WARNING:

I normally do not give warnings before a chapter, but the content here warrants one. Though this chapter does not depict actual acts of sexual assault and harassment, it does feature second-hand accounts and descriptions of past incidents of it. If you can read such content with no problem, feel free to continue.

If you or a loved one live in the US and require assistance from trained professionals, call the RAINN hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you live outside the US, similar hotlines should exist for your country. Help is always available. If you are a survivor, it is not your fault. It was never your fault.

November 16, 1913

Mukago was not expecting any visitors that day when she heard a knock at the gate to the Tokito Estate while she was training by herself outside. Despite not going on missions due to her pregnancy, she made sure to continue practicing so that she could be ready to go back on the frontlines once she was safe to do so. She quickly sheathed her sword and walked over to the gate, asking whoever was on the other side, "Who is it?"

"It's Reiko," the visitor replied.

Mukago opened the gate and asked her, "What's going on?"

"Can I… Talk to you?"

Mukago was confused, but knew that whatever it was, she sounded serious. "Is everything okay, Reiko-san?"

"Yeah… Yeah…" Reiko then looked up to the sky and realized she was lying to not only Mukago, but also herself as she shook her head. "Okay, no, no, it's not entirely okay. I lied."

"Come on in," Muakgo told her before she walked in and Mukago shut the gate behind her. "Let's go inside, Reiko-san. Don't feel bad about it."

"I need to get this off of my chest," she told Mukago as the latter locked the gate back up. "I can't hold it in anymore, and I feel like you'd be the person who could relate the most to what I'm going through." She was rather despondent and looking for someone to listen to her based on her tone of voice and her expression. "Please, hear me out, Mukago-senpai."

Mukago had a feeling about what she was talking about, but did not want to jump the gun in case she was wrong. "Okay, let's go in and sit down so we can talk about it." She thought to herself, "She's talking about what happened on the ship, isn't she?"

As the two walked into the house, Reiko asked her a completely different question, starting the conversation off with, "How's Tokito-sama doing with everything going on? How's he coping with fatherhood?"

"It's been stressful on both of us," Mukago admitted. "But we're pulling through. We aren't alone, either. Without the support of the Oyakata-sama and the other Pillars, I don't know what I'd do with myself, and neither does Muichiro." The two then walked into the common dining room of the house, where the two stood across from each other. "Anyway, I want to know why you want to talk to me. You seem very concerned about something, Reiko-san."

"I'll tell you when we sit down."

"Okay then. Let's sit."

Once the two sat down and got on their knees, Reiko immediately asked her, "Have you ever been raped or otherwise forced into sex, Mukago? I know that sounds kind of repetitive, but have you?"

Mukago was shocked to hear Reiko immediately come out of the gate with such a hard-hitting question. In disbelief, she replied, "Uh, well, um, that's a Hell of a way to start a conversation."

"Answer me."

Mukago nodded and let out a sigh, admitting her answer to Reiko. "Yes. I was."

"How did you cope with it?"

"So that's why you came here…" Mukago scratched the back of her neck and rubbed her forehead. "Ah, well… I kind of just buried it for a long time. It had a hand in me becoming a demon, though it certainly wasn't the only reason. For a while, killing men I slept with as a tea waitress gave me a sense of control, as did springing myself onto men instead of them coming to me. Even so… It didn't help. I still had issues with trust for a long time. I wanted to constantly run away from danger, which probably explains why my Blood Demon Arts were largely based on distractions and blinding the enemy."

"If you don't mind me asking," Reiko inquired. "What happened?"

"I suppose it's only fair to give a little bit of context." Mukago then looked around the room and began telling what happened to her. "I had always had a few clients who would be a bit harsh or a bit too wild on me. We'd be in the middle of sex, and sometimes, some asshole would do something I didn't like, and despite me saying 'hey, that's not part of the deal', that bastard would do it anyway, like if I only was going to blow him but then he decided he wanted to go all the way. But then… When I was fifteen… It escalated on one particular night." Mukago was somewhat reluctant to tell Reiko exactly what happened to her, but knew it was for the best that she give some kind of explanation. "I had a customer who forced me back on the bed after we had already had sex. I told him to stop, but…"

1812

"I can't believe you didn't want me again," a man in his early thirties said to a human Mukago as she sat on top of her bed and he got dressed again. "Come on, I couldn't have been that terrible to you. Are you going to answer me?"

Mukago remained silent as she stared at the wall in front of her, not saying a single word to him as she tried to process what had been done to her just minutes prior. She was hurt, but she knew she could not let him see it, lest he try to force himself on her again or complain about her to her boss.

"Suit yourself, then." He then left money on the floor near the bed and told her, "I'd advise you to go along with whatever your customer wants next time. Don't make it difficult like you did to me!"

Once the man had left the room and shut the door to it, tears welled up in Mukago's eyes. "Why… I feel so disgusted…" She wiped the tears away as she looked at the clothes that had been ripped away from her when he decided to have what he called a 'second round' with her. "I didn't ask for him to do this to me a second time." She then got up from the bed, put her clothes back on, and picked up a small green vase from the floor before throwing it at the wall in frustration, shattering it into many pieces. "Fuck you, you piece of shit! You don't get to do that to me! Nobody gets to do that to me!" She then screamed and punched the wall twice. "Fuck you!" Once her fists were through the wall, she pulled them out and began to sob to herself as she fell to her knees.

