Premise: Whisked from the verge of death by a gift of blood, misfit siblings Gyutaro and Ume begin lavish new lives as man-eating demons. However, Gyutaro quickly realizes that they are as unwelcome among their own kind now as when they were humans, and he and his sister's uniquely inextricable existence as fledgling demons is in jeopardy. Created by Doma to upset the existing dynamic of the Twelve Kizuki, the two siblings have no choice but to embark on a perilous climb to reach the sanctuary of Muzan Kibutsuji's recognition.
The Used
By TransientBANG
WARNING: This story contains scenes of extreme violence, gore, murder, cannibalism, and self-harm. Children are sold into prostitution, and, though it is not discussed in great detail, transactional sex occurs between minors and adults. Reader discretion is advised.
One: Threshold
The man in red asked me if I wanted to become a demon, but he didn't wait for an answer. I was stabbed in the back—this wound worse, so much deeper than the slash I'd lost too much blood from.
I would not let go.
I found myself jerked backwards onto my knees, my muscles electrified by a fresh agony that pulsed with each wracking beat of a heart now filling with blood, racing with life. But even if the organ exploded under the pressure of the new vitality fighting to enter my body, I wouldn't drop her. I refused.
Ume's burned flesh crackled and thrashed in my arms. I held her close, tight—so much so that I ceased to be aware of where my body met hers. We were a single writhing mass of pain—a shuddering coagulation of mending and rending and the whole cycle over and over again.
Until we weren't.
But now we were a different kind of exposed nerve—a hungry one. I opened eyes that drank the darkness and beheld the raw, rapidly-paling figure clutched to my chest. She was naked. A curtain of white hair coiled from her scalp, writhing outwards, blushing pale green at the tips, like—like—
—like the way blood was wicking its way through the kimono the demon held out. I looked past his extended arm, past his strange eyes, at the now-nude corpse of the oiran.
Before I could lunge towards it—the meat that would consume my entire attention until I consumed it—the stranger had slammed an iron-firm hand onto my shoulder.
The porcelain-skinned creature crushed to my chest cried out now. She struggled, fighting my loosening grip, reaching towards the woman's corpse.
And I didn't know who they were. Not a one—the living or the dead. But I would not lose sight of my larval-white demon, and though I wanted desperately to feed, I also wanted this one to be nourished. If she ate, it would be… about as good as if I could.
I released her, though it left my arms with a sense of being… bereft? She was on the oiran's body like a flash of lightning, tearing at it with needle-tipped nails and saber incisors. Gulping, gobbling, sobbing all the while.
"Well, I suppose you dears are famished!" The demon in red made a sound like laughter and relinquished his hold on me.
From one moment to the next, I had closed the distance between myself and the discarded cadaver. I brought my mouth down on the nearest limb, opening wide jagged jaws grown sharp and shark-like.
It was cold, wet, gelatinous, then stringy, fibrous, crunchy—but the taste was like nothing else I'd ever, EVER could have conjured in my imagination. No, not even the sweetest treat I'd glimpsed through strangers' shutters could compare, I was sure.
The cacophony of shattering bone filled my ears as I tore into the leg. The white demon crouched next to me over a spill of guts, devouring liver with great smacking bites. This was right: as it should be.
As mouthfuls of the chilled meat slid down my gullet, the world gradually began to expand around me. I noted the demon in red—our… savior?—backing away from my pale one.
—Her name… I know this one! It's… Ume! (How could I forget?!)—
He had apparently draped the soiled kimono over Ume's hunched form. I became aware of the snow again—the frozen ground, unyielding beneath my bare toes. I had stopped feeling its chill long before I'd collapsed in the street, but the new numbness suffusing my body was more of a kind of… mindful disregard; I knew that the earth was cold, but it caused me no discomfort.
I vaguely realized that I wasn't breathing—hadn't been since—since—
-since the start of the hunger, the appetite. In feeding it, there was a sort of icy energy that coursed through my body with each bite of the woman's flesh I consumed. And though I ate and ate of it, crushing the bones that Ume either couldn't (or just wouldn't) eat, licking the greasy paste of marrow and bone splinters—despite it all, I burned for more. I had to keep eating; this one body alone was not going to cut it. The smiling demon looked down on us with what was supposed to be benevolence, I supposed, but I wouldn't dare push him for the other dead oiran he held casually slung over one shoulder. From his earlier touch, I knew that he could crush me—and probably would if I failed to keep a respectful distance from the kill he had not offered to us.
"Oh, no!" I forced my head up at his voice, still clutching a half-eaten limb to my mouth. "What are you going to do now, Little Demons?" he trilled, inclining his head in the direction behind me. For the first time, I noticed a figure trembling at the threshold of the yukaku house we'd been feasting before. And again, there was that sense of familiarity. I couldn't quite recognize a face that I felt, somehow, should be familiar to me.
But then my stomach twisted, and all thought and curiosity were wrung from my head.
I didn't like the face, I knew that much, but I loved the smell of this person—what I instinctually knew was their nourishing, necessary flesh and blood.
I moved again, seeming to arrive at my desire before I had even fully finished realizing what it actually was I wanted. It was a man, a human. I'd been one of these things, right?
He gasped, but he had no words—just sheer disbelief. I guess I didn't give him much time to process his fate. I didn't think about it, either; I just gripped him by each shoulder and, pushing in and back… cracked his sternum like a nut. His exposed heart continued to beat obliviously, a throbbing fist in a cocoon of myocardium. The sight so excited me that I delved face-first towards it, taking it in my mouth and tearing it from the vessels suspending it between the lungs.
Fresh, living flesh—! Oh, and I thought I'd enjoyed the cold human meat! Delicious! What was this new existence, if not escalating delight?! And just behind no more than flimsy paper barriers were more of these fine delicacies—as many as I wanted, surely.
I chewed the thick, rubbery tissue, feeling it slice beneath my fangs. My tongue traced the inside of a chamber, scooping out congealing blood before I popped the vessel against the roof of my mouth. The noise drew Ume's attention; staring intently at my meal, she stood up from the bloody smear that marked all that remained of the oiran. Still watching, she patted vaguely at the kimono draped over her shoulders, finally threading her arms into the sleeves and pulling the front together.
I tossed the corpse at her. Despite how badly I'd misjudged my strength, Ume compensated; she jumped and intercepted the body midair before I could accidentally send it over the adjacent roof.
She held the cadaver like an oversized straw doll, regarding me with fluorescent eyes. We both smiled, sharp and bloody.
"Life is precious. You must treasure it."
Kimono = traditional Japanese garment
Oiran = Edo period prostitute
Yukaku = red-light district