He wasn't wrong.
He didn't take long. Eight years weren't as long a period of time as sounded but enough to turn a tiny toddler into a strapping teenager.
Seven-year-old Rengoku Kyōjurō wouldn't stop chattering to his bemused mother about taking his fairy big sister as a blushing bride as his fifteen-year-old self.
Fifteen-year-old Rengoku Kyōjurō received his first Nichirin sword as a newly-minted demon slayer and lamented that his late mother could not be around to bask in his moment of pride together with him.
But away from her family she laid, feet beneath the soil and he clearly felt what it was like to be his father.
To have great power and be powerless still. To attain mastery of swordsmanship and cut uselessly at an enemy that could not be cut down, reduced to watching his beloved waste away from illness, and eventually succumb.
No wonder he gave up the sword.
Kyōjurō's grip tightened, callused fingers squeezing the hilt.
Did he blame his father?
He could.
For willingly wasting away what he had been left with.
For losing his way after the only path he had ever walked was taken from him.
For loving one so much that it rendered him blind to others around him craving that same love.
But… could he blame his father for loving his mother so much that the only thing he could do, in the throes of his despair and agony, was to reject the world, a world in which she no longer existed?
He could.
But he wouldn't.
And neither would Senjurō.
Poor boy.
He had been no more than a mere quarter of Kyōjurō's twelve years when the inevitability of death struck their family, stealing away their mother and effectively orphaning the siblings overnight when Rengoku Shinjurō's destroyed spirit left to join her cold, unresponsive body underground.
…Except that Kyōjurō would not allow it.
He decided.
He would be the only orphan.
A father figure could not trump having an actual father around but until their only surviving parent began his recovery from his loss, he was going to have to step up for Senjurō. It would take time getting used to juggling three different identities but he was confident.
"…Big brother."
"Yes, Sen?"
Hearing his childhood nickname, unused since their mother's untimely passing, Senjurō could not help a small, shy smile from surfacing on strained facial features. "I-I see that you are fully-uniformed. Will you be heading out for a mission later?"
Running a thumb over the rounded end of his Nichirin hilt in brief consideration, Kyōjurō lifted his confident gaze to Senjurō's hesitant one. "Mission, yes. Routine patrolling."
"Shall I pack some food for you then? It's late. It's almost night. It won't be easy getting food while you are out-" His next words were as hopeful as they had their hope drained by Kyōjurō's reply, "-No, Sen."
Seeing his face fall, Kyōjurō hurried the few steps to in front of his younger brother. Dropping onto his knees, he wrapped outstretched arms around the boy's smaller form in a firm, reassuring hug that warmly reminded both of the sort that their mother used to give them.
"Promise me," He murmured to an ear, "that you won't pack anymore food for me. Promise me," At his older brother's hoarse voice vibrating between their bodies, Senjurō blinked, then blinked rapidly still, as hot tears sprung up around his eyeballs. "that we will eat our meals together as long as I am home. Promise me that and I promise you that I will come home." At the first of warm moisture dampening his left shoulder through his slayer's uniform, Kyōjurō mustered the courage to let a tear, one of the many he had had to swallow, slip.
"I promise you that I will come home."
That was a promise, which had become increasingly challenging to keep amongst people, common and noble, from one to another. Undoubtedly, it had stemmed from exacerbated growth of demonkind across Japan, through feudal times to the earliest of its modernization.
And the Rengoku clan had been involved in its extermination since as early as its first devastation on the country.
Formerly samurai, the Rengoku men had moved on from serving one master and one purpose to one good, which was the protection of the vulnerable and the underprivileged.
It was the same lesson Rengoku Ruka had instilled into her eldest son as an indelible part of his childhood, one of the many others taught by many others following his goal to join the Demon Slayer Corps.
Kyōjurō understood those lessons. Learnt them. Practiced them. All not without realizing the reason why.
Home.
Necessity to all but luxury to those who confronted bloodthirsty, rampageous demons on a daily basis.
