Solitude was something that could break you.
It planted itself like a seed in your heart and fed off sadness and fear as if feeding off water and sunlight. The roots ran deeper on your chest, branches growing out as they sank in your bones and broke you apart from the inside.
The machinist knew that very well, that was why he couldn't stand it.
The deaths of his wife and kids served as fertilizer for that seed, always there but never fed. And without wanting to, the thorns grew from the inside and by the time he realized the poisonous plant was already so deeply engraved in him he was unable to take it off without destroying himself completely.
The only remedy for his sickness was death, sweet and glorious death he was too much of a coward to achieve by himself.
So he resorted to the devil.
He took Enmu's hand, did everything he told him to, repeating in his mind that those gone would approve of his actions, this path he had taken to escape from the pain.
He couldn't be blamed. Him, who the world had snatched everything away from, couldn't be reproached for wishing to snatch away someone else's happiness to get his.
The machinist held the bone awl tighter and stared with nervous eyes.
The swordspeople, they had woken up a while ago and were gonna cut the head of the demon that had stained his hands. And he couldn't allow it.
«If it's at least one I can do it. Maybe the demon will reward me for it» His eyes went over to the trembling little girl that leaned against the wall. As if he could smell it, he instantly recognised the loneliness coming from her, the same seed that had drank from his sadness and misery. She also lost her family. «You'll forgive me, right? You understand why I have to do this, right? You will, I'm sure you'll be able to understand me, I would do the same for you, so you have to do the same for me»
It wasn't that important, the girl looked like she was on her last breath either way.
«She'll forgive me» he told himself one last time.
It happened so fast everything felt dizzy.
He remembered yelling, at the same time as he lunged at her with the awl. But then the redhead got in between them, just a moment away from having cut the demon's head off as that thing with a boar head cried his name.
He felt the way the awl sank on his insides, how it teared them apart along with his tender flesh at the same time as his hands got soaked in sticky, warm blood.
The girl only stared, unmoving and with eyes as open as an owl's. Then he heard her wail like a deranged animal.
She kicked him, sent him flying at the other side of the wagon at the same time as the train fell out on a side and everything spun. There was a pulsing pain on his leg, in between what was left of the train and the dust. Looking down, he saw himself imprisoned under the weight of the train. Maybe he'll die like this once and for all.
In the end they cut the demon's head off, so what else to wish for.
And the only way to remediate his pain was fading away, only leaving the train behind. The machinist looked, in the wind, at how the demon turned into dust and disappeared.
He could swear that a headless figure, rising from the dead, appeared on the corner of his eye. And it was looking right down at him.
He felt like crying.
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The world stayed still and a thousand voices echoed in his mind. But his own rose above them all.
«I can't die» Tanjirou told himself, over the beeping sound that muffled his ears. «If I die, that man will become a murderer»
He thought about Aya a second later. «She'll miss me» he tried to go back to his feet, uselessly, as the pain on his tummy tugged him down. If he wasn't an older brother he would have laid down. «She'll feel very lonely if I'm gone»
"Tontaro!" Inosuke's head appeared on his fuzzy sight. He miraculously heard him. "Are you okay!? Hey, don't you die on me!"
He poked Tanjirou's cheek a few times and it was the annoyance that made Tanjirou keep his eyes open.
"I'm okay," he managed to say in a whisper. "Go help the others, will you?"
"Bah," Inosuke said. "The guy that stabbed you is trapped under the train, and honestly I refuse to help him. He can die for all I care."
"Inosuke," Tanjirou pleaded. "Do me that favour, will you?"
He softly growled, crossing his arms across his chest as if wanting to refuse but finally exclaiming "Only because you're my underling number three!" For Tanjirou, that was enough.
Inosuke stopped for a moment and scratched his shoulder. "Hey... where's Yuno?"
And in the distance, as if waiting for that moment, both of them heard someone screaming.
Aya's black hair appeared in between the rubble, huffing like a deranged bull when seeing red on top of the machinist.
Her sword shone on some corner she didn't pay any mind to, as Aya circled the man's throat with her naked hands and pressed down. Press down, press down, press down, trying to break bones and muscles and drowning the man that had dared touch Tanjirou with the resulting blood.
