just like a blue gem shining

By: Aviantei

Part Thirteen:

"The Shape of a Tsunami"

"Zenitsu-kun," Shimizu asks, "how the hell did you manage to forgive him?", and isn't that the question of the century right there?

There's no need to clarify who she's talking about. They both know. If there's anyone the two of them hold in common to forgive, it's Kaigaku. Sure, you could slap a bunch of other people in there, too, if you squint hard enough, but what would that accomplish? Kaigaku was a point of contention for both of them, and for Shimizu even more. After all, with time, the bullying faded away. And, while everything he said as a demon hurt, it hurt even more to know it didn't have to be that way, that he regretted it in the end.

Of course, Zenitsu's not a saint. He can see the good in people, but that's also a sense refined because of his ears and what they can understand. Zenitsu knew at the end that Kaigaku felt remorse for what he did, that Kaigaku was glad Rairi ended up safe, even if it meant his own death. Those are feelings that Zenitsu shares, and time has a good way of healing wounds. Even after looping back to the start and having some of those wounds ripped back open by Kaigaku being, well, alive and not just a memory to contend with—

Sometimes Zenitsu's angry.

Sometimes he's just sad.

Sometimes he's glad about it.

And when it comes to the subject of forgiveness…

When Zenitsu finishes swallowing his bite of peach, he takes a step back to lean against the tree he plucked the fruit from. His hand is a juicy, sticky mess, but he keeps hold of the fruit as he stares up into the canopy of leaves above him. Summer sunlight slips through, leaving his vision filled with shades of green and faint yellow. "Can I be honest with you, Shimizu-chan?" Zenitsu doesn't even need to look her way to know she's nodded. "I don't know if I have all the way," he says, and Shimizu's sound in the aftermath is plenty telling, now isn't it?

"You…haven't?" she asks, and Zenitsu shakes his head. "I don't know…I just thought…You haven't said anything."

Of course he hasn't. Sure, he and Kaigaku had a talk, and Zenitsu felt better afterwards—he feels relieved still. Kaigaku was given the chance to be a better person, and he's taking it in stride. He's been a better person to Zenitsu. He's been a good partner to Rairi. Hell, he even kept away from Shimizu through the whole of Final Selection without even needing to be asked, just not to make things worse, and, yeah, part of that was out of a sense of self-preservation, but Zenitsu knows it's also because he didn't want to ruin things for Rairi.

And if Aniki's working so hard to do better for them, how can I ruin it by bringing up that sometimes I'm so angry I don't know what to do with myself?

Zenitsu tries to smile, but he knows it doesn't work from the sound of worry slipping off of Shimizu. Well, it's better to be honest, then, huh? "I'm okay sometimes, and other times I'm not. I know that sort of thing is normal, but it still feels weird. I…I'm glad he's doing better. Aniki's changed a lot, and he puts in the effort to do better than last time. And I guess…what I can't help but think is 'If you always could've been like this, then why weren't you?'" Why couldn't Kaigaku have tried harder before he became a demon, if he always had that potential? "It's unfair, but I still think it…though I'm sure it's a whole lot harder for you, Shimizu-chan, than it is for me."

It's not a competition. It never is. Whenever you start comparing suffering, no one ends up winning, and it's way better to support each other, anyways. But Zenitsu's had a long time to contend with his own feelings, and it seems just a little bit messed up to be spilling his guts about his complicated and still changing relationship with Kaigaku to someone that died because of him.

(Kaigaku's whispered admission in the dark: I ate Urokodaki, too. I caught her, and dragged her to Kibutsuji to win his favor, and when she killed herself so he couldn't turn her into a demon, too, I ate her.

Yeah, Zenitsu's going to keep that one to himself.)

Shimizu rocks back and forth on her feet, sounding a bit lost. Zenitsu didn't mean to make her feel worse—the words just kind of spilled out. "I think…it helps," she says after a while, though her sound is all twisted up. It's nothing close to a panic attack, but Shimizu has that same knot of darkness inside her as Kaigaku, different from a box of happiness with a hole in it. It's a sound that Zenitsu's more than familiar with from all the former members of the Demon Slayer Corps, the scratching haze of trauma. "To know I'm not the weird one for not being over it."

