Butterfly Effect

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/31388492.

Rating: Not Rated

Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Category: Gen
Fandom: 鬼滅の刃 | Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Anime), 鬼滅の刃 |
Kimetsu no Yaiba (Manga)
Relationship: Kamado Nezuko & Kamado Tanjirou, Agatsuma Zenitsu & Kamado
Nezuko, Hashibira Inosuke & Kamado Nezuko, Agatsuma Zenitsu &
Hashibira Inosuke & Kamado Nezuko, Agatsuma Zenitsu & Hashibira
Inosuke & Kamado Nezuko & Kamado Tanjirou
Character: Kamado Nezuko, Kamado Tanjirou, Kamado Family (Kimetsu no
Yaiba), Tomioka Giyuu, Urokodaki Sakonji, Kibutsuji Muzan, Demon
Slayer Corps Hashiras | Pillars, Hashibira Inosuke, Agatsuma Zenitsu,
Matsuemon Tennoji | Kamado Tanjirou's Kasugai Crow, Sabito
(Kimetsu no Yaiba), Makomo (Kimetsu no Yaiba), Tamayo (Kimetsu no
Yaiba), Yushiro (Kimetsu no Yaiba), Susamaru (Kimetsu no Yaiba),
Yahaba (Kimetsu no Yaiba), Kyogai | Drum Demon (Kimetsu no Yaiba),
Rui (Kimetsu no Yaiba), Mother Spider Demon (Kimetsu no Yaiba),
Father Spider Demon (Kimetsu no Yaiba), Older Sister Spider Demon
(Kimetsu no Yaiba), Murata (Kimetsu no Yaiba), Kochou Shinobu,
Tsuyuri Kanao
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence,
Demon Slayer Kamado Nezuko, Demon Kamado Tanjirou, Role
Reversal, Kimetsu no Yaiba Manga Spoilers, Body Horror, Aura-
reading, Minor Original Character(s)
Language: English
Series: Part 1 of Butterfly Effect
Stats: Published: 2021-05-19 Completed: 2021-07-24 Chapters: 11/11 Words:
46254

Butterfly Effect
by dragonshoard

Summary

Kamado Nezuko loved her life. Her family was poor, but they were happy, and that's all
that mattered. When her older brother Tanjiro is injured and can't make the journey down
the mountain to sell charcoal, Nezuko takes it upon herself to make the trip instead. When
she returns, she finds her family has been slaughtered and her older brother is acting
different.

(A Role Reversal AU in which Nezuko is the Demon Slayer and Tanjiro is the demon)

Notes
This was inspired by Hanayo Sora's YouTube animation of the Demon Slayer Nezuko AU.
Please check out her work, she and everyone she collaborated with are incredibly talented!
https://youtu.be/lOkpV_kGlP4

Chapters 1-7 have been edited as of 6/27/2021

Chapters 8-10 have been edited as of 6/28/2021
 Family
Chapter Notes

Edited as of 6/27/2021
Added in more dialogue and fixed a few story inconsistencies.

The trip down the mountain promised to be a difficult one.

The wind carried a chill that meant a storm was on the way. It was going to be dangerous, but
Nezuko knew it needed to be done. Even as her mother and Tanjiro protested, she could see that
they understood as well. If someone didn’t make this journey, they wouldn’t have nearly enough
food to make it through a harsh winter storm.

“If we just wait a few days, I’m sure my leg will be better,” Tanjiro tries for what must be the
hundredth time.

“We can’t afford to wait a few days, you know that,” she says as gently as she can. “Besides, I’ve
made the trip with you dozens of times, I will be fine.”

“Nezuko…” he sighs.

She knows how difficult this must be for him. Her big brother always prided himself on taking care
of the family. It must hurt him to not be able to do anything while his leg heals.

“You do so much for us, Tanjiro,” she says, taking his hand and squeezing it. “Let me take care of
things—just this once, okay?”

He squeezes her hand back and gives her a small smile. “Alright. Just this once.” Then he does
something unexpected, he takes off his hanafuda earrings.

“Tanjiro, what are you—”

He puts them in her hand and curls her fist around them, smiling brightly. “Father always said that
they bring good luck.”

“I can’t possibly take these, they’re yours!”

“As the eldest son, it’s my job to protect you,” Tanjiro says, his smile strained. “This is the only
way I can think of to protect you while you’re away.”

“Oh,” she says, suddenly understanding. She studies the earrings in her hands. Her ears aren’t
pierced like Tanjiro’s so she reverently places them into a small pocket she’d sewn into her haori a
few years ago. “I’ll make sure you get them back.”

Tanjiro relaxes a little. Not a lot, but he’s less tense than before. “I know you will.”

She gives him a quick hug then leaves the room.

“You should let me come with you, Nezuko!” Her little brother Takeo says, running up to her from
where he and the others were likely eavesdropping. Sure enough, Hanako and Shigeru trail in after
him.

“I want to go with you too! I promise I’ll be good,” Hanako says.

“Actually, I have a very important job for you all,” Nezuko tells them, leaning in conspiratorially as
if she’s telling them a secret.

“Really?” Hanako asks in a loud whisper, leaning in to listen. Shigeru leans in as well, but Takeo
seems conflicted.

“I need you to look after Tanjiro and help mom with the chores, can you do that for me?” she asks.

“But we’d be doing that anyway,” Hanako whines. “We want to go with you! If you don’t want to
take the boys, you could just take me.”

“Hey, that’s no fair! If I don’t get to go, neither do you,” Shigeru says.

“The cart’s broken and Nezuko won’t be able to carry you guys if you get tired,” Takeo argues.
“Besides, she needs someone that can protect her, so I’ll go!”

“Listen to me,” she says in her serious voice, gaining all of their attention instantly. “This trip isn’t
going to be like going with Tanjiro. It’s going to be dangerous with the snowstorm on the way,
which is why I need you three to stay here.”

Takeo huffs, clearly upset. “But what if something happens to you? There won’t be anyone there to
protect you!”

“You sound so much like Tanjiro sometimes,” she sighs fondly and fusses with his hair. He
grumbles a bit but doesn’t try to push her away. “I’ll be fine, Takeo, I promise.”

“Oh, I have an idea!” Shigeru says, running outside. He comes back a moment later with the axe
Tanjiro uses to cut down trees for charcoal. “You should take this! That way if anything bad
happens, you can protect yourself.”

Nezuko takes the axe and tucks it under her haori. She’s humoring them a little, but she can’t deny
that it’s a good idea. There are wild animals out there that wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her.

“My little heroes,” she says, pulling them into a big hug. “What would I do without you?”

Finally, she tugs on her snowshoes and makes her way outside. She gathers the charcoal into the
carrying basket and heaves it up onto her shoulders, adjusting the straps so it sits a bit more
comfortably on her. It’s heavy, but she can handle the weight.

Her mother comes outside carrying a sleeping Rokuta on her back. “He wanted to say goodbye, but
he fell asleep before he could.” She adjusts a piece of Nezuko’s hair. “Are you sure you want to do
this?”

“Of course,” Nezuko says, determined.

Her mother sighs, but she smiles all the same, holding Nezuko’s face with her hand. “My brave
little girl. Your father would be so proud of you. I know I am.”

Nezuko leans into the touch. “Thank you mom. I promise I’ll be home soon.”

Her mother nods and after a few more heartfelt goodbyes and a head pat from Tanjiro—she’s
trekking down the mountain towards the village.

She’s made the journey down the mountain before, so she’s memorized the twists and turns of the
path. Gentle flakes of snow fall lazily from the sky. It’s a quiet, peaceful day. There’s an uneasy
feeling in her gut, but she figures it’s just because this is her first time making the trip down the
mountain on her own.

She sees the village in the distance around midday.

“Hi Nezuko!” One of the older women of the village, Mrs. Miyata says. “Where’s Tanjiro? Are
you selling the charcoal all alone today?”

“Hi Mrs. Miyata! Yeah it’s just me today,” Nezuko says, “Tanjiro hurt his leg so he’s back home
resting.”

“Oh no, that’s too bad! I’m glad he’s resting though, that boy needs rest every once in a while!”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Natsumi says next to her. “I always tell that boy he’s working himself too
hard.”

“He’s just trying to take care of us,” Nezuko says. “Would either of you like to buy some
charcoal?”

“Always straight to business with you, Nezuko,” Mrs. Miyata says, shaking her head. “I’ll take
some, and I’ll be sure to let people know that you’re here.”

“I’ll be buying some as well,” Mrs. Natsumi says. “I could also use some help sewing up my
curtains if you don’t mind, Nezuko. My cat has been causing some trouble and my tremors make it
too hard to hold the needle anymore.”

“I’d be happy to help,” Nezuko says with a smile.

Word spreads fast around the village that she's there and by the time the sun is setting she’s already
sold all of the charcoal and earned a few coins from doing odd jobs around the village.

Many of the villagers ask about Tanjiro, and she reassures them that he’s fine. Their concern for
him makes her smile to herself. Her big brother has no idea the kind of effect he has on people, his
loving and caring nature endeared him to everyone he came across. She can’t wait to tease him
about it when she gets home. She starts the trek back up the mountain with enough food to get
them through a storm and then some.

“Oi, Nezuko!”

Nezuko turns as Mr. Saburo beckons her from his window saying, “You’d best not head back up
the mountain at this time of night. It’s far too dangerous for a young girl like you.”

She hesitates. “I’m sure if I hurry, I’ll be okay—”

“Nonsense. Come inside before the demons show up.”

Nezuko decides it’s not worth the argument. She goes inside. Mr. Saburo comes off a bit odd with
all his talk of demons, but she senses nothing but kind intentions from the man. Tanjiro had once
told her about how the old man had lost his entire family, so he must be lonely. She’d be lonely too
if she lost her family.
She sets her things down by the door, and removes her shoes and haori. The old man gives her a
meal and some fresh tea. After a long day of work, it is very refreshing.

“Thank you for the meal,” Nezuko says after she’s finished. She watches as Mr. Saburo lays out a
second futon for her. A question falls from her mouth before she has a chance to stop it. “Mr.
Saburo, why are you so scared of demons?”

He pauses. His back is turned to her so she can’t see his face, but she can see the way his shoulders
tense. She’s always been very observant.

“Fear is healthy,” he says eventually. “Fear keeps you alive. Those man-eating demons are
ruthless, they’ll eat anyone—man, woman, child. We’re just meat to them.” He turns and looks at
her then, his expression dead serious. “It would do you well to be afraid of them too.”

Nezuko isn’t really sure how to respond to that. It’s hard for her to be scared of things that don’t
actually exist, but Mr. Saburo clearly believes with all of his heart that these creatures of his
nightmares are real.

“How do you protect yourself from them?” she asks.

“There’s a group that exists to protect people like us. The Demon Slayer Corps,” he says. “They
kill the demons that kill humans.”

“Isn’t that all of them?”

Mr. Saburo grunts in affirmation. They don’t don’t talk much after that.

She decides that she’ll have to come back and visit sometime. Mr. Saburo needs to be reminded not
to live his life in fear. Maybe her siblings could come too if they wanted, she knows Tanjiro would
be more than willing to help someone that needs it. Maybe they could even be his new family.
Everyone needs a family. She eventually drifts off to sleep, the thought of demons far from her
mind.

In the morning, Nezuko thanks Mr. Saburo for his hospitality and he wishes her a safe journey
home. She starts the trek again back up the mountain.

When she approaches her house, there’s a sense of... wrongness radiating from it. It permeates the
air so heavily that it’s stifling. It presses down on her chest—and only gets heavier as she gets
closer.

The door is ajar like someone had forced it open. Something is definitely wrong.

Her sense of smell has never been as good as her older brother’s, but she doesn’t need enhanced
smell for blood and death to overwhelm her senses even before she opens the door. She hoped
against all hope that she was wrong, but when she sees what’s left of her beloved family…

She screams.

She falls to her knees, dropping the basket of food she’d been carrying. Blood covers almost every
surface and her family has been torn to pieces. Even little Rokuta looks up at her with glassy eyes
—his chest torn wide open.

Her eyes burn with tears and million questions cycle through her mind, but she notices Tanjiro and
Hanako are missing.
“Tanjiro,” she whispers, then raises her voice to a yell— “Tanjiro! Hanako!”

She gets to her feet and looks the house up and down, but there’s no sign of him. She finds them
outside, laying face down in the snow near the shack where they keep the tools for making
charcoal. Blood is soaked into the snow around them. Hanako’s guts are spilling out of her
stomach. Tanjiro’s body is wrapped around her as if he’d been trying to protect her.

A realization hits her like a rock. Tanjiro must have been trying to find the axe. He didn’t know
their siblings had given it to her. Nezuko sobs. The axe weighs heavily at her side. If only she
hadn’t taken it, if only she hadn’t been so stupid, maybe then—

Tanjiro groans.

Hope surges through her and she runs to his side. “Tanjiro! Tanjiro are you okay?!”

He says nothing, she turns his head and realizes his eyes are still closed. He’s covered in blood, but
he’s breathing and warm to the touch. He’s barely holding on, but it’s enough. She needs to get him
to a doctor.

She kneels down and pulls Tanjiro onto her back, wrapping his arms around her neck.

“Stay with me big brother, I’m going to get you help,” she says and starts running as fast as she can
down the mountain.

The snow is coming down much harder than before, and Tanjiro isn’t exactly light. It’s hard for her
to breathe, but she keeps pushing onwards, even as her muscles and lungs start to burn with protest.
The odds are not in her favor, but Nezuko won’t give up.

Tanjiro wouldn’t.

Suddenly, she feels him move. Her relief is short lived when he starts growling. Tanjiro shoves
himself off of her with an animalistic snarl and Nezuko loses her balance and falls to the ground.
She pushes herself up to check on her brother and finds him writhing in the snow, the veins of his
neck protruding as he seems to struggle against some invisible force.

“Tanjiro, what's wrong?” she asks, but Tanjiro doesn’t respond. He clutches his head like he’s in
pain. “Please just talk to me!” Nezuko shouts desperately, crawling over to him.

His head snaps towards her and Nezuko realizes a few things all at once. His eyes are pink, and his
pupils are elongated like a cat’s. His canine teeth have sharpened into fangs, and he’s salivating.
She can’t sense the kindness her brother always radiated—instead it was something else.
Something demonic.

He lets out a roar and tackles her. On instinct, Nezuko grabs the axe and holds it up just in time.
Tanjiro bites into the wooden handle instead of her. He snarls around it, his mouth still dripping
with saliva. There’s no recognition in his eyes, and she can only sense one thing from him.

Hunger. Endless hunger.

We’re just meat to them.

“Tanjiro—Tanjiro I’m so sorry,” she says, tears welling up in her eyes. “It must’ve been so
painful.”

Her family has been killed. Her kind, loving brother is now a man-eating demon. How could
something like this have happened?

“Just hold on! You can fight this, I know you can!” Nezuko shouts, using all of her strength to hold
her brother off.

