Chapter 2: Saburo
His name was Saburo. An outcast with no family, who lived by hunting and gathering for himself—a self-sufficient man who bothered no one in his daily life, and whom no one bothered in their daily lives. A person living quietly in the woods and who wished for nothing more than peace for the rest of his years. That was who he was, to her; that was his introduction to her.
Days had passed after their first meeting; following them, he helped her do just about anything and everything, having had to haul her to different locations when needed, such as when he visited the town to find clothes for her, and then when he took her to see the village doctor. Nursing her back to health took a sizable portion of his time every day succeeding the initial visit, and for the first time in years, Saburo experienced once more the life of the common man.
Those days turned to weeks, the first of which she had been a no-name guest who lived in his house who had been too weak to do almost anything by herself, and too disoriented to even speak, but when Saburo realized that it might be a linguistic barrier that her silence had been indicating her attempts to overcome, he took it upon himself to take her through the basics of Japanese, setting aside intermediate and fluent Japanese for another time.
Once all of that initialization had been completed, the time they spent together turned to months—for the first couple she had been a no-name stranger who lived in his house and helped with menial duties accommodating them both, but eventually there came a time when she was able to speak her name to him. To Saburo, that was good enough.
Over time, as she regained her health, and grew stronger, and more intelligible, he came to teach her how to hunt, and how to gather. He taught her language, customs, trivia to get by every day within the house, and tips on how to perform the most basic chores—he taught her almost everything there was to know of the land, including the history of the town, and then the country itself—something that struck him as a bit odd as a requirement, but dismissible—and eventually, before he realized it, she had become a part of his life.
Gradually, she spoke to him more and more clearly, and conversation flowed naturally between the both of them, but there were times when she kept to herself; those were whenever he inquired about her. Those questions had come late, as he did not even realize that there were things he himself had to learn of till later on: Questions of who she was were met with a blank-faced silence, as though she herself was oblivious. Questions of where she came from were corresponded to with a thoughtful look, and then an apologetic shake of her head. Questions of when she arrived were answered with thoughtful quiet and an "I do not know."
Questions about the sword that had been tied to her hands were retracted after he sensed her pensive, bothered unease—not solely because he did not want to pry, but because he found her insecurity and apprehension regarding that topic contagious.
Ever since finding her, the feeling of having a presence with him came to become something of an awkward thing for him to get used to again. Her gaze often made him uncomfortable whenever he felt her eyes watching his back, and the interactions with her had proven to be difficult for even himself to carry out. She was someone whom he had never met before, and was a foreigner, no less. The looks they received from the townspeople the first time he ventured into town with someone else in tow back when she first came were too much for him; not only did her black hair and brown skin stand out, the very fact that Saburo of all people was accompanied by someone they never saw before came across as a bit too difficult to accept under the circumstances.
That was to say, normal circumstances. As much as he would like to think otherwise, Saburo was a pariah; and he had no one to blame but himself.
[]
"Hassan."
"Yes."
"Hang up the towels. I have gathered them by the door."
"Yes, Master Saburo."
During the time when Saburo taught her the basics of the language, he came to the point where they discussed honorifics. They varied by familiarity, and by authority. He had not been one to tell people how to address him; it was of little consequence to him. Rather, he enjoyed, inwardly, seeing how people perceived him through the honorific they chose for him themselves; it not only told him where he stood among them, according to their perception, but also informed him of the kind of people they were.
Hassan was an obedient person, compliant and quick to learn. Her movements, he had noticed, were very efficient—almost mechanically so—but her demeanor was all but inhuman. She was a humane individual, understanding empathy for the animals they hunted, respectful of their lives, and eager to learn whatever he had to offer each night. She was quiet—stealthy—and never made more noise than necessary, but intent. What she desired to accomplish was always clear to him from her mannerisms—and secretly, it was something he admired; a person so young yet capable of putting her mind to something so patiently; a trait that made Tanjiro Kamado popular among the adults, including Saburo himself.
Oftentimes she would get absorbed into her tasks, but never to the point where they drowned out her surroundings.
In other words, Hassan was competent; a source of gladness and pride for Saburo, though he wondered, with a touch of guilt he would bury quickly, if he could claim such a person as similar to being his own progeny….
