Yuu knew that the people from his village had, always, been selfish and resentful.
They filled the heads of their children with lies and resentment over something that wasn't there, neighbours that held bad intentions, non-existent villains and imaginary complots, and just like Ayaka, all of them only saw what they wanted to see.
He had known ever since the first moment. His memory, as prodigious as Ayaka's sight, had never allowed him to forget any of the malicious gestures where their true nature showed itself.
No one from the village had ever asked for her mother's help, they didn't trust a doctor that came from the city and had become a part of the family by marriage. Although the Kobayashi family had been there for generations and fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers worked and lived together in their time.
They didn't starve because people from other places went to her, the Rengoku family had been regular customers until the resignation to death had fallen over the father and the son could do nothing but cry the death of the mother and take care of the brother. Other families he still remembered the names of had been the Kobayashi's livelihood and had given them a warm meal to have everyday, as the villagers refused to spend even a single coin in something as tricky as science to save the grandparents and the parents that died one after the other, because it would be more advantageous to let them die now that they were old and couldn't bring money to the family instead of keeping them alive and having another burden to feed.
All of them wore simple clothes made out of faded away fabrics, along with cheap pins and kimonos lent from older to younger siblings, but not because they were humble or that kind of person that preferred the religious low ways of life over the flamboyant. It was known that drawing attention to oneself was like directly asking for one to be torn apart by the sharp tongues of the neighbours.
His father hadn't been any different, he was just more discreet. He didn't like when Yuu wore nice clothes to go out or when he talked too much with the people that worked on the market. His mother had always called his paranoia something stupid, but of course, she was different, she hadn't been born on the village.
As much as he had been born there, Tamaki had never treated the Iwamoto family like the others did. He whispered comments under his breath about them during lunch or sent some glances towards the kind family he believed pretentious, but sometimes he shared a bottle of sake with Makoto and Kaori was a pleasant companion that laughed at his jokes.
No, the reason Yuu started to loathe Ayaka had nothing to do with his parents or the people from the village.
And the reason why Yuu had stopped wishing to heal had nothing to do with the abhorrence he felt toward his first friend. Instead, it had been born from the consequences.
Hurting someone was the biggest sin a doctor could ever commit. He hadn't understood that until witnessing it with his own two eyes. "Hurting" felt like any other word back then, with the innocence and ignorance of a kid that had never tasted blood. But when he tasted his parents', bloody corpses before him in a puddle made from his broken life, spilled because of his own sins, he grew to truly understand what his mother meant.
Someone that caused the sight of the corpses on the floor with horrified expressions wasn't worthy of being called a healer.
Takeshi had been crazy, insane like only someone deranged could be. And he had been obsessed with Ayaka, too.
When Ayaka wasn't with them to enjoy the sight of the little girl being ripped to shreds, he didn't stop bringing her up. "Aya-san this, Aya-san that". He commented that she was short, that her wrists were thin and delicate and how easy it would be to break them. He had Ayaka on her mind like a lover had the beloved, like a renaissance artist had his muse, somewhere high up he couldn't reach, trapped in a cage to be stared at but never listened to.
Yuu always grumbled, under his breath, that he didn't truly know Ayaka (of course, because if not he wouldn't have liked her). Takeshi answered every time that he didn't need to.
He knew Takeshi had a liking for her and her always pale skin, but he never thought he'd reach that point.
The sight of the demon in the darkness, over the corpses of his parents and the red that proved Yuu's sins (although back then he hadn't known they were his) had made him throw up.
He stepped back in a hurry, tripping against some oil lamp and accidentally setting the room on fire. The fire only showed him in more detail the fangs of the crazy kid and the crimson around him.
Doctors couldn't hurt anyone, doctors always had to be healers, medics, caretakers, the most gentle and kindest of souls.
The sight of Ayaka, appearing outside his house in between the ashes, had reminded him that he was nothing like that. And the sight of Ayaka, promising in a whisper that she'd protect him, had reminded him that she was.
And after that Takeshi disappeared just like that. No one ever found his corpse and Yuu never asked Ayaka if she had killed him because he knew whose fault it would be if she had.
So she, with winter's arrival, disappeared off the earth too, like princess Kaguya who came from the Moon and disappeared only after an entire life, leaving behind parents that had prayed years for her arrival. She was brought back to the white and colourless world of the gods, from where only her and her eyes more cursed than blessed could come.