Inosuke cackled. "Finish him off, Yuno!"
Instead, the only thing the sight made was fill Tanjirou with terror.
"Inosuke," he weakly started, with the desperation tugging at his voice. "Inosuke, you have to stop Aya."
She continued having that crazy look on her eyes, as the man, under her, started turning red. Tanjirou insisted again.
"Inosuke, please stop Aya."
"But he hurt your tummy!" He replied. Tanjirou shook his head.
In the end Inosuke tugged her away from the man, struggling to make her fingers finally let go of his neck, where she left purple bruises.
Without caring about her throat, Aya screamed. "I'm going to kill you! I'm going to kill you with my own two hands! I swear I will, and there will be no place where you'll be able to hide from me! I swear I'll kill you no matter where you hide!"
The machinist whined in fear and coughed, looking at Aya who was struggling in Inosuke's arms, yelling and screaming promises of death and vengeance.
"I'll kill you!"
"Akiko, stop moving around!" Inosuke said, as he uselessly tried to make Aya stay still.
The machinist turned around to them with tears in his eyes.
"Demon!" He exclaimed in horror. "You're the demon here! Stay away from me, monster!"
And just like that, Aya stopped moving.
She allowed, without moving a muscle, for Inosuke to leave her beside Tanjirou. He didn't say a word as he ran to help the injured, by Tanjirou's request, leaving them alone.
"You should also help," he started. "I'm sure Zenitsu and Yuu will be grateful."
Aya silently shook her head.
"Hey." When Tanjirou took both of Aya's in between his, they were trembling. He said her name like a prayer. "I'm not gonna leave, okay? I'm just gonna rest for a bit, you can go with the others."
"Yuu is enough," she whispered, voice hoarse. "He's good at it... at healing and calming people down. I'm gonna stay here."
Tanjirou rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, fixing on her naked arms. "Where's your haori?"
Aya shrugged. Her smell was everywhere, sweet and tender like fresh flowers, and he allowed for it to drown his senses, until every single corner of his being was filled with it. Silence.
"I really think you should go help the others," Tanjirou insisted. Aya's eyes were fixed on his stomach, where the crimson had turned the black of his uniform in an even darker colour.
"I'm staying," she said. "I'm staying because I... I love... and you... I..." And then she huffed, shaking her head without uttering another word.
"Aya," he tried once more. Then, a whisper. "Do you think I'm gonna die?"
She stayed silent, biting softly onto her lip. The only thing she did was squeeze Tanjirou's hands tighter, as her shoulders started to shake up and down.
"Please don't cry," Tanjirou said, when seeing how fat tears ran down her cheeks. "Aya, please don't cry."
"How can you ask me such a thing?" Aya sobbed, letting go of one hand to wipe away the tears from her face. "You're bleeding out in front of me, and yet you ask me not to cry. Do you even care about your own life? The only thing you know to do is apologize, and I keep crying and crying, I feel like a little girl, as if that's the only thing I can do. What a pair of morons."
She dried her tears one last time in a useless attempt and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, hand going back to the safe place Tanjirou's had become.
"You're mad at me." Aya didn't ask. He stayed quiet. "Please say something."
"I'm not mad," he said, nearly by instinct. He got Aya's hands closer to his face, trying to keep them warm with his breath. He could kiss them, he thought, kiss her knuckles and palms and every centimeter of exposed skin, but he didn't. "I'm just... upset."
Aya lightly squeezed. "Don't lie to make me feel better." She looked carefully at Tanjirou's face, as if drinking every single detail of his features. "Please, I don't want you to do that."
Tanjirou took another deep breath of air, trying to push down the pain of the injury on his stomach.
"I was mad because I felt like you didn't care about me." He averted his gaze somewhere else but turned back to look at her, this time more determined. "Because I feel like you don't care about me."
The corners of Aya's lips twisted downwards and she hummed sourly.
"Is that really what you think?"
He could do nothing but nod, chin still over their intertwined hands.
"It's just that... I told you everything." Tanjirou played with Aya's fingers in between his, rough and worn out in comparison to hers, thin and soft. "And even so, I had to hear lots of things about you from other people, you didn't even tell me you had a fight with Genya."