Demon slayers were first taught to never promise 'home' to either themselves or to the people around them. However, feeling and hearing his younger brother quietly sob into his shoulder, Kyōjurō broke the rule.
Shattered it.
But shielded a splintered spirit.
Watching Senjurō reenter their house slightly later, smiling more genuinely than before, Kyōjurō turned to wordlessly depart its premises.
Was there a demon where he, a human, was currently headed?
Yes, certainly.
Were there people where he, a demon-slayer, was currently headed?
Thankfully, no.
For where he was currently headed, was a graveyard.
It remained one of those exceedingly few places unvisited by demons, given its lack of… well, food, alongside the well-known fact that it housed the Rengoku clan's burial ground within.
One hardly ventured there, least of all a demon, yet he could smell one. As a matter of fact, he had been smelling the same one in the vicinity since the day his mother had been laid to rest there.
It was a beautiful spot. Picturesque. Quiet and peaceful. Empty of clutter and surrounded by greenery. Chiseled into stone in vertically-arranged rows of Japanese characters, the name 'Rengoku Ruka' was scarcely readable through withered vegetation but there her tombstone sat, nestled at the foot of a gigantic tree.
A tree that was currently, generously showering apricot blossoms out of season.
In varying shades of pink, flower petals dotted the ground below in uneven puddles of color and fragrance. Those decorating Ruka's tombstone, burdened by the additional weight of more landing atop, gradually slid off to join their friends on the grass and soil where they crackled noisily beneath approaching footsteps.
Kyōjurō inhaled deeply.
The air was clean and rejuvenating, freshly imbued with overnight dew and floral essence, a nasal treat. Through the intoxicating heaviness generously wafting from overhanging tree branches, full and beautifully abloom in unnatural vitality, he clearly detected the first whiff of what he had come in returning, unrelenting pursuit of.
"Demons," Kyōjurō began aloud, gravely and seemingly to no one and nothing in particular. "have a stench to them." Facing his mother's grave, he continued, "It is undetectable to humans but we, demon slayers, are no average humans. Through specialized training, our senses have been heightened beyond surpassing the highest of human limitations. We are trained to find demons, to hunt them, to protect our land and people from them."
On an outstretched palm, he caught a flower petal in the middle of spiraling. Against his tanned skin, its rosiness seemed eerily aglow. He closed callused fingers on it, feeling its velvety softness against the skin and opening his hand anew, found it empty.
"…You have done a great job with the flowers." The same hand reached decidedly for his waist, where his Nichirin sword hung. "They have served you well. Your stench was lost in their fragrance, almost invisible, even to a demon slayer like myself. However, it…"
Kyōjurō drew his sword and, with a flourish, brandished it in the direction of his mother's tombstone.
"…is undeniably pollution, and I cannot forgive you, unnamed demon, for bringing it to humankind's final resting place, least of all, my mother's!"
Stabbing his Nichirin blade in a powerful stroke, he jammed its tip into the tree trunk directly behind it, through the massive tangle of vines jumping forth to suddenly obstruct his view of the demon when attack forced its materialization.
Saki froze.
Not from his sword digging its sharpness into the bark through her shoulder the first time he struck.
Not from his blade slashing across her exposed throat along its sharpness through the veil of vines the second time he struck.
She stilled, confronted by a fifteen-year-old teenager and seeing his seven-year-old self in between the furiously-swinging tendrils.
In the few seconds her wounds healed, to no imperfection, she thwarted yet another attempt at her decapitation from Rengoku Kyōjurō, who saw his onslaught just as effortlessly neutralized by a nasty tangle of vines thickly coiling around and upwards the length of his blade.
They were persistent, coming together time and again to encase his weapon in leafy green.
They were strong, nearly impossible to cut through despite repeated attempts.
Then, the first tendril crept atop his hands he wrapped around the hilt of his Nichirin sword.
He swung his arms.
Leaping a short distance backwards to sink into a defensive stance, he prepared himself for incoming attack from the obviously-experienced demon only to have her… turning her back on him in what clearly translated to be… disinterest.
