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( PROLOGUE, you wait still. )
You don’t think about death very often, but when you do, you think of your dreams. Like colors swirling in curls, magenta swaying to cyan, and the greenest eyes made out of the bluest springs– you think of blood splatters painted in shiny gold, knives made out of coal, and sharp teeth covered in jam. It’s a dizzy– something startling, something more: A hand that smears ink all over the floor, a buzzing laugh that echoes around the room, and screams sliding like music notes from your throat. ( You think of an argument– a breakup, a bloodied knife, and acid melting your fingertips. )
You don’t think about death very often, but when you do you think of a boy with cherry blond hair ruffled by the wind; of smiles heavier than waterfalls, kisses like the scorching sun, and something thundering under your ribs. An artificial kind of charming it is; of sweet nothings whispered like curses under his tongue, heavy and warm, wrapped prettily around your neck like a necklace made out of noose.
It tastes like strawberries popping under the roof of your mouth, confetti-like sparkles shining in your vision and blurred with tears. It’s a dream, but it never feels like just a dream. Something tells you so, and you can’t shake the feeling: it’s wrong. So, so wrong. ( Aunt said– “dreams are supposed to be nice, sweetheart,” while holding a needle in her hand, “They’re supposed to be comforting.” )
Comforting. ( “What– what do you call the bad ones, then?” Threads entangled in soft fabric, dark eyes narrowed to slits: “Bad dreams? Aren’t those only nightmares?” )
You’re seven when you learn the difference between a nightmare and a memory.
In your memories, this is how you die: with a kitchen knife haphazardly stabbed deep into your belly, and warm blood smeared on your lips. It burns. You’re not sure what, but something burns, and the smell of melting flesh combined with hydrochloric acid is so foul that nausea crawls up to your throat in biles. It’s horrible. You can feel yourself dying– ( feel your life, so vivid and brilliant, slip away from your melting fingertips ) but you’re not ready yet.
You’re not ready, but you can feel the static build-up in your lungs. It hurts, you’re gutted like a cattle, and something coils under your skin like electricity, it fries off your nerves one by one ( it’s terrible ), and it’s so cold yet warm. All you can feel is a stasis induced by hysteria– oh, you’re dying, like actually, and you’re not even out of high school yet–
It doesn’t matter. You aren’t ready to die, but it doesn’t matter because your pierced organs can’t wait to stop bleeding out like a river, nor can the static smell of acid stop burning your lungs. There are no miracles in real life, there will be no miracles, and even if you aren’t ready, you will die in this dingy apartment too cold to be called home in the hands of someone you trusted once.
( Your last thoughts among the echoing giggles are as follows: I never even said sorry to my mom. )
Before everything, the nightmares and memories, the story you know goes like this: you’re a bastard child of some rich clan, and they don’t want you. They don’t want you, nor your foreigner of a father, but while you carry their sacred blood, he doesn’t. That is the main difference between you and him. ( He’s not as lucky. )
His crime, dishonoring a maiden out of his reach, is rewarded by execution. ( They fed him to the dogs. Limb by limb, you hear through the mouths of tittering aunties with painted lips and dolled-up hair, they severed him apart, until only the head remained. Then, a particularly horrified one recounts, they shoved it on a stick right by your whore of a mother’s window! ) As a lesson. To let her remember, of course, who she is! ( She’s locked up forever, someone says rather pitifully. Poor thing. But what’s poor about a woman who mothered a bastard? )
Your crime, being born, however, is rewarded differently. ( You’re the lucky one, remember? ) You’re a bastard, but you’re a child of theirs regardless. You’re a child of theirs, and you have the mark to prove it– an ugly discolored tissue of flesh that stretches across from your left arm to your belly button. A birthmark. ( A shackle and a guillotine. )
So they don’t kill you, but they don’t want you either. ( They sell you off to another family, as a bride-to-be, because you’re not worth nurturing, but you’re not defective enough to be killed. ) It stings most unexpectedly– were you born just to be shuttled like cattle? Meek and timid, like a lamb to a slaughter, without an opinion or sway? They want you to just roll over on your belly for them because you were born and you were not supposed to.
It is a horrifying existential dread that creeps up in your spine, builds up like a web, and entangles you into a cocoon of self-pity: you’re born to be a wife, a mother. ( That’s, that can’t be– ) The people in this house are kind, kinder than what the people who sold you would be like, but it’s not enough. ( “Look,” they say your name, the one assigned by your whore of a mother when you were born, with sickly sweet smiles, pointing at the older boy soon to be your husband– “isn’t Shuji-kun so handsome?” No, no, no– )
You’re sick of handsome faces and kind words. ( So, so sick– ) That feeling, that sense of dread; it gnaws at your stomach, nicks your organs, makes bile pool up in your throat and sweat tremble from your nape. You can’t breathe. ( “You can’t leave me,” says the boy who haunts your dreams in a burst of giggles, “we’ll be together forever!” But, the scene changes along with his face– he’ll eat you whole, a distorted voice says instead, pityingly.
)
You’ll be together forever.
You can’t bear to see it.
If fate was a drawn line and yours was set in stone, what happened that day could only be explained as if the stone had shattered into a million pieces, along with what you knew as reality. ( Like popping sparkles, bam bam bam– )
It’s a blight summer night. The cicadas sing like they always do, the air is humid, and if you were to rate everything you’ve ever hated in your life, humidity would probably come in fourth or so. ( You can’t say what the first three are, you cannot, that you swore. ) Yet, even still, you’re out of your bed, and out of your comfort zone that is the house you’re haunting. It’s a terrible idea, you know what happens to the little girls wandering too far out of their herd, but even if this family treats you kinder than most would, there are only so many reminders that you can take.