Tanjirou raised his gaze up to her big and expressive eyes. Enmu had been right.
"Friends are for that kinda stuff and-"
"I had a cat," Aya suddenly said. "I called him Fluff."
Tanjirou slowly repeated his name. "What happened to him?"
"A kid from my village fed him poison."
She'd tell him the truth. Her whole truth.
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Descending down to the dark sea that were the memories from that time was as asphyxiating as really diving in a real sea.
So she remembered, for once vividly and clearly, what she hadn't wanted to accept. Hoarsely, Ayaka talked.
"For some reason, that boy from my village found me really interesting.
Despite the fact that I had never talked to him, or that I was a sick child, he considered me someone important. Special, even.
I never understood why, I always believed myself to be pretty simple. Well, before realizing not everyone saw like me, but I didn't find it very important because my mother and my father didn't seem to find it very important either, as I refused to listen to the whispers about us that roamed the village.
I think it wasn't only me, I think my parents also did.
Back then I thought they didn't realize, that they didn't know all the things they said about us and that I was the only one in the house who could see it. But I guess that was just me, believing to know everything.
I don't know why but everyone seemed to ignore a lot of things, like ghosts that greeted each other and didn't comment on the chains that weighed them down.
I feel like it was from my parents from whom I learned to look somewhere else, from whom I learned to ignore the misery behind my back. It was easier that way.
That boy came from a small family. His mother got pregnant a few times after giving birth to him, but one way or another the baby was born dead or she suddenly had an abortion because she fell down the stairs or got sick or... or it just happened.
Everyone knew the father hit the mother and that the only reason the child had been born was because, during the nine months he had been in the womb, his father had been in the war and came back only a year later, finding another mouth to feed. That was something that only infuriated him further.
I didn't personally know Takeshi's dad, the few times I had gone over to their shop to buy sandals he had been behind the counter as Takeshi attended me. Once my mother mentioned he was known for having sudden fits of rage he released on whoever was closer, which wasn't strange for me to believe.
When I was seven and he was around eight the news of the death of his mother quickly spread across the village. I didn't pay much attention to it, I think I was sick with pneumonia and spent a month or two in bed, so it's not like I could. No one said anything about it, not even my parents, so that simply happened and became something normal. Takeshi was left alone with his father.
It's only now when I think about it closely that I remember some time after that, once, when I went to his shop.
He didn't only sell sandals, he sold a bunch of other stuff, and he talked so politely and sweetly it made you want to buy whatever he pointed at. Luckily, I was young and only had the money to buy some socks for my father, so he couldn't sell me anything else.
It had been a few days ever since I recovered from some illness, I've suffered through so many I really can't remember. So it was only some time after I went out of bed, I had the appearance of a pale sick child, usually worn out after some horrible days.
He looked at me a lot, as if he couldn't stop staring at me. I was slightly sweaty and trembling, just like anyone under my circumstances, and at some moment he took my wrist to leave a sandal on my palm in order to look closely at the details on the sole. He squeezed my wrist so strongly I had to complain for him to let go, but even so it took him a few seconds to set me free. I think that if I hadn't said anything, he would have broken it.
I had always been a small girl. I was weak and helpless, I was usually very thin because there wasn't much food at home and my body never seemed to be satisfied no matter how much strength I tried to gather.
I'm not sure, but I think he liked that.
The more I grew the more resistant I became to illnesses, until I could get out of my house and talk to other kids. I wouldn't have if not because Yuu did, so I followed him like a loyal dog.
I don't know if Yuu told you that, he did? Then I prefer not to remember. I'll just say they weren't very kind kids.
There was a moment when something inside me broke, and I think that to this day it's still broken. The world wasn't a place full of happiness and love like I had believed until then, not like how my parents had preached. I stopped believing there was anyone kind except for them, and even so I resented them because they were the only ones. There was always something that they ignored, they ignored a lot of things and I lost any faith in them to help me.
I couldn't stand it anymore so I didn't go back with those kids, in the end everything was... painful. No matter what I did, I had gotten wallowed in a deep pit where my little me couldn't see any exit from. Sometimes I like to think about what would have happened if I had met you there, if your presence would have changed things. I guess it's no use to think about that now.