Something like recognition flickers in his eyes, but he doesn’t relent, in fact he grows in size,
pushing down even harder on the axe. She’s losing. Her arms are shaking from the effort of
holding him off. But she knows she just needs to try harder. For Tanjiro’s sake.

“I know you don’t want to hurt me, Tanjiro!” she cries, tears spilling down her cheeks. “You’ve
only ever wanted to protect me! That’s your job isn’t it? As the eldest?”

A wet drop lands on her face. At first she thinks it’s saliva, but then she realizes that Tanjiro is
crying. His eyes look different now. Not the same as before, but less animalistic. He recognizes her
—she can feel it.

“There you are,” she whispers.

In an instant, every instinct in her body tells her to move Tanjiro. She summons all of the strength
left in her body and flips them over.

Something slices through her hair and sends her and Tanjiro tumbling through the snow. She keeps
a strong grip on the axe, even when her back slams into a tree. When she looks up through the
black spots swimming in her vision, she sees the swordsman. He’s wearing a strange black outfit
and a haori with two different patterns. There’s a calm power to him that she doesn’t understand.
Reflexively, she pulls Tanjiro closer to her, even as he continues to growl and spit.

“Why are you protecting it?” The swordsman asks.

“Tanjiro is a human being,” she says. “He’s not an it and I won’t let you hurt him!”

“That creature is no longer human,” the swordsman says. “It is a bloodthirsty demon that wants to
eat you.”

“My brother will not eat me or any other human, I know he won’t!”

The swordsman tsks and lunges towards them at a speed she can barely comprehend. When he
goes to grab Tanjiro, she manages to swing the axe just in time to graze the skin of his hand with
the blade. He jumps back, surprised.

Tanjiro snarls in her arms, but she holds onto him tightly. “He’s all I have left,” she pleads. “Our
family has been slaughtered. I just need to turn him back into a human.”

“It’s impossible,” the swordsman says bluntly, examining the wound on his hand. “Once a person
is turned into a demon, there’s no changing them back.”

“Then I’ll find a way,” she says. “I have to.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t let him live.”

Nezuko stands and puts herself in front of Tanjiro, brandishing the axe. “Then you’re my enemy.”

“You’re brave, but you’re not very smart are you?” The swordsman says, furrowing his brow. “It’s
my job as a demon slayer to kill demons and protect humanity. You can’t call me your enemy.”

“I can when you threaten my family,” she growls.

Silence stretches between them as they stare each other down. The wind tosses her freshly cut hair.
The swordsman regards her as if he’s seeing her for the first time, but his expression quickly
returns to that impassive stare. “If you don’t stand aside, I will be forced to make you.”

“I won’t let you kill him,” she responds, determined to protect what is left of her family.

The swordsman lunges towards her and Nezuko is forced to realize just how outclassed she is. He
knocks the axe aside with ease and hits her head with the hilt of his sword, sending her sprawling to
the ground. There’s a ringing in her ears as she passes out.

Somewhere in the haze of unconsciousness, Nezuko senses the presence of her family. Her mother,
Takeo, Hanako, Shigeru, and Rokuta. She can’t move or speak, but she knows they are there with
her.

“My brave little girl, stay strong,” she hears her mother say. “I’m sorry we had to leave you. Please
take care of Tanjiro.”

Of course, she thinks. He’d do the same for me.

She wakes up with tears in her eyes, staring at Tanjiro’s sleeping face. He’s got a piece of bamboo
in his mouth secured by black fabric that seems to be acting as a muzzle. She looks around to see
the swordsman leaning against a nearby tree, watching them closely. She sits up and pulls Tanjiro
closer to her.

“You’re awake,” he says.

“You—you didn’t hurt him?” It was meant to be a statement, but it comes out as more of a
question.

“When you passed out, your brother leapt to your defense,” he says. “Even while he was starving,
he chose to protect you. I’ve never seen a demon do that before.”

Relief crashes through her. Tanjiro had managed to fight off his demonic urges, just as she knew he
could.

“Take your brother and go see a man by the name of Urokodaki Sakonji. He lives at the foot of
Mount Sagiri,” the swordsman says. “Tell him that Tomioka Giyuu sent you.”

“What—”

“It’s cloudy, so your brother should be fine for now, but don’t let him be exposed to sunlight.”

With that, Tomioka Giyuu was gone.

Nezuko sits there for a moment, her mind trying to catch up with everything that just happened.
There’s a lot to think about, but first she and Tanjiro need to go home. Their family deserves a
proper burial.

It was much easier to think that, but actually doing it proved to be a challenge. Digging is mindless
work, but when she lays Hanako down into the first grave she breaks down into hysterics. Had it
really only been yesterday that they spoke?

She could be alive right now if it weren’t for me. They all could be. If I’d taken them with me, or if
I hadn’t taken the axe, then maybe—
Tanjiro hugs her, drawing her out of her thoughts. His silent tears soak into her shoulder, but she
doesn’t care. She’s just glad he’s here and he’s alive. If he’s alive, he still has a chance to be
human again. She holds him close as they both cry.

When she finally pulls herself together enough to try again, Tanjiro is right there with her. He helps
her move the bodies and bury them. They gather rocks to surround the graves. By the time they’re
done, the sun is beginning to set in the sky.

She prays over their graves. She’s not sure if Tanjiro does the same. After the bodies were buried
he’d started staring off into the distance at nothing, his eyes unfocused. It’s like she gets these brief
glimpses of her brother and then he’s gone again. She helps him put on fresh clothes, and the entire
time he doesn’t seem to be all there. She adjusts his checkered haori and fusses with the blue scarf
around his neck.

She takes his earrings from her haori and tries to put them back in his ears, but his eyes clear for
just a moment and he grabs her hand, closing her fist around the earrings the same way he did
yesterday.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

He nods, then his eyes land on her hair. His brows furrow and he brushes his hand through it.

“It’s a little weird, huh?” she says to fill the silence. “The last time my hair was short I was
probably still a toddler.”

Tanjiro smiles around the muzzle with a fond look in his eyes, but in a blink he seems to lose
himself again and his hands fall to his side. Nezuko can’t help but feel disappointed. She ties
what’s left of her hair back. She’ll have to grow it back out. She grabs some supplies, and tucks the
axe under her haori once again.

She takes a solemn moment to look at the home and the graves she was leaving behind. They may
have been poor, but they were happy. She’ll miss that.

Finally, she grabs Tanjiro’s hand. “As long as we’re together, everything will be okay. I swear I’ll
find a way to make you human again.”

She’s not sure if he actually understands what she’s saying, but he squeezes her hand back. Tanjiro
is too kind of a soul to stay a demon forever. It was her duty now to take care of him and make sure
he got his humanity back.

No matter the cost.

 Tricky Old Man
Chapter Summary

Nezuko and Tanjiro are headed to meet with Urokodaki Sakonji, but they stumble onto
a horrific scene along the way.

Chapter Notes

CHAPTER WARNING: Mention of suicide

Edited as of 6/27/2021
Fixed some grammar issues, added more dialogue, and fixed some story
inconsistencies.

As dawn breaks over the horizon, Nezuko quickly ushers Tanjiro into a small cave. She can’t risk
exposing him to sunlight. They’ve made significant progress, but there’s still a ways to go before
they reach Mount Sagiri.

“We need to keep moving, but you can’t go out into the sun,” she says, thinking out loud. “What
are we going to do?”

Tanjiro just stares at her blankly. Those brief moments where he seemed to actually be present and
understand her had lessened after they left their home. Nezuko just keeps trying to talk to him and
fill the silence in the hopes that it will bring him back.

“If only we had the cart…maybe I could’ve put a blanket over you and carried you that way.”

No response. Not even a blink.

“Hm. No that wouldn’t have worked, the cart was broken anyways. There’s got to be something
else we can do…” she trails off, racking her brain for ideas. Then it hits her. “Oh! We could try a
basket like the one we used to carry charcoal. Do you think that would work?”

He tilts his head. It’s not really a response, but it’s much better than the blank stare.

“We passed by that farm on the way here, surely they would have a basket to spare. I could cover
it and carry you until nighttime,” she says, clapping her hands together. “I think that could work!
At the very least we can give it a try.”

Tanjiro blinks.

“Well it’s better then nothing,” she says as though this is an actual back and forth conversation
they’re having. “If you have a better idea, I’m open to suggestions.”

Tanjiro obviously doesn’t reply. Nezuko tries to pretend it doesn’t hurt.

“Get some rest,” she tells him gently. “I’m going to go back to that farm now.”

Tanjiro stares off at nothing as she leaves. It’s only been a day, but she already misses the sound of
her brother’s voice. Those brief lucid moments of his were her only hope that he was still in there
somewhere.

The farmers are very kind to her, offering to give her a spare basket and supplies free of charge.
She insists on paying them with what little money she has on her. She knows how difficult it can be
to spare supplies. The basket is riddled with holes, but with the straw and bamboo, she knows she
can fix it.

She takes the supplies back to the cave. Her heart stops when she doesn’t see Tanjiro, but when he
pokes his head out of a hole he’d dug for himself, she sighs with relief.

“You must really want to avoid sunlight, huh?” she says.

Tanjiro frowns. It hurts her heart, but at least it's a reaction. His eyes seem just a little more focused
than before. Nezuko hopes that it stays that way for a little while longer.

“I guess I’ll have to make sure to reinforce the basket well,” she says, then sets to work.

She cuts the bamboo with the axe, and with deft fingers she weaves the pieces over the basket to
cover all of the holes. She remembers when her mother taught her how to do this, guiding her
movements gently.

“And remember, you have to pull it tight,” her mother said.

“What happens if I don’t?” Nezuko asked.

“Then it’ll fall apart and all your hard work would’ve been for nothing.”

It’s a fond memory. She’s blessed to have so many fond memories, even if it makes her heart ache.

When she’s finally finished, she goes inside the cave and approaches her brother.

“Okay, I’m all done,” she says, setting the basket down. “Do you think you can fit in here?”

Tanjiro lifts himself out of the hole and stares at the basket, his brows furrowed like he’s deep in
thought. A part of her is relieved to see him so focused. She watches as he suddenly shrinks down
to the size of a child and climbs into the basket.

“Amazing, Tanjiro!” She cheers. “You’re so smart!”

He lifts his hand and pats her head. She can’t help the bubble of laughter that escapes her. It’s
reassuring to see him acting like himself.

“Let’s go, big brother,” she eventually says. “We’ve still got a long walk ahead of us.”

Nezuko puts the lid on and wraps the basket in cloth for safety. She struggles to lift the basket onto
her shoulders. It’s heavier than carrying charcoal, her brother may have shrunken down but he
wasn’t much lighter then before. She supposes she just has to get used to it.

Throughout the day, she distracts herself by telling every story she knows from memory. She fills
in the gaps of the stories by making up the things she can’t remember fully. The quiet used to be a
peaceful thing, but now it just feels like it’s mocking her—reminding her of everything she’s lost.
So she fills it with her voice.
She’s thoroughly exhausted by the time the sun is setting. Her back and shoulders ache from
carrying Tanjiro all day. Her throat is dry from talking, her feet hurt, her legs are sore, and she
wants nothing more than to curl up in a nice futon and sleep. Nevertheless, she keeps moving.

She slows down to speak with a woman before entering the forest. The woman tells her the best
way to get to Mount Sagiri.

“Are you sure you want to go this late carrying all that luggage?” the woman asks. “People have
been going missing out there, I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

Nezuko bows as best she can and smiles. “Thank you, I’ll be careful.”

“Stay close to the path! Oh, and watch out for wild animals!” The woman says as Nezuko leaves.

She sends a last, friendly wave to the woman and her child. It’s always nice to meet such kind-
hearted people.

When the sun has left the sky completely, Nezuko leans down to let Tanjiro out of the basket. He
grows back to his full size and stretches. He seems more alert and focused than before. She takes
his hand and together they walk down the path side by side. It’s a little spooky being out in the
forest at night, but at least she isn’t alone.

They’re passing by an old temple when Tanjiro stops in his tracks, forcing Nezuko to a stop as
well. His nose twitches as he sniffs the air. Nezuko realizes that she can sense a dark presence from
the temple, whatever was in there—it wasn’t good.

Tanjiro’s grip on her hand tightens to the point of almost being painful. He’s salivating around the
muzzle, his breathing labored, and his pupils shrunken into slits. The last time he looked like that
was when he first turned. Which means something has triggered his hunger.

“You smell blood,” she realizes in horror. “Human blood.”

Tanjiro doesn’t respond to her at all. He’s shaking with restraint, forcing himself not to move.
There’s a war raging inside of her brother’s mind and she’s helpless to stop it. She looks back at
the temple. If Tanjiro smells blood it means someone is hurt. She needs to be useful right now.

“Stay strong, Tanjiro. I know you can fight this,” she tells him, taking her hand back and watching
as he clenches his fists. “I need to check on the people inside. I’ll be right back.”

She runs up the stairs to the temple. As she gets closer, she senses a dark presence from inside. It’s
similar to what she felt when Tanjiro attacked her. It’s demonic. She pulls out her axe and grips it
tight in her hands. Peeking through a hole in the screen door, she has to stifle a gasp at what she
sees.

Bodies piled on top of each other—bloody and ripped to shreds. The demon is grey-skinned and
covered in blood. He’s using razor sharp teeth to rip the skin off of one of the bodies. Organs and
entrails litter the floor and the smell is so horrible she nearly gags. No wonder Tanjiro was fighting
so hard, these weren’t just wounds.

It was a massacre.

Anger boils in her blood. Her brother is barely holding himself back while this demon happily
gorges himself on human flesh.

We’re just meat to them.

This is one of the man-eating demons Mr. Saburo was so afraid of. What Tomioka had thought
Tanjiro would become. She has to wonder—who had this man been before he was turned into a
demon? Could Tanjiro really become like this?

No. Nezuko decides she could never allow that to happen. Tanjiro wouldn’t be able to join their
family in heaven if he killed a human. Better for him to be dead and in heaven then to become a
beast like this and burn in hell. There was no going back for the monster in front of her, however.
He’s already sealed his fate. This demon will kill again if she doesn’t destroy him.

She rushes into the room, then takes her axe and brings it down on the back of the demon’s skull.
The demon crumples like a leaf and falls over. She tugs the axe back out with a nauseating squish
noise that will haunt her dreams.

Was it over? Could it really have been that easy?

No, something wasn’t right. She starts to step back when she hears the demon start to laugh.

“Foolish little girl—did you really think you could kill me with that axe?” he cackles as his wound
closes. “If you wanted to get eaten so badly you could’ve just asked.”

Nezuko ducks out of the way as the demon lunges at her, but she can’t get out of the way entirely.
Claws rake against her cheek, tearing open her skin. She cries out from the pain, but has to move
again to dodge another attack.

Then Tanjiro appears and punches the demon's head clean off.

The demon’s body falls over, but he’s still not dead. His head speaks from where it rolled onto the
ground.