( “I said; you’re going to marry that boy!” Aunt says, red-faced and grim, “Have you forgotten why you’re here? Get used to it!” Fingers clenched and airways closing– “but I–” a bark, “don’t make me repeat myself, girl!” )
So, a cacophony of screams interrupts your little walk just like that. Much like the shlinks of katanas being drawn, flesh getting torn apart, it tears through your misery too. ( A memory: “I just want to eat you up,” a smile so twisted, so tender– “You really would let me do anything to you, no?” )
Something wicked this way comes, and it makes a hole through the human defenses with ease. The policemen, you think numbly, where are they? ( Dead, dead, gutted, and dead– ) You don’t understand, you don’t understand what’s going on or maybe you do, but that doesn’t matter because before you know it you’re already turning on the balls of your feet. It’s terrifying. Whatever it is, this creature is undoubtedly evil. You think of your lessons, of the religion Aunt liked to preach, and terror seizes your heart. ( You walk closer. )
It’s a fool’s errand to walk into danger when you should be running away from it instead, but you can’t help it. How unfortunate it is that your feet, much like your trembling heart, don’t seem to listen to reason?
Every step you take is only furthered by your horror. ( Oh, you poor thing. Isn’t this what you prayed for every night? A ghost of a man whispers in your ear, and you don’t know him, you don’t, but you carry his skin and hair like a fucking trophy. My baby girl, dead right beside me!—
( Then, a nightmare: “We’ll be together forever,” a giddy laugh, “even death won’t do us part!” Even in death; in his hands, he holds a knife coated in gold! Cyan reflects off of the shiny silver, pop pop popping like red cherries and–! ) )
The Thing you spy from afar is, simply put, a grotesque creature with more limbs than any humanoid monster like it should possess. A blank face littered with multicolored eyes like freckles, stretchy, four long arms spanning from its back, and two stubby legs sticking out from the bottom of its torso– it is awful. Even more so when it opens its bloody maw, the lower half of its face and a red tongue with even more eyes pop out.
“Haaa,” steam comes out of its mouth in whiffs when it moans, and in its moss-covered fingers, he holds something you’re not quite sure of. “Nooooo…”
It takes a second. You release your breath in a stutter, lungs collapsing at the bloody remains of the policemen, their empty eye sockets, and those who are not yet dead, but trying to crawl away with little strength they can muster. ( Bam bam bam–! )
“That…!” The creature gasps in delight when it sees you with its many eyes, and with barely concealed hunger sweeping through them, he says: “Ma… re…chi!”
Something heavy settles in the bottom of your stomach. ”Marechi…?” Oh. Oh? You say the word, and taste it on your tongue, but it feels different. ( Something changes. ) The air gets denser around your lungs, you can’t breathe, and something explodes right behind your eyes. ( A night– memory?: “They’re called demons, sweetheart,” the boy in your dreams grins, “the bad guys who survive off of human meat. Sick, right?” Oh, that’s not– )
The creature’s, the demon’s, snarl cuts through the air like a whip. You don’t understand, ( you’re alive? ) everything burns, but the demon jumps towards you. Your joints are locked in place, you can’t think, tears roll down like rhinestones from your eyes and sweat drips like crystalline diamonds from your forehead to your cheek. ( And in your ears, you hear bam bam bam! “Isn’t this what you prayed for every night, dear?” Someone gone, someone near– then, you see swirling green eyes with neon pus leaking, cherry pinks, morose purples, and mosaic blues; blinking, blinking, dilating, and bogging– )
Its hand reaches. Towards your eyes, you can tell even in your delirious state– but before it can even touch a hair on your head, something whirls and swings by. ( Something big, and something very cyan. ( Pop pop pop! ) ) The weapon, which you assume it to be, chops its hand clean off like a butcher to meat in one maneuver. Blood, magenta in its color, splatters on your face. ( Like jam smeared on your jaw, rich and syrupy, it drips drips drips! )
The demon howls in pain then, cradling the limb closer to its chest, but the person, the woman, doesn’t give it a chance to recover. She jumps, jumps, and delivers a kick so strong with her right leg that it has to stagger– has to retreat at least a few meters away from you. ( Eyes so so so green, so blue and so cold, staring devotedly. “I love you.” But you killed– )
“You alright, kid?”
And easily, the most gorgeous woman you’ve ever seen hauls up a giant axe dripping magenta to her shoulders. ( Are you alright? You killed me! You want to answer, but your throat chokes up, and you can’t breathe– “Easy, baby,” a hand on your shoulder, warm and horrible, “your mom is just worried. She’ll warm up to me in no time!” No no no no no–
In his hands, a knife painted copper. )
“No,” you breathe. ”Kill it, kill it, hurry–!”
Why then, the woman laughs loudly, “Ha! How bratty,” and shifts her weight on her feet. Then, she brings down her axe in a swing, getting into some sort of stance, and glances at the snarling demon regrowing its limb by the corner.
“Ease up, kiddo,” her voice is of the nasal sort when she speaks again, tone flickering in amusement, “I’ll take care of it.”
You can’t help it. The moment she says those words, your world tilts on its axis, and the last thing you see before you pass out is her jumping forward, like a blizzard, to swing her axe in a gust of wind. You try to keep yourself awake, but it’s a useless endeavor because a sizzling sort of pain stabs itself through your nervous system, and you’re out cold before you realize what’s happening.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
( CHAPTER ONE, born a prophet. )
warning(s): disturbing imagery.
It’s a blight summer night with constellations dotting the sky when everything falls apart at the seams. The air is stagnant, thick in its humidity and it fills your lungs like black tar. ( Spongy, hot, and blisteringly syrupy, it drips drips drips– ) It burns, and it takes, pools in your stomach, and sloshes with each breath you take. Someone is standing there. Behind you, oh the deplorable you!
It’s a moment of pure agony as you take in the scene, flimsy and cracking, awkward and nerve-wracking.
“Where are you going?”
Asks the boy standing before you, with a lit candle fragilely cradled in his hands, painted in hues of yellow and silver. If you had not known him, you wouldn’t notice, but there are cracks made of golden ( drip drip drip ) filling the stoicism in his voice, tight and airy. ( Like yellow teeth smeared in a sticky, syrupy jam, it’s– )
“Somewhere,” you respond easily. A little too easily, the words spilling like organic waste from your loose lips and buzzing like electricity around your ears. “Why do you care?”