Outside, he heard the sound of clips being used to hang the towels as he had requested, and the tautness of the line coming into effect by providing a short bounce where it stretched after the weight of sheets were added below them. He was just finalizing the rearrangement of the tools in the house when Hassan returned, standing by the doorframe, putting away her boots.
"I have returned."
"Yes." Saburo, not looking at her, allowed a small, serene smile to grace his features. "Thank you," he added shortly after.
They were thinking the same thing right then. They had cleared the day's tasks quite early, and there was nothing left to do, except, likely, her studies. As she moved to grab her book she used for taking notes, Saburo held up a hand. "Hassan, I have been quite tired as of late. I'm afraid that I will not be able to tutor you today."
Hassan blinked, and nodded her head. "Yes, Master Saburo." Lately, Saburo had been venturing outside the house later than eight more and more often, and she believed that it had probably tired him out, gradually. She wondered what it was that he had been doing outside so late, against his own rules.
There was a silence from her as he made to move towards his sandals, but, as she began to think that he was going to go out for his usual evening strolls into the woods starting from an earlier time, he suddenly stopped. "…I will make some tea for myself," he said a bit after the pause. "Would you like some as well?"
Hassan pondered it a little, before shaking her head, muttering her gratitude toward his offer.
"Very well. You are free to do as you please for the rest of the day, but return by eight."
[]
In winter, the sun set much earlier than in the other seasons—that was something even a child could make note of, but Saburo was not a child. He was a man aging into his later years, and as someone in his position, his world had come to expand far beyond the rising and the setting of the sun, or merely the seasons' habits around Japan; namely, he knew the habits of the birds as they migrated from their country for somewhere with a warmer climate, and their gradual departure over the course of the beginning months of winter.
That was the third month, then. December. The birds had long departed, though a few weaker, older ones still remained behind, letting out their final chirps before the cold would come to claim them, high up in their nests.
Yet the flight of avians were not of concern to him. It was the hour at which demons would begin to prowl at night. 8PM. At least, if it was of any indication at all, the demon he knew would only come out at 8PM, no matter the season, and no matter when the sun set. In the past, from within his humble wooden cabin, he could feel its evil presence outside past eight; whether it circled his home, or climbed the trees surrounding it, he would not know…but he could hear its voice on some nights every single year, beckoning him to come out and join his family.
Delusions were what he would now wave them off as. Ever since Hassan came into his life, those fears grew weaker. They definitely must have been mere delusions. After all, with the weakening of his obsessions over the great spirit hunters, and of his ritual of visiting that tree every evening, came the peace that his mind had come to embrace from Hassan's company. He had stopped hearing those noises haunting his abode, with her company every night then. That was when he began taking the risk to leave his doorstep—to pay his final respects and to leave his personal demons for death by the end of that winter, even though something always compelled him to leave earlier than he would like to.
The tea was warm in both his hands and his throat. He blew gently into his small cup, and the steam and aroma that wafted off the surface of the liquid returned to him a homely breath that warmed his face, juxtaposing the warmth of his house to the frigid winds that blew outside. Hassan never disobeyed him—not even accidentally, so Saburo was not worried that she would come home late against his rule. He took another sip of his tea, and, without realizing it, drifted off into a peaceful nap in his position.
[]
The soles of her sandals scrunched the snow beneath them. It was intended to be a light walk outside that she was on, which she would prefer to do in more open footwear, thus she had put away her boots in favor of her sandals. The former would not have brought snow to Saburo's doorstep, which was why she would often wear the heavier pair when on duty.
She looked around, observing the trees, and noting their features to guide her on her walk around the woods, making note of additional details on each of them with each day and listened to the chirps of the birds above, counting their numbers and comparing their sources.
She liked to explore the woods, and find new paths for herself to go around; new routes, routes that were easier to take going upward, those that were more accessible to scale going downward, the burrows of the small animals that they hunted, and the places where snow gathered least. It was a mere hobby, and not something that she would do for strategy, even though she would share her self-found knowledge with Saburo should it easen his life somewhat. There was something in exploring that kindled her spirit somewhat, despite the cold sometimes bypassing the loose kimono she wore for home.
Minutes passed, and it was a full hour before she began to grow a bit weary of her surroundings. It was the basic human condition to become anxious when one was alone, and it was merely the mind tricking the person into believing that there were eyes trained on them when there were none in order to exercise caution against unseen threats. Hassan knew that, yet something felt different this time.
