The darkness of the night wasn't a problem for Ayaka's eyes, that avidly followed the figure of the demon between the trees and the blackness of the forest.
There was something in the demon, something dark and abysmal that came out of him like a deadly mist, soaked in antiqueness. Ayaka knew the demon was ancient, those like him, that had been decades or even hundreds of years living in that world like unnatural creatures, gave off a very specific kind of aura, a certain way they carried themselves, and Ayaka could only see dark and bubbling darkness in the place his heart was supposed to be.
There wasn't light anywhere, that demon was the very embodiment of a piece of hell, with his flames dark as twilight and the wickedness that roamed free there. All of that, or at least a small piece, filled the demon's body, that didn't appear to be more than a twelve year old boy. But she could see it, the sins exceeded the weight of his soul. He wasn't like Nezuko, there was no possible salvation for him.
"You are quite insistent, don't you think so?" The demon looked at her from above, on the threads high up in the threes. He was tired of playing child games, an underlying annoyance on his voice. She was tired, too. They must have spent quite some time like this, Ayaka wasn't sure, but what she was sure about was that by then Tanjirou, Inosuke and Murata (was that his name?) would have defeated the demon of the threads and would be on their way down the mountain.
She had dedicated all that time to run after the demon, he was sly and Ayaka could suppose his strategy was one of a despicable person, sliding in between the shadows and not showing itself enough so someone could notice he was there. He had tried to sneak away from her a few times in the time they had been playing that stupid tag game, but he hadn't taken into account Ayaka's eyes, as far away as he tried to run, he would always be on their range.
This time it wasn't like the thread' s demon, that had put hundreds of meters between them. The demon didn't take into account she could see more and believed that with seventy, eighty meters away would make her lose sight of him.
It was a pity it didn't work, both of them were tired of playing and the demon had finally decided to come out of the shadows. It would be decided right there and then, no more child games, with a battle that wouldn't end until either one of them died or the Sun rose above the horizon. And few hours were still away for that to happen, so it was sure one of them would die, full moon watching over them to witness. And Ayaka wasn't planning on dying, not at least without a reason to.
"And you're quite sneaky, don't you think so?" Ayaka replied in a mocking tone.
She took out her sword out of its sheath, taking out a handkerchief to briefly clean the shining gray blade. Once she finished she threw the handkerchief over her shoulder without worry.
"Now that you've decided to make yourself known I can finally cut off your neck," Ayaka said, eyes fixed on the demon and a relaxed smile on her face. "I thank you for coming out and not making me lose my time more than I already have, running after you was starting to become annoying."
The demon threw a killer look at her, and that was the least that could be said about it. It shined brightly, filled in with poison. That kind of gaze reminded Ayaka to one of a deadly spider, its fangs out and jaws open reading to bit and inject the final toxic that would end the life of its prey.
But she was no prey nor was she a bug that had been trapped on a spiderweb, she was the mountain that would crash the spider under the overwhelming weight of winter.
"You talk too much," the demon sentenced, throwing at her many different threads that flew around her, making on their speed for the strands that usually framed Ayaka's hair to fly as well.
She had no problem dodging them, jumping in between them using the trees to boost her up.
The demon frowned, Ayaka gave him an innocent smile with raised eyebrows.
"I do? I hadn't noticed," she replied leaning her head to the side. All threads came out of the demon's hands and that would be an easy way to get closer to him. She could work with that, she thought, as her voice became aggressive and acid against the demon. "Maybe I should shut up and focus on killing you."
The amount of threads increased with every second until she was forced to slash them when they came too close to her skin.
These ones weren't like the puppets demon's, that had been easy to tear with the mere touch of her blade. They were now tougher, like wires and she was forced to use the Stone Breathing to get rid of them.
"Stone Breathing, Third Form: Stone Skin"
All nearby threads surrounding her were cut short, falling limply around her like mere spiderwebs instead of heavy wires. And step by step, slash by slash, she came closer to the demon, who was backing away as if they were still playing tag.