“You’re my fiancée,” he says just as blandly as his tone. It's maddening. You know him, you know that he’s forcing it– the words, to come out and that he doesn’t care what you do at all, however, it’s infuriating. It’s infuriating that he knows how to press your buttons; how to make your insides boil, rage creep at the edges of your brain at the title, but you force yourself to hold still. ( It’s not worth it, nor has it ever been. )
“Don’t you think I have the right to know?”
“No,” your reply this time comes as a snort, veiling the anger, and with condescension dripping from your mouth, you taunt: “You’re stupid. Stupid boys don’t get to know anything!”
Why then, “I’m not stupid,” comes his dull answer.
Dull, like the way he forces his eyes to be, dull like the way he parades himself to be. Yet, you catch the way his eyes narrow and fill with more bite than ever, and as typical of him whenever he gets like this, he doesn’t waste any more of his time to snip: “I’m the smartest among my cousins.”
“‘I’m the smartest among my cousins,’” you mock wryly. It’s a statement told not in arrogance, but in truth, and that only makes matters worse when you consider it: you’re lucky to be with him. ( But what is luck if not your damnation? Don’t you know– “my dear,” a wraith of a man whispers in your ears, “should've been dead right beside–” )
“You’re so gross,” you say suddenly, airways tightening, as you let your nails– what’s left of the bitten ends, cracked and bloody, prick the soft flesh of your palms. It’s a tragedy in the making! Don’t you see? ( This is your life’s purpose. )
He doesn’t say anything in return. He pauses, and reconsiders, yet he never replies to your taunts– it feels like a statement. Does he think he’s better than you? You notice that he does that a lot when it comes to you. ( Thinks, thinks, thinks– thinks until thoughts overflow the open gasket of his skull, thinks until a punch resonates with a startling pop! to his jaw. Thinks thinks thinks until you can’t take it anymore. )
He sighs out your name, then, as if he knows what goes through your mind. The syllables are soft against the humidity, however, its effect is near immediate: You flinch. It’s embarrassing enough as it is; hating to hear the name he tastes on his tongue, hate it the more he addresses you by it. It's a name given by someone you’ve met only thrice, and the significance of it haunts you nonetheless– my poor daughter, you can still hear the whore say in hysterics, your mother is so, so sorry.
The way he says it is more of a resignation, rather than a demand, but it sizzles against your skin all the same– a defeat that is not a defeat. It clenches against your skin, near your brittle bones, and sinks further into the meat of your chest. This is an insult. ( What is an apology if not a farce? Flowers without scents. Words without meanings. Your name on his lips. They're all the same and you hate how despotic it sounds. )
“Where are you going?” He repeats.
“I will not tell you,” you confess with all the heat boiling your insides. Oh, it’s like an erupting volcano. Orange casts on black, it drips and it sizzles– This heat, this anger, it is the only defense you have against someone who can afford to lose this easily! “Go back, Yamada Shuji. Not everything is about you.”
“This isn’t about me,” he repeats your name, and your jaw clenches involuntarily. “Mother said I should keep an eye on you.”
“Momma’s boy,” you taunt instead of answering. It always leads back to Aunt with him, and she’s the worst one of them all, she’s the woman who raised you. ( “Ah it’s okay, girl,” sharp smiles growing softer at the ends, “I’m okay, see?” It’s revolting. What’s Aunt if not half of Mother? In your case, even that is not true. )
”Leave me alone!”
You turn back to leave, but instead of granting you the pleasure of going away, he asks something that freezes the blood flowing inside your veins, “Why do you hate the idea of marrying me?” You hear the soft thud of his feet against the ground, “I never–… I thought we were friends.”
( Friends? ) Oh, but he’s so suffocating. A presence that looms over your shoulders, into your naked lungs, and you drown by the way it encompasses your mind like an ocean. Your reality shatters. Colors blend in together; silvers and yellows, browns and reds, emerald greens, sapphire blues, amethyst purples– everything pops into one before your very eyes. ( He’s the closest thing you have to a– )
It makes you want to scream.
“What gave you that idea?” When you speak, your tone is as brittle as you feel. Your resolve strengthens, passion breaks, and you remind yourself as harshly as you can: this is Yamada Shuji. Your fiancé. The boy you’ve known ever since you can remember, the plain-eyed and dirt-haired boy. ( Don’t you know you’re the luckiest? Crows and croons the old ladies, with smiles tightly woven and fans raised high, he’s so docile. He loves you, girl! )
Love. ( He loves you? )
“What do you mean?”
“If you believe that we were ever friends, then you’re even stupider than I thought,” you clarify without much thought, and you hear the way his breathing hitches, composure breaking momentarily. ( A sliver of a nightmare slips: green, green eyes bleeding magenta and acid so potent it leaks into your lungs– no, no. This is not the time. ) Shifting on the balls of your feet, you breathe: why does he have to make everything harder than it should be? This isn’t about him. ( It will neverbe about him. )
When he doesn’t reply, “I’ll be back by tomorrow,” you say. It’s a placing gesture– but it reminds you of something. ( “We’ll be together forever,” laughing, laughing, laughing. )
A wrenching feeling settles in your stomach at the behest of your most recent nightmare, and before you know it, your hand is raised half heartedly in a wave.
You don’t know it when you leave, but it’ll be the last time you’ll ever see him.
( We’ll be together forever, a boy giggles in the back of your mind. Then, the image flickers, and it returns: dead, my dear girl dead right beside her father! )
There’s electricity flowing in your veins. Static burns in your lungs, it stutters, and your reality reshapes itself along with the fact: that you are not who you are. You are not who they said you to be, raised you to be. ( An impostor? Someone laughs, giggles even, and just the sound wretches your insides– “It’s because I love you.” )
You used to be someone else. That much is clear– before you were a bastard girl of a prosperous family, you were an only child of a single mother whose work seemed endless. She was kind. Harsh. You remember it– the image flickers, but you remember the way her eyes would crinkle when she laughed, the particular frown her lips would curve when you did something rather unpleasant and… ( “I don’t like that boy,” she says offhandedly, the details of her face fading at the edges like watercolor. “He’s not right in the head, duckling.” / With a mad grin, he laughs: “It’s all because I love you, darling,” and in his hand painted red, a silver knife shimmering cyan. / “I’m sorry, sorry sorry–” Is it still love if it hurts this much?