I had seen Takeshi every day for months and he never stopped looking at me, ever. That always scared me.
I didn't eat much back then, now that I think back, I think I unconsciously wanted to die. Medicine is expensive, you know? I felt, one way or another, like a burden on my parents. I had grown to feel a great resentment towards them because of all our misery, but at the same time I loved them dearly. I never wanted to say it out loud, good daughters don't have those kinds of thoughts, but I'd like to confess it to you.
I don't know if Takeshi knew, as if he could read my mind, of that disgust that grew inside me, of everything I thought about my parents. I don't know if that was why he killed Yuu's parents instead of mine. Ironically, I guess my resentment towards them saved them in the end.
When I saw the fire in his house I took a sword and ran there. Yuu's parents lay dead inside the house and everything was in flames, but luckily Yuu was still alive. I promised him I'd keep the demon away.
But I didn't know how to use a sword, I was as strong as could be expected from a sick girl and he was a demon. So he quickly immobilized me.
He told me everything his father did, without pain or crying, just like something that happened and nothing else. He told me, too, that he liked me. I couldn't believe him.
He offered to leave the villagers alone if I loved him in exchange. He loved to touch me and he did so as he kept talking nonstop.
He said the world had a natural order, that he had understood when seeing, in the middle of the living room, the corpse of his mother.
That was for him the same as a worm in the beak of a bird, that everything felt strange in his house and that, before that sight, he felt like everything went back to normal.
His mother, a weak and small thing that had resisted to die, finally lied unmoving like it should have, prey to something bigger and stronger than her.
He knew that, after his mother, the next weak and small thing left in that house was him.
So when they offered to turn him into a demon, years later, he accepted.
And when he offered to leave the villagers alone, I also did.
I let go of my sword. I couldn't kill him, I was unable to. Although I would have only needed to press a bit against his neck I was too weak, too soft, too kind, and I could do nothing but accept.
I hugged him and held him in my arms. He melted like a little kid, kissed me and touched me, whispering sweet lies into my ear as his eyes looked under my skin, at the blood that appeared tastier than anything he had ever eaten. I wanted to cry.
Then the Sun started to come out.
Takeshi tried to move, feeling that sunlight wasn't good for him, but I didn't let him go. In fact, I held him tighter.
He started struggling, trying to stay away from the sunlight as I pinned him down with all the strength I could muster, burying my nose on his shoulder as I cried. I wondered what would have happened if someone had intervened, if someone had done something, just what would have happened to that child.
I lamented the fact that things had reached that point, and a long time after he turned into dust I kept crying there where I had tainted my soul with an impure love. I felt like I had betrayed myself. And I swore to never let something like that happen to me again.
By the time Himejima-shishou appeared, I had already collapsed."
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Aya finished talking and stayed silent, with a heaviness around her that spoke of grief. Tanjirou didn't abandon his hold on her hands.
"I'm sorry you went through all that."
She blinked, as if suddenly realizing she was there and going back to the mortal world.
"It's okay." Her voice was still hoarse. "Your thing is worse."
"No, no it isn't," Tanjirou said. "It's not okay. What happened to you was horrible, Aya."
She didn't speak for a minute. "Was it?"
That she doubted it made him angry.
"Of course it was," he insisted. "It was a monstrosity."
"Oh," Aya said. "Am I... Am I allowed to cry, then? Can I... Is it okay for me to do that?"
Tanjirou brushed a strand of hair away from her face. "Do you want to?"
Aya took a shivering breath, eyes shiny with tears.
"I think so."
She leaned her head somewhere on his abdomen, over the bloody stain that painted the place where his injury was, and held onto his uniform.
"I'm sorry for crying so much," Aya said, silently soaking his clothes. "I swear I won't cry anymore."
"It's okay," Tanjirou reassured her. "It's been a long night, maybe you should sleep."
Aya only clutched tighter onto his uniform.
"Do you promise me you won't die if I fall asleep?" She whispered.
"I promise," Tanjirou whispered back.
"You still have to turn Nezuko back into a human and I still haven't introduced you to Shishou... or aniki," Aya continued whispering.
