Revised. 3/20/24: I appreciate your patience with me. I'm sorry for the delay and the removal of some chapters. I had severe writer's block due to my personal family issues and medical issues, I had to put this story on the backseat for a time. Furthermore I was in editing hell because I was trying to make the story more detailed and emotional and to develop the characters better without being too overt. I also aimed to find the right length for my writing, not too long or too short, and to avoid being too simple or dull. I think I found a good balance at this point, so hopefully this is good. I'm still editing other chapters, mainly planning to keep the original storyline I had.
The next thing Daki knew was that she was in a world of eternal darkness. She was scared. "What is this place?" She squinted and swiveled her head around, looking for anything recognizable, but her eyes had not yet adjusted. In all directions, it was pitch black. She reached out a grasping hand into the darkness, but there was nothing to touch or see.
"Gyutaro!" Her voice came out as a helpless squeak of a mouse, no longer did she sound like the powerful demon she once was. A crippling pain surged in her chest as she became overwhelmed with panic. "Gyutaro! Gyutaro! Where are you?" She took off full speed, but she never reached a wall or her brother. She never reached anything. Her knees buckled under her and she collapsed on the floor, but there was no floor to see, just feel. No matter where she looked or how hard she flailed, her surroundings had been replaced with an empty abyss.
"You look..."
Gyutaro's calm voice broke through the darkness and Daki shot up her head. He stared at her, pale green eyes studying her.
"Gyutaro!" She gasped loudly and bounced to her feet. Streams of tears coursed down her cheeks and down her chin.
There were so many things that Daki had thought of to say to Gyutaro when she finally saw him again. But just now, she could not think of any of them. All she could do was say Gyutaro's name, over and over, and wrap her arms around him. She pressed her face into the tattered kimono over his deformed waist, half-expecting the pain to come flaring back to life inside her body—whether it would be from the immolation or from the Demon Slayer's beheading—she didn't know. Yet she felt nothing but warmth. She looked down at her chest to see that not only was she unharmed, but she was barefoot and wearing her scratchy, pale pink kimono that she'd worn when she was a human.
"I'm….Ume…again…" The girl realized. Daki is not my name. It never was. It is just Ume. Small-looking, scrawny thirteen year old Ume with disheveled white hair and lime-green eyes that framed her lovely face.
Ume released Gyutaro from her hug and looked up at him with anticipation.
"I don't like this place! Do something!"
Gyutaro was silent, he didn't seem to acknowledge her presence at all.
"Hello! Wake up!" Ume began to shake his arm to draw his attention. "Gyutaro! Are you listening to me? Hello!" She demanded.
Gyutaro responded by roughly yanking his arm from Ume's grasp and turning his back to her. "Stop it! Don't follow me!" He snarled.
But Ume responded by reaching out to him and grabbing his arm once again. "Why? What's wrong?…Hold on for a second."
"I'm going this way. Go walk that way. It looks brighter."
Ume quickly glanced over her shoulder to squint into the blackness and saw the small glimmer of a white light glowing in the far distance. It was something that she swore wasn't there before. Nevertheless, she dismissed it with a shrug before turning back to her brother.
"So," she said, trying for an air of nonchalance, "Do you think that way is the exit?"
For a moment, Gyutaro said nothing and just stared down at Ume contemplatively. His dull green eyes deadlocked onto her bright lime-green eyes. The painful silence filling the space between them grew heavy and suffocating; Ume tried to breathe as best as she could, trying to calm herself down, but it was futile.
"Broth—"
And then without so much as a warning, Gyutaro gave her a push that sent her staggering backwards and he began walking in the opposite direction. "Don't follow me. We're not siblings anymore."
"We're not siblings….?" Ume froze, unable to fully register what Gyutaro was saying. Vivid fear crippled her speech and her mind went blank as she watched her brother walk further away. "Are…are… you still mad about earlier?" She called after him almost beggingly, but he didn't stop. "I'm sorry! I was just upset that we lost, I said I'm sorry. So just forgive me, okay!"