Yuu could do nothing but wander around the village for days, since the roof he had always slept under was nothing but ashes, looking like a wretch and slowly losing the colour from his face and the flesh from in between his ribs.
Once he collapsed, in between the barren and empty land of the paddies, it wasn't Ayaka who came to save him, although they had similar eyes and both belonged to the same Moon she had come from.
Her grandmother had always been stubborn, too rough to be kind.
When seeing him there, starving, she couldn't help but think about kids from decades ago that cried over stolen melons. So with the harshness only she had, Kaede pinched his nose and made him open his mouth to drink. Then, when his throat wasn't dry she made him bite onto a piece of bread he tried with all his might not to swallow. She was smart enough to know that if she punched his throat he would have no other option but to swallow. Maybe Yuu would have died if she hadn't, that had been his wish back then.
"Aren't you gonna be a doctor!?" Kaede yelled, as he coughed the water she forced him to drink. "Aren't you gonna honour your mother!? Then live, goddamn it!"
"No! I don't want to!" He remembered saying. "I can't!"
The guts, the insides of a body, they had been an image horrendous enough for Yuu to believe the idea to be something horrific.
In contrast, Ayaka's parents were kinder.
To him, they offered the truth, instead of the lie they had told the people from the village.
The moment Ayaka had woken up after the accident she had left with a cultivator. Himejima, they called him, would train Ayaka for her to dedicate her life to killing people like Takeshi. That only made Yuu sink deeper in his own self pity. The reminder of Ayaka in between the ashes, ordering him to run away, only brought back the insides and the bloods and that he had thrown up just by looking. He'd never live up to her mother, even if he had memorized entire science books and could sing each and every one of the symptoms for tuberculosis.
He had always believed his memory to be something that could only bring perks. But when he memorized the blood and the expression on Ayaka's face every time he made her trip, his opinion on the matter changed.
Tanjirou had explained, as they bit onto some rice cookies in between his training, that it also happened to him, somehow, but not as much. The red of his family was carved under his eyelids the same way the insides were memorized on Yuu's mind. He guessed the demon slaying corps was a place full of people like him.
Lives that had been broken, lives that had been soaked in misery and shattered into a million pieces, and they weren't any kind of vase that could be glued together.
Takeshi, along with that village, had ruined their lives.
Then he didn't understand why Ayaka would want to go back to that place, go back to that people.
When he finally fell asleep, he found himself on the main street.
"Okay," he whispered to himself, in an attempt not to lose his mind. "Antimony, tellurium, iodine, xenon, caesium, barium."
It was his village, yes, but not the one he remembered.
Everything was colourful and flashy, with extravagant ornaments he was sure the villagers would have never used.
There was music in his ears and, for some reason, everything was filled with pigments that were too brilliant.
It was a parade. The entire village was swallowed in a colourful succession of people with drums, bells and trumpets that rumbled in a melody, intertwining with one another. The confetti was thrown at the air like the rich threw coins at the poor to seem merciful, and he didn't know any of these people. So full of joy, on their abundant and never ending happiness, that he wasn't able to say he really knew them.
When had the villagers been kind enough to do something like that? So flashy, with such nerve, going out into the streets wrapped in luxury and happiness for everyone else to see?
Even if hadn't woken up beforehand and he hadn't known that was a dream, Yuu wouldn't have believed that to be a reality. Like a human wouldn't have recognized as real the white world of the gods princess Kaguya had been brought back to.
His mother told him, when he had asked in his childish ignorance why Ayaka got sick so often, that Ayaka was actually like princess Kaguya who came from the Moon. And since she wasn't from earth, sometimes the celestial beings tried to take her back, and it was their mission to make her stay, or else she'd be really sad. For a long time he had believed Ayaka sprouted from bamboo instead of born from flesh and blood, and that was why he never minded. So every time Ayaka fixed her gaze on a little detail for too long or dozed off looking at the distance, Yuu told himself Ayaka came from the Moon, until he knew she was just as human as everyone else, and that the way she fluttered around him, the way she clutched to him, those weren't normal at all.
The drums muffled his ears along with the sweet melody of the flute, so he continued, "lanthanum, hafnium, tantalum, tungsten, rhenium, osmium" to shut them up.
He tripped against something in between the crowd of people that went out to watch the parade, with its countless bells. Fluff was against his legs. He huffed, giving him a sharp yellow eyed glare before disappearing again. He was much fatter than when he was alive.