It was still 4PM, based on her perception of time since she left her home, but the sun was already low, and the temperatures were rapidly growing colder—faster than they had been a few days ago. Eventually, she became too irrationally nervous to continue her trek, and decided that it was a good time to return home. Climbing over some roots, her kimono got caught on a branch and the sole of her sandal separated from her foot the moment it came into contact with a protrusion in the ground simultaneously, leading to her unable to protect herself from falling down and striking her head against a rock—and almost immediately, she blanked out in the snow.
[]
She was in the same place again—in that darkness. The skull that had incinerated her being was nestled into the making of a dusty throne of worn stone, seeming to have been fused with it, and she prostrated herself before it. Nothing came—not the voice, and not the fire. There were no flowers, and no clouds; no stars and no masks: It was only her, and the death that sat judge above her.
There was only a silence; a constant, deafening one, and it grew to become intense enough that her mind perceived it as being a voice unto itself. As she waited for a message, her eyelids shut, and in the darkness of her blocked vision came a mesh of memories. The voice she heard months ago came to her once more in memory, and this time, she could appraise what it said.
Th t sh h d gr wn w k. Th t sh w ld str y ff th p th f th H ss ns. Th t t w ld c me f r h r h d wh n th t t m c m . nd th t t h d g ft d h r bl d t pr v h rs lf w rthy f l f .
"Three storms hath set their voracity toward Nippon. They wilt arrive, and their traces wilt litter this nation only when their predecessors' have gone, but lest the claws of these heretics besmirch the lives of persons and nature, the blight thou carrieth within thy body shalt burn them to cinders.
"Should their blades not be dulled, they wilt seeketh more lives to stoke their winds, and the evening bell wilt toll the name of all nations upon this earth.
"Hearken. Do not force the Lord in Heaven to return early."
[]
Saburo woke to a damp feeling on his thigh. His kimono stuck to the area where it was wet, and he held but an empty cup in his hand that dangled off his fingers at a sharp angle. It looked as though he had wasted some precious tea, to his dismay. The small flame he had made had been extinguished long ago by itself, and it left the drink to become cold within the kettle. He made to stand, stretching his limbs and popping some joints. Looking around, he noted that Hassan had not been back yet, which did not surprise him—if she had been, he would not have woken up with an uncleaned tea set—and that everything, including the ōdachi, was in place. Outside had gone dark, as typical of winter. He arched his back and took in a deep breath, before stopping abruptly, eyes widening. The tea had been too cold for it to have been only a couple of hours since he fell into slumber.
Hurriedly, he went to look at his clock to read the time, and made for outside quickly. He looked around for Hassan—no sign of her anywhere nearby—and, with a deep breath taken, yelled out her name.
The sole word echoed into the forest, passing by the ears of the foreigner, and landing on those of the being perched on the fallen trunk above her prone form. It watched over her unconscious self with gleeful anticipation, allowing a cackle to escape its lips.
The creature turned its gaze to the bark of the tree behind Hassan, and sneered at it. Through its bared teeth, which formed an inhumanly wide smile, came a distorted voice: "T i , b r , u i l dd a o r n e t re ."
Shortly after, the young woman stirred from her slumber, but by the point that she had awoken, the creature was long gone.
[]
Cold, cold. What happened? Her body ached, the way one's would after waking up from sleeping in the wrong position, and her head throbbed acutely, but her pain was amplified by the fact that her clothes had been soaked through by the layers of snow she had slept on. It was merely two months ago that she had caught a fever, but it appeared that she was going to burden Saburo again with another cold, then. As she gathered herself, she thought of options to make it up to him…when, with a chill, she realized that she might have gone past the curfew he had set.
She stood upright, snow falling off of the creases in her clothing, one weak leg put forward. It shook a bit, before steadying fairly quickly, and she started to look at her surroundings to gain an idea of where she was at the time, when her eyes landed on something peculiar. On the bark of a nearby tree were odd-looking distortions. She moved closer to it to inspect it; perhaps she would be able to find a clue as to where she was based on the trees she was around. Squinting, she was able to make out the faint outline of a few characters in Japanese in the darkness, yet, despite all the tutoring, she did not understand what they were.