"I'll kill you even if it's the last thing I ever do," Ayaka proclaimed in frosting calmness, and for a moment, the slightest moment someone else would have missed, but not her, the demon looked scared. "Despicable people like you don't deserve to live."
Horror, complete horror painted his features because Ayaka was very close, so close she could cut off his neck. This time he was the prey instead of the predator.
"Stone Breathing, Fourth Form: Volcanic Rock - Rapid Conquest."
He went back to his spider grimace in a second as the demon lashed out at her, threads flying around her more than ever.
"I would love to see you try." The demon smiled with the slightest pinch of rage, sending more threads her way who, without paying them any mind, ended up being slashed by them. Her face, her arms, her legs, all of it spluttered out lively red blood.
There was something about the threads then, she could feel it in the way they teared her flesh out, something different. She couldn't slash them with the weakest of the Stone Breathing Forms.
Those threads couldn't be slashed.
«Even if you feel pain, even if you feel regret, don't allow anyone to walk all over you, never! You're still a Fujioka even if your name is Iwamoto, prove to everyone else you're better than them!» Ayaka tightened her hold on her sword, ignoring the stinging pain from the cuts that covered her whole body.
"Do you like these threads!? You can't cut these ones, you stupid girl! You won't be able to slash my neck!" The demon yelled, as there was nothing else shining on the gaze of her opponent that wasn't the red glow of madness.
Maybe she wasn't able to cut them, but Ayaka could do something else.
Jumping on those threads destined to cut her in half, Ayaka fastly slid over them, gaining the speed she needed to finally reach the demon who could only observe the dizzying speed at which she was coming, arm out with sword in hand destined to behead him.
The astonishment on the demon's head brought a satisfied smile to her face, because Ayaka had used what he was proud of the most to get to it and end his life. She yelled, a piercing booming sound coming from the deepest part of her chest.
"Stone Breathing, Fifth Form: Arcs of Justice!"
The air around them turned heavy, falling over them something similar to mist, gray and freezing that wrapped them up in death, just because of a breathing form.
The Stone Breathing's fifth form was the most powerful form of them all. It obliterated anything on its wake, leaving in ruins the area around the swordsman along with their enemy.
It destroyed the floor, the bushes, the trees and rocks near its range, and if she wasn't able to cut off the demon's neck with that form, Ayaka could believe herself to be dead.
The freezing mountain and the power that came along with it hovered together over the demon's form, a mallet above him that wouldn't take much time to go down and punish him for all his sins containing the rage of the gods. And when Ayaka's sword was a breath away from cutting off his neck, thunder rumbled through the mountain.
Unconsciously, Ayaka averted her gaze to the origin of the roar. It wasn't a stormy night, the sky was clear, no clouds on sight. And that could only mean one thing.
There in the night sky, before the Moon and the stars, she distinguished a form in the distance. It rose above the sky, ascending over the trees like an all powerful saviour.
If a normal person had walked nearby, then they would have sworn to their friends and acquaintances two gods had manifested on that mountain that night, earth and sky oozing unimaginable power.
«Zenitsu?»
It was enough for Ayaka to get distracted, and instead of slashing the demon's neck, he used the smallest second to give a step back, and Ayaka's sword felt around the air. Not expecting the possibility of finding nothing to crash against the sword followed its path and found itself on the floor.
An explosion that could compare itself to a volcano's eruption came from the contact as a wave of dust rose in the air by the breaking of the floor. Ayaka's eyes filled in with dust as she backed away, stumbling due to the wind.
The next thing she knew, two threads cut her back near the shoulder blades and without taking a second longer the demon strengthened the threads one last time, turning the most red they had ever been.
In a swift and practiced wrist flick, the threads tangled around her forearms and legs and she got imprisoned in between his webs.
When such brutal dust cloud cleared up, Ayaka found herself hanging high over the floor. The demon appeared right before her, he had gotten on its damn threads again as he gave her a cruel smile.
She was now her prey as the demon turned again into a spider that would sink his fangs on her pale skin and would devour her without thinking twice about it.
If she hadn't been a bug trapped on his spiderwebs before, she was now.