When lifting his gaze he found Ayaka. He knew it was her because he had never seen the mole on the left cheek in any other person, but the hair shone on top of her head, the skin had the tan of someone that spent their afternoons basking in the sunlight and the way she smiled was the way she did back when she was ten.
She wasn't alone, despite the people that went out to celebrate the parade, she was surrounded by faces he knew very well.
They were born relatively closer to one another in age, one or two years of difference at best. The kids Yuu had clutched to after Ayaka were around her, as they all happily talked to her, chuckling and giving pats on the back as if they had been friends for a lifetime. And he didn't know them, either.
The demon was there too.
The demon that ruined his life looked the happiest he had as a human when he wasn't talking about "Aya-san". The purple bruises around his neck he usually had were nowhere to be seen, because that world was too kind to allow for a father to hit his son.
He talked with Ayaka without a worry, as if he had never been obsessed with her or as if he hadn't eaten Yuu's parents. And he could only wonder "why, why, why?"
His head pulsed, enough so to forget singing "iridium, platinum, gold" and walk past the parade and reach the group of kids he had been spending his time with for over a year.
Maybe that had been how Ayaka had felt, because he didn't know how but Takeshi was on the floor, blood pouring out from his nose, and for once Yuu didn't care about hurting someone else.
So he continued hurting, he destroyed his nose until knuckles pulsed. And when his hands hurt he kneeled him in the stomach and then kicked his shin.
"Die, you goddamn bastard!" That voice was as his as the bleeding knuckles, so he had to accept it as his, too.
Ayaka screamed and tried to make him stop, holding onto his back uselessly and relentlessly asking what was wrong. Everyone around them stepped back in horror because no one could understand how someone so full of hate could exist in such a fantastic world.
It was the other him, whatever illusion Ayaka had of him in his face, the one brave enough to join Ayaka in trying to stop him and manage to get him away from the bloody pulp he had turned Takeshi into.
She stepped back when everything returned to normal, a hand over her chest as she took deep breaths of air. Uneasy and with eyes trembling, her gaze slid from the Yuu covered in blood to the affectionate and impeccable Yuu that had been with her all day. Yuu guessed he was the scary one.
"What…?" Ayaka tried to exhale in confusion, at the same time as Yuu made an attempt to brush away with his sleeve the blood that had splashed his face.
When he had enough blood out of his eyes to see again Yuu got up, not before spitting at Takeshi (asshole) and taking a hold of Ayaka's wrist.
She looked at him in confusion, and that confusion continued when Yuu announced "we're leaving" and started to tug her along with him.
He didn't have much of an idea of where he was going as he waited, on the way, for his ears to stop rumbling. Ayaka didn't even try to clean his face like she had always done when they were kids. Instead, she tried to make him let her go, struggling to go back to the others and sending worried glances at Takeshi behind them.
"Yuu... Yuu... stop…" He heard Ayaka say, muffled. And he didn't notice how she hit him on the shoulder. Finally, when his ears stopped pulsing, he finally realized that oh, she was yelling. "Yuu stop! I said stop! Let me go!"
"You're in a dream! Ayaka, you're living in a dream!" This time he took her by both wrists. He remembered, he remembered everything, why couldn't she? How could she forget? "For fuck's sake, why would you dream about something like this, huh!? Why would you dream about the boy that ruined our lives!? About all those people that have always despised us!? A perfect world for those damn bastards!? That's your paradise!? A parade!?"
Ayaka let out a yelp when Yuu took her from the floor and settled her on his shoulder, hitting incessantly against his back and demanding for him to let her go. Not even when Yuu exclaimed that Nezuko needed her help did she stop struggling.
«How did I wake up?» Yuu wondered, huffing and covered in blood, at the same time as he tried with all his might for Ayaka not to fall from his shoulder.
The bridge gave him the answer.
"Mercury, thallium, lead," Yuu sang on his head.
Ayaka kept screaming, on his back, for him to let her go, to stop, to leave her alone for once and to allow her to be happy. Yuu, however, threw them both into the river.
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The red of Nezuko's fire finally gave him back his sense of smell.
It dyed the snow the same way the insides of his family had, and that made for the white snow that had buried him to suddenly melt and so, he finally remembered. Remembered the crimson of his sin.
He knew the fire of his sister came with her demon blood, and that if she was spilling blood, then something bad must have happened. So, again, he burned, because he had no other option but to do so, until he turned into ashes.
How to get out? How to get out? How to get out?