…The sheer familiarity of it all halted Kyōjurō in the middle of all movement, offensive and defensive, long enough for Saki to make her move, sending a fresh flurry of razor-sharp leaves towards him.
Flame Breathing was clearly her bane, instantly reducing every single last one to fine ashes that blew away in a sudden gust to reveal… only himself where two once stood.
Unbelievably golden eyes widened disbelievingly.
Pinpointing his attacker's location came in a close second when a blinding wave of vines suddenly erupted from the soil of his feet, rapidly multiplying from a single tendril lying hidden in ambush since he first set on her. They were swift, closing in on and wrapping tightly around his resisting body within seconds and with a great heave, hoisted a struggling Rengoku Kyōjurō high up into the air, turning slowly around so that he came face-to-face with his demon attacker.
Unlike the last time this happened, Saki stared at his face, instead of avoiding it.
Unlike the last time this happened, Kyōjurō looked like he could bite his own tongue off in fury, as opposed to grinning back at her with the vigor of a thousand suns.
Clearly, she was toying with him, dangling him by a thin vine like he was a pupa, instead of killing and devouring him. At this point, he was no longer certain what angered him more, the lack of respect for him as a human being or the lack of interest in him as a demon slayer.
"Undo this! You will let me back down this instant!" He hissed, fiercely renewing his struggling from within his cocoon of vines. However, all it managed to do for him was make him look like a pathetically-wriggling caterpillar in the heat of pupating and nothing close to the threat he was supposed to be.
Darn it!
He was a demon slayer! If he was going to die here tonight, at least let it be the death of one!
Was she even going to allow him the dignity of death?
If only he had his sword! He would do the honors himself, if she wouldn't.
"…Demon!" Saki let him snarl, teeth bared and jaw taut, into her face. "You will either allow me a fight or death. I will not suffer this humiliation anymore and longer than this! Are you listening to me? Don't just stare and say nothing! If I am to die at your hands tonight, it will be in a fight fair as day itself-"
"-You are as noisy as ever, brat."
Kyōjurō blinked again.
"…Brat?" He blustered, furiously wriggling inside his cocoon where it swung, freely and fiercely, from the treetop where his captor currently nestled. "I am as much a brat as you are a demon! Demons either fight or flee when they encounter demon slayers and yet here you are, doing neither and making sport of humiliating me before my inevitable death! Some demon you are-"
"-I remember you calling me something else all those years ago, instead of 'demon'." Saki appeared to recall, albeit with relative detachment, sparking the very first sign of recognition with her speech. It flickered powerfully to life across scarlet cheeks at her following words. "I also… clearly remember you being a lot more agile than this, too."
Keeping her face turned towards his allowed him an unbridled view of unnaturally green eyes glimmering palely against a backdrop of unassuming delicacy and ghostly pallor. Clad in a white, subtly-patterned kimono that revealed more of flawless skin than the teenager was comfortable seeing, she watched him avert embarrassed, rapidly-blinking eyes to rest them instead on her abundance of light hair, to quietly, visually digest the way it framed her near blinding paleness in thick, unbound waves.
Childhood memory of those same maroon-tipped strands brushing his shoulder stirred amidst the anger tossing inside him.
"…Big Sister…" A surprised mouth formed the words, syllable by syllable. "Fairy…" Kyōjurō saw her turn her now expressionless face away and shouted out after her retreating figure, "Wait! Don't go! I-I apologize!"
Saki stilled in the middle of leaving but gave no inclination of staying.
"My mother, Rengoku Ruka… You knew her. You were close to her. You must have heard…" He briefly struggled but recovered his composure, just as quickly. "of her passing. You must have been here all this time, keeping her company and I..." Shame crossed his face. "misunderstood you."
Saki turned to face ahead rather than away but still gave no sign of outward interest.
"…You must have been hurt."
Kyōjurō lifted his regretful gaze to hers, finding forced calm simmering.