"I don't think it's weird at all." If anything, that kind of reaction is normal. If Shimizu woke back up at the same time as the rest of them did, she's just had a year to deal with it, which is nowhere near enough. And unlike Kaigaku, who also woke up right after dying, Shimizu's been dealing with it all alone. Zenitsu's way more impressed she can even talk about it in the first place. "You went through a lot, Shimizu-chan. It's okay for that to linger. You…you don't need to get over it."

Now, Zenitsu can say that he thinks it would be better if she did get over it. Carrying pain and fear and resentment wears on a person, and that's not something he would wish on anyone. Letting those sorts of feelings go should make it a lot easier for Shimizu to move on and live a good life. But also she went through a lot, and getting killed isn't something people tend to have to get over.

If something had happened in that final battle, and I'd died instead… No, Zenitsu doesn't feel like thinking about that possibility at all. He lived, and he got to enjoy a long life with Rairi, and that's what matters.

So I want Shimizu-chan to be able to feel that kind of happiness, too. If there's anything he can to help—aside from the obvious altering Canon and changing how the previous timeline came out so that all of them get to live—then he will.

Shimizu stares a bit longer, her sound fluctuating as several emotions overwhelm her at once. It's chaotic enough that Zenitsu can't distinguish them all from one another, though he's pretty certain there's a thread of relief in there. "Are you sure?" she asks, voice trembling. "Is it…okay for me to be upset? I don't…I don't want my feelings to get in the way of fixing everything—"

"Shimizu-chan." Zenitsu keeps his voice gentle, the same way that Rairi always did for him. He reaches out his non-fruit-holding hand and grasps hers. "No one's asking you to shove everything down for the sake of the future. If you did that, it would defeat the whole point." Shimizu's sound ripples in disbelief, but she doesn't argue, so that's a good start. "We're all people living in this world. Once everything's over, we should be able to enjoy life world we've made. If we sacrifice ourselves whenever we've gotten the chance to try again, isn't that kind of dumb? You wouldn't want any of us to tear ourselves apart just for a 'happy ending,' would you?"

If that's what was expected of them all whenever they woke back up at the beginning, then Zenitsu has some choice words for whoever or whatever decided shooting them all back in time was a good idea.

After a moment, Shimizu sniffles. "No…I wouldn't want that. I just…sometimes it's hard to remember that people care about me." Able to hear that she has more she wants to say, Zenitsu just squeezes her hand tighter, trying to show her that she's not alone. "Did…did Rairi-kun ever talk to you about Depression?"

"Yeah." One of their students had a pretty rough case of it. The routine of training ended up being good for them. "Is that…something you struggle with?"

"Mmhmm. From even before I got here the first time." Ouch. That couldn't have been easy, and what she went through in the last timeline just must've made things a lot worse. And she went for a whole year by herself, too? Zenitsu was already glad before, but he's even more grateful now that Shimizu made it to them. "It's…not easy. I promise I want to accept that you all care about me. But whenever my head starts sinking into the dark, it's easy to shove all that aside. I…I feel like I should be able to handle this. How many times did I read the manga? How many different fix-it fics did I read? I want to be able to find the answers, otherwise what am I even doing here?!"

And with that, a dam cracks somewhere inside Shimizu and lets the tears come spilling out. She drops her peach and just wails, and Zenitsu hates to see a friend hurting, but he's also just glad to see that she's letting something out. Rairi talked to him a lot about how crying is a good thing, how it helps you process emotions so they don't linger too long in your heart. So if Shimizu needs to have an intense sobbing session, then he can sit there with her through it, remind her that she's not alone.

So Zenitsu abandons his own peach (it's not like they have any shortage of the things anyways) and pulls Shimizu into a hug as his empathy makes him tear up, too. At the end of it, their clothes are sticky and soaked with snot and tears, but that's a problem that can be solved with some laundry.

Shimizu isn't out of the woods yet, but her sound is just a fraction lighter than it was before, and that's victory enough.