They appeared to be words to her, but without any surrounding context, the message, if it was one, did not get through to her, and she was left tilting her head to the side and furrowing her brows to get an idea of what it meant. Perhaps she could show them to Saburo next time, when they hunted again… For then, she only needed to make her way back home. She had never disappointed him before, and so she would hate to start.
Swaying, she ambled over the multiple hills of the mountain, carefully stepping over depressions that were concealed by the night, which came off familiarly easy to her, while trying to recall where she had gone before she fell unconscious.
That tree was ahead of the one below the hill closer to the ridge over the one that still had some leaves remaining, and if she followed that small path, she would be led to the tree with oddly-shaped claw marks… As she began to follow the path that would lead to a small clearing that she had gone through on her way to that spot, she heard an eerie cry.
Perhaps it was a regular sound, but the winds that were picking up had distorted it greatly, leading to the effect of a short howl of a wolf-like creature. It certainly sounded that way to her, but when she focused on what it was…she made out her name.
Saburo? He was…yelling. Her senses went deeper, still, and she felt rapid footsteps with the signature of sprinting. He was looking for her—she had to hurry and return! Leaving the clearing, that was when she felt the chilling presence of a creature behind her, but she dared not look back, feigning ignorance and rushing through the sloping hills, dotted with hard ridges and rough turns, while the snowstorm continued to intensify.
She pushed past branches, broke some off, ducking under others, and felt the cold getting to her, making her skin number and robbing her of her finer controls over them. At several points her face was assaulted with a blast of snow that she believed must have come from her drops onto beds of condensed ice, and the frigidity of the surroundings made the loudening voice of Saburo become more distorted and more similar to like that within a dream. Her breaths deafened her ears, and she sucked in too much cold air from the speed at which she ran, until finally she closed her eyes and powered through the aerial blankets of white ahead of her, the sounds of arboreal pursuit behind her making it difficult to stay calm.
Before long, she burst through a frame of frail branches and tumbled into more stable ground, several meters from none other than Saburo himself, who looked more disheveled than she had ever seen him, panting hard and bewildered at her sudden appearance, before his expression melted into a mixture of relief and…sadness.
He kicked up small heaps of snow with his sandals as he made his way towards her, locking her in a sudden hug—something that had never happened before. She was too surprised to say anything—not even to apologize—before she hesitantly, no, movedly made to return the gesture…
It was her first time giving him such an embrace, and they both reveled in the silence they shared, the snowstorm around them subsiding in noise as they listened only to each other's breaths, listening to them slow down and stabilize. He must have been worried sick for me…, she thought guiltily. In her mind, she had been surprised at how worried he had been instead of mad. She had assumed that the curfew had been out of disciplinary protocol, but then, as footsteps behind her approached, and as Saburo perked up and began returning to his previously frantic demeanor, she realized only then that there must have been something more.
Saburo's arms around her slipped off from her back, and she felt his breaths heating up above her head. When she herself turned to look, she too became a believer. Then, no matter how much she would try to forge a normal life for herself, she knew it would never come to fruition, because standing before the both of them was the cause of many a loon, and was unmistakably demonic.
[]
" bu ," the creature…spoke…to them, taking steps forward. "I th g I d i cl r o n t nd r a ou pas igh ."
Hassan could not help but let her eyes go wide as she took in the form of the being approaching them. An abominable thing it was, with mangled legs, a sinewy torso, veiny arms, all of them disproportionate to each other in size, and…a completely smooth, round face. Featureless, hairless, and clean… Its eyes were rounded, but strikingly beady—that was, it struck nothing short of fear into her heart upon catching sight of it. Its beady red eyes, glowing in the white snowstorm—no, through it—came closer and closer, and the movements that such a misshapen body made as it advanced were an awful thing to bear witness to.
"O ," it realized something, and that was when its face morphed into something as grotesque as the rest of its body, which had the strange effect of making it less fearsome and foreign, yet made its threat much more clear. It expanded its mouth, both horizontally and forward, into something that resembled a wolf's maw, while retaining an uncanny, human-like aspect. Its eyes grew even larger than it was before, and the blood vessels in them became more clear to see—something that Hassan inwardly asked to stop as they had enlarged.