Gyutaro did not even turn to look at her as he kept walking.
"Wh..what's wrong..Big Brother, what's wrong? Hello? What is wrong with you?" The words escaped her lips before she could choke it back down. "Hold on, just wait…!"
"Don't," He levelled her down with a glare so chilling that Ume froze at the sight, "I said do not follow me."
His words vibrated through her, low and thick in the air. She shuddered, and the force of his savage look trapped all protest in her throat.
"We mean nothing to each other anymore," He said so coldly that Ume was frozen along with it. But her gaze remained on him, her moss-green eyes drowning at the sight of her only family left in this world slowly sauntering away. "From now on, we are strangers."
No, Big Brother. That's a lie. You can't turn your back on me! Have you lost your mind? You can't just leave me, you idiot! I won't let you! You promised! She wanted to scream, wanted to cry, but when she opened her mouth to speak, her words came out in a shrill, cracking jumble that sounded more like the petrified squeaks of a mouse than human speech.
"No! Gyutaro, w…wait up! I'm sorry!"
Tears were pouring down her face again, but she hardly felt them this time. The girl chased him down, shouting after him. "Did I make you mad? Please forgive me! I was just mad that we lost. I was just frustrated that we lost. I don't think you're ugly, I swear I don't. I didn't want to admit we lost because of me!" Ume shrieked, the cracked words slipping out of her lips. "I'm sorry about always holding you back! Don't leave me…"
Gyutaro stopped mid-way and turned to face her, his eyes cold and hard. "Shut up, Ume! Do not let me repeat myself again! Do not follow me. Get lost!"
In an instant, his expression was shrouded with sadness. Almost as if awakened by the thunderous cruelty in his own voice, Gyutaro closed his eyes, visibly regretting using that tone with her.
"Just do this for me." He shattered the still silence with a soft tone, his voice calm and quiet, but Ume could feel the sorrow intertwined in his words. "Just this once, just listen to me. Don't follow me, walk the other way. Go towards the light…"
Then with that, he walked away without another word.
Ume ignored his pleas and picked up speed, disregarding what could happen next. It didn't matter if he pushed her away or yelled at her again. As long as they were together, she didn't care. With a shrill sob, she rushed at him, colliding with him while she was still at what was nearly a full-on run and leapt on her brother's back.
"AH!" Gyutaro let out a cry and gave a violent tremor.
"Hey…stop…!"
Ume clenched her arms around his neck as tight as she could. "No!" Her voice came out awfully shrill. "No…No! No! No! You can't leave me! You mustn't leave me! We have to stay together! No matter how many times I might be reborn, I'll always be your little sister!"
A raw, tense silence hung in the world as both siblings stood there.
Ume could sense Gyutaro's shock from his apprehensive silence, but she couldn't discern what exactly he was thinking.
Suddenly he spoke. "Ume, look."
No sooner did those words leave his mouth, there was a change within the darkness.
"Oh no…" thought Ume, her eyes wide with terror as she watched the darkness before them unveil a pathway of orange-red flames rising from nothing, hardly penetrating the darkness outside of it. Ume felt miles of heat and pulsing infernal light flow into them. She could see the field of roaring crimson, surrounded by pools of lava, sprawling spires of brimstone reaching towards a ceiling that seemed limitless. The unbridled flames roared as if it was a living, breathing creature, carrying out a heavy stench of rotten flesh that overwhelmed Ume so much it made her gag. There were screams amongst the flames, sharp, penetrating screams of millions of people in great anguish pierced the air.
It was Hell.
"Ume,"
"Yeah.."
"I don't want you to come in here with me." Gyutaro spoke firmly, his features intertwining with each other. He looked vulnerable and despaired for a second, his fearless facade cracking before he hurriedly sealed them back together.
Ume grimaced, something about his expression made her chest constrict uncomfortably. In a response, she reached out and pulled his ear hard until he hissed with pain. "No! I'm not leaving! What part of that do you not understand! You are my brother—"
"And as your big brother, I can't let you follow me anymore." As he said this, Ume detected something in his voice–something solemn and saddening. There was a pang of hurt in her chest, and it struck deep. For a moment, Ume observed him silently, watching the pain that he held in multiple. The sadness, the regrets, the agony—Ume could see it all, hear it in his very tone. And she hated it more than anything.