"I attacked you. I even… tried to decapitate you…" Green eyes rolled white. "Did I hurt you? Are you hurt? I know that you are a demon and that you can heal from your wounds but you were cut with a Nichirin blade, therefore it must not have been easy to recover-"
"-You mean, this?" With nonchalance that sharply contrasted his concern, Saki pulled out Kyōjurō's missing sword out of a nearby cluster of wilted plant.
"Yes!" He exclaimed, excitedly and in utmost relief, to find his weapon displaced rather than misplaced. "Can I have it back?"
"No." Her refusal was immediate and rooted in careful observation of the weapon she grasped in a hand but not with the air of someone untrained. "My, my… the blade is red in color."
"That-" He perked up anew. "That is because I practice the Flame Breathing-style of demon-slaying under my father, the current Flame Hashira's tutelage." He explained hurriedly, watching with wide eyes as she flipped the blade this way and that with apparent skill and fearlessness despite its bloody reputation for demon-slaying.
"Well, I did not enjoy fighting that."
"You were wounded. Badly. Those bloodstains on your kimono looked like a lot of blood." His efforts at breaking free of his constraints caused the surrounding foliage to shiver all over. "Are you fully healed? Can I check on you? Can you set me free so that I can check on you?"
"…No." Came her refusal once more, though it was extended with audibly more relish than its first. "And quiet down now. We are in a graveyard, sitting amidst the mess you created, pollution." Reclining against the tree trunk, she smirked at Kyōjurō's startled face, seeing it mellow into self-reproach. "…I should not have accused you of that." He began in a low voice, uncharacteristic of his typical exuberance. "I should have known better. I should have known that you would come to visit, Big Sister, even though you never showed again after that night when you last did." Oddly enough now, he found himself moving far more easily in his confines despite her incapacitating him and dangling several feet above what would be a very, very hard fall. "Why didn't you come back?"
Attempting to lighten a heavy mood, hers clearly, Saki shrugged. "I got busy." She spoke just as carelessly.
"With what?"
"Sleeping."
"Sleeping?"
She glared at his skepticism. "Yes, sleeping." She bit out. "Sleeping away my insatiable appetite for human flesh. That's what I do, for survival. That's what I have to do, if I am to not… consume humans."
Kyōjurō quietened, realization dawning. "I remember now. My late mother had told me the exact same thing about you, Big Sister, that you were different from the common demon. You do not kill humans. Nor do you eat them. You sleep to save them." He let out a low, full-bellied chuckle. "Eight years of it, to be exact."
Saki nodded, lighthearted as she meant to portray. "Far, far away, where no one could possibly come to disturb." A pointed look directed at him emphasized her point, drawing playful chuckling.
"Did you dream a lot?"
"I don't remember."
"Did you come by my house at all, after all those years? Did you see my younger brother?"
"I don't remember."
"His name is Rengoku Senjurō. I'm Rengoku Kyōjurō, you do remember that, don't you?"
Saki shrugged. Kyōjurō glared. "Will you even remember to let me out of this?"
"Keep this up and I won't."
Kyōjurō glared. Saki shrugged. Again.
Then, movement breaking out anew jostled the vine cocoon from inside when the young woman continued her staring from across him. It was intent, trained and contained only his flushing face. He looked up, as much as he physically could move his head against the pressure of vines wrapped around him, when Saki rose to her feet, elegant as it clearly wasn't for him where he continued to dangle.
Step by unfaltering step, she approached, treading a fine line between floating and walking across the tree bough to sink into a squatting position right in front of his face with nothing more than a rustle of clothing. Wrapping her arms around bent knees, she leant closer still to Kyōjurō, squinting judgmental eyes under furrowing brows, watching in curiosity as red color rose up his neck to make a beeline for his hairline.
"What?" Kyōjurō backed up as much as humanly possible inside his cocoon, feeling himself warm all over under her continued staring. "What is it?"
Paying no attention to his increasingly obvious discomfit, Saki closed the distance between, "You…"
"What is it? What? You're too close." He wriggled harder. "Stop getting close."
"You…" She stopped an inch away from grazing skin between their closely-staring faces. "are still a really weird-looking kid."
