Six months in, and Tanjiro was ready to go to the final selection. Or, in actuality, he was overqualified. With two breathing styles (one of which, Sakonji had never seen before) under his belt, his mastery of constant total concentration breathing and a honed body from six months of constant practice, he'd almost reached Pillar level. (Now, if only he could actually take care of himself...)
Everything about the situation boggled Sakonji's mind. He'd heard of geniuses rising through the ranks quickly, but this…
Giyuu would be upset that he didn't want to be the water Pillar… but Sakonji secretly thought this would be better for both of his students.
"I'll train twice as hard, Nii-chan!" Nezuko said, determination shining in her eyes.
"Me too!" Takeo, who had only just started his own training, agreed.
"I think we all will," Kie said softly as she stepped in, likely preventing a cacophony of noises from the rest of the children. Her own training was coming along slowly, but surely. She seemed to be able to squeeze every last ounce of growth from her training sessions, and she joined the children in their swinging exercises every morning before starting on her own self-proclaimed duties. Sometimes he thought she progressed through sheer grit alone. Despite her outward appearance, the woman was no pushover.
Between her efforts and the rest of the children's help (and sometimes hindrance from the younger ones, but it had been so endearing), they now had a nice-sized house with four separate sleeping rooms, a cooking room and an engawa. To Sakonji, it felt almost lavish, but it was necessary. He found, the more he got used to the children, the more he realized how lonely he'd been before and how much happier he was now with others around so often. Especially with an adult to interact with who had a good head on her shoulders.
If he'd ever had a daughter, he would hope she could have been like Kamado Kie.
"Alright, everyone," Tanjiro said as he put Rokuta down after giving him a hug. "Be good. I'll be back shortly!"
"Good luck, Nii-chan!"
"You'll do great!"
"Come back safely!"
"Love you!"
Tanjiro looked as if he'd been given the world.
Still beaming, he set off waving while wearing that grin on his face, fox mask tied to the side of his head and a borrowed nichirin blade. "Don't worry, Urokudaki-sensei, I'll make sure you don't lose any more students to the final selection!"
Sakonji could only sigh. So he did know more about Sabito and Makoto than he'd let on. Somehow, the former water Pillar had never been able to bring himself to ask.
He appreciated the boy's words. He did… but it still took him by surprise when Tanjiro showed how much he knew so casually. One can know something without fully understanding the repercussions, apparently.
The worst part was Sakonji really should be used to it by now.
Kie put a hand on the cultivator's arm, concerned – likely for Tanjiro more than him. "Do you lose many children to the final selection?"
Sakonji sighed. "Yes… I do. However," he glanced at the disappearing figure down the road (he was still waving at them) and almost felt sorry for the demons trapped by the wisteria forest, "I am sure he won't be one of them."
And wasn't that a relief to say.
xXx
Yamamoto Miroku hated this.
He'd been training for years, had barely gotten to a point where he could use his chosen breath style at all (although he hadn't come close to mastering it yet), but here he was running from a demon with so many hands… there shouldn't be any demon this strong in the final selection! He'd tried to cut it, even with his wind-breathing style, but he'd cut off a hand and then made a few dents at the most. The neck hadn't even been scratched… and so he'd run.
"Why don't you just come back," the demon called to him. "You can't outrun me~."
Miroku's stomach lurched and he jumped over a fallen log. He refused to just give up because otherwise what was it all for?!
But he knew he couldn't keep up this pace…
He felt tears come to his eyes, but refused to acknowledge them. And his heart pounding so hard in his chest that it hurt? What else did he expect from running so hard?! It certainly didn't stem from his fear (of course)! Also his legs and arms shook because he'd pushed himself for so long. And that was the only reason.
And yet, in his heart… he knew.
'Is this how I die?' he asked himself. 'So close to the finish line?'
He went to take another step, but his foot caught on a branch he'd thought he'd stepped over and he went sprawling, scraping his palms, bruising his knees and losing hold on his sword. It took him a moment to realize what had happened, and dazed he looked up to see his sword ahead of him, lying on the ground. He went to crawl forward and grab it, but the voice of the demon behind him made him freeze in his tracks.
"Caught you~!"