"I should have used my strongest threads from the start, it would have saved me the trouble. I really underestimated you but, what was that thing you were muttering about killing me again?" The demon wondered, cheek leaning on his hand, observing how Ayaka fought against the threads.
"I'm going to kill you, I swear I'm going to kill you!" She yelled, because she would, she wouldn't go down so easily. She wouldn't leave the land of the living like this.
«I don't feel my arms nor do I feel my hands», she thought, gears starting to spin on her head, because even like this her nichirin sword was safely secured in between her fingers. «I can't panic now, I can still use the Stone Breathing one last time, I need to think about a way to get rid of these threads. Think, think, if that was really Zenitsu I need to go help him, and who knows where Inosuke, Tanjirou and Murata might be. I swear I'll kill Tanjirou for not listening to me.»
In another wrist flick Ayaka ended up facing down, the demon having to cran up his neck to look her in the eyes. He was smiling.
"I don't see how you will do that, did you seriously think I used all my power against you? Look at you now, I could kill you right this moment and you wouldn't be able to do nothing about it."
Ayaka growled, but even so she could feel herself slowly bleeding out because of the pressure on her flesh the threads had. If she spent too much time hanging there, she would die.
The demon simply grabbed Ayaka's ribbon in mockery, carefully examining it on the palm of his hand like it was really interesting, leaving her hair to fall down from top of her head and to cover her neck, fluffy and covered in splashes of blood.
"Don't underestimate me," Ayaka hissed challenging, as her mind continued to work with her eyes, quickly flying around the place to look for something she could use to escape. She ignored the demon's eyes, hoping he wouldn't discover her intentions, until something flew up to her head to make an escape plan. She just needed to distract him more.
"You already did that once and I nearly cut your head off, don't make the same mistake twice."
The demon frowned for a moment, annoyed by the fact that a rank 10 demon slayer had been close to killing it.
Flexing his hands, he made the threads around her limbs to squeeze tighter and she couldn't help but squeak in pain. She bit her lip afterwards, because she didn't want to give the satisfaction to a demon of knowing it was hurting her, as it only laughed, small high pitched chuckles.
A mark appeared on its pupil, and what was written there sent shivers down her back.
"You aren't strong enough to defeat one of the Twelve Demon Moons," the demon pridefully announced, setting aside a few white strands of its hair so Ayaka could see it clearly.
Carved on the right eye of the demon there was a number "5".
«It's not possible, that's not possible!», Ayaka thought in panic, because she didn't know how she was still alive. She was merely a tsuguko, she wasn't a pillar to have enough power to survive an encounter with a Demon Moon.
Even if he hadn't killed her in battle, the demon had still imprisoned her, and he didn't seem to have any intentions on killing her. Not yet, at the very least. Why had he trapped her instead of cutting her into pieces?
The demon went down to the ground satisfied with her silence, walking off to what seemed to be a dirty and torn piece of paper. In between the dust and the rests of the glare after the use of the fifth form, Ayaka hadn't even noticed it was there.
Her eyebrows shot up to her forehead as the demon took the paper from the floor with a smile proper of a lunatic and unfolded it, revealing its contents for the world to see.
Ayaka didn't need to see to know what it was, she recognized it perfectly. That letter had been sheltered on one of the pockets of her haori all that time, ever since the morning of the Final Selection.
The demon eyed it and Ayaka fought against her binding, not worrying about the threads that sank further on her injuries. She had been consumed by something deeper than the thirst of defeating her enemies, than the rage that seemed to flow through her veins.
"Take your hands off that, you bastard! If you dare touch that letter I won't only cut your head off I will tear your body apart! I will make you discover how hell on earth feels like!"She screamed, veins deeply carved on her forehead. Himejima-shishou's lectures would be no use now, there was nothing on this world able to stop the freezing winds of Ayaka Iwamoto's fury.
The demon paid her no mind, fascinated as his eyes traveled avidly over the letter's content as Ayaka continued cursing his name in enraged yells.
With dreamy eyes the demon finished reading, taking in the weight of the words that had been so lovingly written on paper.