)
You wake up with a startle, in an unfamiliar place, and the first thing you register is the pain. Hot, blistering pain. ( Like molten lava flowing through what remains of your veins… ( But, it’s supposed to hurt, isn’t it? ) ) Something throbs inside your fingertips, like acid, and cold chills inside your belly– like a rod penetrating your squishy guts once again. ( Again, once again, dying– )
But there’s no blood. No ripe organs spilling out from the open slit in your underbelly, folding like sausages, or even a scar. No blood. No smell? There’s no hydrochloric acid burning inside your lungs. ( Melting, oh, oh his face is melting– ) Only a dirty, sweet scent that you cannot or do not seem to discern the origins of– overwhelming, yet also easy enough to ignore. Oh, isn’t it easy to ignore? You have better things to worry about, to get a move-in, to leave this place–
“Easy there, damsel,” a voice says abruptly from behind you, thick in its amusement and bored in its delivery, “You had a nasty fever. Surprisin’ that you could even wake up, eh?”
It’s a distinctly feminine voice. Spoken from the nasals. Throaty. Slightly accented– but you’re not sure of its origin. Your head hurts when you try to think again, mind bursting at the seams as you try to hold onto this moment, but the second you register her words, it sends it reeling back again.
You didn’t expect to… wake up. Even before you remembered– as pitchy and staticky as it is. It’s a funny feeling, you don't know your thought process when you were walking up to that– that carnage, but you remember what you thought during it. When that monster attacked you, you– ( Iron tastes like sour cherries, ( pop pop popping ) and the smell is so bitter, it’s overwhelming– it hurts, hurts, hurts. You can’t breathe, you can’t think, you can’t– )
You swivel your head back, slowly, to look at her. ( Isn’t this what you prayed for every night? His hand, bony and leathery, squeezing around your shoulder. We’ll be together forever! )
She’s old, is the first thing you notice about her. You don’t know how old she is, but she must be at least above thirty. Scars litter her exposed skin like blooming flowers, and she wears nothing but a sleeveless western top along with a pair of hakama. ( She’s– muscular. More than any men you’ve seen in this lifetime or the previous. )
The second thing you notice about her is her eyes. Or, eye. The one not covered by the thick of her unkempt hair, lined with red and brown makeup, colored in ether blue. You aren’t sure why, however, the sight of it makes you nervous. Like you’re bare naked under the glaring spotlight.
“Hm?” She raises her eyebrow when you don’t speak. ( “No man would want you as you are!” Hands getting clammy, shins bleeding dry– “oh, my poor boy,” but it’s never you you you– )
“W–who are you?”
“Your savior,” the woman before you replies point blank, and it rushes back to you: This is the woman who killed that… ( “They’re called demons, darling, not monsters.” A charming, sharp smile bleeding a plethora of colors– ) “Ain’t that enough for you?”
“My savior…”
You repeat. Pause. Savior. The word ticks unreal on your tongue, the syllables tilt strangely and the phonemes come out awkward when you say it. Savior. It feels otherworldly. Like a memory long forgotten being remembered again, in the patchwork of timelines that is your brain, you recall a prayer that is not a prayer, but a desperate plea instead: please, God, whatever, save me from this nightmare.
Your savior. What an awful word it is; cold, unfeeling. Your mind conjures up an image to match, and it’s never real. ( You died, died, died– that night, to a boy you barely recognize now, in a house completely unfamiliar with something cutting open your guts. Savior. You had no saviors, not in this life nor the previous. )
“No– no. Who are you, lady?”
Nonetheless, that’s not what you’re looking for, specifically. Because if this world is anything like what you think it is, then–
“So bossy. Are you just askin’ for my name or something else, damsel?” She snorts, taking a slow drag from the silvery kiseru loosely held in between her middle and forefingers. “Hmm?”
“What do you want me to ask?”
“I wonder…”
A strange look passes her eye, then, and she flexes her legs against the open window, ( where are you? ) and tilts her head to the side. Her dark hair falls flat against her face, but you still can’t see her other eye– she watches you like a predator to prey, the smoke that comes out of her mouth accompanied by the golden hour painting her in a majestic light.
“Shimizu Kimora,” she says, then, without you prompting. “My name. I used to be a Demon Slayer– like the demon you saw last night.”
“Okay,” you pause, all the questions dying on your tongue save for one. “Why did you save me, Shimizu Kimora-san?”
“I felt generous,” but from the way her eyes narrow, that’s not all there is to it, “I think. What’s your name, kid?”
When you tell her your name, there is no recognition flickering in the ether of her eyes or downturn in the corner of her darkly painted lips. It’s something that both fills you with glee and stomach churn in agony: she doesn’t know you. Neither you nor what you are. ( Were? Who are you? A seven-year-old bastard with a fiancé or a sixteen-year-old victim who got murdered by her boyfriend? )
“You shouldn’t have saved me,” you admit, in the end. ( Perhaps there is no difference. You are cut from the same cloth, wherever you go– even a lifetime later, always misfortunate, always a tragedy in the making! ) “I think I was meant to die.”
Because there is no explanation as to why. You remember yourself, before and now, you remember how you died and were born– it’s a terrible dichotomy that trembles inside your mind, snares your brain, and kills you all over again. You are both alive and not. ( You weren’t supposed to be alive and now you don’t know who you are. )
Even if all you can recall is patchy memories of a life long forgotten, something like this doesn’t make sense: there were no characters with your name– and you’re sure of it. You’d have remembered him talking about it, events and characters rolling like candy from his mouth, open wide and sweet with sugar. ( Surely, there is no mistake. You knew ever since you heard– “Marechi,” the demon had panted. “He’s a marechi,” the boy you once adored called a character with silver hair. “It’s special blood, basically.” So, isn’t it funny how you are always meant to be devoured? )
“If you were meant to die, you would’ve,” Shimizu bites out with a strange tone, her forefinger tapping onto her silver kiseru lightly. “Don’t talk like an old lady already, brat. Do you wanna die?”