"I stole enough from you, Ume." Gyutaro's low voice teemed with conviction. "I robbed you of your future once, I won't do it a second time."
"Th…that's not true, Big Brother!" Ume argued, her voice almost breaking. "You stole nothing from me!" She swallowed hard, trying to keep the words from choking her on their way out. "I was only able to come this far because you were with me. Because of you, I was able to become an Oiran. You saved my career, my dream. Because of you, I became the face of the Upper Moon Six rank. Don't you understand? You made me strong, Gyutaro. You kept me alive. You saved me, you saved my life that day…"
"On that day, you were dying, you had no other options. And I thought that I was doing what was best for you. I wanted you to have the world and become what you could never be in your first life. I wanted you to be revered and feared at the same time so no one would dare to mess with you. I wanted you to be someone who simply collects what belongs to you and dictates fate by your own hands. I wanted you to live and…be free." The cracks in his quiet tone were palpable, yet his facial expression carried his regrets the most. "But in the end, I just turned…you into Daki."
The way he uttered out her former name was said with such revulsion that Ume could practically see it dripping off his lips. It told her how much he loathed her former self to her core. Ume clawed a single hand at her chest, trying to will away the growing constriction in her heart. "I would have…have died that day…if you did something different, I had to change..."
"And here you are. Somewhere between hell and heaven."
There was so much conviction in his low voice that Ume tried to reply, but her jaw trembled and she felt more stinging tears rising to her eyes. It was like a splash of icy cool water on a fresh wound, and she couldn't exactly pinpoint this strange influx of emotions. It was only seconds later did she finally have a name for this odd feeling.
Remorse.
Her thoughts cast to Tanjiro, recalling their brief talk on the rooftop that triggered those flashes of deep-seated memories of Muzan-sama's cells.
"A life that's lost can never return. It's gone forever."
"A demon's body..isn't made of human flesh."
"Why do you steal people's lives? Why do you ruin them?"
"Even you were once human, weren't you? Surely, you struggled against pain and suffering. You must have shed tears."
Ume remembered that she actually froze at the chilling tone of his voice when he uttered those words, causing her to be too distracted to listen to the meaning. He had just snuck behind her at such a jarring speed and managed to tear off her foot with his bare hands. The seemingly pathetic prey she was overpowering moments before just transformed into a ruthless predator in the blink of an eye.
She could tell he was mad. Hell, mad was an understatement. Enraged, livid, infuriated beyond words was a far better description. He looked so monstrous, so inhuman that Ume couldn't help but to feel intimidated. His eyes were bloodied, framed with a bloodlust-filled contencance. His lips were twitching, even his hair seemed to be rising like spikes on his head, and Ume knew he was hell-bent on ending her for slaughtering that neighbourhood.
At the time she dismissed his words as ignorance. His questions genuinely sounded like a humourless joke to her ears. She was a demon, an eternal, powerful creature of the night that had the means to do whatever she pleases with no scruples. Why should she bear any woes over the loss of meaningless human life? What did he even expect to accomplish with his questions at that point? To make her apologise? To make her bear tears? To make her express some form of repentance? What did it matter? It was all meaningless. She had already done the horrible deeds, and much more even before that. Cruel and vicious things, void of any compassion. His words made no sense.
Until now…
Ume understood him. About the remorse, the inner turmoil of her own humanity, the accountability that he was trying to remind her of. She could see it now, the myriad of memories flashing in her mind, played in vivid colours, sounds, and emotions—the affluent neighbourhood that was dancing in the wind and was now plagued with cruel imagery; the blood of the fallen had polluted the once tranquil street. An ocean of blood swarmed over the expanse of the field in all directions, bringing with it the endless screams that shook the earth. The screeching old man clutching his severed hand. The beseeching woman cradling the bloodied corpse of a male. The bloodcurdling cacophony of the living within the demolished buildings screaming and pleading to the fallen to arouse them from their permanent slumber. Ume suffocated when she remembered a mangled Tanjiro writhing in agony from his deep shoulder wound, big glass eyes seemingly watching her in the decimated street of phantom screams.