In the blink of an eye he appeared in front of Ayaka again, looking with curious wide open eyes at the face of the demon slayer.
With a flex of his fingers the demon made the threads tighten around her neck, choking Ayaka until she stopped yelling, desperately gasping for air.
"You…" the demon accused, anxious voice as it acquired a small tremble. "You teared your bonds apart… Yeah… You teared them apart with your own hands, isn't that right?... With your own hands, your bonds with your family… Such strong bonds… And you broke them into pieces…
He left the mortal tightening against Ayaka's neck to relax and her body started shaking as she coughed, throat dry as if she hadn't had water in days. She took a few breaths of air to get her breathing back to normal, even feeling the burning tears that had appeared on her eyes with the crashing feeling of asphyxiating.
"Answer me!" The demon hissed, in his impatience tightening the threads around her neck a second time, just loose enough to let her speak.
"And what if I did?" Ayaka barked with the few energy she had left on her throat, enough to whisper. Then she looked at the demon in disgust. "Now give that back, you shithead."
"No, I don't think I will," the demon mocked, moving the letter from one side to the other as Ayaka's eyes desperately followed. "Better yet, I think I'm going to read it aloud, just to torture you. Demons can be tortured if you hang them up facing the Sun, but that doesn't work with you, human, so I'll enjoy this."
Ayaka fought against her binding fiercely as she tried to unsuccessfully set herself free. She was making the same mistake she warned Tanjirou about so long ago.
In a few words, if she didn't go back to her senses, Ayaka Iwamoto would die that night because of her recklessness.
"I said give that back!" She incessantly fought and she didn't feel the sharp pain of the cuts or the injuries neither the exhaustion that was starting to slowly settle in her body. Right then and there, the only thing on her mind was the letter and only the letter. The letter, the letter, the letter and nothing else.
In a deadpan voice, the demon started to read:
"Dear A-chan, we hope you are safe and comfortable on Himejima-san's home. We pray for you every night hoping you are."
"Shut up! Shut your mouth! I don't want you to say the same words that came out of my parents' mouths!" Ayaka interrupted him. She didn't want to hear it, she didn't, she didn't. She had already memorized the words that came next, she knew how big her sins were, that she'd burn in hell like she reminded herself of every night.
The demon smiled in sadistic satisfaction. He had found them, it was her weak point just as much as it was her strong point.
"Himejima-san told us you'll be going to the final test to become a demon slayer, we had hoped you'd tell us yourself, but we understand you must be too busy for your old, tired parents. Even so, come visit when your training finally pays off to celebrate, we can buy melon mochi. Everything's still the same here, there has been a scandal, Takada-san cheated on her wife with a girl your age, isn't that worrying? Besides that there are no news, so you won't feel overwhelmed when you come back. Please write back, we're cheering you on, mum and dad," the demon finished with a last laugh. It was enjoying it and Ayaka couldn't stand it.
"Shut your mouth! Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!" She protested time and time again, shaking her head as if that would ensure she wouldn't hear him, yelling louder and louder hoping to muffle the demon's voice with her own.
"It seems you were the only one to blame for your bond's breaking, your parents tried to get closer to you but you pushed them away. You created a distance by your own hand, am I wrong? And you're all alone now," the demon guessed, and his voice was bitter, spread through Ayaka's injuries for it to sting, for it to hurt.
"Give it back! I'll kill you! I'm going to kill you!" She threatened time and time again like she had already done. But they were false promises, hollow and meaningless, contrary to the ones she used to do.
But hollow promises weren't so rare for her, right? She had promised her parents she'd go visit again. She had also promised Himejima-shishou she'd turn into a worthy successor, but she was going to die, she wouldn't be a pillar in the future, enjoying huge bathtubs and all kinds of soaps.
All those things had turned into hollow words, that would disappear from this world along with her to join her soul in hell when her life was snatched away by that demon.
"Why are you angry? I'm just saying the truth. You teared your bonds apart on your own and now you're sad, and lonely, quite contrary to me, who has strong bonds with his family," the demon said, stranged by Ayaka's yelling. He threw the letter behind his shoulder, crumpled in a ball. "I don't need a bunch of broken bonds either way."