"Spe ng in e hu an tong e is…something uncomf rtable for me to do wit that kind of face…," it said as its voice turned mystically from unintelligible to sounding as normally as any regular villager's, till it finally affixed them with a clearly fake look of civility. "I hope this is better?"
The way its mouth moved as it formed human sounds out of such a monstrous face was something of a horrific marvel, and Hassan had all but had enough of it. Yet, as Saburo remained silent, she simply was still at a loss on how to respond, many of the words it spoke being any combination of lost to the blizzard, to its vocal distortion's transition into more or less clear, and being too advanced for her at the time.
"Saburo, you don't really believe that you're truly free from me, do you? I've been watching you every single time you went to visit that tree of yours, you know? I get the message." The demon crossed its fingers together, "I know I've been more lenient on you lately, but you shouldn't think that I would let you go that easily after all these years we've spent together."
"So you knew…," Saburo spoke for the first time since meeting the demon, his voice shaky, and barely more than a whisper—while it was hard for Hassan to make out despite her proximity to him, the demon picked up on it without any indication of difficulty.
"I know all there is about you. Ever since I ate your family all those years ago," Hassan froze in her spot, her whole body stiffening, "you've been a really interesting person to watch—my only source of entertainment. Seeing you suffer so much like that was so joyful, you know?"
"…Why?" Saburo whispered to her with a raspy voice, as though his throat had dried up all at once. "It's still 7PM," Hassan's head rose slightly at that, "so why are you here already?"
"I had to lay low for a long, long while, avoiding the demon slayers they sent after me and avoiding direct contact with them," it began, "I think they just gave up on me because I hadn't killed anyone in so long, so you should know what that means." As it finished looking around, as though it had been confined, the demon's eyes turned into slits. It glared at them, malicious. "I've been very starved."
[]
There was a great many thing that Saburo did not know about the great spirit hunters, yet craved to. During his search for knowledge, from whatever source presented itself to him, he found out one important thing about the demon slayers—that was, the fact that they carried weapons called the Nichirin Blades, said to be one of the only weapons that could banish demons into the realm of death.
Nichirin Blades possessed few distinct features that distinguished them from regular weapons, and among them were that they varied in color, but that when they did, the length of the sword was undisturbedly of that hue. They also possessed unique, engraved characters at the base of their blade; the brand of a rare group of swordsmiths somewhere in Japan.
The sword that Hassan had appeared to him with displayed no such characteristics; its blade's face was distorted with wisps of black that covered the sheen of metal beneath it, and there were no such words written on it. Aside from the black bandages wrapped around its hilt, it had little in the way of decoration.
Learning that, Saburo let go of the miniscule hope he had when taking her in, instead wishing to focus on the present and what new future he could forge with the visitor.
Yet, then, when the path leading outside the torment he could not escape appeared, he once again found there to be a hole in the darkness—and though his eyes had adjusted to it and could make it out, Hassan's had not, and she would fall in.
"I have no name, but I have one intention tonight." The demon raised one finger to represent its goal, and pointed it square at Hassan. "I will kill that woman and watch you thrash, Saburo. It's what I live for."
[]
His name was Saburo. An outcast with no family, who lived by hunting and gathering for himself—a self-sufficient man who bothered no one in his daily life, and who no one bothered in their daily lives. A person living quietly in the woods and who wished for nothing more than peace for the rest of his years. That was who he was, to her; that was his introduction to her.
But she knew there was something more to him that he had omitted telling her.
Saburo stood up, and an awkward silence just followed—before he yelled at the demon, pointing a thin finger at its face from afar. "You—You think I'm some kind of joke made for you? You think you can get away with this? I will have the demon slayers come for you. You'll regret it!" he spat with more anger and vitriol than Hassan had ever seen him expressing.
It was a lame threat he threw at her, but he could not do much to her either way. He had no power, no strength, to truly confront a demon such as it. He had stammered on his words getting his message out, but what did he just accomplish then? All it did was to cause the well of emotions within him to finally overflow, and he let out a distressed yell at nothing in particular, arms taut and fists clenched, yet swung powerlessly as trepidation number his sense of control over his own body.
He was a man just waiting for his death, pacing around in powerless nervousness. While the cold blew through his thin kimono and pierced his skin, adrenaline sealed off that thermal pain, but stress over the need to protect Hassan muddled his brain and did nothing short of beginning to short-circuit his old mind.