“You stupid fucking brats—I’ll make you pay for this!”

The body starts to move on it’s own, but Tanjiro kicks it with a force she’s never seen from him
before, sending it flying into the woods.

“What is this? A demon and a human working together? Whatever, I’ll just have to kill you both.”

The body comes running back at full speed, attacking Tanjiro. Tanjiro growls and fights back, but
the other demon is stronger. Nezuko goes to help him, but she’s stopped by the demon’s head
which has now grown arms.

Its creepy little body lunges for her, but she’s able to hold up the axe in time. His hair wraps around
the axe like they were hands. Even as just a head with arms the demon is stronger than her. But
when his tongue reaches for her bloody face, she feels a rage she’s never felt before and throws the
axe with all her might.

The axe imbeds itself in a tree—pinning the demon to it. He hisses and struggles, but his hair is
tangled up with the axe making it impossible to move.

Nezuko briefly reconsiders growing her hair back out.

The body and Tanjiro have disappeared into the woods. She runs after them and finds them near
the cliff of a ravine. The body has the upperhand on Tanjiro, pinning him to the ground. Without
thinking, Nezuko tackles the demon and both of them go flying off the cliff.

For a split second she really thinks she’s going to die, but then Tanjiro grabs her and hauls her back
up. She gasps for air as her heart slams in her chest. She looks over the cliff and sees the demon's
body lying limp on a rock. She figures it won’t be able to bother them now.

Once she manages to stop shaking, they go back to where she’s pinned the demon to the tree. It’s
just hanging there limply. Tanjiro’s eyes are unfocused again. She gets the feeling he’s exhausted
after all of that. She is too, but she has to be the responsible one right now. Even though she doesn’t
know what to do.

The axe was her only weapon, and it’s currently the only thing keeping the demon pinned to the
tree. Then she notices that the sun is starting to peek through the trees, cutting through the shadows
of night.

“Tanjiro, you should—” she starts, but the words die on her tongue when she realizes he’s already
crawled back into the basket.

She turns back to the demon as the sun continues to rise. She thinks about what she should do to
finish him off. She has no weapons, and she’s not strong enough to bash his head in. Something
tells her she should just wait for the sun to reach him.

He starts snarling and cursing at her—reaching for her with his creepy hands. She feels disgusted
at this sad, pathetic creature. But when the sun hits him and he starts to scream in agony, there’s a
pang of sympathy buried under all those negative feelings.

“So that’s what happens when demons go out in the sun,” she says.

“Indeed,” someone says.

Nezuko jumps and turns to see a man in a tengu mask watching her. His light blue haori with it’s
cloud pattern clashes with the angry red of his mask. She senses power from this man, controlled
and honed to a fine point.

“Were you just watching us fight the demon on our own?” she asks, annoyed.

“No, I only just arrived. I wanted to see what you would do with the demon,” the man says. “I am
not impressed.”

“I don’t see why I should need to impress you,” she says bitterly.

“My name is Urokodaki Sakonji. You are the girl that Giyuu sent my way, are you not?”

Nezuko freezes. Why did she let herself say those things? Tanjiro would scold her for her bad
manners, regardless of who this man turned out to be.

“P-pardon me for my rudeness, it has been a long couple of days,” she says with a bow. “My name
is Kamado Nezuko and my brother is Tanjiro.”

“Tell me, Nezuko, what will you do when your brother eats a human?”

She has to force her anger down so as not to lash out at the man again. Her urge to claim that
Tanjiro would never do such a thing is strong, but she knows how naive it sounds. Should he lose
that war inside himself, he wouldn’t be able to control his actions. Nezuko would never forgive
herself if that happened.

“I’d kill him and then myself,” she declares. “Tanjiro would rather die than hurt a human being, so
if it should come to that, I will feel great pain, but I will do what needs to be done.”
Urokodaki is quiet for a moment before he speaks again. “Your resolve is stronger than I thought.
Even though you couldn’t decide what to do with the demon before the sun rose.”

“I wasn’t sure what else to do,” she admits. “I’ve never had to decide how someone dies. A few
days ago, all I did was look after my little siblings and help my mom with chores.” A sob catches in
her throat. “It was never supposed to be like this...”

A hand falls on her shoulder and she looks up at Urokodaki’s off putting mask. “You can’t think
about the past now. Cry, and mourn the life you had before, but then you must move on. For
yourself and for your brother.”

So Nezuko mourns.

For her brother who can’t enjoy the light of the sun anymore. For her siblings whom she loved with
all her heart. For her mother that cared for her and taught her everything she knows. For herself and
the person she used to be before all of this happened.

Urokodaki leaves her to it, she sees him burying the bodies of the humans that were killed from the
corner of her eyes. She focuses on her emotions, letting them run through her unhindered for the
first time since she found her family dead. She’s sad and she’s angry. Sad for everything that’s
been lost. Angry at the demon who killed her family so cruelly and hurt her kind older brother who
never deserved any of this.

She lets herself feel it all then lets it drift away. She won’t forget these feelings, but Urokodaki is
right. She needs to move on—for Tanjiro’s sake at least. She can’t focus on her mission to make
him human again if she’s chained down by all of these feelings.

She sniffs and wipes her face with her haori. The cuts on her right cheek sting from the tears. The
wound is fairly deep, it is still oozing blood and it would likely scar. She patches it up with what
little supplies she has then joins Urokodaki in praying over the graves.

After a few solemn moments, Urokodaki rises, so she rises with him.

“I am going to test you to see if you are fit to join the Demon Slayer Corps,” he says. “Carry your
brother and follow me.”

Nezuko nods. As exhausted as she is, she knows this is her only chance to become stronger. She’ll
need that strength if she wants to be able to protect Tanjiro and destroy the demon that killed her
family.

They start running. Urokodaki is far ahead of her, running with such impossible ease. Nezuko’s
lungs are burning and she’s breathing hard. Sweat runs down her face and back, and she keeps
stumbling with all of Tanjiro’s weight. But even as the muscles in her legs burn and her chest
tightens, she keeps pushing forwards. At one point she trips and falls flat on her face, but she
struggles to her feet and starts running again.

“Sorry Tanjiro,” she pants. I’ll make it up to you someday.

Her older brother deserved all the joy the world had to offer. He’d always taken care of them—
always shouldered the heaviest burdens as the eldest son. Now it was time for her to pay him back
for everything.

When they finally stop at a small house, Nezuko is practically dead on her feet. She’s hunched
over trying to catch her breath.
“Was that—” she pauses, trying to swallow more air, “—the test?”

“No,” Urokodaki says. “We will be climbing the mountain.”

Nezuko almost cries.

“Tomorrow, that is,” he says. “You need rest.”

She nearly passes out right then and there, but she manages to get Tanjiro settled and crawl into a
futon before doing so.

The next day, she realizes Tanjiro won’t wake up.

“Is he okay?” she asks Urokodaki desperately.

“He expended a lot of energy,” the man says. “Demons usually recover energy by eating humans.
This is likely Tanjiro’s way of recovering.”

She sighs in relief and looks at Tanjiro’s sleeping face. She fusses with his hair when she notices a
piece is out of place.

“Rest easy, big brother,” she says softly. “I’ll take care of everything.”

“I’ll make sure that your brother stays safe,” Urokodaki says as she walks over to him. He hands
her a stack of clothes. “You’re going to want to change out of that kimono.”

He goes outside while she changes into the tunic and pants. It’s a bit strange, she’s not used to
wearing men’s clothing but she decides that it’s best to listen to the old man’s advice. The clothes
fit her surprisingly well. She pulls on her black haori and glances longingly at her kimono. It was
her favorite one after all.

The trek up the mountain with Urokodaki is a quiet affair. She realizes she has no idea what she
has gotten herself into. She has no clue what this test entails, so she hopes Urokodaki will explain.

It’s night by the time Urokodaki finally stops. Even though she thought she was used to hiking in
the mountains, the air here is so much thinner than it was back home. She’s practically fighting for
every breath and her head feels dizzy. Her legs were still sore when she woke up, and they’re
burning even more now then they did after all the running yesterday.

“From here, I want you to make it back to the house at the foot of the hill before daybreak,”
Urokodaki says then disappears into the fog.

Nezuko looks around. The mountain seems quiet, but she can’t help but be suspicious. “Make it to
the house before daybreak?” she asks aloud. “That seems way too easy. Everyone knows the
descent is easier than the climb.”

She starts running, but skids to a halt when she sees a rope hidden in the leaves.

“Tricky old man,” she says.

There were traps then. She tugs the rope and watches rocks fly to where she would’ve been if she’d
tripped on it. So the traps aren’t deadly, but they sure will hurt if they hit her. They’ll slow her
down if she stops to check for all of them. Her best bet is to make a run for it and avoid them
wherever possible.

The traps are difficult to see through the dark and the fog, so Nezuko just prays and hopes for the
best. When she trips on a rope, she senses the log swinging for her and rolls out of the way only to
fall into a pit. The fall knocks the wind right out of here—not that there was much there to begin
with. She’s dizzy from the lack of air, and her entire body aches, but she can’t afford to give up.
Not now, not ever.

“This is for you, Tanjiro,” she rasps and pulls herself back onto unsteady feet.

Navigating the mountain is torture. Dodging projectiles and the swinging obstacles comes
naturally to her, but she struggles when it comes to the ropes and pitfalls scattered throughout the
path. By the time she makes it to the house, she’s beaten and worn—covered in blood and dirt. She
throws the door open and collapses.

“Made it back,” she pants, though Urokodaki has eyes and can see that. It’s more of a declaration
for herself. She did it. She made it. She can get stronger.

“Kamado Nezuko,” she hears him say. “I accept you as my student.”

 Time Flies
Chapter Summary

Nezuko begins her training under Urokodaki. Tanjiro sleeps.

Chapter Notes

Edited as of 6/27/2021
Edited some grammar, changed some formatting, and fixed a few more
inconsistencies.

Nezuko has spent a few months with Master Urokodaki so far.

In that time, he proves himself to be a devil of a mentor but also a very kind man. He works her to
the bone with training and exercise—sending her down the trap-ridden mountain again and again,
each time with new traps and dangers waiting for her. He has her practice swinging a sword until
her arms feel like they’re going to fall off, then he makes her do it even more. But he also teaches
her how to patch up her wounds so that they’ll heal faster, how to make a salve that makes her
bruises hurt less. He even helps her pierce her ears when she explains the significance of the
hanafuda earrings to him.

“They’re a family heirloom,” she says. “If Tanjiro wants me to keep them for now, I want to wear
them with pride.”

She flinches when the needle pierces the cartilage of her ears.

“Keep them clean or else they will get infected,” he tells her.

She nods then she finally puts the earrings on. When she sees her reflection, she almost doesn’t
recognize herself. Her hair is short and choppy, the claw marks from the demon she and Tanjiro
fought have scarred over into four angry red lines on her cheek. The earrings look like they don’t
belong to her.

“I’ll give them back to you, Tanjiro,” she says to her sleeping brother. “Whenever you’re ready to
accept them.”

Urokodaki teaches her about the Demon Slayer Corps. She gets the feeling he knows more than
he’s letting on. The man radiates experience and power, there was no way he was always a simple
trainer. However, she doesn’t press him about it. She’s grown to trust the man. If he has a reason to
keep something secret, it’s likely a good reason.

“In order to become a demon slayer, you’ll have to survive the Final Selection at Mount
Fujikasane,” he tells her one day.

“How many usually survive?” she asks.

Even behind the mask, she can sense a dark look from him. There’s a story there.

“Not many,” he eventually answers.

He has her descend the mountain once again. She can tell the difference from when she first made
the descent. She’s gotten stronger, her breathing is under control even as she runs through the traps.
Her senses are stronger than ever—she can sense dangers like she never could before, even
managing to sense where most of the ropes and pitfalls are before she trips. The more she improves
however, the deadlier the traps become.

She trips on a rope and ducks her head as knives bury themselves in the tree above her.

“Are you crazy? Or are you just trying to kill me?” she says to Urokodaki when she makes it to the
foot of the mountain.

“I’m preparing you,” is all he says. Then he hits her over the back of her head, too fast to dodge.
“Have more respect for your elders.”

She huffs an apology and rubs her sore head. She knows that she can’t really argue with his logic.
If the Final Selection is as dangerous as Urokodaki says, she’ll need all the preparation she can get.
He has her move rocks from the foot of the mountain to the top then back down again for the rest
of the day.

The next time she makes the descent down the mountain, she has to hold the practice sword in her
hand. It’s a strange comparison—but it almost feels like holding someone’s hand and pulling them
along with you. Like what she used to do with her kid siblings, except now it’s a dangerous and
deadly weapon. At first it does nothing but interfere with her movements, but she quickly grows
accustomed to it.

Urokodaki increases her sword training after that, much to her excitement and dismay.

The first time he’d given her the sword it’d felt so foreign in her hands. It wasn’t at all like the axe
she’d been using. This was the real deal. She’s taught how breakable the swords are, how force
must be applied vertically and evenly along the blade to keep it from breaking. The crazy old man
also threatens to break her bones if she breaks her sword.

Then she’s thrown to the ground over and over. Even though she has a sword and her mentor is
unarmed, she can’t land a single hit on him. He sends her sprawling to the ground every single
time. He has her moving the rocks again after that, heavier than last time. She’s getting stronger.

It’s when he starts teaching her the breathing forms and techniques that she starts to actually
appreciate swordsmanship. However, total concentration breathing starts to feel more like an
excuse for Urokodaki to whack her stomach with a bamboo stick every time he thought she wasn’t
bracing her lower half properly.

Over the course of her training, she develops tough calluses on her hands. Her hands are no longer
soft and feminine like they were supposed to be, and she has to trim her nails short or else they
interfere with her training. Her hair had taken on a burnt orange color where it had been sliced off.
It makes her hair look messy and unkempt. She looks nothing like a proper lady anymore. It was
disheartening at first. She’s not sure if she’ll ever find a man that wants to marry a girl like her.
However, she forces the thoughts aside and focuses on her training.

She didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. It was Tanjiro that mattered. She’d give up
anything if it meant making him human again so that he can live a happy life under the sun.
On a bright morning in early summer, Urokodaki tells her to become one with water and kicks her
into the waterfall. It takes a while, but she develops a connection with the element. It adapts to any
environment you put it into. Nezuko can relate a lot to that.

“I can’t wait to show you what I’ve learned so far, Tanjiro,” she says to her sleeping brother. “I
wonder if you’d be proud of me.”

Somehow, she knows that he would be.

Around the six month mark, Urokodaki calls in a doctor that he knows to examine Tanjiro, but
there’s nothing physically wrong with him.

“He seems like a healthy young boy in spite of...well, you know,” the doctor says, trailing off
awkwardly.

She feels Urokodaki look at her, but she doesn’t acknowledge it. She’s actually glad the doctor
thinks he looks healthy. Her brother doesn’t look as pale as he did six months ago, which is a good
sign.