Kyōjurō gave himself to renewed agitation. Again, Saki paid him no attention, instead setting her chin on an upturned palm and letting her eyes rove over his face and head, the only parts of him unobstructed by vine. "I thought you looked weird enough back then when you were just a kid, with golden hair and eyes. Your eyes," Hers flickered to his. "They're really big. How can anyone's eyes be that big?" She observed, as if to herself, much to his embarrassment. "And your hair," She reached out to a tendril of bright blonde hair closest to her hand. "It's spiky and everywhere, like a lion's mane. Some parts are even reddened at the tips. Why-"
"-You have hair like that too. And you are pale, frightfully so. Your hair, your skin. Who even has eyes that pale a shade of green?" Embarrassment peaking, he shot back, to Saki's humorous agreement. "True, true." She dropped her hand from his blushing face. "But I'm a demon. A human like you won't know but demon transformations are essentially a lottery. Most wind up looking almost nothing like their original selves, with horns and whatnot." She added as an afterthought, as if in relief. "I got lucky."
From the soft, shy smile she let spread across delicate facial features, he saw a girl, human and seventeen. Healthy, with a peaches-and-cream complexion. Blinking eyes the color of forest, she lowered them shyly as laughing golden eyes sought them out from underneath her pearl-white wedding cap. Inside the same, thickly-coiled auburn hair sat at the nape of her neck in a tight, flawless bun.
With a start, he clearly identified, from his fleeting vision, the subtly-patterned white of her attire to be that of traditional Japanese bridal garb.
"Fairy bride…"
"…Kid."
"Fairy big sister…" Kyōjurō whispered disbelievingly, then repeated strongly, "Fairy bride! My bride! My fairy bride!" His struggling intensified, causing their tree to rain apricot blossoms over Ruka's grave below.
"Kid…" Saki sighed.
"Not anymore." He insisted amidst the jerking and swinging about, entirely his. "I am fifteen. No, I am turning sixteen. How could I? How could I have been so late?" He lamented over her repeated calling out to him. "I should have tried harder to look for you."
"…I'm leaving. I shouldn't have come here-" Pulling decidedly away with an abrupt sweep of hair and clothing, she disappeared into the surrounding stretch of forest so fast, she appeared to melt into the foliage.
Assuming the Rengoku brat lost where she had left him behind to dangle, weaponless and vulnerable, she had planned on freeing him once she had put a sizable amount of distance between themselves, only to find herself reeling from the impact of having her hold over him neutralized, hearing him shouting out seconds later.
"-Total Concentration Breathing…!"
With the same gargantuan surge of physical strength and speed that had broken him out of his vine cocoon, Kyōjurō barely needed readying before launching himself at Saki from far behind, expression fiercely determined. With outstretched arms and stunning accuracy, he caught her around the small of her waist, bowling her over where they both seemed briefly suspended in air.
Sent tumbling a fair distance from impact, both demon slayer and demon ended up one over the other, covered in leaves and twigs as they sprawled painfully across the forest ground.
"You-" She grabbed onto him by his upper arms, fingers clenching into flesh through his sleeves.
"-Kyōjurō," He panted triumphantly above her indignant face, grinning. "If we are to be husband and wife, we will need to get used to calling each other by name."
"You don't have my name." Hooking a leg around his, she twisted hard, throwing him off her flat onto his back while making a crack at escape.
However, escape quickly became wishful thinking when Kyōjurō, apparently reading her movements far better than she was able to read his, seized her by her shoulders just as she flipped them both over, pinning her forcefully back down with a body more man than pipsqueak.
"That's easily rectified. Either tell me your name now and marry me, or tell me your name later and marry me." Wrapping callused fingers around her wrists, he shrugged. "It's all really up to you, seeing how I'm perfectly fine going with either."
Throwing her head back against the soil, out of annoyance rather than helplessness, Saki wondered how painful she wanted to make this for him. Did he not remember that she was a demon and could overpower him without breaking a sweat?
Yet another thought had her realizing which one of the present two was the more important issue to address. "We are not going to be husband and wife."