At that, Hassan began to rise, uncertain and apprehensive about its not attacking them. She put an arm up to her left to push Saburo back, and to fend off the creature in case it suddenly lunged at him. "Master Saburo, please return home."
It was all she could say in the situation.
"She understands me! Saburo, listen to the girl, won't you? Ah, but don't walk away too far now. I want to make sure you'll see what I'm going to do to her."
Hassan fixed it with a look—it bore no malice, no fear, but seething, threatening anger toward the creature. She whispered to it, "I will not let you hurt Saburo."
The demon grimaced at her, eyes narrowing. "You won't?" it challenged.
The next few seconds, Hassan was silent, not saying a thing, not moving outside of finalizing her defensive stance—when the demon materialized right in front of her, and, before she could react, threw a fist at her that sent her flying backwards, far past Saburo, who appeared almost catatonic, when he whirled around to shout her name.
She rolled several times upon impact with the ground, feeling something in her middle more or less turned into something more tender than usual. That was when grew afraid for her life. Too afraid to even breathe, or even turn around, the air had been knocked right out of her by the sudden, unstoppable force that pummeled her with such intensity that a path of snow had been dug over her trajectory, leading all the way to the side of Saburo's house; her ears were ringing, and her eyes blurred with tears that suddenly appeared in them.
Involuntarily, her body forced vomit blood out of her—and some things that felt solid enough to be cartilage, no doubt. Unable to let them all out as they continued to flow, she forcefully put herself on her knees to prevent herself from choking on the stream of blood rising to her throat. Her arms were useless, feeling much too heavy to move, much less lift. Yet, even before she was able to comprehend just how powerless she was at the moment, a blast of wind blew her further backwards into the wall of the cabin as the demon once again landed in front of her, having had jumped all the way from where she had punched her.
She felt something in her back crack, and knew that the house's wooden exterior gave way to her dislocated shoulder. Her eyes wandered helplessly, and caught a glimpse of the towels she had hung earlier being splattered with what seemed to be her own blood, alongside more ribbons along the ground that laid in stark contrast to the white snow.
"I've always, always, wanted to break this little house to pieces, but where was the fun in that?" The creature sauntered up to her fallen form, and gave her an amicable smile. "That was, till you came and offered me a toy I could wreck this shitty house with! So thanks!"
Hassan braced what she could.
The demon wrapped a single, large hand around both of her legs, and lifted her up into the air, and from what she could gather from its words through her splitting headache, it was going to use her as a batting tool to break the house apart. That was when something sizzled within her—too weak to resist, to injured to fight back, something odd occurred—and suddenly, the blood she was leaking out from almost every part of her body returned to being warm after the snow had invaded her insides through opened wounds.
Her ripped skin grew darker, her bloodied hair turning more like a bruise, till she felt the skin of the demon wrapped around her feet peel off—and she was sent flying through the wall and into a corner of the house, dust rising from the force of the blow, with splinters flying everywhere, several stuck onto Hassan's skin, before melting right out. The frigid, raging wind blew through the hole in the wall, rapidly dropping the temperature within the house.
"Ouch, what was that!" the demon complained and inspected its hands, where it found black splotches beginning to discolor its palm. Bewildered, it muttered, "What the…? Wisteria…?" No, that was not it… Was his death finally…?
Hassan did not hear it. She was struggling to even remain conscious, with what little shreds of mind she could assemble left. She did not know what she could do at that point, but fear compelled her body to move…and it did. With all the strength she could muster, her arm, now completely exposed after the demon had torn away her kimono, rose, and, twitching the entire way, grabbed hold of the ōdachi that she had fallen right next to. She heard her bones crack, and joints she did not know existed—or severely dislocated ones—pop, but at that point, the cold had conveniently numbed her sense of pain, and she slowly stood up, in a daze, holding the end of the sword's bandages in her left hand.
"Impossible…," the demon whispered, then scowling. "Are you a Demon Slayer after all!?"
Saburo rushed to the scene, wheezing hard, seeming more cognizant than before. "Stop this, demon! Hassan has no business with you!" he bellowed till his voice frayed at the edges, something Hassan recognized as what his strained voice sounded like. "I am your target! Not her! ME!" His arms flailed around frantically as he gestured to it, to her, and then to himself, and finally he threw a punch at the creature—a feeble attempt to catch its attention, which at least managed to serve to break it out of its reverie of inspecting the splotches on its hand. "Gah!" Saburo recoiled backwards, cradling his arm in pain.