Still, she can’t help but worry.

“He’s made it this far,” her mentor tries to reassure her.

“I think I’m going to go to bed early today,” she says, then closes the door to their room and curls
up beside her sleeping brother the way she used to when they were kids.

It’s a hollow comfort. She wants her brother back.

She takes to the water breathing forms like—well, a fish to water. It feels natural, even if she can’t
quite use them at their full power yet. Her descents down the mountain grow even deadlier and
more challenging. She starts using her sword to deflect traps instead of just evading them. It’s
exhilarating. She’s never had this much energy.

When she focuses she can sense where Urokodaki and Tanjiro are, as if they give off some kind of
energy that she can pick up on from far away. She tries asking Urokodaki about this, but she
struggles to explain it and ultimately has to give up when he clearly doesn’t know what she’s
talking about.

At the one year mark, Urokodaki decides she’s learned everything she can from him.

“The rest will be up to you. You alone will determine whether you can reach the next level,” he
says.

“What about the Final Selection?” she asks.

“Come with me,” he says, and leads her to a clearing deep in the forest. The snow is falling gently
now. It reminds her of home. He stops in front of a large boulder with a single, continuous rope
wrapped around it.

“If you can slice through this boulder, I will let you enter the Final Selection.”

“How am I supposed to slice through a boulder with just my sword?” she asks indignantly.

He puts a hand on her shoulder as he leaves her. “That’s for you to figure out.”

After that, he doesn’t teach her anything ever again.

Nezuko glares at the boulder. If this is what stood between her and getting Tanjiro his happy
future, she will slice right through it.

Except she can’t. Her sword threatens to shatter if she strikes the rock any harder.

So she starts practicing everything she’s learned. She’s kept diligent notes on everything she’s
learned in case Tanjiro wanted to learn from them one day. Over and over she pushes her body past
its limits and further beyond that, raising the bar for herself at every turn. Her palms become
blistered and raw from all of her practicing, and she knows that they will never be soft or delicate
ever again. She will never be soft or delicate ever again. Tanjiro needs her to be strong, so she will
be strong.

Six months pass this way. She practices, then tries to split the boulder. When she fails, she starts
back over. Practice, attempt, fail, repeat.

One night, as she lays next to her brother, she finds herself asking— “What would you do if you
were in my place, Tanjiro?”

She’s come to realize how easily their positions could’ve been switched. If he had never injured
his leg, he would’ve been the one to make the trip down the mountain. He would’ve been the one
to find their bodies. She could’ve been killed or turned into a demon just like Tanjiro.

But that isn’t what happened, and she can’t afford to dwell on all the what-ifs. Like the ocean, her
thoughts threaten to consume her if she isn’t careful.

Tanjiro continues to sleep.

The next day she makes her way back to the boulder, sword in hand. She strikes the boulder again
and again until she’s sweating and shaking from exertion. She growls in frustration.

“Why can’t I do this?!” she shouts.

“It’s not very ladylike to yell.”

Nezuko gasps and turns to see a little girl smiling at her knowingly. She has a fox mask tilted away
from her face, there blue flowers painted on it.

“Why didn’t I sense you?” Nezuko asks.

The little girl shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Who are you?”

“You’re not very polite are you?”

“I’m polite!” she says defensively. Then realizes her tone. She really has forgotten her manners
since she left home. What’s wrong with her? “Sorry, I just—” She’s not really sure what she’s
going to say.

“Don’t apologize,” the little girl says. “You should always be open about how you feel, that way
everyone knows where they stand with you.”

Nezuko decides that she likes this girl.

“I’m Makomo,” the girl says. “What’s your name?”

“Nezuko.”

“Alright Nezuko, I’m going to help you.”

Makomo shows her problems with her swordsmanship that she didn’t even know she had. She’s a
clever, mysterious girl. A boy with peach colored hair watches them closely from a distance, his
arms crossed. He wears his fox mask over his face, it has a mark on one cheek that resembles a
scar.

“That’s Sabito,” Makomo tells her when she asks about him. “He wants me to help you master
total concentration breathing and your sword fighting skills before he fights you.”

“He wants to fight me?” Nazuko asks, letting Makomo put a flower crown on her head.

“Mn,” Makomo nods. “He says it wouldn’t be manly to fight an unprepared girl.”

“How considerate of him,” she says flatly.

Makomo just giggles.

She may not talk about her life much, but Makomo talks about Urokodaki fondly and frequently.

“We love Urokodaki very much,” she’d always say. Apparently he had taken both her and Sabito in
after they were orphaned. Nezuko had respected her mentor, but she respects him even more now.

Makomo explains total concentration breathing to her. Nezuko doesn’t completely follow the
technical stuff, but she gets the idea it's meant to make humans be able to fight on par with demons.

“How can I master it?” Nezuko asks her.

Makomo smiles. “Train to death.”

So that’s what Nezuko sets out to do. After a while, she gets tired of Sabito watching her from the
shadows, and finally snaps at him.

“If you want to fight me then do it!” Nezuko yells. “I’ll never get better without a proper
challenge!”

Sabito seems to consider this, then assumes a fighting stance, a wooden sword in hand. Nezuko
assumes her own stance, weary about fighting someone with only a wooden sword, but she
remembers how Urokodaki knocked her to the ground with his bare hands. If her mentor raised this
boy, then he knows what he’s doing.

He rushes towards her and the fight begins. She’s improved under Makomo’s teachings, but it
wasn’t enough to beat Sabito. He knocks her to the ground with the hilt of his wooden sword.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” he says.

She trains. Makomo and Sabito help her in their own ways. She appreciates her fights with Sabito
because it gives her the chance to actually put the skills she’s learned to the test. She tells him this
one day while he’s brooding against a tree.

He looks at her. “You’re a weird girl, Nezuko.”

She punches him in the gut, watching as he doubles over.

It’s the first blow she’s ever landed on him. Makomo finds it hilarious judging by the look on her
face and the way she barely holds back her laughter. Sabito drags Nezuko into another fight,
fuming about how she just got lucky.

She enjoys the time she spends with them, however harsh and grueling the training may get, she
cherishes those brief moments of laughter. It reminds her of something Tanjiro once said to her.

“No matter how cruel and unfair the world may seem, there will always be something good
waiting for you.”

Another six months of rigorous training comes and goes. It’s snowing again. Her hair falls to her
shoulders now. Her hands are rough with calluses and blisters, her nails trimmed short. The scars
on her cheek had faded to a pale pink. She knows her body is littered with dozens of little scars
from her training. She should hate the way she looks now, but she doesn’t.

She’s never felt more alive.

Sabito is carrying a real sword today. Something important is going to happen today. The air
between them is charged with anticipation. It’s all been leading up to this moment. All her hard
work for the past two years—today she needs to prove she was worth training.

Sabito unsheathes his sword. Nezuko readies her own. She can see Makomo watching them from a
distance.

Nezuko takes a deep breath.

The battle begins. They rush towards each other, but she reaches him first, slicing through his
mask with her blade. And just like that it was over.

Sabito smiles at her. He has kind eyes. “Not bad,” he says fondly.

“I’m really going to miss you, Nezuko,” Makomo says. “Don’t forget what you just did.”

“What—”

“Hey, beat that guy for us, okay?” the little girl says, fading into the fog.

Nezuko turns back to where Sabito had been, but he’s gone too. As the fog dissipates, she sees the
boulder split into two perfect halves.

“Did I really do that?” she asks aloud, but she knows in her heart that she had. She’s holding her
sword right between the split rock. She had been so sure it was Sabito’s mask…

“Thank you,” she says, her eyes burning with tears. “I’ll keep you both in my heart.”

They had been like family after all, even if it was only for a short time.
 Another Little Fox
Chapter Summary

The Final Selection begins. Nezuko must use everything she's learned to survive.

Chapter Notes

Edited as of 6/27/2021
Reformatted a few things, changed some of the dialogue, and fixed inconsistencies.

Nezuko stares at the split boulder for a while.

Her mind replays her fight with Sabito. Makomo wanted her to remember what she had done. In a
split second, she’d sensed an opening. Her instincts had guided her sword and her movements as if
they were being pulled by a thread.

She senses Master Urokodaki before she hears his footsteps in the snow. She turns around to face
him, watching him closely as he inspects the boulder. He seems sad.

“I never intended to enter you in the Final Selection,” he tells her.

She wants to ask why, but a part of her already knows the answer.

“I’m tired of watching children die,” he says. “I was certain you’d never be able to slice the
boulder.”

“Becoming a demon slayer is the only way I’ll be able to protect my brother and find him a cure. I
didn’t have a choice. I had to do this.”

“Kamado Nezuko, you continue to surprise me,” he says fondly.

“What...what happens now?” she asks, a bit flustered.

“Now you must survive the Final Selection,” he says, putting a hand on top of her head. “You are a
brave young woman, Nezuko. If anyone can do it, it will be you.”

The tears burning in her eyes spill over onto her cheeks. The weight of everything she’d gone
through over the past two years pressing down on her. Urokodaki holds her close while she cries.
This man who pierced her ears but threw her into a raging waterfall, who hugged her while she
cried but threw deadly traps at her day after day. The man that taught her how to bandage the
wounds he gave to her. This kind, evil man had wormed his way into her heart.

It’s a shame that Tanjiro hasn’t had the chance to properly meet their new family member.

“I will look after your brother while you’re gone,” he tells her. “You just focus on coming back
alive—for this old man’s sake.”
That night, Urokodaki makes a huge hotpot in celebration of Nezuko completing her training. Even
though it’s meant to be a celebration, a somber cloud had settled over them.

“Eat as much as you want,” her mentor says. “You will need the strength for the hardships that
await you.”

She gets the feeling he’s talking about more than just the Final Selection. Her new responsibilities
threaten to weigh her down, but Nezuko would bear the weight of the world for her family.

“Thank you again for the meal,” she says later, after she had eaten far more than she’d ever had in
her entire life.

Urokodaki nods. “Good meals replenish your strength and help you get stronger, you should eat
more, young Nezuko.”

She laughs. “I’ll keep that in mind!”

“All creatures need food to survive,” he says, serious now. “Even demons.” Nezuko watches him
walk to a cabinet as he continues, “You can tell how many humans a demon has consumed by how
strong they are. Some of them will even develop special powers. The most powerful demons are
the ones who have consumed the most humans.”

Nezuko has come to realize that people sometimes had strange ways of trying to protect the ones
they cared about. Tanjiro had given her a precious family heirloom passed down from their father,
Makomo filled her head with information and corrected her movements, Sabito beat her into the
ground until she could stand against him as an equal.

This is how Urokodaki is trying to protect her—these cryptic, vague statements meant so much
more to him than they do to her. If only she could decipher them.

He opens the cabinet and pulls out a fox mask from inside, then hands it to her. It's just like the
ones Makomo and Sabito had, but the design is different. It’s fairly simple, with red ears and eyes.
There are thin eyebrows that make the mask look like it’s glaring at her. It’s mouth is pointed
down and there’s a red crescent moon on the cheek that bears her scar.

At first she thinks the mask looks angry, but really it just looks determined.

“It’s called a warding mask,” he says. “I’ve charged it with a spell that will protect you.”

“A warding mask, huh?” she says, gently tracing the carvings. Then she stands so that she can bow
properly. “Thank you. I am honored to wear it.”

She holds Tanjiro’s hand while she falls asleep that night.

“I’ll come back to you, big brother,” she says to him. “I swear it.”

The next morning, Nezuko prepares. She puts on the new haori that Urokodaki had given her, it’s
almost identical to his own. She ties the top part of her hair up and leaves the rest down. With her
sword on her hip and her new mask in place, she’s ready.

She hugs Urokodaki before she leaves, catching the old man off guard. “I’ll be back soon,” she
promises.

He says nothing and just holds her back until she leaves.
It takes all day, but she makes it to Mount Fujikasane where the Final Selection will be taking
place. The foot of the mountain is a forest of beautiful wisteria trees in full bloom despite the fact
that they’re out of season. Nezuko can’t help but admire the petals in the moonlight.

She climbs a set of stairs and finds a large group of people standing around. They’ve all got swords
with them, so she assumes they’re all here for the Final Selection. There’s hostility in the air, but
she’s widely ignored for the most part. Nezuko can only see one other girl among the crowd. She’s
dressed in pink, with a green and pink butterfly hair piece. Nezuko thinks about approaching her,
but she hesitates for a moment too long.

Two identical children address the crowd, one has black hair and one with white hair. They’re each
holding a lantern and wearing matching purple kimonos. “We thank you for coming to the Demon
Slayer Corps Final Selection,” they say in unison.

The one with white hair speaks on their own. “There are demons imprisoned here on Mount
Fujikasane.”

“They are unable to leave due to the wisteria trees blooming here at the foot of the mountain,” the
other one says.

“However, after this point there is no wisteria, which means the demons roam free.”

“You will have to survive here for seven days in order to pass the Final Selection.”

“And now, be on your way,” they say together.

Seven days in hell, she thinks. Can I really survive that?

There’s no choice. She has to.

Everyone splits away from the group. The other girl had disappeared without a trace. Nezuko finds
herself running through the forest. The moon is high in the sky, which means the demons will be
out and about. She needs to be alert and quick on her feet.

“One night at a time, I just make it to sunrise,” she tells herself.

She decides to head east to where the sun will rise. It'll clear out demons in the daytime and allow
her to get some rest. She’ll surely need it if she’s going to stay alive.

There’s a demon in the tree line, she can sense the demonic energy. It jumps down from the trees
and tries to attack her, but she’s faster.

Total concentration water breathing—second form, lateral water wheel.

The attack slices through the demon's neck as he’s in midair, reaching for her. His body falls to the
ground and begins to turn to dust.

Nezuko’s senses scream at her— from behind! She darts out of the way as a demon leaps from the
bushes behind her. He skids to a stop and grins at her.

“Thanks for getting rid of that asshole, now this is my turf!” The demon runs towards her.

Seventh form, piercing raindrops.

The demon’s head rolls onto the ground, and his body crumbles like a leaf.
Nezuko’s hands are shaking as she sheathes her sword. She steadies herself. She was glad the
sword she had was made from nichirin steel now more than ever. Urokodaki really had been
looking out for her every step of the way.

Suddenly her entire body tenses. Danger! There’s a scream nearby. A boy runs past her, terrified.

“This isn’t what I signed up for!” he cries.

Nezuko hides behind a tree to try and figure out what this boy was so afraid of. A horrible,
terrifying energy reaches her from through the trees. She sees the outline of an ugly, giant beast
with many arms protruding from random places on its body, it stomps through the woods
projecting such a visceral sense of danger that Nezuko freezes in place and can’t get herself to
move.

Her heart slams in her chest, her breathing quick behind her mask. How can she defeat something
as powerful as this creature? It’s hard to believe something like this was ever human.