Because of the time that they finished up at Demon Slayer Headquarters, Kaigaku and Rairi ended up staying at an inn on the way home. It was a cheap thing, but it included dinner and some breakfast, so neither of them had any reason to complain. Whenever the innkeeper asked if they needed one futon or two, Rairi answered one, and that made Kaigaku's stupid heart do all sorts of acrobatics that he didn't even know it was capable of doing. Which is dumb, considering that all three of them share the same room more often than not these days, but still—

Is it okay for me to feel happy like this?

It's the sort of doubt that sneaks up on Kaigaku more often than not, a feeling that sneaks up on him whenever he lets his walls down. Seeing Urokodaki at Final Selection just kind of made the frequency crank right on up. At HQ, he was a bit distracted by the whole taking care of Rairi and meeting Oyakata-sama ordeal, but journeying home, where he knows she's waiting, means he can't go ignoring it forever.

Fuck, this is the worst. Letting himself have feelings is doing all sorts of shit to his brain that he has no idea how to handle. Things were a whole lot easier whenever he could just feel angry all the time—and they were a whole lot worse in plenty of ways, too. If it means he gets to have the good stuff like seeing Rairi's smile, then he's just going to have to learn to handle it, though.

Speaking Rairi, though, they're not in the futon. Oh, they were there, they both fell asleep side by side, and it's that exact sort of peace that seems so surreal. It just seems they woke up before he did and slipped out in the meantime. Kaigaku sits up, stretches, and just kind of…takes a minute to remind himself that he hasn't been dreaming the whole past year. Yeah, it would be even better to wake up with Rairi right beside him, but it's not so bad to know they were there, that he'll get to see them again, that they'll all be together for at least the next year as they try and show Oyakata-sama results.

With the sleep rubbed out of his eyes, Kaigaku pulls himself up to his feet and gets to work on tidying up the bed out of pure habit. He supposes he could wait and linger for a bit longer in the blankets, but sitting still has never settled well with him. Looping back to the beginning might've helped him slow down and appreciate the little moments, but that doesn't mean he does well with being so stagnant.

And so he folds up the futon and opens the window, letting the fresh breeze tickle his bare chest. It's still early, the habitude of his training getting him up before the sun has even finished rising. He's sure that's what woke Rairi up, too, and he wonders if they went outside for some exercise or breakfast. Their few belongings already organized, Kaigaku decides to go look for them and picks up his haori before he goes.

Except, as he unfurls the garment and goes to shrug it on, he realizes the fit isn't quite right. Not that it matters much, considering that he never wears the thing closed anyways, but it does make him squint in the early morning light to be able to tell the one he's picked up is violet, rather than deep blue.

Which means that it's Rairi's.

Which means that Rairi is out there wearing his.

Yeah, that's a satisfying thought to start his day with if he's ever had one. Kaigaku debates if he should wander out the way he is, too, just to see their reaction. He's about halfway to the door with that thought in mind whenever it slides open, revealing Rairi on the other side, carrying a tray with two cups of tea.

Their expression brightens whenever they see him. "Good morning, darling."

"'Morning." Rairi stepping into the room didn't do anything to stop Kaigaku from heading to the door, and he claims a kiss that Rairi leans right on into. When they part, he tugs on Rairi's (his) sleeve. "Looks like you took something with you when you got up."

It takes Rairi a beat of looking between the two of them before it hits them. "Oh. Shit, sorry. I must not've been paying attention. Either that or habit kicked in." Yeah, Kaigaku supposes that a whole lifetime of wearing blue instead of purple would have an effect now wouldn't it? Not giving any time for that thought to linger, Rairi's already bringing the tea in. "Grab the table so I can put this down, please. Once I get it out of my hands, you can have the haori back."

"Or that part can wait until we're ready to go." Kaigaku does what they ask and sets up the table and cushions, but Rairi's gone a bit still after his comment. Even in the early morning light, the tips of their ears are starting to turn red. Knowing what's okay to say and what's not, Kaigaku leans in hard. "You could keep it all day, if you want. I don't mind you wearing my clothes one bit, Rairi-senpai."

"If I kept it all day, you'd be stuck with mine." Kaigaku snorts; as far as he's concerned, that's even less of an issue. "And then you'd be showing off even more than usual to everyone, and I think I'd like to keep that to myself for a while."