"I also have to kill Muzan," he added. She only nodded slowly.
"I'm sorry again, Tanjirou." And that was the last thing she whispered before falling asleep.
Instead he had to stay awake. He promised Aya and he promised himself. He tried to think about something else other than his injury and the pain that made him dizzy.
How did that one saying go? No rest for the wicked?
"Hey, Tanjirou!" Yuu appeared in the distance, waving a hand as he ran up to them. He kneeled before Aya in a hurry, as her troubled breathing crashed against Tanjirou's chest.
"Oh, gods," Yuu muttered under his breath, lifting Aya's head slightly to place a hand on her forehead. He took a thermometer from inside the bag and placed it under her arm.
"What should I give her? I don't know if..." He seemed to realize for a second time that Tanjirou was there. "Help me move Ayaka, I don't think you'd like to see what would happen if she puked looking up."
Tanjirou rose an eyebrow. "If she pukes? But she only got her throat slashed."
Yuu threw both hands up in the air as if fed up with everything while they laid Aya on the floor. "Dumbass came here knowing she was sick!"
They made a pillow with Tanjirou's haori and, when seeing her tremble and lacking Oyakata-sama's haori, he took off the jacket of his uniform and placed it atop her shoulders.
"Aya... is sick?"
"I bet she's been sick even before coming, yeah," Yuu said. He looked at Tanjirou in a distracted moment, sticky stain now visible on his stomach as it painted his white shirt red, and he growled in frustration. "Inosuke told me you got stabbed, but I didn't think it was this bad!"
Yuu, blushing, told him to unbutton the lower part of his shirt and pressed against his injury. Tanjirou could push down the impulse to tell him to leave it and to tend to Aya, but he promised her he wouldn't die, so he didn't.
By their side, Aya continued sleeping.
"I've always believed," Yuu started, sending her sleepy form a long stare," that Aya is too kind."
Tanjirou tilted his head to the side, expectant, as Yuu finished with his bandages.
"Her dream. Ayaka's dream," Yuu continued. "Didn't she even mention it?"
He shook his head, curiosity suddenly eating him from the inside.
"I think it was some kind of paradise in the future. All her family was there, and I didn't see it, but it wouldn't surprise me if she had a kid or something." Yuu shrugged and tied a knot at the end of the bandages. "Although I understand she didn't tell you, you were there, older, but you were. I guess that must have been embarrassing for her."
Tanjirou laid down again and gods, it hurt really bad.
"I left some stuff on the other side of the train," he said. "I'll go get it, so don't move." Yuu let out a trembling sigh and he muttered, "hydrogen."
So as he walked away, Tanjirou tried not to die.
But the knowledge that he hadn't given his heart to someone mean and malicious brought him immense relief.
In the end his nose had been right, he wasn't wrong for trusting her sweetness.
The pain clouded his senses and mind, like a mist that formed in the gaps between his brain and skull and left him confused.
Rengoku appeared and told him what to do, the way he had to breathe. The pain decreased but even so his ears were still beeping. It was then when he appeared, fastly and without a warning.
Upper Demon Moon Three.
The first thing he did was try to kill him, he would have if not because of Rengoku.
He cut his arm in half and left him bleeding, and Tanjirou stared as his injury quickly healed. He would have said it was magic if he hadn't known magic didn't exist.
The demon called himself 'Akaza'.
For a moment he looked confused, as his eyes slid from Tanjirou to Aya's sleeping form.
"I hadn't seen that one," he muttered to himself, although loud enough for Tanjirou to hear him. Akaza squinted, thinking, and the surprise crossed his eyes for a moment. "She doesn't have any fighting spirit."
Then he turned to Tanjirou:
"If you don't properly take care of her there will be sequels," he said in amusement. "If I'm not wrong, it's not just a simple cold. So make sure she doesn't die under your care or you'll die with that burden."
Rengoku got in between them to cover the sight of Tanjirou and Aya from that demon. "I'll have to ask you to leave my kouhais alone."
"Don't be like that, pillar," Akaza said. "I thought you and I would be able to understand each other."
"I don't think that's possible." Rengoku held tighter onto his sword.
And so, they fought.
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