Kyōjurō blinked. "I asked."
Incredulous green eyes stopped their blinking to perform a full, obvious circuit around their eye sockets as Saki once more dodged his persistence, lips pursing in an awkward little smile she directed up at him. "I didn't agree." A careful look down the lack of space between their upper torsos drew attention to how they were plastered against one another through obviously mussed up clothing. "And you, my dear boy," She emphasized meaningfully with a reproachful finger to the tip of his nose. "ought to learn how to properly treat a lady."
"…!"
Until she had so insinuated, it had not occurred the least bit to him to divert his blatant staring from the generous display of collarbones and shoulders sprawled to embarrassing detail beneath his body in a… most compromising position. Unabashedly feminine and resembling ivory, they peered wherever cloth bunched, a direct result of her kimono loosening inadvertently from their tussling to end up sitting askew on her upper torso
Appalled, he sprang abruptly from her reclining self in a sputtering mess, hastily rearranging awkwardly-flailing limbs into the most formal of sitting positions a respectable distance away and flinching obviously when Saki joined him, now properly-attired and with not a hint of tease in smiling green eyes.
"Kyōjurō"
He met her gaze shyly.
"We are not going to marry." She smiled. "We cannot."
Seeing him perk up in attempted reply, she preempted it with a finger to his lips. "You are going to say that we can and that you promised me years ago, and I am going to say that we cannot and that it is not just because we are fundamentally, vastly different beings."
Words, clearly formed in the mind came tumbling out of Kyōjurō's hapless mouth in the form of unintelligible noise, chagrining him.
Detecting the first ripple of unusual muscular tension along a tightening jaw, she swapped her index finger out for a whole hand over the bottommost of his face, stemming the next onset of Total Concentration Breathing while continuing, somewhat ruefully, "I am a demon and you are a human. You are part of those who slay demons for the undisputed good of mankind. Just like your mother, you belong where I can never rightfully be a part of. You cannot…" She swallowed, uncomfortably hard. "Be with someone, something, regarded everywhere and by everyone as the common evil. And…" Her hand firmed up over his still active mouth. "You and I… Well, we are not in love."
Are we?
At Saki's final few words, the bottom half of Kyōjurō's face restarted its furious twitching despite obstruction, attempted wording unfortunately muffled by pressure instead manifesting as aggravated wheezing.
Effort at reaching for his Nichirin sword or otherwise putting up a fight, any at all, in resistance to her dominance fell entirely obsolete to coils of thick vine curling abundantly out of soil to lock his limbs down by his wrists and ankles.
Rendered immobile towards the last of his struggling, he found himself capable of little else but watch helplessly as Saki neared.
"Gods… I really should have done this when you were a child."
When you, Rengoku Kyōjurō, were a child, likely obtuse to the concept of loss and unlikely to look the way you do now, golden eyes glaring objection you are not able to verbalize, reddened face daring me to carry on with what I am clearly setting out to do…
"Stay in the light, kid. Make your home there." Into her speaking voice crept the first hint of falter. "Stay there. Have your family there, and venture no more into the dark if not for the sake of a loved one." Saki's paling face crumpled from exertion, more emotional than physical, as she sobbed out her next words. "I can't have you still thinking and knowing about me as we both move forward and so, while you are still able to, I want to tell you that it's been really, really great meeting you, kid, and to see the sort of person you are growing up into."
Seeing her lean closely in across, expression grimly set yet softly somber, wheezing fiercened into grunting behind the hand she still held over his agitatedly-moving mouth. From her beautifully, unnaturally green eyes, Kyōjurō read the beckoning of enchantment she sought to impose and he fought to reject.
However, both calmed entirely when Saki closed the remaining distance between their staring faces.
Letting his eyes fall shut, he let her.
The awaited opportunity to speak barely registered, right after he had gotten it, because at the exact same moment she removed her hand and their lips gently brushed, she touched her forehead to his and with that briefest contact, left nothing but took away everything he knew and remembered of her.
"Goodbye, Rengoku Kyōjurō."