And they top it off with a perfect smile, and Kaigaku just kisses them all over again, because he's allowed to, and it's the sort of thing he's wanted for ages. Forget the tea for a minute—Rairi's right there, and kissable, and Kaigaku can't wait for them to defeat Kibutsuji just so all they have to worry about is being with each other, and won't that just be perfect?

You know. Assuming they work out all their other problems that don't have to do with demons. Like Urokodaki.

Kaigaku stills with Rairi in his arms, and they tilt their head. "Something wrong?" they ask, resting their foreheads together. Rairi's still got a little bit of height over him, though they're close enough that the position isn't awkward.

Part of Kaigaku bristles, but he's gotten a lot better at understanding when his anger is anger and when his anger is fear. He whispers, "You haven't made me talk about what we're gonna do about Urokodaki yet."

"I was waiting for you to say something first." While that's sweet and all, it feels just a bit too much like getting coddled for Kaigaku's tastes. His displeasure must be showing on his face, because the next moment Rairi says, "Even if I did make you talk about it, would you have been ready to?"

"…No." Kaigaku wishes that admitting the slightest bit of vulnerability could stop tasting like vomit in the back of his throat. At least he gets the word out, and Rairi would call that progress. "The problem is, I don't think I'll ever be ready, and I was kind of hoping you would force it out of me so I could get over it."

Rairi presses a soft kiss to Kaigaku's forehead. "That's not how this works, darling," they say, and he knows, but he wishes it could. "That said, I am going to be here to support you. Now, what were you thinking about doing whenever we get home?"

Kaigaku kind of wants to avoid Urokodaki Shimizu for the rest of his goddamn second life and any more lives that may be waiting after it, but he knows that's not the right answer, either. He needs to face it to move on, because the alternative is, what? Feel uncomfortable in his own goddamn home? Not be able to work together to defeat Kibutsuji, once and for all? Make Rairi spend their days having to watch two people they care about always be at odds?

(The last one isn't supposed to bother him the most, but Kaigaku hasn't been able to think like a rational fucking person ever since the day he realized he was in love with Rairi, so there's nothing to do about that.)

"I think…we should at least see how the two of us fare in the same space together." Otherwise things like eating are gonna be all sorts of awkward. Kaigaku's first instinct on Fujikasane-yama was to throw up, but maybe that's something he can work past if he can convince his brain that Urokodaki's not about to have her guts ripped out in front of him. "Talking…we'll have to do that at some point, but I don't know if I'll be able to handle that yet." See the whole throwing up the moment he saw her thing. "But it's like you said. Baby steps, right?"

"Baby steps," Rairi says, squeezing Kaigaku in a tighter hug. "Thank you for being willing to try. I know this is hard for you." It just might be the most difficult thing Kaigaku's ever fucking done, but arguing semantics ain't gonna make it any easier, so he lets it go. "I'm proud of you, Kaigaku. No matter what happens, please don't forget that."

A tight knot forms in Kaigaku's throat. "Thanks. I'll keep working so it can stay that way." They should probably sit down and drink their tea before it goes cold, but Kaigaku doesn't make any sort of move to sit down, instead taking the moment of sharing an embrace with Rairi for all it's worth. Somehow, just having their presence nearby is enough to make Kaigaku feel like things will be alright, that he hasn't fucked everything up past the point of no return.

Home. Rairi-senpai is home.

(And yet, in that peace, he can't help but think:

I might be ready to try, but what if Urokodaki isn't?)

[Author's Notes]

We're not about to make things easy for anyone, but at least it's not all angst! We've got some fluff bits up in here to help ease it a little bit.

Thanksto dreamsmadereality, ToonyTwilight, Ronear, and wormylol2 for the follow, favorite, and comments on the walk steady series since the last update. Thanks for your patience for this chapter's release; it's been a sleepy month for me and beta Noiz both.

If you look close, you'll see me panicking over the fact that the first Infinity Castle movie will be out later this year. I am both excited and terrified to see Kaigaku on a theater screen, but it'll be great (and awful) all at once!

For March's update, we'll have the next blue gem part, so I'll see you then!

-Avi

[27 February 2025]