"You can't understand what it is like! You've never loved anyone in your pitiful life!" Ayaka barked, looking like an enraged dog. "They're kilometers away from here, safe from creatures like you! You can kill me slowly if that's what you want, but that's the only thing I care about!"
From the deepest part of the demon's throat came out a confused mutter.
"I have a family too, you know, and even so I can't understand your reasoning. But I guess you can understand mine." His eyes fixed on her, those eyes that didn't connect to any heart, only a black hole. "Everything is done for family, and you've threatened mine, that's why I'll have to kill you."
With that last sentence he tightened the threads around Ayaka once again. She squirmed, coughing and shaking in a useless attempt to set herself free caused by the innate instinct of human beings to live no matter what, not giving up and trying until the end, even if there was no solution at all.
With the last ounces of strength she had left. Ayaka started to pray for herself, because that was the only thing she had left.
"Namu... Amida Butsu... Namu... Ami... Amida... But... su... Na... mu... A... A…"
The letter stayed hanging up in the air, the sound of her own voice vanishing from her ears, dying out at the same time as life abandoned her along with the beating of her heart. When she finally exhaled her last breath, Takeshi appeared in front of her.
"Finally, Aya-san! I've been waiting for you, are you prepared to go to Hell together?" He stretched out a hand to her, inviting in his voice as sweet as sugar.
Ayaka stretched out her hand towards him not to take his hand but to slap it away. She, however, got by his side without looking at his face.
«There's no warmth here.»
She had been preparing for a long time.
«Say, Aya-san, was it happy? The time you spent on this world?»
Had she been happy? Had she used her life to the fullest?
Would she have regrets once she left?
"Grandma… Mother… Fa… Father… Yuu…"
ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ
The beeping on her ears cleared up with the screaming of a foreign voice.
"Rui... Rui!" It called. And that was the voice that welcomed her back from the other shore.
The colours came back and Ayaka recomposed, coughing and shaking as she fought to breath in some kind of miracle.
She found her own hand stretch out to the horizon that she had managed to raise on her delusions.
She had failed to grab the hand death had offered her.
«What… happened? Who's Rui? Who's that girl?» Ayaka wondered.
The demon, where was the demon? Why hadn't he killed her?
"Mother was killed! And old brother was murdered by a demon slayer wearing a yellow haori! I got to see him and if he decides to go after us we'll be killed too, Rui! What should we do? There are too many and they're looking for us." The hurried voice came from a girl Ayaka didn't recognize but who had a scaring similarity to the demon she had fought against, pale hair and pale skin adorned with red moles.
Old brother? Mother? It must have been talking about the so called family of the demon.
Ayaka realized that Rui, as it had been called, was the demon she had been fighting against all that time.
With the apparition of the demon girl Rui had suddenly loosened up Ayaka's threads leaving way for the air to travel to her lungs.
She would call it her lucky day if she wasn't still tied up high above the floor, the possibility of being murdered still hovering over her.
Rui didn't move, looking somewhere at the distance as the demon girl insisted, scared of dying just like any other human.
"Hey... listen!" She desperately pleaded, beads of sweat running down her forehead, eyes filled with horror.
"Shouldn't we be running by now?" She asked, and for a moment, just for a single moment, its face completely changed her appearance, losing any resemblance she ever had to Rui.
For some reason that infuriated him, sending on the demon girl's direction many threads that teared and slashed her face, as she screamed, voice inked in pain without caring about Ayaka still hanging high above them.
Howling, the demon fell to her knees, bringing up her hands up to her face as she tried to desperately cover the injuries somehow.
Was this Rui's beloved family? Was this how it treated them?
"What are you looking at? This doesn't concern you," Rui said to an unknown presence in the distance. Ayaka looked over there, chest heavy as she was sure she had been a unconscious for a while. The blood around her injuries was already dry as it formed a disgusting crust around them.
"Who...?" She sighed in a whisper, as her eyes distinguished the green of an haori. "Shishou?"