After she began to cry, she heard a knock at her door and screamed in fright, expecting the man from earlier to come back. Instead, a voice called out from the other side, "Akiko, it's me…" Using her human name to refer to her, a fellow tea waitress and prostitute was the one on the other side. "Are you okay?"

"Come… Come on in…" As the door slowly opened, one of her friends walked in. "There… Something… Something happened to me…"

"Are you okay?" Reiko noticed that Mukago was wiping her eyes, potentially of tears, as she recalled such a traumatic event.

Mukago was snapped back to reality by her question, and quickly cleared her head with a deep breath. "Yeah, it's just fucking hard to think about it. So, well… He went ahead and raped me. When it was over, he walked out and yelled at me for not agreeing to have sex with him again. I felt so unsafe, so sad, so…Fuck… Just… I felt like the world was even less safe than I thought it was. I knew the world was already pretty God damn cruel, but this just made it so much crueler. A week later, I became a demon after I had sex with Muzan, and no, before you ask, he did not force himself on me." Mukago clearly was hurt by the experience, and retelling it opened up some old emotional wounds. "For that whole week, I couldn't even trust myself, let alone others. Becoming a demon gave me some power, but at too high of a cost."

"How did you move on?"

"That's difficult to answer," Mukago admitted. "I don't think I'll ever forget it, but what I can say is that I did stop blaming myself or anyone else but the person who actually raped me. I realized that if I kept blaming myself, I'd give that piece of shit the victory he wanted. I realized that one day, I would be alright. I didn't know when, but I knew it would come. That said… Perhaps the thing it affected the most for a long time was how I viewed intimacy. I never had an issue with having sex with anyone, but that also became a problem. I began to offer it perhaps a little too much and a little too forcefully to others. I felt that if I was the one who initiated things, I could always be in control."

"Control…"

"Exactly. Control. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it affected me even up to now. Me and Muichiro began having sex very soon after I was freed from Muzan's control, and it was largely because of me offering it to him. We were doing all these things with barely any emotional attachment, but it didn't take long for an attachment to occur on my end, which was kind of scary." Mukago had to pause for a moment to collect herself, trying to avoid crying. "I never thought that I'd actually fall in love with someone, and yet here I am. I may have been over 160 years old chronologically, but inside, I knew I was still a scared young woman who was unfamiliar with so much due to her past. I started selling my body when I was twelve. Yes, twelve. I would have died if I hadn't, but even knowing that, I feel so disgusted knowing that I had to resort to selling my body when I was still a child. Cue me spending the next 100 or so years as a fifteen-year-old girl and on-and-off prostitute, and I simply couldn't picture myself having sex with anyone for any reason besides an exchange of services or money."

Reiko was shocked to hear about her full story. "Wow… I kind of feel… It feels so overwhelming compared to what happened to me."

"Don't put yourself down," Mukago assured her with a warm hug after wiping away her tears. "You went through something horrible, too. I won't let anyone try to belittle you for that."

Reiko returned the hug and told her with a heartfelt tone, "Thank you." Once the two split, she asked her, "So, with that out of the way, do you want to hear about me?"

"Well, that's what we originally sat down here for, right? Go on."

"I've had nightmares ever since I was raped on the ship," Reiko admitted to her. "I've slept with my sword by my side every night since then. Sometimes, I hear their voices despite knowing they're both dead. A few days ago, I heard one of them calling out to me while I was on a mission with my brother and one of my friends. It makes me wonder if I'll ever stop hearing them."

"I know how you feel," Mukago nodded. "I know exactly what that's like, Reiko-san. I had nightmares too for a while. To be honest, I'm not even sure how they stopped. I do know that in those dreams, I eventually began to ignore him, which helped. I also began to stop having them a few decades later, which is right around when he probably would have died. Knowing he's dead and gone helps, at least for me."

"Ignoring him… I have noticed that the voices aren't as bad as they used to be when they first happened, actually." Reiko theorized to Mukago, "Maybe that's why. I kept telling them they were dead and gone when the voices did happen."

"If it helps you, keep doing that. Look, Reiko, you're going to be alright. What those two did to you was wrong, but they were just a large stone in the road you just happened to stumble over. Your dreams in life lie far beyond what they did to you." She then placed a hand on her shoulder and looked her right in the eye. "You're a strong woman, Reiko. You survived being hunted down by Muzan despite you and your brother having no support structure for so long. You were able to escape Rui's family on Mount Natagumo. You can do this. One day, you might even find someone you love and possibly bear children for like I did, and that person will love every part of you, knowing your past but not rejecting you for it. If that is what you want, they will be a lucky man to be with you, Reiko. It's not entirely necessary to have someone like that in your life, but I would wholeheartedly recommend it."

Reiko immediately thought of Tsuyoshi and Tokuhei when she mentioned falling in love. She was just friends with them, but as of now, they were the only people she thought of as potential interests for something more than friendship. She blushed slightly and told Mukago, "Th- Thank you…"

"Remember," Mukago concluded her speech to her. "Those that mind your status as a survivor and think less of you for it aren't worth the shit they let out in buckets or toilets, and those who are actually worth a damn won't mind it at all. Fuck anyone who shames you for it. They aren't worth your time."

Reiko nodded. "I've been trying to convince myself of that ever since it happened, but I never truly believed it. Maybe hearing someone else tell me that is what I need."

"If at any point I feel like I'm stepping over you when I'm speaking, let me know."

Reiko kindly assured her, "No, no you didn't. Not at all."