The boy trips. He and Nezuko watch in horror as the demon lifts up a dead person, opening its
giant, gaping maw, and eats them whole. Nezuko can hear the crunching of bones. The demon
grows bigger, and she realizes this was what Urokodaki had been trying to warn her about with his
cryptic statements.

It’s getting even more powerful right before her eyes.

The boy makes a run for it, but the demon reaches out one of its hands. It shoots out from its body
and grabs the boy before he can get away, dragging him back in and holding him over its mouth—
ready to feast.

Every part of her body is telling her to run, but there’s something else there too. Rage. This demon
had killed so many humans. So many children. She can’t let it happen again, not while she has the
strength to do something about it. She isn’t a helpless little girl anymore. She draws her sword and
holds it tight to stop the shaking in her hands.

Second form, water wheel.

She uses the vertical version of the water wheel form to slice through the demon's arm. Blood
pours from the wound as she and the demon lock eyes.

“Ah, another cute fox has come to me,” he says.

Nezuko’s breath catches in her throat. Another?

“Tell me little fox cub, what year of Meiji is it now?”

She pauses, confused. “It’s the Taisho period.”

The demon stares at her for a moment then lets out a terrible scream, banging multiple fists on the
ground and shaking the earth around them. He’s scratching wounds open on himself as he howls
about it being a new time period again.

“Damn you, Urokodaki! Damn you for trapping me in this miserable place!”

This isn’t good. The demon wants revenge for being held prisoner by her mentor. No wonder
Urokodaki hadn’t wanted to send her here. But if what she thinks is true, she wants revenge as
well.
“I’ve been trapped here for forty seven years,” the demon howls. “I will never forgive you,
Urokodaki!”

“T-that’s impossible!” The boy behind her says. “The demons trapped here aren’t supposed to live
that long!”

“I’ve stayed alive by eating you brats, at least fifty so far,” he says. “Now how many fox cubs have
I eaten again? One, two, three…” he counts, all the way up to thirteen. “Ah, so you’ll be number
fourteen then, little cub.”

“Fourteen of what?!”

“The number of Urokodaki’s students I’ve eaten, of course,” he laughs. “He leads you all to your
deaths by giving you those masks!”

The rage Nezuko had been feeling before increased tenfold. She remembers what Makomo said.

“Hey, beat that guy for us, okay?”

Nezuko rushes in as the demon cackles, launching dozens of arms at her. She slices through them,
blind with rage. An arm slips through and launches her into a tree. She hits the ground hard and the
mask on her face shatters. She can almost hear Sabito scolding her for losing her concentration.

Dark spots cloud her vision and she’s so dizzy she feels like she’s floating. She closes her eyes.
There are people there with her. Her family, they’re watching over her still. Makomo and Sabito
are there as well. It’s only fitting since they’re family now too. Makomo holds her hand. Sabito
punches her shoulder.

“Don’t die here, Nezuko,” Makomo says.

That’s right, she thinks. I can’t die yet.

Nezuko’s eyes snap open and she jumps out of the way as an arm goes to grab her.

“Looks like this will be fun!” the demon says, sending more arms towards her.

She slices through them, and uses the momentum to bring her in closer to him. She has to cut off
his head. She cuts through his attacks, moving like a raging river—when he sends arms flying out
of the ground, she leaps to avoid them and uses the chance to run across an arm to get to his neck.
She moves fast, using her agility to her advantage.

She senses the opening and her sword follows the movement.

First form, water surface slash!

She cuts right through the demon’s neck and lands back on the ground. Her heart is still pounding
in her chest. She takes a deep breath. Fighting demons is truly terrifying, but once she’s started
fighting the fear doesn’t settle in until after the fact.

The demon turns to dust. It’s satisfying in a twisted way to watch him disappear from this earth
after killing so many kind, innocent souls before they ever had a chance to reach their full
potential.

“I hope you can find peace now, my friends,” she says, facing the sky and hoping that her words
will reach them.
There is blood running down her face from where the mask had probably cut her when it shattered.
She wipes it away from her eyes. Poor Urokodaki. He had no idea his special masks were the
reason all of his students were being killed. She decides not to tell him. Finding out would surely
crush his spirit.

There is still a long night ahead of her. She notices that the boy she had saved was long gone. She
can’t really blame him for running away. Though she also can’t help mentally calling him a
coward for not helping. She sheathes her sword and heads east once again.

Luckily for her, no other demons attacked her that night. The sunrise comes without much fanfare.
She finds a sunny place to sleep.

Just a few more nights to go.

 Reflection
Chapter Summary

The old man reflects on his time training Nezuko.

Chapter Notes

Edited as of 6/27/2021
Since this chapter is from Urokodaki's perspective, I thought it might fit better to have
him refer to himself by his first name, Sakonji, so I went back and changed that.
Edited some grammar and spelling errors, and added a few paragraphs.

Dear Master Urokodaki,

I am sending you this letter because I have found two strange siblings travelling together. Their
family had been killed by a demon, and the brother was turned into a demon himself. The sister,
Nezuko, was fiercely protective of her brother and outright refused to allow me to kill him. She
vowed to turn him into a human again. I thought it had been the soft-hearted sentiments of a girl
who had lost everything, but when she raised an axe to me and declared me her enemy—I knew it
was much more than that.

During that time, her brother had multiple opportunities to try and consume her flesh but he didn’t.
When I knocked the girl out, I thought for sure he would eat her in his starving, feral state, but
again he proved me wrong. He lashed out at me in an attempt to protect his sister. I have never
seen a demon do that before.

There is something different about these siblings. I want you to meet them and see for yourself.

The girl’s name is Kamado Nezuko. She is a passionate girl, but she is reckless and weak. I have
sent her your way in the hopes that you will accept her as your student and train her to become a
demon slayer. I truly believe she has what it takes to become one of us.

She will need the full strength of a demon slayer if she is going to avenge her family and protect her
brother in the long journey ahead of her.

I would also implore you to let me know if you sense something off about them. I couldn’t place the
feeling in our initial encounter, but upon further reflection it just feels as though something is not
right about them. They are strange siblings indeed, but this feeling goes beyond that. I wonder if
you will feel the same as I do.

Yours truly,

Tomioka Giyuu
Sakonji had immediately understood what Giyuu had meant in his letter when he finally met the
siblings.

There was something different about them to be sure. The wrongness barely stood out among
everything else, but it was there—whispering in the back of his mind when he looked at the
siblings. For one thing, he could never quite get used to seeing Tanjiro’s sleeping face, even
though he had hardly met the boy before he fell into hibernation.

It was hardly uncommon for Nezuko to snap at him out of frustration, but each time he was
surprised. She constantly surprised him. She reminded him a lot of his long dead students. What
Nezuko lacked in brute strength, she made up for with speed and agility the same way Makomo
had done. Her determination in the face of new challenges and her fierce protectiveness of her
brother often reminded him of Sabito. The reminders were painful, but often comforting in a
strange way.

Nezuko is a brave woman, impolite, and stubborn as a bull once she puts her mind to something.
Even still there was a selfless, loving girl hiding beneath all of that bravado.

The first few months she stayed with him, she absolutely refused to eat first no matter how much
he insisted. When he pressed her for answers she looked at him sheepishly.

“My family was poor,” she told him. “I always ate last to make sure everyone got their fill.”

Breaking that particular habit had proven more difficult than teaching her the water breathing
forms. And he still believes she would gladly go hungry if it meant helping someone else.
Especially someone that she cared about.

She takes to the water breathing forms very well. There’s a part of him that believes that if she does
manage to survive, her nichirin sword will turn blue. However, another part of him thinks water
breathing will only be the first step of her journey, as it so often is for many others.

After she left for the Final Selection, Sakonji couldn't sleep. He decides to busy himself with a
project. Nezuko kept the kimono she had worn the day he met her. She had always said it was her
favorite one. It was worn and sewn back together in multiple places where it had torn.

He busies himself with finding someone that can make an identical pattern. When everything is
finished, he just prays Nezuko will be alive to accept the gift.
 Bittersweet
Chapter Summary

Nezuko survives the Final Selection and gets her demon slayer sword.

Chapter Notes

Edited as of 6/27/2021
Fixed some more story inconsistencies and reformatted a few paragraphs.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Falling asleep proved to be more difficult than Nezuko had anticipated.

She had hoped to get some rest during the day time, but there’s a constant threat of danger in these
woods that causes her to feel like someone is screaming non-stop in the back of her mind. It’s
incredibly frustrating and prevents her from getting any real sleep. She can sense the demons all
around her, waiting for the sun to go down.

As day turns to night, Nezuko finds herself facing off against a steady flow of starving demons.
None of them come close to posing the same challenge as the hand demon, but each day presents a
new challenge. She’s chased through the woods by a pack of eight demons that want to kill her and
each other. On another night she’s beat to hell by a green skinned demon that doesn’t stop
laughing until he crumbles into dust. Another demon throws rocks at her from the trees, and lands
a good hit on her head before she can finally kill him.

She gets better at sensing where the demons are as the week drags on. She can even sense other
people at a distance if she focuses long enough. However, she can’t get herself to focus too long
with the constant buzz of danger and negative energy all around her.

On the sixth night she hears a crack of thunder and she watches with a mix of shock and awe as a
streak of lightning zips by her, cutting off the head of a demon she was fighting. As the demon’s
head rolls, a blonde boy in a yellow and orange haori sheaths his sword.

“Was that thunder breathing?” Nezuko asks, unsure of what else to say.

The boy says nothing and continues to stand there with his back to her. He must not be the friendly
type.

“Well, uh…thank you,” she says awkwardly. “I hope I see you again.”

She leaves quickly after that, wondering what she could possibly be hearing that sounded like
someone snoring.

Exhausted and covered in dirt, bruises, and drying blood, Nezuko finds the wisteria trees as the sun
dawns on the final day. She survived. It’s a surreal feeling. She’s come so far from where she
began. However, her blood runs cold when she gets a dose of harsh reality.

There’s only four survivors here.

She can hardly believe it. There had been such a large group, could they really be all that’s left?
She looks at the other three.

The boy in the yellow haori is there, but there’s something different about him. There’s fear
radiating off of him in waves and he’s visibly shaking. What had happened in the past day to cause
such a drastic change in personality? Could it be that he’s shaken from how few of them are left?
She could understand if that’s the case, she’s shaken as well.

There’s a scarred boy glaring at the covered table that’s been set up where those children had made
their announcement on the first day. He seems impatient, but he’s trying to look unaffected. His
hand is resting on the hilt of his sword as though he’s ready to draw it at a moment’s notice.

The girl with a butterfly headpiece in her hair stands apart from them. She’s completely unscathed
unlike the rest of them, and there isn’t even a single smudge of dirt on her clothes. Nezuko can’t
help feeling a little jealous. Have the past few days really been so effortless for this girl? Their eyes
meet for a split second. The girl’s passive expression doesn’t shift in the slightest. Nezuko looks
away.

The identical children from the first night come to greet them at long last. “Congratulations, we’re
pleased to see you are safe,” they say in unison.

“So, when do I get my sword?” The scarred boy asks.

“First, we will be issuing all of you uniforms,” the black haired child says. “We will take your
measurements and engrave your rank—Mizunoto.”

“Then you’ll give us our swords?” The scarred boy presses.

“Today you will choose the ore for your swords,” the white haired child says. “However, the
swords themselves will take between ten and fifteen days to complete.”

“You’re kidding,” the scarred boy huffs, clearly displeased with the answer.

“You will also receive a kasugai crow today,” the white haired child says then gently claps their
hands.

From the sky, three black crows descend. Nezuko holds out her arm and lets the crow land on it.
She smiles and carefully strokes the bird’s head, the crow leans into her touch. The twins explain
how the birds will be used for communication.

“You said crows right?” The blonde boy asks, his voice cracking. “Why am I getting a sparrow?”

Sure enough, a small sparrow had perched onto his shoulder. Nezuko hadn’t even seen it descend
with the other birds. She almost laughs, but then the scarred boy next to her starts shouting.

“Don’t give me this shit!” he yells. “Where the hell is my sword?!”

“We were just told we’d get them in a week or so. Throwing a fit like a child isn’t going to speed
anything up,” Nezuko scolds him.

“I’m getting the demon slayer sword today,” he growls, approaching the children with a violent
intent that makes Nezuko seethe with rage.

She blocks his path, her crow flies off somewhere. “I’ll break both of your hands if you touch
those kids,” she says with forced calm. “We’ll see how well you can hold a sword then.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” The boy snarls. “Get out of my way!”

He raises his hand to shove her, but she grabs him by his wrist and twists his arm, dislocating his
shoulder. She lets him go when he cries out, gripping his shoulder with his other hand.

“What the hell?!”

“That was a warning,” she says. “You won’t get another one.”

His scarred face contorts with anger. “You little—”

“Are you done chatting?” the black haired child says, cutting the scarred boy off. “It’s time to pick
the ore.”

The scarred boy makes a dissatisfied noise, but doesn’t try anything else as he works to reset his
shoulder. The table is uncovered to reveal a dozen or so chunks of metal in varying sizes. Nezuko
wonders if there’s so many because they wanted to give them options or if they had just been
optimistic that more of them would survive.

The four of them just stand there, looking at the ore.

“How...how will we know which one to pick?” Nezuko asks the children. She doesn’t want to
choose wrong. She’s never seen ore in her life, she has no idea what makes any of these different
from each other. They just look like weird rocks to her.

“That’s for you to decide,” the white haired child tells her.

Right. Of course. She really should’ve expected an answer like that.

Butterfly girl is the first to move, she picks up one of the pieces closest to her delicately and studies
it in the light.

“What does it matter? I’m going to die anyway,” the blonde haired boy groans, picking up a piece
from the back of the table.

The scarred boy hisses as he finally resets his shoulder, sending Nezuko an angry glare. He
snatches up his own piece.

Nezuko hesitates. She wants to choose the right piece so badly—but how? She closes her eyes and
takes a breath. Focus!

Something tugs on her senses, trying to get her attention.

She opens her eyes and grabs her piece of ore, holding it in her hands. She has doubts, but she feels
like she made the best choice.

The walk home makes the Final Selection seem like a breeze.

Without the constant threat of danger and adrenaline to keep her awake, she feels a bone-deep
exhaustion settle over her like a heavy blanket, making it hard to keep walking. The bag the twins
had given her with her new uniform weighs her down so much she feels grateful that she didn’t
have to carry the ore as well.

The paddy fields seem to stretch on forever. Some kind farmers offer to let her stay with them for
the night, but she politely declines.

“My family is waiting for me,” she tells them.

They give her an old staff to lean on so she can continue walking. She does her best to express her
gratitude with a nod of her head, but she still feels a little bad just taking it from them. A stubborn
part of her told her she didn’t need it, while the rest of her body agreed that she definitely needed
it.

By the time the foot of Mount Sagiri was in view, she was barely moving. Each step was agony.
Dark spots swim in her vision and the tears gathering in her eyes made it even harder to see. More
than once she trips on her feet, and every time it’s harder and harder to get back up.