"…Really, Saburo? If you really wanted to die, you should've tried sleeping in the snow in the past. I would've at least given you a painless death while you were asleep!" it breathed quietly, yet intensely to him, still wary of the spots that were not healing, but choosing to turn to its object of interest first. Demons like itself could easily heal themselves of any wounds inflicted upon them by devouring humans, except if they were caused by the sun itself, so it needed to hurry and consume someone. The woman was unwrapping the blade—something that was not quite a Nichirin Blade, yet still felt so wrong—but her unsteady hands and arms were slowing her progress greatly, and her legs threatened to give out under her any time. She was the perfect candidate for its first meal in ages, but it had begun to suspect that her very body was the cause of its injuries, somehow…
If it could devour Saburo and regain its strength in time, it could be rid of the dangerous woman quickly. The choice was clear for it to make, but it was still hesitant—something its demonic mind just could not comprehend.
Saburo tried to control his emotions and his breath, but gave up partway when he saw that his efforts were not making a difference. "Please—Please, spare her. I will do anything," he begged, shaking his head side-to-side when he finished his sentence, indicating that he was resolved to cast aside his humanity for Hassan's sake, finalizing the gesture with an intense look that was more directed toward himself than the demon itself.
Upon hearing it, unnoticed by the demon and Saburo himself, Hassan snapped out of her pain-induced trance, feeling her adrenaline finally stabilizing, and with a face numbed by shock, tears fell out of her eyes. She choked back her sobs, which would rack her lungs and her throat with scratchy pain if they escaped, but her tightening chest felt fragmented nonetheless. Willfully, she forced out a message to him through the swells in her throat that made the whole for air so much smaller:
"Do not…give in…to sadness, Master Saburo," Hassan breathed more than spoke. "Do not…give in…to that demon." If Saburo died, Hassan would be completely alone, and he would have condemned her to the same fate that he had been suffering through all those years with that creature. She would be left to mourn his death, and to spend countless nights with obsessions of avenging him. She could only imagine how painful it must have been for him—the pain she felt then, with her entire body broken, would be nothing compared to how she would feel with him gone. "Because, if you died," she gave him a serene smile, "I will die alongside you."
Giving up on uncoiling the bandages around the blade, she allowed her blood to line them throughout its length, and Hassan instantaneously struck—the demon retaliated the moment it realized what she aimed for, but the blade missed, sinking itself shallowly enough to draw a drop of its blood, but enough to let the poisoned gauze make contact with its flesh, where the demon's left fist that connected with her body sent Hassan flying backwards across the room again. The subsequent gust carried her weight, whereupon she collided with the wall on the other side and collapsed in a pile, incapacitated.
[]
There were many things about himself that Saburo never told her, but Hassan had come to learn of them herself, nonetheless.
Though they never visited the village again after the first time, she vividly remembered, through her daze, what it looked like—it was as though she was reliving her past through her ride on his back.
The looks the villagers gave him had been those of one seeing an outcast. Where he walked, they parted, and to whom he talked, they avoided. While his eyes were usually downcast, they had been attentive at that time, looking for the pharmacy and the tailor they needed—as it had been for her sake, someone he had only met a day ago with no prior introduction, he had tossed aside his own ego in order to aid her. No, perhaps it was because they did not know each other at all that they were able to bond so…and since then, Hassan had only wanted to learn more of him.
From his unexplained fear of the night, from the walks he would take every morning when he rose earlier than her, from the empty futons he would lay out around his, from the extra food he prepared that would go uneaten, and most of all from her familiarity with the kind of ostracization that he had been subjected to, she understood him more deeply than words could ever convey.
She knew. She heard. She saw. A stifled cry of anguish was the first thing she heard since arriving in that land, from the one she had come, and it was only much later on that she realized it belonged to him. She knew the things about him that he did not tell her, because she had experienced them for herself.
And she had cried for him.
Though she had been silent about a lot of things about herself, so had he. Yet, they both had known, that despite their secrets, they had become a family within those two months that had felt like such a dream for the both of them. Two outcasts who hated themselves found solace in one another.