He didn't remember going in, only having walked from the hill of the mountain. So he ran down and down, but the trees were endless and everything was white.
Did he have to destroy something? Did he have to open a path with his sword somehow?
«You already have what you have to cut»
He knew his father hadn't been an imagination, although when Tanjirou turned around (with the intention of hugging him) he wasn't there anymore.
"I already have…" Tanjirou repeated in a whisper. "What I have to cut."
The nichirin sword was firmly tied to his waist, and it had never been hard to take it out, not at least until then.
"Ah, there he goes again."
Red of blood and misfortunes.
The girl leaned her chin on his shoulder and her breathing crashed against Tanjirou's cheek.
"Where do you think you are going?" She asked. "Tell me, where do you think you're going?"
"I'm getting out of here," Tanjirou answered, placing a second hand over the handle of his nichirin sword. "I'm gonna wake up."
"So you finally see it, took you long enough," who now Tanjirou recognized as Aya said. "But well, what else to expect from you, older brother?"
Tanjirou knit his eyebrows further together the more Aya leaned on his back, smiling with the devil's mischief when she saw him take out the sword from its sheath.
"So you're leaving," Aya said, playing with one of Tanjirou's curls in between her fingers. "Do it, then, abandon your family. But at least be aware of your decision and what it entails, you're not leaving just this dream, you're leaving them, too."
"That's not true," It wasn't true the way Tanjirou didn't abandon his family when they were massacred in the snow. And it wasn't true the way Aya didn't abandon her family, either.
"Right." Aya's smile widened, closed, at the same time as her hands went down to Tanjirou's and held onto them and his sword. "Be selfish, older brother."
Her red stood out against the snow when Tanjirou pushed her away and she fell to the floor, chuckling in between the white of winter.
"I'm not the one you're mad at, older brother!"
"Shut up for once! You're the one that can't see a thing!"
And, screaming, the red painted the white of the snow and Tanjirou woke up.
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The stream was strong, intense, but, over everything else it could have been, it was messy. It couldn't be compared to the infinity she liked so much.
Ayaka got out of the river and found herself on the shore, impeccable clothes now soaked and wet hair sticking to her face. She was sure she wouldn't find the silver ornament again.
Yuu appeared not too long after, coughing and confused when he realized they were still there, and that Ayaka was looking at him. And she didn't look very happy.
Luckily the river washed away Takeshi's blood, although it could be luck or not, because now Ayaka could hit him.
"What the hell is wrong with you, huh!?" She started, slapping him so strongly he ended up looking back. "Why couldn't you just leave me alone!? Why do you always have to ruin everything!?"
Yuu slowly blinked, processing the burning injury that started to bloom where Ayaka's palm crashed against his cheek.
"We didn't wake up…" Yuu whispered, thunderstruck. When Ayaka was satisfied she sat down again on the shore, wherever the river had dragged them to.
She covered her face with her hands, losing in a blink the anger she had used to lash out at him, as she stayed still, kneeling before the river as if it could get her back to the village.
"Why are you like this?" She whispered in a painful moan. "Why do you always snatch away my happiness?"
Yuu huffed, still paralyzed in astonishment, and turned around to her.
He had been wrong, it wasn't that she looked blinding. The colour on her cheeks, the shiny hair, the lightly tanned skin, they weren't to make Ayaka be any more pretty or perfect.
She looked like a normal girl, who had been a normal child, who had friends like everyone else and who had spent her life like any other person. She was no princess Kaguya that had come from the skies, beautiful and ethereal. She was not a being above the existence of mortals.
That had been the tale she would have liked to live, because although Ayaka had spent her entire childhood wishing to live the adventures of samurais him and her father had told her, those fairy tales she had considered reality because there was nothing else to prove they weren't, influenced by Nobunaga, princess Kaguya, the hero Momotaro or the goddess Amaterasu. And with them she spent a life, tied to a bed that kept her alive, and what she had desired the most was that she wouldn't have had to do so.
He had known Ayaka wouldn't realize it was a dream because her sight had always been like that. Only able to look at one thing at once and losing the entirety of it all, he hadn't believed she'd be able to discover it by herself. And seeing only one side of things made her get stuck in an illusion of what she first saw.
Yuu got closer to her, slowly, and he didn't know if it was because Ayaka didn't move that she didn't slap away his hand when placing it on her shoulder.