The blood that had once belonged to the demon girl flowed freely through Rui's threads, proof of what he had done to the wailing girl in the floor.
"What are you doing!? Isn't she on your side!?" The unknown form asked in fury.
Ayaka forced herself to focus her sight once more. When she saw the shiny scar on the demon slayer's forehead and the wooden box at his back, she had no doubts. That was Tanjirou Kamado.
«He can't be here,» she thought in dread. «He's gonna get himself killed, Tanjirou's going to die. Nezuko. They're both going to die.»
Then where was Inosuke? She wasn't particularly worried about Murata. Would it be true that person she had seen pierce through the sky was Zenitsu? If he was, she had to do something or Rui would kill them all. They had no chance against a Demon Moon.
"Ally? Don't compare it to such a shallow thing," Rui answered in a deadpan voice. He was going to kill Tanjirou if he kept talking, she saw in the way he moved the threads on his hands. "We're family. We're connected by strong bonds. Besides, this is in between my old sister and me, if you stick your nose into this I'll cut you into tiny pieces."
But because it was Tanjirou, he was going to stick his nose into this.
"Allies and family are both tied by strong bonds. The two are valuable things," Tanjirou replied stubborn as he was. "Even if it's not a bond tied by blood there's nothing superficial about it! People that are tied by strong bonds smell of trust. But you two… " He gave a step back in disgust." Fear, hate, that's the only thing I smell! I won't call something like that a bond! It's false!"
Rui said nothing as he dedicated Tanjirou that killing look he had dedicated to her before.
"Tanjirou! Shut up and listen!" Ayaka yelled from above, tightening her jaw in spite. He raised his eyes to look at the direction of her voice, finding her bloody and covered in bruises facing down. Her black hair was still down and frizzy. She bet it didn't smell like wisterias now.
"Aya! Don't worry I'll get you out of there!" He screamed in horror at her estate.
She payed him no mind, because there was no way he'd do that.
"Get Nezuko and run away from here! Go and get Inosuke and the others with you!"
"There's no way I'm leaving you here!"
"Forget about me, damn you! Tanjirou you don't understand, you have to run from here as fast as possible! You won't be able to defeat it, it's a Demon Mo-...!"
Her yelling was cut short as the threads around her tightened as she choked on her own spit, crimsom blood, of a metallic smell and warm and sticky to the touch, spluttered out of her injuries.
"You're too loud," Rui said, whose frown hardened once again. "I would prefer if you choked and shut up already, or do you want me to slowly kill your partner in front of you in order for you to shut your mouth? Your family is kilometres away from you, but if what that fool said is true for you, it will be the same thing to torture him."
Struggling to breath, Ayaka took a deep inhale.
"Don't you dare… touch them," she hissed, tightening her hold on the nichirin sword. She could still do it. A last ounce of strength and if she was lucky they'd found her in the morning to get her to a doctor.
The demon girl sobbed in defeat. Tanjirou wasn't running, why wasn't he running? Hadn't he listened to what she said?
Instead, Tanjirou tensed in an attack position, pointing his black blade towards the demon. His heels were firmly stuck to the ground, and on his eyes shined the flaring fire of passion.
Why did they have to partner her up with a boy so lacking in common sense.
"Demons, just what I was looking for." A voice announced behind them.
From the shadows appeared another demon slayer, and Ayaka could see how selfishness dripped from him, mixed in with ambition and cowardice.
"If they're gonna be childish demons even I can do it," he continued. He didn't notice Ayaka hanging above him, neither how strange it was if the demons were childish for everything around them to be torn apart by the fifth form of Ayaka's Stone Breathing. Instead, the demon slayer turned to Tanjirou in a brattish smile. "Get back, I want to make sure I get a raise. If I do, I'm gonna get a lot of money, so I'll just defeat some low level demons and go down the mountain."
Himejima-shishou was right, those with no purpose or carrying vile intentions didn't survive in the Demon Slaying Corps.
Without blinking, Rui sent a wave of threads that cut the upper part of the demon slayer's body into tiny pieces. It was only a second but now the remains of his corpse laid on the floor. Ayaka swallowed, feeling a drop of blood flying up and crashing against her cheek.