Why, a look of morbid interest crosses your face, “are you offering?”
“No.” The stare she gives you is downright scandalized as she takes in your question, and her voice has this awkward edge to it as she speaks, “shit, brat, the hell do you take me for?”
“You are a slayer,” you shrug, redirecting your gaze to the axe leaning on the wall near her. It’s cleaned off from the magenta blood of the demon as you can see, the sharp edges covered by a sheath, and yet it looks as unassuming as a wolf pretending to be a sheep. “I think it’d be peaceful and quick. Beheading, I mean. Don’t you think so?” Well, it’d be certainly better than bleeding out, at least. Feeling your guts leak out like undercooked steak, squishy and wet, while bubbles of blood stream down your chin– it isn’t… just the memory of it reels you into horror once again.
“You’re a weird fucking kid,” Shimizu squints, a frown perching at the end of her lips, “I used to be a Demon Slayer, not Brat Killer. Got it?”
“Lame,” you scrunch your face up in a mock distaste. But then, you peek at the sky behind her, and anxiety pools back in your stomach in large gulps. It’s getting dark, and the last thing you want to do is to go back. ( If the new you couldn’t stand it, then how could you from before? ) “Are you sure I can’t convince you, though?”
“You could sing me sonnets and I would still say no.”
A moment of silence passes, then, and you open your mouth again, to say something– you’re not sure what, but Shimizu cuts in with a tone sharper than the blade of her axe: “If you’re feeling any better, stop dallying and go home. Surely, your folks are worried by now.”
What a terrible thing to say to someone like you, you reply in your mind. Someone who worries? Aunt only cared about the bride-to-be of her son, and Shuji would sooner care about his mother than you. The only one who cared about you is long gone, and she doesn’t even exist in this world anyway. ( A breath, a clink, and you drop the container with shaky hands– no, no, no. Mom, I’m so sorry– )
“There’s no one like that for me,” something bitter creeps into your voice when you speak, “none at all.”
“You don’t got a home, damsel?”
She carries an unpleasant tinge in her tone, and it tickles all the wrong parts of your brain. It’s not– but is it like that? You aren’t supposed to exist, so does it matter if you even got a home in the end? Just suck it up, you want to scream, but your tongue is made out of cotton. ( It hurts. )
You don’t want to go back.
“Does it matter?”
Of course, it does. It matters, however, you can’t bring yourself to say it: you don’t belong anywhere in this world. You were born and thrown away, you were born and no one cared– then, you were someone; you were a bride, but you hated it all the same.
“Doesn’t it?” She asks eventually, voice heavy. You stay silent, nails digging into the meat of your palms. It’s not that you don’t want to answer– you can’t. Whatever you think, you shouldn’t say it. ( Don’t you know? You’re lucky to be with him. )
“It’s getting dark,” Why, she says then; offers, even, “you should leave when the sun rises.”
You hate to say it, to admit it, but a flicker of hope burns in your chest at the motion. What’d happen if you didn’t go back at all?
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
( CHAPTER TWO, path to destroy. )
You were fourteen years old when you consciously watched your first anime, and a few months later, read your first manga. While you weren’t terribly into it like some of your other friends were, you would consider yourself a casual watcher as you watched most of the well-known ones in the cycle– the classics, if you would dare to call it. ( Or the ones your hardcore fan friends roped you into watching. )
Demon Slayer was an anime like that. You weren’t interested in watching it until your boyfriend at the time sat you down and made you. ( It was his favorite. What kind of sick joke was this? ) You liked it, you think. It was a fun show, the characters were lovable enough, and the animation was so well done that even you could get behind it.
That didn’t mean you wanted to be in it though. ( A grin matched with a devious glint– “We’ll be together forever. You want it too, don’t you?” You really would let me do anything to you, no? / No, no, no– his lips are on yours, but it’s not right, they bite and tear and– )
“Why did you become a Demon Slayer?”
It’s a terrible thing to be alive. ( Is this even real? ) There’s air in your lungs, blood rushing in your veins, and tremors gliding across your hands. Oh, your hands– with bitten-off nails, sore and unsightly, scrabbed with cuts from pebbles on the ground. ( It burns. ) There’s no way you’re not real. ( You’re alive! “Death is not the end,” the woman who used to be your mom says in grace, “don’t be scared, duckling.” But isn’t it just unfair? )
The girl from before, who you used to be, is dead. ( She was real too. ) You remember it: the vivid pain, acid sizzling against your fingertips, and manic laughter filling your ears like asphalt. She– you were alive, with bright eyes and even a brighter future, but–
( “Why are you doing this?” A plea, like blue springs and red winters falling apart to make apple green eyes, frozen cold like ice, “Because I love you.” )
“Why’re you askin’, damsel?”
Shimizu Kimora is an interesting person. She is gruff and impolite; she sits with her legs haphazardly crossed over each other and her hair is a mess. She is kind. She lets you stay the night despite having every right to kick you out of the room she’s rented for the night, she nursed you back to health herself rather than letting you fend for yourself, and instead of telling you to sleep, she entertains your idle conversations. ( She is– something crawls into the back of your mind– she is everything your Auntie stood against for. )
You can feel heat pool up in your face; at her raised eyebrow, downturned red lips, and the bemusement coloring her eyes. You play with your fingers, in shame, in embarrassment– how can you tell her? You want to pick her brain, inspect her insides, bleed her dry until she is no more! ( You want to be just like her! That is what you want to say, but your throat clams up, like all those years ago when you were sixteen, gutted, and in front of a murderer. )
“It’s, um,” you stutter, which is not like you at all and you want to scream, “It’s nothing.”
“You wouldn't be askin’ if it was nothin’ at all,” she points out, from where she’s sharpening her axe, and the sight is more cool than intimidating as you observe. “What, you want my life story now ‘cause I saved you?”