Finally her knees buckle under her and she collapses to the ground. The dark spots in her vision
worsen, but Nezuko isn’t ready to give up yet.

“Come on,” she hisses at her body, “just a little further!”

She tries to push herself up with her arms, but they shake and give out on her before she can get to
her feet. Her frustrated tears dampen the ground beneath her. She needs to see her brother. She
needs Urokodaki to know she made it back alive.

She chokes back a sob. “They’re counting on you—you can’t let them down!”

With shaky, unsteady limbs she manages to get to her feet, leaning heavily on the staff as she waits
for her vision to clear up. The full moon lights her path as she shuffles forward once again.

She sees Urokodaki’s house and barely manages to stay on her feet as she sways with a sudden and
fierce relief. The door to the house bursts open—Nezuko’s adrenaline spikes and she reaches for
her sword on instinct even though she doesn’t sense any danger. Then she sees him.

Tanjiro.

She drops the staff in her shock and reaches out to him, only to go crashing back down to the
ground. He manages to catch her and holds her close to his chest as he guides them both to sit
down. For a split second, Nezuko can’t even move. She hears Tanjiro’s breath hitch and she knows
that he’s crying.

“Tanjiro…” she says quietly. “You’re...you’re awake?”

She wraps her aching arms around him and pulls him even closer, clutching fistfuls of the back of
his haori like it’s a lifeline and starts to cry too. She cries so hard she feels like she can barely
breathe. The weight of two years of worry and heartache lifts from her shoulders as she sobs into
his chest.

His energy is full of the kindness and love she remembers, even if there is a dull demonic edge
there now. It’s like warming up by a fire after being frozen in ice.

“Please—please don’t ever, ever do that again, I was so worried—” she chokes on another sob. “I
thought...I thought you’d never wake up.”

He’s shaking in her arms, and she’s not faring much better. She can feel him leaving a wet spot on
her shoulder, but that’s nothing compared to the blood, filth, tears, and snot she’s leaving on him.

There’s a sound nearby like someone dropping something heavy. Nezuko doesn’t need to look up
to know it’s Urokodaki. Another pair of arms wraps around them both.

“You came home to us alive,” he says, the relief raw in his voice.

Safe and surrounded by the love of her little family, Nezuko gives in to her exhaustion and passes
out in their arms.

She sleeps for an entire day, waking up the next night. She bathes, bandages her wounds, and puts
on some fresh clothes. Urokodaki offers a fresh meal to welcome her home. She talks to him about
the Final Selection, as well as the hand demon. Though she omits a large part of it, her mentor is
no fool. She can sense his guilt and deep-rooted sadness even as he tells her how glad he is that the
demon has been dealt with.

“You will be facing much stronger demons in the future, Nezuko,” he says, “ones with powerful
blood demon arts that will challenge you at every turn.” He puts a hand on her shoulder. “But I
believe you will be okay.”

“Thank you,” she says with a sad smile. She looks at the door to her room where Tanjiro had fallen
asleep again and a thought crosses her mind. “Do you think Tanjiro will have a blood demon art?”

“Your brother is different from other demons, only time will tell if he will develop such abilities.”

Before she sleeps that night, she pushes the hair away from Tanjiro’s forehead. His scar looked
different now. It was a deep red with sharp edges that reminded her a bit of the sun that’d been on
her mask.

“I’ll focus on finding you a cure, you just focus on winning the war inside of you,” she says to
him.

Fifteen days come and go.

Tanjiro thankfully doesn’t sleep for too long, so she spends a lot of the time regaling him with the
stories of her training and the Final Selection. Even though he can’t add much to the conversation,
he is a great listener. He’s much more focused now—more present then he’d been before he went
to sleep two years ago. After she’s done talking he forces Urokodaki to give him a hug. Watching
Urokodaki accept the hug awkwardly ends up making her laugh.

He comes with her on another night to pay respects to Sabito and Makomo in the field they’d
trained her in. It’s a quiet affair. He holds her when she cries.

On the fifteenth day, a strange man with windchimes on his hat shows up at the house. Nezuko
greets him outside, but before she can say anything he starts talking.

“My name is Haganezuka,” he says. “I have forged the sword for Kamado Nezuko, and I am here
to deliver it.”

Nezuko buzzes with excitement, but forces herself into a bow. “I’m Kamado Nezuko, it’s a
pleasure to meet you! Would you like to—”

Haganezuka turns his back to her and starts to unwrap the sword. “This is the nichirin sword, I
forged it.”
“Yes, would you like to come inside? Or would you prefer—”

“The materials for a nichirin sword are obtained from the mountain closest to the sun, scarlet iron
sand and scarlet ore, these produce steel that can absorb sunlight.”

“Oh, is that what makes them so effective against demons?”

“Mount Yoko is bathed in sunlight all day long you see,” he continues, “there’s never a cloud in
the sky.”

“Okay?” she says awkwardly. “I get the feeling you’re not listening to a word I say.”

He whips around to face her, making the windchimes hanging from his hat ring loudly. He’s
wearing a hyottoko mask over his face.

“Hm, your family works with fire?”

“We made charcoal, but I don’t see how that’s relevant to anything?”

“Well, you’re not quite a Child of Brightness—you’re close, but not quite,” he says. “I’ll be
interested to see what color this sword turns.”

They go and sit down inside the house. Haganezuka sits next to Urokodaki, and Nezuko sits across
from them, holding the sheathed sword in her hands. The sheath itself is black, and underneath the
black wrappings, the hilt is blue.

“Go on and draw it,” Haganezuka tells her. “It will change color when you do. Each sword is
different depending on the wielder.”

Nezuko draws the sword. She grips the hilt and raises it up to look at it, but it stays silver. She’s
disappointed for a moment until the blade slowly turns black.

“A black sword?!” Haganezuka shouts, a mix of anger and disappointment coming from him.

“Is—is it a bad thing to have a black sword?” she asks.

“Not necessarily,” Urokodaki says calmly as Haganezuka fumes next to him. “It’s not a common
color, that’s all. It’s usually a sign you’ll struggle to find a breathing style to master.”

“But I like the water breathing style,” she says. “If I master something, will it change color again?”

“No, once you draw the blade for the first time, it doesn’t change color after that,” Haganezuka
says bitterly.

“Oh,” she says.

She studies the color of the blade, she could swear there was a bluish tint to the metal when she
tilts it in the sunlight, but she could just be imagining things.

Suddenly, she hears the cawing of a crow. Her kasugai crow flies into the house and lands next to
her.

“Kamado Nezuko!” the crow says. “Here are your orders! This will be your first mission as a
demon slayer!”

“You can talk?!” she asks, surprised.

“Make your way to a town northeast! Young children have been going missing there!” the crow
says. “Find and kill the demon responsible!”

Nezuko sobers up and nods. “I understand.”

Haganezuka leaves soon after that, muttering angrily under his breath. Nezuko is getting her
uniform ready so that she can change into it when Urokodaki approaches her.

“It’s time I gave you this,” he says, holding out a pink haori that matches the exact pattern of her
old kimono. Reverently, she takes it and inspects it.

“This is brand new!” she says. “Where did you get the fabric?”

“I had it specially made. I knew you wouldn’t be able to wear it with your uniform any other way.”

She pulls him into a hug. “Thank you, Urokodaki.”

He pats her head. “I will give you some time to get changed. I have one other thing to give you
before you leave.”

He goes outside to give her space. She makes quick work of changing into the uniform. She pulls
on the skirt and buttons up the shirt. With her belt secured, she ties on her black leg wrappings up
to the middle of her calf. She ties her hair into a low bun to keep it out of her face. She carefully
pulls on her new haori, it’s the perfect texture and weight.

A few minutes later, she and Urokodaki sit across from each other. Tanjiro watches them through a
gap in the door.

Urokodaki shows her a carved wooden box. “I want you to take this, I made it so that you could
carry your brother in the daytime.”

Nezuko lifts the box up and gasps. “It’s so light!”

“It is made from Kirikumo Cedar, which makes it incredibly lightweight. I’ve also coated it in a
special lacquer to make the exterior more durable.”

“You’re so thoughtful, Urokodaki!” she says. “This is an incredible gift.”

She goes into the room and sets the box down in front of Tanjiro. “Are you ready to go, big
brother?”

He looks up at her and nods. He shifts his form and gets into the box. Nezuko smiles at him.
“Whatever happens next—we’ll face it together,” she says, then closes the box so that she can lift
it onto her shoulders.

Outside of the house, she and Urokodaki look at each other. She bows as low as she can.

“I really can’t thank you enough for taking us into your home,” she says. “You’ve done so much
for us these past two years, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

Urokodaki adjusts her earrings and fixes her collar. She can sense his sadness, but also his pride.
He puts his hands on her shoulders and says, “You don’t have to repay me, you’re family.”

Nezuko’s eyes get misty and she sniffs. She gives the old man one last hug.

“Good luck on your journey, Kamado Nezuko,” he says. “I wish you and your brother all the best.”
 “Thank you, Urokodaki,” she says. “We’ll miss you.”

With a final wave, she begins the journey northeast towards her first mission as a demon slayer.

Chapter End Notes

This was a tough one ngl. If you like the story so far leave a kudos and let me know!
<3 If you have any questions, feel free to ask :)
 Let's Play
Chapter Summary

Nezuko's first mission as a demon slayer.

Chapter Notes

Edited as of 6/27/2021
Added in some paragraphs to help with flow and fixed a few mistakes. Changed
chapter title as well.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The town is bustling with people when Nezuko arrives.

There’s a wide open marketplace with dozens of vendors selling food and other wares. Nezuko is
briefly tempted to look at some of the stalls, but she can’t forget that she’s here on a mission. She
walks through the town, trying to pick up on any demonic presence.

“Did you hear about Akane’s daughter?” Nezuko hears a woman ask. “She was taken last night.”

“That’s horrible!” Another woman says.

“She’s the tenth one so far,” the first woman says. “I hope someone puts a stop to this, I haven’t let
my son leave the house in days.”

“Excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear,” Nezuko says. “Do you know where I can find Akane?”

“What for?” One of them asks.

“I want to give her my condolences,” she says. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the full truth either. This
seems like the best place to start looking for a demon in this town.

The women are very helpful and point Nezuko in the right direction. The house they send her to is
clouded with such a powerful grief it makes Nezuko’s eyes water. A disheveled middle aged
woman with tear tracks on her face greets her at the door.

“Are you Akane?” Nezuko asks.

“I am,” Akane sniffs. “What do you want?”

“I heard that your daughter was taken,” she says. “I want to help you find her.”

Fresh tears gather in Akane’s eyes, but a flicker of hope shines in her eyes. “How? How can you
help?”

“I need to know where your daughter was when she was taken.”
“She was here, i-in her room—” Akane sobs. “I heard laughing a-and then I heard the door open so
I went to check on her but she was...she was already…”

“May I see her room?”

Akane nods and leads her inside. She slides one of the doors open and shows her the empty futon.

“Her doll was missing too,” Akane says. “She takes it everywhere with her.”

Nezuko steps into the room, trying to sense the presence of a demon. However, Akane’s grief is so
powerful that it overwhelms and drowns out everything else. She shuts her eyes and focuses her
breathing. There’s a little girl out there that needs her help.

She has to sort through the grief and Tanjiro’s energy to find the traces of a demon. It’s faint, but
it’s there, like footprints in the snow.

“There you are,” Nezuko says, mostly to herself. She starts following the trail, but Akane stops her,
desperation written all over her face.

“Where are you going?”

Nezuko decides to tell her the full truth. “I’m going to find the monster that took your daughter.”

“Please,” Akane cries. “If you find Akina—if you find my little girl, bring her home.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Nezuko promises.

She has to move quickly, as the trail is already fading. It really is similar to tracking footprints in
the snow, but there’s more snow falling and covering the tracks. Another problem is that as soon as
she starts navigating the crowds, dozens of different energies collide and bombard her senses. She
has to close her eyes in order to focus on that demonic energy, and miraculously she doesn’t bump
into anyone or anything as she walks.

Maybe it’s because they want to avoid the girl that’s walking around with her eyes closed, she
thinks to herself.

As day turns to night, she finds herself in a nearby forest where the demonic energy starts to
become stronger. It’s easier to focus on it when there aren’t so many people around.

“Tanjiro, are you okay?” she asks over her shoulder.

There’s no response from the box.

“Ah, I guess you’re sleeping,” she says.

She keeps her footsteps light on the forest floor, avoiding any stray branches or leaves that might
give her away. From the corner of her eyes she sees a flash of color in the trees. She looks up and
finds an expensive looking kite tangled in a tree. It’s strange to see such a toy so deep in the woods
where it would’ve been useless anyways.

As the demonic energy gets stronger and more potent, she starts finding more toys scattered about.
She counts about nine of them in total.

The tenth one is in a bush, it's a little doll in a red kimono stained with dirt.

Is this Akina’s doll? She wonders.

A gust of wind rustles the leaves of the trees. Nezuko feels a chill run down her spine and she turns
to see a little boy with demonic yellow eyes smiling at her. In his hands, it looks like he’s playing
ayatori. He has the long string wrapped between his fingers, making a pattern with the loops.

“I don’t usually play with big kids,” he says.

“You’re the one who's been kidnapping children?” she asks, her hand clenched on the hilt of her
sword.

“I’m Menko!” he says brightly. “Would you like to meet my friends?”

He raises his hands and rearranges the loops in the string. As he does, children’s bodies come
flying out from all around. The stench of death is so potent it makes her gag. Six of them are
skeletons, but others still have rotting flesh attached to them. It’s one of the most horrific things
Nezuko has ever seen, and it only gets worse as they shuffle towards her with jerky movements.

There’s a girl in a blue kimono standing next to the demon, her body limp and her eyes glassy. She
has to assume it’s the missing girl, Akina. She can feel the waves of terror pouring off of her. The
girl is alive.

Nezuko draws her sword.

“Let’s play a game,” Menko says with a grin and twists the loops between his fingers again.

The corpses lunge towards her. She feels Tanjiro leap out of the box as she defends herself against
the walking corpses. Tanjiro helps her fend them off, but no amount of damage they do affects
them. They’re literally just corpses, they don’t feel any pain and they don’t get tired.

Menko twists and pulls the string in his hands. Nezuko realizes something— this is his blood
demon art!

“The string,” she says. “We need to cut the string!”

“You don’t think I’ll let you ruin my game that easily, do you?” Menko says, twisting a new loop.

The corpses surge and focus solely on attacking her. She and Tanjiro tear through them, but they
just keep pulling themselves back together and getting back up.

“Tanjiro—get the string!” she shouts, slicing through bone.

Tanjiro nods and dashes towards Menko. Nezuko takes the chance to use one of the water
breathing forms.

Sixth form, whirlpool.

Twisting and moving her body and sword she conjures a massive whirlpool that cuts through the
bones of the corpses and scatters them across the area. They don’t reform.

