how nasty rotting corpses can be? Die somewhere closer and then you'll be allowed to die when you're with me," she answered, crossing her arms over her chest. "Besides, if you die who's going to turn back Nezuko into a human? Because it sure as hell won't be me."
That was a lie, if Tanjirou were ever to die she would probably carry Nezuko around so he could rest in peace on the other shore. But that would have been too soft to say and she didn't want him to think he was allowed to die.
The demon slayers set free from the threads soon started to raise again like walking corpses.
"Hey you! Stay away from the spiders and get out of here! You're just being a nuisance!" Ayaka commanded the boy who still hadn't given his name and she didn't have the intentions to discover. She used the full power of her eyes on him but even if he started to generously sweat the boy shook his head time and time again. Ayaka squinted at him but ended up not paying attention to him. If he wanted to die that was his decision as brave as he made himself out to be.
Ayaka noticed the disgusted expression on Tanjirou's face by the corner of her eye. «He must have smelt something.»
"This stench…" Tanjirou muttered, scrunching up his nose. Her eyes noticed the imperceptible movements of the spiders on the floor, getting closer to them with their small and abundant legs so they could put their threads on them.
«Little bastards», she thought, grabbing Tanjirou by the waist and jumping far away from the small brats.
"They're everywhere," Ayaka offered as an excuse at the questions on his ruby eyes. because he was close, so close she was face to face with the colour of his eyes. She could feel the beating of his racing heart against her skin.
Pointing to the spiders that had been milimetres away from touching them, she finally let go of him.
"What is it that you smell?" She asked after clearing her throat, in an attempt to ignore just how painful it was to have a body as warm as his so far away.
She had been having other skin against hers more in the last few days than she had in years. It had been long since she had enjoyed that kind of touch against her skin, going from the cold of Himjima-shishou's waterfall to Tanjirou's skin was a very sudden change.
But this time she had been the one to do it. Not even before going into the Final Selection had she dared take Himejima-shishou's hand.
Maybe... maybe she missed it. Maybe she missed loving people back.
"I've been feeling a strange stench lately," Tanjirou explained with a hand over his nose, as both of them dodged the demon slayer puppets. "I don't know what it is but it's making my nose useless, so I won't be able to smell the demon that controls the threads."
«The demon that controls the threads, right, focus on that», Ayaka told herself, fixing her eyes on the shining threads under the moonlight at the same time as she snatched a sword away from the hands of another puppet in a swift kick.
"I can't see it either," she growled at the fact that the demon was too far away for her eyes.
They exchanged a knowing look.
If neither her nor Tanjirou could, then there was only one person left:
"Inosuke! If you're able to locate the demon with precision, please do so!" Tanjirou pleaded being close to desperation.
"If you can do it, then Tanjirou, that one guy and I will handle the weaklings and you'll have the main demon all to yourself, Inosuke-sama!" Ayaka added to Tanjirou's pleading.
"I'm Murata!" The boy she had called "that one guy" yelled at them from a distance.
The one that hadn't obeyed her and was now barely helping as best as he could, cutting off threads and dodging attacks thrown at him.
How endearing.
"Good idea, Aya!" Tanjirou praised her. Ayaka smiled proudy. "Murata-san, Aya and I will handle the ones being controlled, Inosuke you must-!
He cut himself off mid sentence to grab Ayaka that stumbled clumsily out of astonishment, choking on her own spit at the sudden apparition of a demon above their heads.
Tanjirou patted her back softly as she recomposed, quick enough for the both of them to dodge the demon slayers' corpses.
There, shining under the Moon and in the middle of the sky, (no, leaning on threads metters above their heads), a demon.
«Is it the one controlling the threads!?» Was the first thought that came up to her mind in a flash.
The demon had the same colour as the spiders permeating his skin, white as bones, and identical red dots adorned its face in patterns. Its hair framed its face, resembling the colour of its skin, hovering over it as if threatening to devour it in long spiky strands.
"Don't disturb our clan's peaceful life here," it claimed in a monotone voice. And something inside her burned bright and fiercely at those words.
"Peaceful life?" She asked with bitter poison on her own voice. "Peaceful life!? Your peaceful life is bullshit!"
All that death, all that suffering, all those corpses, the blood, all of that. And it dared call it a peaceful life!? So many lives that had no one to pray for them prematurely snatched away because of that demon and it dared call it a peaceful life!?
"Shut your mouth you goddamn bastard! Get down from there so I can cut off your head! We'll see how peaceful your life is!" Ayaka threatened, raising her sword on his direction.
"You will all be killed by mother for this," the demon only said, no doubts or uncertainty behind his words.
He ignored Ayaka's very noticeable and burning fury completely, and with those last words, walked off through the threads. He walked calmly, no worry on the possibility of her cutting off his neck nor that they would kill "mother". The threat of death didn't disturb him.
"Hey!" Inosuke broke the silence in a low yell. Using the back of one of the members of the corps and used that to boost himself up to the demon, but it was unsuccessful as he didn't reach the threads and stayed shaking the sword.
"Damn it! Where are you going!? Come back here and fight me!" Inosuke asked in yells to the air, but the demon ignored him just as it had done with Ayaka and continued on his path over the threads.
Inosuke ended up falling to the ground in a loud bang that would have surely broken a bone or two, but that didn't seem to annoy him and went back on his feet without any trace of pain.
"I think that's not the demon controlling the threads" Tanjirou yelled for Inosuke to hear behind him.
Whatever he said, Ayaka's fury wouldn' fade away so easily. The lives of others.. weren't something to play with, as impolite and mean as she could be, she would never allow for someone else to treat other people's lives as things to be simply snatched away.
For some reason she thought about her family, and about Yuu and his parents, that had one day suddenly left an orphan son. Just like that. Something on her heart squeezed tight and that served as fuel for the bleaming wrath.
"Change of plans, Tanjirou" Ayaka said in a deadpan tone, glassed over by a layer of unsaid threats. "I'll go after that demon as you, Inosuke and Murata take care of the one that controls the puppets, but don't do anything else. When you finish, go down the mountain and take Zenitsu with you to the wisteria house."
She didn't wait for a positive reaction and started running towards the demon she could still see walking over its stupid threads.
Murata trembled as he saw Ayaka fade away in the darkness of the forest. Tanjirou tried to call out her name but it was no use, ceasing his attempts as he was busy trying to dodge the puppets' attacks.
"That girl's so scary," Murata muttered to himself, nearly invisible shaking on his voice.
Tanjirou gave him a curious glance.
"Who, Aya? " He asked in arched eyebrows. Murata nodded and Tanjirou shrugged. "Aya isn't so scary after all." He scratched his cheek in thought. "Well not that much."
Yes, that much.