“That–!” You flinch back, then pause, reconsidering. “… was that an offer?”
She snorts, unkindly, and turns her body partially to look you over. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Will you tell me your life story?” You ask while completely ignoring her inquiry, with more brazenity than before, and slightly lean forward in interest. “Shimizu-san?”
Why, she looks at you with thinly veiled befuddlement then, her lips left hanging ajar. “Nosy brat,” she puffs at your words, and you can’t tell if it’s fond or not, but she puts down the rock she’s using to sharpen the blade of her axe.
“You’ll leave me alone when y’hear it, then?”
“Sure,” you shrug, but it’s a lie. You don’t have to spell it out for her to realize that as well, but she still gruffs out something-something about brats and how handful they are.
“There ain’t much you can do ‘round where I came from,” she says eventually, with a graceful sort of defeat poised in her figure, as she looks offside while picking at her ear. “Can’t farm, hate sewin’, and everything I cook’s tasteless. The only thing I ever good at was woodcuttin’.”
A weird expression crosses her face then, momentarily, but she’s quick to shake it off with a small shrug of her shoulders– like she’s shedding her skin brand new: “Family job, yanno? I wanted to take over.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Why, indeed,” with a mean smirk curling up on her lips, she continues: “Had two brothers before me– men, y’know? We all had very diff’rent opinions on how my life should’ve gone.”
“Oh,” your tongue dries in the crevice of your mouth, “you… ran away?”
“Ha!” She slaps her knee in a weird sort of delight, “You’re a smart kid.”
“But–” you fumble over your words, something forming inside your head that seems almost forbidden- unnecessary, yet you press on anyway, “but why a Demon Slayer?”
“I’m only good at destroyin’ things,” she replies easily. “Where else would I go?”
“You– you could’ve–” think, your brain scrambles to find an answer, but there’s nothing. ( “You want this too, don’t you? We’ll be together forever!” As he cuts you open, ripping from your sternum to the underside of your belly, guts spilling like gelatin all over the floor– )
“I could’ve what, brat?”
“I don’t know–” and there’s a certain degree of desperation coloring your words, “…how did you run?”
Is it that easy to leave?
( But then– fingers curling up around your wrist, heavy and tight, “you must understand, girl. Marrying him is your best bet.” But, but, but– “he’s a nice boy, Shuji is.” Something breaks, shatters in your chest, and you can’t breathe– )
Shimuzu has this strange look in her again, as your words hit, but all she does is fix you with a blank stare before picking up her axe to sharpen it again.
“I answered the question. Better keep your promise, damsel.”
“But–”
“You don’t need to know how,” and she turns so you can’t see her face when she speaks, “I just did.”
“How?”
Your grip on your tattered clothes tightens, then, and you lean forward with a sick sort of intensity. “Please, I–”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I want you to teach me,” is your admission, and it’s a lament. Whispered lightly yet resolute, filled with desperation leaking in wonder. You want to run. ( But you never knew how. )
Your words seem to strike a chord in her for she freezes still like a picture, and she turns to look at you like she doesn’t see you at all. Her hands are trembling, you notice with a start. She’s trembling, her eyes blank, and face paling– something is wrong, terribly so, but you’re not sure what.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” says she. Voice tight, and void of the amusement from before. It’s almost– robotic. Like those machines you’ve seen forever ago, in a lifetime different from this one: soulless, and dried like ink. “How old’re you, six? You’re already spendin’ the night with me, your guardians must be worried sick.”
“They’re not,” is your reply. Dull, like your life, dull like your husband-to-be. “I– I can’t go back, Shimizu-san, you must understand–”
“I’m not teachin’ a fuckin’ baby how to yield a goddam’ axe to kill Demons, fuck,” she throws her head back, running a scarred hand across her nose bridge. “Kid. We ain’t doing this. Go back to sleep and I’ll walk y’back the first thin’ in the mornin’, yeah?”
( “Isn’t this what you prayed for every night?” A man you don’t know whispers and a boy you thought you knew manically giggles. “You want this too, don’t you?”
/What is it that you want? You’re seven, and then you’re not, you’re alive yet you remember death– it sinks into your bones, hapless. It’s a virus! It’ll infect your brain and kill you brand anew, but in this world, if you die, there won’t be anyone left to care! Is that what you want? To be a wife and a cattle; like you were born to be like, you were always meant to be– )
“No!” No, no, no, ( Is that what you want? ) Your lungs burn, your heart palpates, and tremors wreck through your body in little gasps. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t–”
If you go back, there won’t be anyone to save you this time. ( “We’ll be together, forever,” the words pop in magenta behind your ears and the warm hand that cradles your cheek feels colder than the hard steel pressing against your soft belly. “Isn’t this what you want?” )
It tears apart your flesh. The heat that overtakes your body, wet and disgusting, rakes from your heart to your brain. It boils. ( You’re so, so scared. ) But it’s fine, isn’t it? ( There won’t be any second chances. ) You’ll be fine if you go back because Shuji isn’t– he isn’t–
( “I thought we were friends,” and your heart drops, drops, drops– shatters at the bottom of your stomach. “He’ll be your husband one day,” Aunt says, her aged hands soft against your hair. “Then– well, I suppose you’ll be like me.” With all this misery and anger welling up inside. )
“Breathe,” a hand cradles your shoulder, but it stings. It’s so warm, Shimizu’s hands are, and it’s like electricity on your skin. It zips and churns the veins, oh the blood-filled veins, and despite her reassurances, you can’t bring yourself to breathe at all.
“In, out, in, out. Y’can do it, damsel.”