Now…she understood why his words chilled her to the bone.
Because Tanjiro made her remember that there was once a time she wasn't like this, and deep down, she knew innately that she was once a person who valued life more than anything. It was why she felt so enraged when Tanjiro admonished her for stealing lives. It was why she opted to mock his weakness instead of outright taking his head as he knelt before the Accidental Demon intervened. He made her remember who Daki once was.
Ume. The ill-named unwanted daughter of a diseased, wretched prostitute wasting away in the murkiest recesses of Yoshiwara who cherished all of her big brother's promises of a great life for them beyond their impoverished dirty misery.
Her doting brother had brought her up with care and protection, constantly reminding her to never allow the pain and cruelty of the wretched Riverbank to blind her from the light at the end of the tunnel —even after the persistent abuse of those who wronged her, those who hurt her and mocked her, never lose sight of the light that lied beyond the Riverbank.
Even in a world where the blessed spat on the less fortunate, Ume was the epitome of the word nice; the very essence and body of the word. Despite all the evil in the world, she believed idealistically in the good things; the lighter areas of life rather than the malevolent things covered in darkness. Evil people were just lost and needed to be guided to the light; good people outnumbered them and would prevail in the end.
She believed in all those things until the day when she was bound, burned alive, and left for dead in a ditch. Ume believed in all those things until the day she was treated like nothing more than an animal. Ume believed in all those things until she stabbed that vile Samurai in the eyeball.
Then, Ume stopped believing in all those things.
Suddenly, she found herself harbouring one of the most vicious and dangerous emotions: hatred. She hated everyone and everything. Detested the Samurai who brutally tortured her to near death, detested her madam who discarded her, detested all those who left her and her brother to rot, but most of all, she detested herself. The wrath and loathing amassed and multiplied, devouring the last echoes of her old self.
126 years ago, Ume died in that ditch forgotten and forsaken by even herself, the nice, honest bubbly girl was gone, only to be replaced with something befitting of a monster.
Ume was no longer that nice girl anymore. Daki threw out the words kindness, honesty, compassion to replace them with cruelty, deception and vengeance. She was no longer recognizable, even by herself. All her naïve assumptions of how the world was a beautiful place regardless were buried deep in the earth and rotting away somewhere with Ume's corpse. Now, all her guesses were more like sharp perceptions and tainted hooks.
This world is a merciless world that only the victors were allowed to live. No one understood that more than herself and Gyutaro. If she were to be empathetic to others, would they do the same to her? No. Not after all she had been through, not after what she had witnessed, that idealistic world she believed in was gone. She had only herself and her elder brother to trust.
It is all for the sake of surviving, she would remind herself every night. Survival was her sole priority, but those words did little to ease her guilt-ridden conscience. What exactly was she surviving for after all that was said and done? What was she even living for? What did she seek for her eternal existence?
She did not know. Even now, she still didn't. She couldn't even dream of ever knowing.
There was only one thing that she did know now with absolute certainty.
"It's my fault that we're between heaven and hell," Ume broke the silence, her voice frayed and soft. "I'm sorry…Big Brother…"
A haunted shadow hung in her brother's solemn green pools after she said that. "Ume, that's not what I meant. I mean…"
"Tanjiro was right…about everything he told me. I think that's why I…" Ume murmured and clutched one hand on her chest. Her heart was pounding against her ribcage as if trying to break free. She told herself she had to show some form of repentance and grief, but she couldn't.