She looks up to see Tanjiro trying to cut through the demon’s string with his claw-like nails.
Menko keeps dodging just in time, laughing as if he’s having the time of his life.

“You’re fun to play with!” he laughs. “We should be friends!”

The veins in Tanjiro’s forehead bulge and he growls, going in for another strike, but suddenly
Menko moves Akina in front of him. Tanjiro has to jump back to avoid clawing the little girl’s face
open.
“This is my new friend,” Menko says. “I like to play with my friends before I eat them, it’s more
fun that way.”

“That’s horrible!” Nezuko says, her blood boiling. “You torture these children before you kill
them?! That’s not fun—it’s cruel!”

“It’s not cruel!” Menko yells. “We’re playing a game! They have fun!”

“You’re wrong,” she hisses and points at Akina. “That girl is terrified. She isn’t having fun, she
wants to go home to her family!”

Menko glares at her. “Family means nothing, it’s only friends that matter.”

Nezuko readies her sword. “I’m sorry someone made you feel that way, but it doesn’t make it okay
for you to kill these children.”

“Why do big kids always ruin my games?!” he shouts, then twists the thread in his hands.

Akina falls limp to the ground, the bones scattered around them start to rattle and shake. Tanjiro
runs and grabs the girl, moving her out of the way before she can get swept up in the whirl of
bones and sticks that start to fly around them.

A creature of bone, sticks, and rotting flesh forms before them. Menko tightens the sting in his
hands and the creature rises. It doesn’t resemble anything close to a human. It lumbers towards her.

Nezuko looks at Tanjiro who is setting Akina down by a tree. The little girl is crying.

“Keep her safe,” she tells him. Turning back to the creature once he nods.

She rushes forward and slices the creature in half. When it threatens to reform, she attacks once
again as fast as possible.

Sixth form, whirlpool.

She cuts the creature into pieces, forcing the bones apart and keeping them from reforming. When
Menko starts to loop the string again, she runs towards him and slashes through the string.

“No fair!” he wails. “I don’t wanna play with you anymore!”

“I wonder how many of your friends thought that before you killed them,” she spits.

His eyes start to tear up. “No one ever wanted to play with me, not even big brother and his
friends.”

Nezuko tries to feel sorry for the kid, she really does. Tanjiro might’ve—he was always a kinder
person than her. But this demon tortured children, ate them, then toyed with their remains like they
were his personal dolls. All she feels is rage. But she has to calm herself for just a moment. She has
a question to ask.

Urokodaki had told her once about the Demon King. The only one who could turn humans into
demons, and the one who most certainly killed her family and turned her brother into a demon. She
needs to find out more about him. Who better to ask than a demon?

She points her sword at the boy’s neck. “What do you know about Muzan Kibutsuji?”

Menko seizes. His face twists into a horrified expression. “I—I can’t!”
“It’s a simple question, tell me what you know!”

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!” Menko chants, pulling his hair.

“Just tell me!”

“No!” he lunges at her.

She decapitates Menko with one swift strike.

It’s disappointing, but what could’ve inspired such a terrified reaction? Why had Menko gotten so
spooked just by hearing a name?

As Menko’s body disintegrates, she joins Tanjiro next to Akina. The girl had stopped crying, but
she was trembling. She was still scared, and Nezuko couldn’t blame her. She pulls out the doll she
found earlier.

“Hi Akina, this is yours isn’t it?”

Akina looks up at her and gasps when she sees the doll, grabbing it and holding it close to her
chest.

Nezuko smiles. “Your mother was very worried about you, and she asked me to bring you home.”

The girl sniffs. “She did?”

“She did,” Nezuko says. “My brother and I are going to bring you back home, okay?”

“He’s...he’s your brother?” Akina asks nervously.

“He is.”

“But he—he has those eyes,” she whispers as if Tanjiro couldn’t hear her.

“Maybe so, but Tanjiro would never hurt you or anyone else,” Nezuko says. “He helped protect
you, remember?”

“Yeah…he did,” she says.

After a long pause, she stands and hugs Tanjiro who looks down at her in surprise.

“Thank you, Tanjiro,” she says to him, fresh tears in her eyes.

Tanjiro stands there awkwardly for a moment before finally patting the girl’s head. The scene
makes Nezuko smile. Her brother deserved to be treated like a human.

Finally Akina lets go and looks at Nezuko. “I wanna go home now.”

“I’m sure you do,” she says. “Let’s go.”

Tanjiro goes back into the box as the sun dawns. Akina gets tired halfway through the woods, so
Nezuko picks her up and carries her in her arms so that she can rest. A small, bitter part of herself
wonders if she had been this strong back then, could she have taken their siblings with her down
the mountain? It hardly matters now, but the thought nags at her anyways.

When they arrive, Akane sobs when she sees her daughter.
 “You found her! Oh, my baby—” she takes Akina from Nezuko’s arms and holds her close.

“She’s been through a lot,” Nezuko says. “She might struggle for a little while, but I think she’ll be
okay eventually.”

“Please, come inside and tell me what happened,” Akane says. “I’ll make you something to eat as
well.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” Nezuko says. “There’s some unfinished business I need to take care of.”

She goes back into the woods. It takes a few hours, but she manages to gather the remains of the
dead children and bury them. It’s messy, and she can’t even make individual graves because she
can’t figure out whose bones are whose. She finds the toys that were scattered about and buries
them with the remains. It feels like the right thing to do.

She prays over the grave, hoping that it’s enough to let the children rest easy now.

Her kasugai crow swoops down from the sky. Nezuko raises her arm for him to land on.

“Your next location is Asakusa, Tokyo!” he says. “Rumors of a demon there!”

“Oh, another mission already?” she asks.

“Yes, now get moving!”

“Alright, there’s no need to be so pushy!” she says.

It’s a long walk to the city, so it’s well past nighttime when they get there. Tanjiro is out and
walking next to her, he’s using his scarf as a cowl to cover his eyes. The city is loud, bright, and
full of life. Nezuko had thought the last town was big, but it was nothing compared to the city!

She and Tanjiro stare in shock. The world was more different than they ever could’ve imagined
back home.

Navigating the streets proves to be its own challenge. By the time they find a quiet area to breathe,
she feels wrung out and exhausted. The sensory input from such large crowds made her want to
curl up in a dark corner. So many people with so many different energies and emotions coming off
of them. It was overwhelming. Tanjiro wasn’t faring much better. She couldn’t be less envious of
his incredible sense of smell right now.

She orders some food from a small vendor and sits down to eat. Tanjiro falls asleep next to her,
leaning his head on her shoulder. It’s a quiet, peaceful moment in such a huge, chaotic city.

Then something presses on the edge of her senses. It’s dark and foreboding. It sits on her chest and
makes it difficult to pull in air. She’s only felt the traces of a presence like this once before—when
she found what was left of her family. It was stronger now.

Closer.

She drops the food and shakes Tanjiro awake. He opens his eyes slowly, but when his nose
twitches and he stands straight up, her suspicions are confirmed.

Muzan Kibutsuji is here.

Chapter End Notes

Chapter End Notes

This chapter was fun to write. Let me know what you think! Kudos and comments are
much appreciated :) Shoutout to my sister who helped me come up with the idea for
Menko. Next chapter should be up soon, so stay tuned lovelies <3
 Wildfires
Chapter Summary

Nezuko confronts Muzan, but nothing goes as planned. She and Tanjiro stumble onto
some unlikely allies.

Chapter Notes

CHAPTER WARNINGS: Intrusive thoughts, body horror, and mentions of vomit.

This chapter will have brief moments from Tanjiro's perspective.

Edited as of 6/27/2021
Fixed some minor formatting issues and some grammar/spelling mistakes.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Tanjiro doesn’t remember what happened that day, but he’d know that scent anywhere. He also
knows the fear that followed it—that hopeless, crushing feeling that’s been haunting him ever
since. Even before he and Nezuko lock eyes, he knows what his little sister is going to do. Still, he
knows he has to try to stop her.

The weight of Muzan’s presence is heavy in the air between them. Tanjiro shakes his head, his
eyes wide. Nezuko can hear him loud and clear, even if he doesn’t speak a word.

Don’t.

Nezuko knows she should listen to him. But the stubborn, curious, angry part of her wins out over
logic.

“I’m sorry,” she says, stepping away from him. “I have to.”

She starts running before she can see the hurt look on his face. He tries to grab her, but she dodges
him and starts shoving her way through the crowd with a single-minded focus. All of her
concentration is spent following that dark, oppressive energy.

When she finds him, she realizes he’s smaller than she imagined. With such an oppressive energy
she expected someone larger. Not this thin, pale man in a hat and a finely tailored suit. But there’s
no mistaking that it’s him.

She draws her sword, ignoring the gasps from onlookers.

“Muzan Kibutsuji!”

He turns to her slowly. His eyes are bright red. His expression is that of someone considering
whether or not to crush an ant. The pressure from his presence is almost suffocating now— just
how powerful was he?!

He’s carrying something in his arms. It’s a little girl.

A human girl.

“Daddy, why does that girl have a sword?” The girl asks timidly, tugging on Muzan’s shirt.

“I’m not sure,” he says to the girl, his expression softening when he speaks to her. “Don’t be
scared, she won’t actually use it.”

“Darling, is everything alright?” A woman asks. “Should I call the police?”

“No, there's nothing to worry about dear,” Muzan says calmly. “I’m sure this girl just has me
confused for someone else,” he says with a pointed look at her.

Nezuko grits her teeth, gripping her sword so tightly her arms start to shake. She is not mistaken.
This is the man that killed her family. The one who turned her big brother into a demon. He’s
killed countless others, created hundreds of demons who killed even more. This man is pure evil in
the flesh.

He took everything from her, and then has the audacity to pretend to live a normal human life with
a wife and a child?

She’s blind with rage. She wants to make him suffer the way she did. Make him feel that same pain
he inflicted on her. She wants to tear open that little girl’s chest the same way he did to Rokuta and
make him watch—

In a flash of motion, Muzan reaches out a hand behind his family and cuts the back of a man’s
neck.

The man crumbles to the ground, clutching his wound. His veins start to bulge and he chokes on
air. His wife kneels at his side, asking if he’s okay. Nezuko sheathes her sword as the man begins
to snarl and spit the same way Tanjiro did when he first turned. She tackles him to the ground
before he can hurt anybody.

She knows what this is—it’s a distraction. Muzan’s leaving, but there’s nothing she can do unless
she wants this man to become a killer and he knows it. She’s frustrated, she’s angry, and she wants
to cry all at once.

“I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done, Muzan Kibutsuji! Do you hear me?!” she shouts over
her shoulder where she can feel his presence, even as he blends into the crowd. “I’ll find you again,
and I swear I’ll make you pay if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Young lady, step away from that man!” A police officer shouts.

Underneath her, the man is thrashing wildly. She has him pinned to the ground on his stomach,
keeping a hand on the back of his head to keep him from biting her. The police officers surround
her and start trying to pull her off of him.

“Stop it! I’m the only one keeping this person from hurting anyone!” she shouts at them.

“If you don’t move, we’ll be forced to make you,” an officer says, raising a baton.
That’s when Tanjiro pushes through the crowd and shoves the officer away from her.

“Tanjiro? What—”

Suddenly, bright clouds of color surround them. Flowers dance on swirls of pinks and purples. It’s
the most beautiful thing Nezuko’s ever seen. She can hear the officers asking where they went.

“What’s going on?” she asks. “Whose power is this?”

“It’s mine,” a woman says.

Nezuko turns to see a woman in a flowery purple kimono, her arm rapidly healing from being cut
open. Her hair is neatly pinned back and she has pretty purple eyes. Next to her is an angry looking
boy dressed in white. His eyes are a similar shade of purple. Both of them have the presence of a
demon, but it’s been dulled like Tanjiro’s.

“Even though this man turned into a demon, you still referred to him as a person,” she says. “I
want to help, if you’ll allow me.”

“How?” Nezuko asks.

“I am a doctor,” she says. “I know you might not trust me because I’m a demon, but I swear I also
want to see Kibutsuji destroyed.”

“If that’s the case,” Nezuko says. “Please do whatever you can to help him.”

She uses a medicine to sedate the man, and he goes lax almost instantly. “We will take him back to
my place, will you come with us?”

Nezuko stands and looks at Tanjiro. He doesn’t meet her eyes. They’re going to have to talk about
what just happened. That, and she left the box behind in her rush to confront Muzan.

“I need to go and get something,” she says. “Will I be able to meet with you later?”

The woman nods, then gestures to the boy beside her. “I will send Yushiro here to come and get
you.”

They part after that. Nezuko and Tanjiro walk back to the cart. Once they’re out of the crowd,
Tanjiro stops walking and gives her the Stern Big Brother look. It’s the one where he narrows his
eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. She rarely ever had that look directed at her before, it was
usually reserved for when their kid siblings did something wrong.

“I know I messed up,” she says, rubbing her elbow. “That man got hurt because of me, and it
probably could’ve been a lot worse if Muzan wasn’t trying to protect his civilian persona.”

Tanjiro raises an eyebrow. She can almost hear— and?

“And...and you tried to warn me, but I didn’t listen,” she says. “I’m sorry, Tanjiro, I really am. I
was stupid and reckless and I could’ve been killed.”

Tanjiro relents and pulls her into a hug. He was scared, she realized. He’d been scared for her life
and she ignored him. What if she had died? What if Muzan had taken another family member from
Tanjiro?

Nezuko bites back a sob as she clings to her brother. She can’t afford to be that reckless again. She
can’t allow her emotions to control her like that. Next time she might not be so lucky.
After a few moments, they pull away from each other. Tanjiro flicks her forehead.

She huffs a laugh, wiping her eyes. “Yeah okay, I deserved that.”

After that, she retrieves the box and pulls it onto her shoulders. She apologizes to the food vendor,
and tries to offer him some change for the bowl she broke.

“It’s not about the bowl—you insulted my cooking!”

“Give me some more, and I’ll eat every bite,” she says.

“Fine, but he has to eat too,” he says pointing at Tanjiro.

“I’ll eat for both of us,” she says. “Just bring me two bowls.”

Nezuko scarfed the food down as fast as she could. “Thank you very much for the food!” she says,
setting down the second bowl.

The vendor gapes at her. “I’ve never seen a girl your size eat that much.”

“Thank you again,” she says, gracefully ignoring that comment. “We should go now.”

He wishes them well as they leave and once Nezuko feels like he can’t see her, she hunches over
and tries very hard not to vomit all over the road.

“Ugh—why did I do that?” she groans. “That was such a bad idea.”

Tanjiro pats her back sympathetically.

She looks up when she feels another dulled demonic presence nearby. Yushiro glares at them from
afar. She straightens up and walks over to him, Tanjiro close behind her.

“Did you get what you need?” he asks as though he really doesn’t care what her answer is.

“Yeah, we’re ready now,” she says.

“Follow me, hag,” he says flippantly.

Funnily enough, Nezuko wasn’t really bothered by him calling her that. It was Tanjiro who took
offense on her behalf. He starts growling at Yushiro.