"What did you just say?" The demon looked enraged, so different to how she had seen it before.
Ayaka hadn't managed to piss the demon off, not completely.
Then, victim to Tanjirou's words, the rage that waved off Rui's small body made the air tense and threatening.
"What did you say just now?" Rui asked again. And his voice squeezed something in Ayaka's heart.
If Tanjirou didn't run along with Nezuko, they were going to die.
Stucking his heels further into the ground, Tanjirou tightened his hold against the handle of his sword.
"I'll say it time and time again, your bonds are false."
It was sealed, the three of them would die there.
Rui muttered angrily, like the hissing of a spider preparing its poison to attack.
"I won't kill you at once." He played with the many threads on its hands somehow distracted. "I'll cut you into tiny pieces before I completely destroy you so she can see it and as punishment for your insolence."
"He isn't important, I don't care if he dies!" Ayaka barked bitterly, on her best attempts to turn her voice from weak and tired to arrogant and mighty. She fought against the threads to catch Rui's attention. "Don't believe I would care about someone like him, so stupidly naive! You know that, he's an idiot if he believes he can defeat you! Why should I worry about someone that can't see death even when it presents itself right in front of him?"
Rui glanced at her by the corner of his eye. Tanjirou swallowed.
"Then you shouldn't care if he either lives or dies, right? If he takes back what he said, I'll take him out at once," Rui offered, not an ounce of interest in its voice.
But there was something else on the way it eyed her in apparent laziness. Avidly watching her every move. He was testing her words, he was trying to discover if Tanjirou was truly important to her.
So despite the pain, despite the hopelessness and the sadness and the rage, Ayaka managed to wear an unbreakable grimace on her face.
She silently prayed to the gods, the ones she knew about and the ones she didn't, for Tanjirou to take back his words, go back to his senses and gather enough strength on his legs to run away and look for Inosuke, Murata and Zenitsu so the four of them would walk off from that place as fast as possible.
But the gods were cruel, so they abandoned her.
"I won't take my words back, what I said isn't wrong, you're the one who's wrong!" Tanjirou yelled, as he proceeded to charge at the demon.
Rui accepted the fight with pleasure, throwing threads at him just as he had done with her.
If Tanjirou refused to save his own life then she'd have to do in on his stead. When they got out of there (if they did) Ayaka would make sure to kill him with her own hands.
Her eyes skillfully looked around. From Rui's hands came out all the threads, the same ones that entrapped her were also used against Tanjirou, just extended to reach further, turning them weaker.
Since Rui didn't pay attention to Ayaka, unwavering on the belief she wouldn't be able to escape, the threads binding her turned from a dark red to a clear white, as it continued attacking Tanjirou. The further he came closer to his neck, the weaker the threads around her became.
She could do it, she could cut those threads.
"Water Breathing, First Form: Water Surface Slash."
"Stone Breathing, First Form: Serpentinite Bipolar"
Ayaka set herself free from her prison at the same time as Tanjirou's sword got sliced like tofu against one of Rui's threads.
Both of them lost balance and crashed against the ground, Tanjirou unable to dodge Rui's threads and Ayaka falling from the threads high above the the trees.
She quickly got up on trembling legs, numb after being unmoving for so long. Blood flowed through them once again, and that brought her relief.
She used all the strength left on them to run to Tanjirou, who was a breath away to be teared apart by Rui's incessant threads.
«Hurry and get to him, you have to run away from here. You can't stand by as they die.» Those were the words that echoed on her mind time and time again as she saw how dangerously close the threads were to Tanjirou, until they got to him and blood was spilled and flesh was teared apart.
But it wasn't his blood nor was it his flesh.
Tanjirou yelled her sister's name as Ayaka finally joined his side and threw them both over her shoulders like Inosuke had done with her a few hours ago. She hurried to go somewhere safe far away from Rui, but her knees collapsed just when she got behind a tree.
Ayaka gasped in exhaustion as she fell, the Kamado siblings crashing against the floor with her.