Instead, her mind drew back to Tanjiro's departing words to her and her brother and she held them close to her heart. It reminded her of her brother's unbounded love towards her, further solidifying her resolve to stay at his side. "But, in the end, just as Tanjiro said, we mustn't just turn on each other," Ume began in a soft voice but it got stronger with every word. The conviction in her tone teemed on the very top of her voice so that he could hear it clearly. "No matter how much suffering we faced, we always had each other. We still have each other. That's all that matters now, Big Brother. We must stay together till the end—"
"No, Ume," The subtle urgency in his voice caught Ume's undivided attention. His dim green eyes held her without flinching. It scared her, how truly grave he appeared. "You're a good kid, always have been. If life had been fair, you'd have gone down a different path, one with a true purpose. I know you could have had such a life," His words were quiet, distant even almost as if he was confirming that notion rather than informing her. "You can go to heaven and be reborn, Ume…"
Ume gritted her teeth, a stubborn glint in her lime-green eyes, a distinct obstinance in the set of her jaw. "So? What's your point? I don't care if I can go to heaven, I am not going there. Because before anything, you're my brother, and I'll never forsake you! You're worth a thousand lifetimes, every stubborn inch of it. I won't let you go! I will never abandon you! We're family and we must stick together no matter what! Come on, Big Brother, did you seriously forget our promise?"
At her last words, Gyutaro's green pupils contract to pinpoints, dilate again rapidly, and then return to something resembling normalcy.
Please, please, show something else... Ume begged silently. Anything, just a small sign that you remember.
"I was wrong for turning you into a demon."
Ume gasped sharply at his last words before jabbing her knee as hard as she could into his back, making him flinch.
"Don't say that! Never say that! Big Brother, listen to yourself! Stupid!" She kneed him again, causing him to hiss out of pain. "I do not regret turning into a demon, I am grateful that I was. You saved me. The fact that we lived for centuries proves that you were right. You and I were always together because we're stronger that way, you idiot! Obviously, me and you are stronger than people gave us credit for. And you know this, so stop playing dumb!"
"No…just…" He tried to say more, but Ume silenced him with a hard kneecap to the back of his head with such immense force, that the impact reverberated through the darkness.
"Shut up! Don't take me for a fool, I know what you're doing! You are not abandoning me! You said that we will always be together no matter what. You promised me that! You can't take that promise back! I won't forgive you if you left me behind!" Ume's throat constricted and streams of tears stung her eyes. "I am not leaving you! I don't care what you say. I am coming with you no matter what. I don't care where we go, as long as it's just us!"
"Ume…" Her name died on his lips.
Ume released a long sigh of relief as she heard Gyutaro heaved an exasperated breath. Through her blurring veil of tears, she watched Gyutaro's contorting features in bated silence. It was definitely there in his ragged features and in his low voice: resignation. The sight of it made Ume completely relax, as though an invisible, heavy tension had been lifted from her shoulders.
Finally. She finally managed to knock some sense into him.
"So that settles it," Ume said with an air of finality before moving her gaze to Hell, feeling a terrible shudder run down her spine. Though she was not that close to the flames, the boiling heat felt so intense against her skin that it was on the verge of knocking her to the ground in absolute agony. Yet she swallowed hard, tightening her arms around his neck and embraced him tightly. Her mind was written in stone and Gyutaro knew well that there was no way of changing it.
She sucked in a deep breath and braced herself.
"Now let's g—"
Ume let out an involuntary squeak of panic as a hard jolt sent her little body flying through the air like a pebble. She groaned in agony when she crashed into the ground, the impact leaving her dizzy and breathless. Her mind was still whirling in shock, but she was still able to shoot up to see the sight of Gyutaro striding into Hell, allowing the flames to engulf him whole.
"No! Please!" The tiny, flailing form of Ume came crashing down after him with a shrill scream, made up of sheer terror. "Nooo! Big brother! Gyutaro!"
And just like that, in that tiny window of time, before Ume could do anything, as suddenly as Hell had appeared, it just disappeared.
And then Ume was left alone with the one single ray of light in a world of neverending blackness.
Before she knew why, she was running again. She was running from the light and running after Gyutaro, hoping that eventually they would reunite in the pathway of hellfire.