Miroku turned to look over his shoulder, eyes wide in horror. It happened as if in slow motion, as the world seemed to just freeze around him… and yet he couldn't make his body move to the side as the enormous hand came streaming towards his face. It caught him around the neck and lifted him into the air.
"You're not one of those children, but I'm sure you'll be tasty."
Miroku couldn't breathe! The hand demon lifted him into the air, up, and up, and up until he hung right above the mouth. He glanced down and, in horror, saw the enormous maw stretch wide, a gaping hole ready to literally swallow him up.
"No…" he gasped, his hands grasping at the demon's appendage. It didn't do any good. He kicked, but the demon's grip held strong. "No… please…"
And then something blurred out of the corner of his eye.
"Breath of Water, second form: Water Wheel," someone said as the blur got between Miroku and the hand demon. An unearthly scream and someone grabbed the back of Miroku's shirt, dragging him along. The demon's hand let go and the next thing he knew he sat on the ground near his sword, his backside hurting. He blinked, looked up, and saw the smiling face of a burgundy-haired boy. He couldn't be older than thirteen – fourteen at the most. And yet he grinned down at Miroku like he could see nothing wrong with the situation at all.
"Are you okay, Slayer-san?"
What?
"Oh, ho, ho! It's one of his! He sent another one to me this year!" the demon said excitedly. The boy's eyes closed and he somehow seemed… sad as he turned to face the demon. "That Urokudaki! He trapped me here and sends me food! I don't know whether to hate him or thank him!"
The demon looked contemplative. Then grinned at them (although it looked more like an angry grimace to Miroku).
"No, I hate him. I hate him! I hate him! He trapped me here!" the deamon yelled and his hands shot forward. "So in revenge," the boy dodged and the demon grew more hands, "I'll devour all of his students!"
The boy evaded him again.
"Too bad you missed one," he said with that same smile. His words didn't match his tone, but he didn't sound insincere or forced at all…
This was one creepy kid.
The hand demon screeched and lunged forward again, but the kid practically disappeared and then appeared again on a tree behind said demon.
"I'm glad I'll be able to give you peace earlier this time around."
He practically disappeared again, and then Miroku heard it: "First form: Water Surface Slash." Then a flash of light glinting off of a moving sword and the demon's head went flying. Miroku could only kind of sit there with his jaw hanging open as the demon's head fell to the ground, already starting to slowly disintegrate.
Then, to Miroku's ever growing amazement and utter confusion, the boy appeared between the head and body. For a moment, he just looked on, eyes so… sad. Over a demon? And then Miroku's brain stopped working altogether as the boy knelt down and put one hand on the demon's head and the other in a nearby hand.
"How old were you when that man found you?" he whispered softly. "Six? Seven?"
Miroku's eyes widened. That was… he… he'd never thought of it that way before.
Then the demon cried out 'onii-chan' and somehow, he knew the red-haired boy had not been far off. Miroku remembered his own little brother, chomped practically in half by a demon as his mother screamed. The demon hadn't been interested in either of them, only in Yasumaru… His mother hadn't been able to cope afterwards and had… just sort of wasted away. His father… well, the less said about the man that abandoned them, the better.
And yet… what if Yasumaru had been turned into a demon instead?
That hand demon that had almost eaten him… that had been someone's little brother too…
He felt sick, not really knowing what to think about this new revelation. Demons were evil, but they'd once been human. Demons needed to die, but they'd had family who loved them once.
For so long, Miroku had just thought of demons as 'not human anymore' and thus 'not human at all'… but… that wasn't the case was it?
He didn't like this new perspective. It made his head hurt and his stomach roll. So he ignored it, and instead, he spoke up angrily.
"Hey! What was that all about?" he asked angrily. "You come in like I needed to be saved and then you hold that demon's hand?! What is wrong with you?!"
The boy just turned and looked at him, that sunshine smile of his replaced by something blank but heart-breaking somehow.
"Becoming a demon is a fate worse than death," he said softly, surely – like he already had so much slaying experience. Maybe he did for all Miroku knew. "Beholden to that man who can – and likely will – kill them on a whim, whether they want to be or not, unable to go into the sun, unable to resist their inherent hunger, unable to remember most of their lives as a human and much of it as a demon… all in exchange for a little power."
He looked down at the piles of ash that was all that remained of the demon. "They don't even leave a body to bury when they do die." He sighed. "Were you in their position, especially if not by your own choosing as this boy was, would you not want someone there to ease your passing?"