“I’m,” a gasp leaves your lips in lieu of a response, but you grit your teeth and push through the horrid beating of your heart, ( your ears ring. Like a terrible, terrible cacophony that turns your inner ears to mush. ) “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry–”
She shushes you, calm and collected even as her rough hands cradle your body close to her torso, and you writhe in her hold. Your mouth is dry, and your tongue feels like boiled meat. ( One, two– breathe? ) Her skin is warm, as is her grip, and you can hear the way she breathes– the way her chest rises up and down. Rhythmically. ( One, two, three, one, two, three– )
You fall asleep to that rhythm: one, two, three; with her arms, strong and muscular, wrapped tightly around your rattling body. ( When you wake up in the morning, it’s to packed bags and the stench of tobacco filling up the air. )
“Of course,” she laughs when she explains, “You didn’t expect me to train you outta the goodness of my heart, did you?” Then, there’s a belated pause that sends sparks down your spine– “If you wanna come with me, be my student, you’re gonna have to prove how desperately you want it, brat.”
She extends a hand, then, tanned from the sun and hardened with callouses. Dark red lips curving into a wicked grin, she continues oh so graciously: “You’re gonna be my little errand girl.”
It’s almost sickening how fast you agree to it.
( Even more sickening when you grab her hand, let her pull you up, and pick up the bags without a single complaint. )
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
( CHAPTER THREE, when do we? )
It starts with a laugh. Boisterous, and unfeeling, cold yet filled with the horrid feeling of warm sunshine filling up the empty crevices. You blink, reposition the quarter-way filled basket on your back, and watch the way Shimizu chats with the costermonger. Charms the man, old and gold, with pretty coins and even prettier words. ( “Quality stuff, isn’t it?” Leaning onwards with interest, his mouth filled with cotton and filth– “though, not sure if you could afford it.”
Then, her smile tinkling with silver earrings dangling from her earlobes– “How about a bargain then, handsome?” )
“Was that necessary?” You ask in a sickened parlor, but only after her charade ends and she pulls you away from the vendors; with the basket on your back full of cheapened fruits. (
“A bargain?” Like marmalades dripping down your wrists in sticky wastes, “Now, why would I do that?” )
“You can pay for it, can’t you?”
“Mm,” her blasted reply comes as a stark crunching noise; her pointed teeth tearing the blushed skin of the apple in her hand. ( With her right one, she grips you by the nape– a habit, you reckon rather sourly by the way it’s done automatically, to make sure you’re not going astray. )
“Don’t like it?”
“I was just wondering,” it’s a cordial explanation; though the tone of your voice is bitter, and the words are spitted through gritted teeth, “y’know, you have the money to pay for it, so. It doesn’t seem necessary.”
“Necessary?” You kick forth a pebble near your feet as she chews out the words intently like the white meat of the fruit in her hand, “you don’t think it’s necessary to get us a discount? You know we don’t shit money, brat.”
There’s something almost comical hidden in her words. No, rather, how she tells it. In all her crudeness and impudence, it's laughably clear what she expects it to do. ( She should’ve known better by now. ) So, you let it soak over you in waves; a scoff tumbling past your lips and your chest puffing out the way you’ve seen her done countless times before.
“Sensei,” only then, you press tightly on your words, “you have a shitton of money. You don’t need to get a dirty discount.”
It takes a beat, but you know the moment your words register. Her lone visible eye widens, and she chokes halfway on her next bite, her lax hand pulling taut against your nape. ( It doesn’t hurt, not with Shimizu, but– “It's okay, darling,” and he‘s tugging you closer by the throat, “it’ll be over in a sec!” / then, comes a profound smack, “What have I told you?! Be more respectful to your elders, you hooligan!” )
“That’s cute,” she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, skin painted red along with spit and juice, “you’re already pickin’ up my bad habits. Keep it up, and I won’t even have to teach you anythin’, yanno?”
“You’re deflecting.”
Your observation comes out flat when you say it, however, you can already feel the familiar comfort of anger prickling against your skin. It sears the flesh, hot and frigid, yet you remind yourself that this lady is your teacher. Even if all she’s done so far was to show you how to swindle old perverts, and carry large weights correctly– you must be respectful. ( You have to get out of there– “I thought we were friends,” but he was always so stoic! / “Does it hurt when I do this?” Isn’t it supposed to? )
“You’re a pain in my ass, kid,” she huffs then, steering you away from an older man’s way. “It ain’t that simple.”
“What isn’t?”
“Adults are never simple,” she explains further, though it’s obvious that she doesn’t want to, “you’d do well to remember that.”
“That’s because you never explain anything,” you huff, the weights in your arms straining what little muscle there is, “how am I supposed to know if you don’t?”
Why then, “What if I don’t want you to know?” She inquiries. Somehow, it weighs harder than anything you’ve been carrying so far, and the prickles in your skin sting with lava seeping out at the wounds. ( She doesn’t want you, you, you– )
“Fancy words for thievery, then,” you spit, which unsurprisingly comes with a resounding smack at the back of your head.
It’s for the audacity, you think–
but her hand isn't heavy. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, yet she could’ve easily cracked your skull with only a hit. ( You've seen her do worse– with magenta blood sticking against your warm skin, and the crowing groans of the monster below you– “marechi,” it’s borderline hysterical, “ma…re…chi!” ) It’s a relatively grim take, the fact that your brain isn’t splattered across the road is enough for you to assume she’s not that mad.
“Ita– that hurts!”
“Better be,” she scoffs and halts in her step to fling a nasty look at a villager who stops to stare unabashedly at you two. For what, you don't know, but Shimizu makes a motion with her hands that you can’t see, nor care to see, and the villager pales. You can't ponder too much about it, though, because she continues to walk ahead and now that she’s not holding you near, you have to keep up.
“You run that mouth a ton.”
“I do!” You frown, attention split between holding the basket full of fruits, and catching up to her. For the first time, you mourn the loss of her piloting hand– calloused, coarse skin scraping against your cotton flesh, “is it so bad that I do?”
“Did I say that?”
She squints, after, and runs her fingers through her wild hair before she begins again: “I’m not a damned thief.” The words seem to sour on her tongue as she speaks, like grapes or cherries, but her conviction remains steady, “Got that? Call me anythin’, but a thief ain’t one of ‘em.”
“Oh.”
“Oh,” she mocks your belated realization, her tone airy and raspy. “Now speak up. I know it ain’t the cash that got your undies in a knot.”