But no matter how far she ran, Hell never returned and the white light remained like a beacon in the darkness, growing brighter, flooding light through the darkness like a lit lantern in a dark room.
Ume ran deeper into the blackness, fleeing from the illuminative light like a small child running from a monster. However it seems that no matter how far she ran, the single light grew its unrelenting brightness more than before as if it was directly behind her as she ran forth into the blackness. It was gaining on her and she was not making it far.
She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound or words came from her mouth. Her breaths came in short bursts as her tears coursed freely down her cheeks. Ume could feel a dreadful drag on her limbs as she sprinted through the darkness. The further she ran, the more she felt herself tapering off, every step seemed heavier than the last, every breath more shallow.
Was it fear that weighed her down, or was the void tightening its grip on her? She didn't know. She had no way of knowing how far she had run, how long she had been struck within this darkness or how long she had left.
The only thing she did know with absolute certainty was that Gyutaro was deep within Hell and she was here, fleeing from her fate of being reborn without him by her side.
Soon enough Ume felt her legs give way underneath her and she plummeted to the ground. She struggled as the tears blinded her eyes. She tried to steady her breathing, but it wasn't helping at all. She choked on the oxygen she had inhaled, causing a guttural noise to erupt from her throat. The tears burned like vinegar as they cascaded freely down her cheeks until her face was blotched and swollen, the lovely face that Gyutaro had cherished.
In the corner of her blurring eyes, Ume could see the white rays of heavenly light ebbing into her vision. It was as bright as the engulfing flames that once burned her alive. The sight chilled her bones and extinguished her fury in an instance; extinguished her desire to fight and her resolve to keep up her tough girl act and revert her to that insignificant scared little girl that she was long before, that weak, helpless little girl that depended on her brother to save her from their mother's wrath, that pathetic, crying scared little girl that cowered behind her big brother when men from the brothels threatened to indenture her, that useless, pathetic scared little girl bounded and broken in that ditch, praying for her big brother to come and save her.
What…changed after all this time…
The useless, pathetic, scared little girl who couldn't brave the touch of flames and heat to save her own brother still existed within Daki.
Her shaking intensified as each of her senses began to shut down. The white light remained there, waiting, almost beckoning her to resign to her fate…
No! No! Move! I cannot give up just yet! I must keep moving! I will never abandon my brother! Never! No matter what! I will fight for him until the end! I must be with him. I must!
Despite her determination to fight, Ume crumbled to her knees, all her strength abandoning her. All Ume could do was sit helplessly on her trembling knees, staring tearfully out at the vast, open expanse of blackness where her dear brother had entered Hell alone, praying, hoping that the flaming pathway would just unveil itself once again.
But Hell mocked her with its absence.
This was the end for her. She couldn't fight any longer. She was suffocating. The agony and fear that she was experiencing were unimaginable.
She shut her eyes in agony, slowly accepting her inevitable fate. Ume was exhausted, both mentally and physically. After all the tragedy that she had been through, Ume wanted nothing more than to succumb to her fate. But oddly enough, just as she thought that despair would envelop her at a moment like this, instead, a singular thought bloomed in her subconscious.
It was a foolish, desperate thought that was so little, yet so profound that it made her clench her fists, grit her teeth, and drag herself up as far away as she could from the heavenly light. It was a thought that made her ignore the pain, the fatigue, and the fear. It was a thought that made her cling to the last remnant of hope she had left.
Ume prostrated herself on the floor with her throbbing forehead kissing the floor, tears dripping down her lashes. "Please.."
"Please, please," she whispered. "I must be with my brother! I can't bear to be without him! What must I do to be with him again? Anything! I will do anything you request of me. I don't care what the price is…I don't care how much I suffer, I do not care what I'll lose, I'll pay what's due!" She raised her hoarse voice, pleading with the empty air. "I will pay with my life! I will give anything to see my big brother again! My heart, my soul, my body. Collect it all and do whatever you want with it! I don't care! Please, I beg you, grant me a debt and I will pay for it no matter the cost!"