"B-but they've killed people!"
The boy nodded in agreement. "They have." Then he shrugged and turned to walk away. "However, if I had been in his position, I would have wanted someone to hold my hand and maybe pray over me. The only reason I'm not in his position is because I've never met Kibutsuji Muzan… and I don't think that's a reason to deny someone a dying comfort."
When he put it like that…
How utterly terrifying to think that if Miroku had met Muzan himself, he may find himself going out and hunting down people to stay alive. Would he enjoy it? He really hoped not.
"In any case, stay alive," the boy said as he walked into the trees. "The rest of the demons here aren't that bad, and the demon slayers will need you in the future."
What? Him? Why him? And yet… Miroku felt himself puff up just a little more at the acknowledgment.
"O-of course you'll need me!" he called after the disappearing figure. "Demon slayers need to be strong like me!"
The boy sighed something that sounded like, 'wind users', but before Miroku could get defensive, the boy just said, "Good!"
For some reason, that just took the wind right out of Miroku's sails.
"W-wait!" he called, running after the boy a little to keep him in sight. "What's your name?"
The boy paused and glanced back at him, that sunshine smile back in place. "Tanjiro. Kamado Tanjiro. Nice to meet you!"
"Yamamoto Miroku," the trainee introduced himself quickly. Then he braced himself, but forced himself to grumble. "Thank you for the help." Then, much louder, "Just know I won't need it again!"
Tanjiro blinked, but then grinned even bigger somehow. "I'll hold you to that. Get stronger, Yamamoto-san! I look forward to seeing what you'll become."
Funny, he hadn't had anyone to really believe in him since his family. He'd been mediocre at learning that wind style and his teacher had helped when asked, but otherwise simply left him to his own devices. He hadn't really made friends while training. He hadn't had a connection in so long…
It felt… good.
He determined right then and there that he would live up to this boy's expectations and do everything he could to make it through the final selection – and whatever came after.
"I'll see you around, Yamamoto-san!" Tanjrio said, then turned to walk away again.
A couple of minutes later, Miroku still stood in the small clearing wondering what had really just happened.
xXx
Kibutsuji Muzan didn't sleep often. Sleep was, after all, a vulnerability and weakness that others would simply take too much advantage of. He would not invite a proverbial knife to the back… as useless as any such attempt would be. He was a demon – the demon: superior, nigh-perfect, almost unkillable, and most definitely not stupid.
However… he did still, on the rare occasion, get bored. He avoided being trapped in small places for the day, but there were days he simply couldn't avoid it. During those times, he slept. And when he slept, he dreamed.
The last time he'd been forced into such an undesirable circumstance had been when he'd gone to track down the potential hanafuda family. It had just been a rumor, but he'd long since stopped dismissing rumors. And that one had been juicy enough to investigate himself.
It hadn't taken him terribly long to track down, a couple of years at most once he'd initially heard the rumor. One of his demons had found a stall selling earrings and Muzan had caught a glimpse of it. Several pairs of earrings were hanafuda earrings.
Needless to say the shop had been destroyed that night and the man had been… forcefully recruited to the side of the demons. He'd searched through all of the memories as his connection to his new demon grew and found images of the man he'd bought said earrings from. Muzan had let him go after that and then watched as the man killed and devoured what had been his family before running for the hills. Muzan always enjoyed watching that – watching the absolute proof of how superior demons were to the weak humans.
Unfortunately, the merchant family that had sold the earrings to the stall owner had been more difficult to track down, but once he had, he'd learned of the artisan from a mountain village who had seen a man wearing the earrings (those had been enlightening memories as well – he rarely got such interesting and necessary memories from the newly turned). Apparently the man had been inspiring and most definitely using a sort of watered-down version of a breath form, even if he hadn't been a demon slayer.
Once he'd finished going through the traveling artisan's memories, the new demon had been set upon the nearest village, and Muzan had gone after the man from the memories – who apparently had a family in the mountains.
He'd been so close… so close to finding whatever trace of that man that had been left in the world and utterly destroying it… and he was positive he'd found the correct house… but it lay empty. Cleaned out as if whoever had been living there had packed and left in a hurry.