"You're a fool, moron, stupid, I seriously hope you don't have sweet dreams ever again for all the troubles you're giving me!" Ayaka weakly cursed, leaning on knees as she tried to hit Tanjirou on his back with her fists, but there was not an ounce of energy left to use her true strength. "Why didn't you run when I told you to? You should have left me behind, now all three of us are going to die unless a Pillar comes before we're executed."
And with her complaints finally out of her mind, she leaned exhausted against Tanjirou's checkered haori, but no words came from his mouth. He smelt like charcoal.
"Is Nezuko okay?" She asked in a whisper, clutching to Tanjirou's back.
"Her injuries look bad, and her wrist seems to be broken, but it will heal," Tanjirou answered, lightly turning his head to look at her, fingers grabbing onto the black and green squares.
"I'm sorry," Ayaka heard him say in a whisper as he continued inspecting Nezuko's wrist. She frowned. Regret, regret for not being able to protect, would it be oneself or loved ones.
"Stop apologizing," she ordered, face hardening. "You're seriously dumb, wallowing on selfloathing and your own powerlessness is no use now. Do something more useful and if you're so determined, think about a way to defeat that bastard."
«Whatever happens, don't look back.»
Tanjirou nodded, she wasn't sure if he did it to please her or not. Her eyes wouldn't be able to tell.
Once he secured Nezuko's injuries, he fixed on Ayaka's pathetic estate.
Her uniform was completely destroyed. The haori was unrecognizable in what had turned into a rag with a red spider lily visible if it had been lucky enough not to be turned into shreds. The suneates, previously tied to her calves, had loosened up at some point in battle, which she had lost sight of along with her sandals. The only thing to keep her feet away from touching the floor were her socks.
In between the remains of what had once been the lower part of her pants appeared thin lines left by Rui's threads. Along with her arms, that bled more strongly since the haori had been the only thing protecting them instead of her legs covered by the uniform.
The cuts were bloody and stinged, and Ayaka's nose scrunched up in disgust at the mere thought of so many sticky blood covering her.
Above all, the biggest change was her hair, that sticked to her face and neck in greasy and sweaty strands.
"Are you okay?" Tanjirou asked in worry, eyes not being able to help but fix on her injuries.
"What does that matter now?" Ayaka bit back, hissing the slightest at the stinging of her injuries. "We must hurry and get away from here as fast as possible, only a pillar can take care of this, we have no chances of winning."
"It matters a lot, Aya! Am I the only one from the both of us that doesn't want you to die!?" Tanjirou exclaimed, squeezing her shoulders too tightly.
Ayaka slapped his hands away.
"Don't touch me," she hissed, squinting. "It hurts."
Tanjirou frowned in confusion.
"My injuries," Ayaka offered as an explanation.
"Ah," was the only thing he said.
Rui looked at them deep in thought, expression symilar to the one he wore as he read Ayaka's letter.
"Siblings?" He whispered, pointing a trembling finger at Tanjirou and Nezuko. "Even if his sister is a demon… they're still together."
Ayaka waved for the siblings to get back.
«I don't like this», she thought, tightening her jaw.
The sister, injuries already healed, seemed to get alarmed too.
"R-rui." Her voice trembled.
Rui continued muttering on delusion. "This genuine bonds, I want them!"
The old sister got up in a hurry, terrified.
"W-wait a minute! Please, wait!" She desperately pleaded. "I'm your old sister! Don't abandon your old sister!"
"Silence!" Rui ordered, sending towards her another wave of threads that beheaded the sister without a second thought.
Tanjirou backed away in fear as he pushed Nezuko closer to him. He grabbed Ayaka's wrist as well, squeezing in a sign of terror, like a plead for her to do the same.
For once Ayaka obeyed, giving slowly fearful steps back until she could do nothing but crash against Tanjirou's chest. His heart was playing the hymn of horror.
"We're going to die, Tanjirou," Ayaka whispered into his hear. "He's gonna cut us in half."
Rui turned his unnatural eyes to the siblings in a spider gaze.
"Boy," he called, biting. "Let's have a talk."