As soon as those words left her mouth, Ume's heart stopped when she saw a jarring sound of a deep guttural cracking seemingly uttered from nothing piercing the air. She stilled. A few seconds passed without her even breathing. The guttural cracking echoed. The floor underneath her trembled and rumbled in such a way it threatened to cave in at any second.
Splintering, cracking, crumbling…
The floor underneath her was breaking.
She lifted her head as she felt herself heightened with anxiousness. Then, she finally came face to face with the 'it'.
Colours.
Colours of green. Colours of blue. Colours of yellow. Colours of red. The core of a rainbow blemished her eyesight. Ume felt her entire world threatening to topple on a deadly axis, her perception multiplying in a sickening kaleidoscope as she felt pulled in incomprehensibly many directions—but all she could focus on was just one colour, hot pink.
Pink flames.
Bright pink flames engulfed her entire body, swallowing her whole. But this time, the flames weren't burning her in the slightest bit, she didn't even feel a hint of heat coming from them. The blinding light of the flames chased away the blankness soon after. A succession of images from someone else's point of view played around her like a picture book. Strange images that did not belong to her. Shards of memories that weren't her own.
A small, wooden house in a land of snow.
A clouded sky hung like a grey sheet over the white landscape filled with snow-capped peaks.
The smiling face of a bright-eyed toddler tucked in a thick white sheet on the memory owner's back.
A young boy carrying a basket of wood on his back, dressed black-and-sea-foam-green haori over a white robe and black pants. His reddish-black ponytail flaked with white, his distinct pair of hanafuda earrings flowing in the gentle wind—Tanjiro.
A rustic room filled with four lively children dashing about the residence. A beautiful woman cladded in a tengui cleaning utensils in the sink, gently hushing them.
Master Muzan standing in the doorway, besuited in a simple outfit consisting of a dull grey suit and matching dress pants. An immeasurable inferno of obsidian flames radiating off of him before the memory owner's eyes, set to consume everything in its fiery embrace.
Masses of dark flesh expelling from him and into the memory's owner, the horrifying squelches drowned out the symphony of anguished-filled screams that filled the air.
The bodies of three small children and the woman, all bloody and broken, strewn about on the glistening red floor like broken dolls. The fading sounds of their final breaths shutting in the memory owner's eardrums in a chorus of suffocation.
Master Muzan's face, uncharacteristically callous and merciless as stone glaring down at the owner beneath him.
The stark red of blood against white snow filling the memory owner's vision, the pungent taste of iron suffocating their throat with each choking gasp.
Tanjiro kneeling over the memory owner, face drenched with thick tears pouring down his cheeks, each droplet of liquid splashed onto the owner's skin like warm raindrops.
A tearful Tanjiro pinned down on the ground, clutching what appeared to be the wooden handle of an axe, fear embedded in his expanded eyes.
A towering black-haired man adorned in a beautiful mismatched haori of red and a collage of green-yellow arched a dark blade, in a pose to cut the memory's owner down.
And finally...the last image appeared…
Callused hands clutching the memory's owner tight to their chest, the voice of Tanjiro echoing a passionate promise into the ear of the owner. "I swear your big brother will save you no matter what…."
Ume gasped in heaves when she returned to reality. Thin breaths of ashy, frigid air throttled her aching lungs. Fear elevated her heartbeat, and her body trembled furiously from everything. Her other hand clenched a clump of her soft kimono, still hosting a heavy tremor of horror, as if by doing so would make the jarring images go away. Her head hurt too much. Her body hurt too much. Everything she saw hurt so much. The nails of the hand on her kimono burrowed deep into the smooth fabric as she tried to make sense of what she saw. What the fuck was all that? This could not be Master Muzan's cells. It couldn't be, she was dead. Even when she was alive, she never had a vision like this before. They didn't even seem like Master Muzan's memories. So why? Why was she getting these memories? What did it mean—
"Nezuko…what's the matter?"
When she heard the voice, Ume felt a stark terror take hold, her body straightening like a pole. No. It couldn't be him, she told herself. But it was so distinctive that she had no doubt it was him.
Tanjiro.