"I'm sorry, I didn't want to-" The words get stuck on his throat. But Yuu muttered "bismuth, polonium, astatine" and managed to continue. "I think you're… a very kind person, Ayaka."
The answer he got was the tiniest reaction, as she flinched over herself. Yuu didn't remove his hand from her.
"For your ideal world to be… such a beautiful place, where there's no hunger, no suffering or no malice, made solely for these people, for that guy… I think it proves that you're a very kind and gentle person."
"I'm sorry for having apologized back then," Yuu continued. "You were right, I only wanted to leave behind all the blame of… having done all that to you, I never took into account how you felt, over ignoring all that. And hurting you, again, is really not something I want."
Ayaka flinched more, shoulders slowly rising and falling as she sighed. Like that, looking so indecisive and paralyzed, she guessed she must have looked like Kanao Tsuyuri. And Ayaka wondered just who that was.
"There's nothing for me out there," she whispered, in the tiniest, most broken voice. "Dad died, mum hates me, you don't love me and now even Tanjirou hates me, how could I possibly blame them?"
Yuu staggered. "Out there?"
"Outside this dream, of course. I've known all along." Ayaka finally looked up at him, and although her face had a grimace, she didn't seem angry. "When I saw you… there with me, I mean not you, the other guy, he didn't even have a single speck of dust on him. Actually, there's not a single speck of dust in this place."
"This really is your paradise," Yuu joked, placing his hand on her shoulder.
"You say there's nothing out there for you," he continued, rubbing circles on her back, "but I don't think you truly believe that." Ayaka furrowed her brow. "There's always something worth living for, people we care about, a chance to make it up to them and to make it up to your own self. Just… just think about what your father would have wanted for you."
Ayaka slapped his hand away and went up to her feet.
"How do we wake up?" She asked, now adopting the usual grumpy grimace that appeared on her face whenever she talked to him.
"Hm." Yuu skipped a bit at the sudden jump and fumbled. "To tell you the truth, I don't know. I jumped from a rooftop."
"Why would you jump from…?" Ayaka pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "It doesn't matter now. Then we have to jump from somewhere high up, right?"
Yuu nodded, Ayaka looked at him from the corner of her eye.
"The only house that has a second floor is… yours," she said, with the smallest pinch of worry. "Will you be okay?"
He nodded. "Yeah, yeah, no problem," although Ayaka could hear him mutter "radon, francium, radium".
"Where even are we?" She asked, finally getting up. Yuu followed her, as they both looked around.
"Oh," Yuu said. "It's your house."
When they went in through the backyard and walked past in a second, Yuu noticed the flowers in the garden were much more colourful than the ones he remembered. Kaori saw them, as she folded the laundry, and waved a hand as a hello.
It had been years since the last time they held each other's hands, and Ayaka tugged him harder when her mother made the comment of "Ayaka being the happiest she had ever been when adopting the Kobayashi name". That made Yuu blink, but Ayaka tugged him once again and they both went out of the house as fast as they had gone in, with a confused Kaori asking behind their backs if they wanted some food for the way.
The paddies were the most splendid thing Yuu had ever seen, shining gold under the Sun, and although they should have been warm like something so fantastic should be, they were as cold as the world of the gods where princess Kaguya lived.
Ayaka looked up at the Sun. What a beautiful, cold sight.
It was Yuu this time the one to tug her when they came across the doors of the house that was nothing but ashes in real life. Nozomi had always been kind with the Iwamoto family, but her happiness was even greater than the one he remembered when seeing Ayaka go in with Yuu. Tamaki's head was behind her, and they could nearly hear him tell a joke, but they walked past him in a hurry, with Ayaka having to recompose because Yuu tugged her too harshly and made her trip.
The balcony wasn't too big, just enough for the both of them. Yuu stretched a hand out to Ayaka as she took the sandals off and helped her get on. He ended up hugging her, as they both looked down at the floor. Harsh reality.
"You know," Ayaka started. "I'd like for this to be true, I'd like for you not to have to live with my parents because yours aren't here anymore and that nothing about that back then had happened, I-"
"Me too," Yuu cut her off. "But what else can we do?"
Ayaka knit her eyebrows together and allowed for Yuu to pat her head as if she was a little girl.
"I don't think things can go back to how they used to be," she whispered, clutching onto his clothes. "I don't think we can be friends again, either. And that's something I lament."
Yuu made her bury her face in the gap between his neck and his shoulder after saying that he agreed.
"Don't look," he softly told her. And she didn't.
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