Now very angry, Muzan had tried to track them and had found a trail leading to a small dock in a nearby river, which had made the trail (mostly scent but also a slight spiritual residue that ticked Muzan off even more as well) more difficult to follow but not impossible.
So he'd followed the river, and come across a set of tracks leading off and into the woods. Speedily, he'd followed them only to find a dead end. With his absolute wrath growing, he'd headed back to the river and found the second set of tracks only a little further down. This one had led back to the river, circling around some rapids. The third set, however, had led off into the trees towards the nearby village.
It, too, was a dead end.
Many trees fell to his rage at that.
He'd been gone more than half the night by that point, drawing closer to three quarters. If he'd been simply traveling, he could have gotten to the village very quickly, however he'd been tracking and he hated how that had taken up far more time than it really should have. Although, now that he concentrated, he could sense the sort of split on the bank where they had apparently landed, laid a false trail and then returned to continue down the river.
If he didn't know any better, he'd think they had known he would come for them…
But how?!
He'd been more determined than ever to find the humans, so much so that when he'd come across the next branch of the scent and lingering trace, it had been in the middle of a town port. Muzan had definitely stopped at a deserted dock and sensed that sort of branch, one heading down the river and the other into town.
What clever humans. He may have to actually turn them… if he didn't initially slaughter them all out of sheer frustration.
Still, he'd known where to go after that, focusing on following the trail down the river. That had been the only reason why he hadn't completely obliterated the town.
Nigh unto dawn, he'd found the boat caught circling around and around in an eddy, completely empty but smeared with blood on the inside.
The entire landscape had been rearranged at that discovery. And, unfortunately, Muzan didn't have time to go back and track. Not when he'd been heading northwest and would likely run into the sun if he went northeast. He'd probably get back to the village on time… but he'd never been one to take enormous chances.
So he'd searched for shelter and found an abandoned house.
For hours, he'd seethed. Even if he went back now, the trail would be cold at best, non-existent at worst. He'd already been able to tell the family hadn't stayed in the town. Now he was back to square one… and he hated it. Him, such an advanced being, reduced to chasing after a bunch of human brats!
Eventually, the rage had faded into a frustrated boredom, and then he'd fallen asleep and dreamed.
He dreamed of demons and demon slayers, of a family running, of looking down at hands and expecting to see claws but only seeing fingernails. Of children yelling out 'Tanjiro-nii!' or 'Onii-san' or even just 'Tanjiro'.
He also heard 'Nezuko', but little else. Although he did get glimpses – impressions, really – of the Waxing Moons and incredibly strong humans with breath styles (demon slayers? Hashira), but nothing particularly concrete.
When he'd woken, he'd had to return to Tokyo to keep up appearances, which frustrated him further after the dream. He had to find this boy – this Tanjiro. His dreams always meant something, after all, even if only glimpses from his demons.
Now, as he stood over the still cooling bodies of the couple that had been living in the way station, he realized he'd lost his chance to find the boy again. He'd tracked the family, but it hadn't done any good. Any leads had only led him to more dead ends. Wherever they'd gone, they'd taken a convoluted route to get there. Which, of course, begged the question of how they knew they were being hunted. That, in turn, made him want them more. He refused to believe this farce of a chase was a coincidence. Unfortunately, he'd traced them to this place, and the only one in the know – the woman of the household – had refused to speak… and she couldn't hold his blood either. Normally he'd think that a pity at best… but right now…
The only reason he didn't tear the house down around him was the lightening of the horizon he could see outside of the window.
He growled, the sound low, deep, feral and full of promise. He would find this Tanjiro! And if he could, the family… and he would either end them or recruit them.
Until then, it seemed he'd have to go back to searching for his blue spider lily. But he would likely be trapped in this house for the day. How… unfortunate. But he could sleep, and perhaps dream again.
Besides, he thought as he eyed the bodies now leaking blood into the tatami mats, at least I have a good meal here.
xXx
AN: Thanks to TimeLordTim for his help on this!
Ugh, had to go into Muzan's mind again... *headdesk* I really don't like doing that. But, it needed to be done. *stoically pushes on*
This is turning into more of an actual story instead of the snippets I intended. Tim says it's just my style... I don't think he's wrong. *ahem*
Next Chapter: Tanjiro worries his family and gets a sword.
Discord: discord. gg/EVUrHMd4za (no spaces)