It boils. ( Pop pop popping like strawberries under your tongue– you breathe, and it stutters, the light flickers; so you remember the taste! Oh, the taste of apple scones melting between your teeth, and flour raking all over the floor… “It's my favorite flavor,” something tinks in your ear, “apple is.” And it’s fitting you think, with those molded verdant eyes of his– )
“I…” How can you tell her, then? ( Apples, rotten and green, blooming inside his very own eyes! ) It swells inside your ribcage, fluttering to leak, that awful feeling– regardless you swallow it down because that’s what you’re supposed to do. ( It’s what you've been told to do. ) “Ne-never mind, Sensei.”
Your efforts to concede remain unrecognized, because she takes one bemused look at you and you feel your nerves fry up in a flash. ( Pop pop pop– )
“It’s not–”
“If y’say it ain’t important I’m leavin’ you here, stranded.”
“Really…” you mutter, tight and gritty. Why does she do this? Can she not see what you’re on the brink of? You don’t want it, you don’t want to talk– ( “I love you so,” darling, darling, darling! )
Destruction only brings misery on its side. ( You can’t take it, no no no– “I suppose you’ll be like me, then.” And there it is, the answer you’ve always dreaded! Continue to dread, still akin to a locked cage; like an infection waiting to burst! )
“There’s no need for–”
“Brat.”
“Fine!” You explode a fit at her monotone manner, readjusting the basket on your back. Her eye is imploring, you don’t like it, you don’t like anything right now, but it aches and you’re sick of this mindless charade she’s putting up. ( Like she cares. ) “I didn’t like how he was looking at you. It was– I didn’t– and you played right into it!”
“Played right into it?” She repeats, an amused lilt crossing into her voice. It grates on your ears, horrible and offbeat, it makes you want to tear her throat down with the skin of your teeth. ( How dare she! After asking you this matter of virtue, of personal value– “you wouldn't mind– you’d let me do anything to you, right?” Shut up, shut up, shut up! )
“That’s it? Y’didn’t like how he was looking at me.”
“He was so gross,” you sniff snobbishly, pushing to ignore the way your bottom lip trembles at the memory of the old costermonger, “he kept looking– staring at your chest all the time. I hated him.”
“You hated him, and that's why you’re angry at me,” she drones, like this is all entertaining to her, “’Cause I didn’t stop him?”
“I’m mad,” you correct. It feels important that you do. “You should’ve bashed his brains in!”
“For ogling at my boobs?”
“For being disrespectful!”
With a humph, you jump forward and stop yourself a few steps in front of her. The basket in your hands drops to the ground unceremoniously, in the middle of the road, yet it takes everything in you to even acknowledge that fact. It hurts, your chest feels like it just might erupt at the seams, but your rage is vivid. ( It sears across your veins, blue and purple, with speckles of gold glittering in the fluorescent lights– It flickers. Like your anger, the steel that gleams a bright cyan and dribbles of sweet cherry jam pops like buds inside your guts– / “Darling, darling, darling–” chanted from loose plush lips, wet, like a tongue dragging on your hot flesh, and a desperate plea mixed with something in delight, “I love you so, darling–“ )
Shimizu stops similarly at your gesture, and when she does, her burly arms drape themselves over her chest idly. ( She’s flexing, a part of you acknowledges bemusedly, as if she’s encouraging you to be very careful about what you say next. ) The situation overweights your anger for a beat, and it’s the shame that creeps down on your neck in blisters. She’s your teacher, yet you gulp that fact down along your nerves to puff out your chest a little higher. Condescendingly, as if she doesn’t know it already, and you’re only retelling what’s common sense– it rather brings an ill sort of satisfaction to your core.
“You can’t let men treat you like that, Sensei. You’ll die before you know it.”
She laughs. You don't know if it’s out of offense or anything else, however, she laughs, and it sounds like shrieking kittens. Hungry, worn down, pathetic kittens. ( But even then she‘s laughing, and oh, how can she still be the coolest like this? )
“You don’t think I could take ‘em?” She asks, but you think it’s half-hearted by the way her eyebrows rise, and her mouth curves up. “I’m strong, yanno.”
Of course, she can. You watched her behead a monster thrice your size in a wink, and you know it. Shimizu Kimora is a strong fighter, ( she’s the strongest you’ve ever known! ) however that only brings you a certain amount of despair in its wake.
( Once upon a time, you were strong too. You killed– )
“People don’t always play fair,” so you admit quietly. ( Like acid burning in your lungs. Drip, drip, dripping onto the tiles below–
) “Everyone falls, Sensei.”
It’s silent for a beat, she doesn’t reply, and your head is hung low so you don’t see her expression, but–
“You can pick up where I left off, then.”
She says as she picks up the miraculously unspilled basket on the road with one hand. Weighs it, murmurs something you can’t hear, and offers it back to you. You know it’s like grasping at straws, it sounds absurd even to your ears, but you can’t deny that it feels like a peace offering– the heavy basket in her hand.
“Let’s go back, kiddo.”
( If it’s like that, even if it isn’t, you don’t have to think about it. )
You reach forward for the basket, and you can swear that her face mellows out when you do, darkening with a look you can’t quite decipher. It doesn’t matter though; because you feel her hand, sickeningly warm and calloused, curl around your nape again. ( It doesn’t hurt, it never does– )
“You’re not allowed to fall, Sensei,” you declare as you both walk side by side.
Why, she laughs then. It feels a little lighter than before, like tangerines dipped in marmalades, and she squeezes the hand on your scruff. “How bratty,” so she responds in delight. “Do I look like I wanna?”
Nobody does, you want to reply in fashion, but before you can help it, a giggle escapes your lips instead. “‘Course not,” you rather say, and it’s a sly sort of smile that creeps up on your lips after, “You’d con death if you could.”
“Damn right,” and as she ruffles your hair, you glance at her from the corner of your eye. ( Despite everything, the proud look on her face sends something electrifying down your belly. )
The rest of the way back ends in a jiffy, and you can’t even recall why you were mad before.