[]
"Breath of Water, Second Form: Water Wheel!"
Saburo barely registered the new voice as tears threatened to spill from his eyes; he was too preoccupied with Hassan's current state to notice that the demon's right arm had fallen off, leaving behind a pitiful stump in its place. They were instantaneous, all seeming to have occurred in the same second: the blood spurting out of their assailant's gaping wound, its terrible screeching, and the arrival of a Demon Slayer with an aura familiar to Saburo. Another familiar face had come back into his life that night, but that time, it was benevolent.
"Mister Saburo, are you hurt?" The boy in a green-and-black checkered haori smiled at him—a gentle look—and doubts about the situation disappeared from his heart. Tanjiro Kamado's arrival imbued his heart with a peace he did not know for a long time; all around him, his world began to slowly repair itself. Not only was the eldest son of the Kamados whom he had provided shelter for that fateful night still alive and well, but he had become the paragon of Saburo's dreams as well.
Hassan's words had struck him deeply, and shook him to his core, but only then did they begin to sink in. He wanted to cry again. How could he? How could he have forgotten the moments he had shared with her, and tried to depart for the afterlife and leave her alone prematurely? Saburo did not realize that he would be leaving behind more victims of his pain to suffer alone, and the shame would have overwhelmed him, except that he was experiencing too much at the moment to even begin.
"DEMON SLAYER!" the demon howled in pain and rage; "Don't think for a second that I will allow you to escape with that—I'll devour your first after all!" At that point, its face was twisted in desperation and was hardly restrained by any composure. Malice was written all over its features, with gnarled veins growling larger over its maw. It grew larger in size, form all but expanding outward till its back touched the ceiling and threatened to bust it open for the elements to invade further.
In response, Tanjiro affixed it with a scowl. "I won't allow you to lay another hand on Uncle Saburo—!"
Tanjiro was well-known for his keen sense of smell. It was what allowed him to evade danger for himself and saved the lives of many others over his career as a Demon Slayer, and even prior to that, his life had been blessed by the ability on a day-to-day basis. The stench of demons, and of blood, were things that had become familiar for him, and him growing accustomed to them prevented them from putting him off-focus ever again. However, though they barely fazed him after his growth, the smell that emanated from the demon before him caused a spontaneous emergence of the bile inside his stomach.
FsssshhhhHHHHHHHH!
He almost passed out from the odor.
The demon howled in pain and confusion—no, it more than merely screamed; it was as though it tried to claw its own lungs own through screaming alone, and spurts of its blood went flying in all directions, painting the interior of his house red and black. They could not hear what it said clearly through the tongue that lolled in rising foam, but understood that it was bewildered about what was happened to it.
Tanjiro and Saburo watched in silent, morbid awe as its right arm began to collapse in onto itself, starting from its fist, where black, dark spots that were not there before grew larger and larger, into what were seemingly holes being opened in space and pulling parts of it in. Its skin warped in color, going from a gross yellow into a virulent green, mixed with all manners of scarlet and purple as though its blood vessels were undergoing a fantastical mutation. At several points, some points in its body seemed to light up the way that flames would shining through its skin like fireworks violently going off. Bubbles of flesh expanded into translucent membranes before exploding, scattering its slimy blood mixed with gore that melted onto the floor and the walls, staining Saburo's futons permanently.
The splotches continued spreading even further, going across its chest and down its torso, rapidly climbing up its body and invading its face—at this point, the smell became similar to intense, concentrated fumes mixed with the worst-smelling flowers being burnt with dangerous chemicals, and Tanjiro had to cover his own nose with his arm to prevent himself from losing his nose, and they both had to shut their eyes from the irritation that their eyes were beginning to water from.
Soon enough, its bones crumbled into goop, and no longer was its form supported. It became a steaming pile of liquefied flesh, which would not end as even that—the mass decomposed further, turning colorless as it went, undergoing chemical processes that denatured its very molecular make-up. Its voice dissipated, giving away to mere sizzling noises as the unknown toxins ate up the demon. Tanjiro had stared in bewildered shock for a few moments before he took the initiative to evacuate Saburo as all that occurred, and gradually they were left with natural silence as traces of the demon ever being there disappeared from the face of the mountain altogether.