“What’s his problem?” Yushiro asks.

“Ah, Tanjiro used to insist that I’m the beauty of our hometown,” she says. “He’s probably just
upset you called me a hag.”

“Well you are,” he says. “Especially with those man hands and that ugly scar.”

Ouch. That hurt. Nezuko forces herself to take a deep breath. Don’t let your emotions control you.

Tanjiro has no such internal debate and tries to lunge at the other demon, so she has to physically
hold him back with all of her strength.

“Let’s just go see that lady already,” she says, trying to play pacifist, but it only backfires when
Yushiro takes offense.

“If you disrespect Lady Tamayo like that again—I’ll beat you into the ground and make you even
uglier than you already are.”

She doesn’t sense anything truly malicious from him. There’s jealousy and protectiveness, and
something else buried underneath it all.

“Oh, I get it,” she finally says. “You’re in love with her.”

Yushiro’s face flushes and he trips on a few words before finally giving up and staying quiet for
the rest of the walk, refusing to make eye contact with her.

They reach what seems like a dead end, but Yushiro walks right through the wall. He pokes his
head back out a moment later.

“Hurry up before anyone sees.”

Carefully, she and Tanjiro walk through what should be a solid wall, but instead just feels like
walking through mist. Beyond the wall is a house that definitely was not there a moment ago.
Tanjiro seems just as surprised as she is.

“It’s a concealment spell,” he tells them. “Now hurry up, Lady Tamayo is waiting.”

The inside of the house is beautiful. Nezuko can’t help but admire all the paintings and floral
arrangements that decorate the place. Yushiro leads them into a room where Tamayo sits, waiting
for them.

“Please, come have a seat,” she says.

Nezuko and Tanjiro sit down, opposite her and Yushiro.

“How is the man from before?” Nezuko asks.

“For now I have given him sedatives and locked him in the basement, it’s the best I can do for him
at this time,” the demoness says. “I believe some introductions are in order, my name is Tamayo,
and this is my assistant Yushiro.”

“My name is Kamado Nezuko, and this is my brother Tanjiro,” she says. “I’m glad to meet other
demons besides my brother that don’t eat people.”

Tamayo and Yushiro share a surprised look.

“How...how did you know that?” Tamayo asks.

“I didn’t tell her anything,” Yushiro says.

“I guess I just assumed,” Nezuko says nervously. “Am I wrong? I mean your energies are just so
much like Tanjiro's, it's the only thing that made sense to me.”

“When you say energies, could you possibly mean auras?” Tamayo asks.

“I...I’m not sure? That’s just how I always thought of it in my head,” she says.

“What can you sense from me right now?”

Nezuko blinks a few times, then focuses on Lady Tamayo. “Most demons have a dark, jagged
presence, but yours seems like it's been shaved down into dull points—not smooth like Yushiro’s
and Tanjiro’s, but duller than anyone else. You’re curious and your intentions are good. Your
energy is overall very positive.”

“Fascinating,” Tamayo says. “Aura reading isn’t as widespread as it used to be, and those who used
it often spent years honing their abilities before they could read someone so easily. You are a very
gifted child, Nezuko.”

Nezuko’s face flushes and she scratches the back of her neck. “I mean it’s not just with living
things, I can also sense when I’m in danger and where weapons or attacks are coming from when
they get to a certain distance from me.”

“It sounds like you’ve managed to find a way to expand your own aura to sense when those things
are approaching. Considering that this seems to be a natural ability, you most likely did it
subconsciously in self defense.”

“Wow...that would explain a lot of the things I’ve been able to do,” she says. “How do you know
about this stuff, Ms. Tamayo?”

“I have been around for a long time, my dear,” Tamayo says. “I’ve picked up a few things here and
there. But that’s a story for another day, right now I’m interested in learning more about you and
your brother.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything you’re willing to share.”

Nezuko tells them their story. It feels strange leaving her mouth, like it was someone else's story
and not her own. At some point, Tanjiro grabs hold of her hand and squeezes it.

“I want to offer you my help,” Tamayo says once Nezuko’s finished talking. “Tanjiro’s situation is
extremely rare and unique. Any demon that went two years without consuming any human or
animal flesh would’ve gone mad, but that didn’t happen to him.”

“Do you think there’s a way to make a cure?” she asks.

“Every ailment has a treatment, surely there must be a way to turn a demon back into a human,”
Tamayo says. “I will need to ask two favors of you.”

“Anything,” Nezuko says a little desperately.

“First, I will need permission to study your brother’s blood. I believe that his body underwent a
tremendous amount of change while he was asleep, and how it changed his blood composition
might be the key to finding a cure.”

Nezuko shares a look with Tanjiro. “Are you okay with that?”

He nods, expression set with determination.

“Alright,” she says looking back at Tamayo. “What’s the second thing?”

“I’m afraid this is going to be incredibly challenging,” she says. “I hate to even ask something like
this from a child, but I will need blood samples from two demons with a higher concentration of
Kibutsuji’s blood.”

“What makes them different from other demons?” Nezuko asks.

“Having a higher concentration of Kibutsuji’s blood gives demons more power than most,”
Tamayo says. “Have you heard of the Twelve Kizuki?”

“Not really,” Nezuko says.

“They have the highest concentration of his blood, which makes them the strongest,” Tamayo says.
“They’re split into two groups; the Upper and Lower Moons.”

“Are you saying they’re the ones I need to extract blood from?”

“That would be best,” Tamayo says. “If I can study their blood, I’ll be able to study some of
Kibutsuji’s as well.”

Nezuko squeezes Tanjiro’s hand. “If that’s what it takes to make my brother human again—then
I’ll do it.”

Tamayo looks like she’s about to say something else, but that’s when Yushiro jumps to his feet.

“Get down!” he shouts.

Without thinking, Nezuko grabs Tanjiro and forces them both to duck as a temari ball flies through
the wall and bounces wildly around the room, smashing the walls and floors with every impact.

Through the new hole in the wall, Nezuko can see two demons. The female in the orange kimono
catches the temari as she laughs.

“Looks like we found them, Yahaba!” she says to the other demon.

“You’re so careless, Susamaru,” Yahaba says. “Look how dirty you’ve gotten my kimono!”

“Oh, quit whining, you don’t have a speck of dirt on you,” she says. “Now come on, let’s make this
fun!”

Susamaru throws two more temari balls. They fly bizarrely through the air, changing directions
randomly and not losing any momentum even as they destroy the house. There’s a strange reddish
blur that seems to be guiding them through the air.

When one of the balls goes flying towards Tamayo, Yushiro throws himself in front of her to
defend her, but the ball doesn’t hit him like it's supposed to—it darts down towards the floor then
flies back up and crushes Yushiro’s head.

Nezuko can’t help the cry that escapes her as his body crumbles to the ground. Tamayo catches
him, cradling his body close to her. Nezuko knows it won’t kill him, but it doesn’t make it any less
horrific to see.

She forces herself to focus, drawing her sword and turning to Tanjiro. “Help protect Ms. Tamayo.”

“Thank you for your concern my dear, but I assure you it isn’t necessary,” Tamayo says. “We’re
demons after all.”

Nezuko turns as one of the temari comes flying towards her face. She sucks in a careful breath and
slices it in two. The halfs circle back, following that red blur of energy. They don’t stop until
they’ve hit her, then they vanish into the air.

The other temari balls fly back to the hands of the demon in the orange kimono, Susamaru. She
bounces them on the ground, her eyes on Nezuko.
“So, you’re the female demon slayer with the hanafuda earrings,” she says, a menacing smile
splitting her face. “I’m going to bring him your head!”

Nezuko’s stomach drops. How could she have been so blind? Muzan knew what she looked like
now—of course he would send demons after her. Now Yushiro’s been hurt because of her. He and
Tamayo and Tanjiro are all in danger because of her.

“Please—all of you go and hide, it’s only me they’re after!” she says.

Tanjiro grabs her shoulder. When she looks at him, he shakes his head. Nezuko wants to cry. She
thinks of their mother and siblings, Tanjiro’s current condition, and how different things might’ve
been if she just hadn’t taken that axe with her that day—

“I can’t let anyone get hurt because of my actions,” she says. “Not again.”

If Tanjiro wasn’t mistaken—it sounded like Nezuko blamed herself for what happened that day.
Had she blamed herself this whole time? Tanjiro wishes he could form words right now so he
could tell her how ridiculous she was being, but his throat closes up every time he tries to speak.
It’s infuriating.

Nezuko looks away from her brother as another temari flies towards her, there’s so much power
behind it that it kicks up dust. She raises her sword to use one of the water breathing forms to slow
it down, but Tanjiro jumps in front of her and headbutts it—sending it flying back to Susamaru
who stumbles when she catches it.

There’s a squelching noise, and Nezuko turns to see Yushiro’s head reforming.

“La...dy...Lady...Tamayo…” he says as the bottom half of his face reforms. “Didn’t I warn you
against getting involved with demon slayer?!”

Nezuko’s guilt grows with every word.

“My concealment spell isn’t perfect,” he continues, “the more people we get involved with the
more likely it is that Kibutsuji will find us!”

The rest of his head finally reforms as he growls, “I despise anyone who ruins the time I spend
together with you! It’s unforgivable!”

Outside, Susamaru laughs at them. “Aw, look at you all whining and babbling!”

She sheds her haori and pulls down the top of her kimono so that it drapes her hips and exposes her
stomach. “You should be honored to be killed by me—one of the Twelve Kizuki!”

There was something noticeably stronger about this demon’s presence. If she really is one of the
Twelve Kizuki…then Nezuko needs to shove her feelings aside. This is a chance she can’t pass up.
They need that blood sample.

Susamaru’s muscles flex and she grows two more arms from the side of her body. The amount of
temari balls multiply and she bounces them all simultaneously.

“Now, let’s have fun together before you all die!” she shouts and throws the temari balls.
Nezuko and Tanjiro scramble to deflect the temari. Nezuko uses her sword and Tanjiro uses his
hands and feet to push and kick them away. Nezuko’s senses are screaming at her from every
angle. She ducks, swerves, and twists her body to avoid getting hit. It’s like an intricate dance if
stopping meant getting injured or killed.

Tanjiro takes a brutal hit to the arm, blood drips down his haori onto the floor. Tamayo and
Yushiro get hit as well. Nezuko barely avoids getting her leg torn off by one that hits the wall
behind her then redirects back at her.

“Hey, stupid hag!” Yushiro shouts at her, blood gushing from his head. “Look at the arrows—
they’re pointing which direction they're going!”

“What arrows?” she shouts back.

“Seriously?! You can’t even see them?” he says then pulls out a small piece of paper. The paper
and his eyes glow blue. “Here, I’ll lend you my sight. Then you should be able to cut off that
temari woman’s head!”

He throws the paper and it lands on her forehead. The change is instant. The red blurs that she’d
seen around the temari balls sharpen and clear—turning into arrows right before her eyes.

“The red blurs were arrows?” she says.

“So you could see them!” Yushiro shouts.

“Well I didn’t know what they were!”

“Stop fighting each other and focus on the matter at hand,” Tamayo scolds them.

“Yes ma’am!” Yushiro says.

“Right. Sorry,” Nezuko says.

Being able to see the arrows clearly makes them even easier to dodge. She looks at Tanjiro, his
wound has stopped bleeding.

“There’s a second demon, I saw him earlier. I think his blood demon art is the arrows,” she says.
“Can you track him down while I fight this woman?”

Tanjiro nods and both of them run outside. Susamaru summons the temari balls back into her hands
and bounces them. Tanjiro takes off to find the other demon while Nezuko raises her sword and
lowers herself into a fighting stance.

“I’m the one you’re after, aren’t I?”

“You are, there’s no mistaking it,” Susamaru laughs. “I can’t wait to bring him that pretty head of
yours! He’ll be so pleased with me!”

The demon raises all six of her arms and throws the temari, all of the arrows pointing directly at
her. Nezuko runs, keeping out of their range. She just needs to avoid them until Tanjiro can make
an opening. The area is limited in space for her to run—she ends up having to run along the side of
the house, listening as the temari tear through the wall right behind her.

She skids to a stop on the ground as the arrows abruptly vanish from the temari. This is her chance.

Third form, flowing dance.

She uses the water breathing form to slice through the temari balls. She tries to cut off Susamaru’s
head as well, but she raises her arms to block her just in time. Nezuko only manages to cut off the
demon’s arms.

“Don’t let your guard down for a second, demon slayer!” Yushiro shouts. “If these demons really
are part of the Twelve Kizuki, then they are more powerful than any other demon you’ve faced!”

“Right!” Nezuko says, adjusting her stance to prepare an attack.

“Do you really think you can defeat members of the Twelve Kizuki?” Susamaru laughs. “We’re
his chosen ones, and I won’t disappoint him!”

In an instant, her arms regrow back to their full size. Nezuko sucks in a breath. She’s never seen a
demon regenerate that fast before. The temari balls materialize in the demon’s hands, and she grins
with her fangs on full display.

Nezuko has to look away as Tanjiro is thrown towards her. She manages to catch him as the other
demon lands on the ground. His eyes are closed; but there are eyes embedded in the palms of his
hands.

“Now then, how about you both die at the same time?” Susamaru says, throwing her temari at
them.

Nezuko manages to roll her and Tanjiro out of the way.

“Tanjiro? Tanjiro, are you okay?” she asks, searching his face. He winces in pain but manages a
nod.

“Hey, demon slayer!” Yushiro shouts. “Kill that arrow demon! We’ll take on the temari woman
with your brother!”

“Alright!” she says to him, then looks back down at her brother. “Don’t push yourself too hard,
okay?”

He nods, and they both stand up. Nezuko faces the arrow demon. What had Susamaru called him
again? Yahaba? That’ll have to do. She glances at her brother and they share a look. His pupils
have narrowed and he looks more demonic.

“I’m counting on you, big brother,” she says.

Then the fight begins.

Nezuko runs towards Yahaba as Tanjiro runs towards Susamaru. She senses her opening and raises
her sword to follow through and cut off his head.

She would fight any demon and win if it means making Tanjiro human again.

Yahaba tsks and raises his hand, the eye on it closes. “Stay away from me with all that filth.”

There’s no avoiding the arrow that appears under her foot and redirects her so that her sword
doesn’t even graze him when she swings.

The arrow throws her backwards, then redirects and slams her against a tree—knocking all the air
out of her lungs. The arrows pull and push her in every direction, making it impossible for her to
gain control of her movements. She’s thrown onto the ground, into the wall of the house, and up
into the air.

Suddenly the arrow is gone and she’s free falling to the ground. A scream tears itself from her
throat. She barely manages to pull herself together long enough to use a water breathing form to
slow her descent, but it’s weak due to her lack of breathing control and she hits the ground hard.

Control your breathing, Nezuko! She scolds herself.

She forces herself to get her breathing back under control. She stands up on shaky legs, her body
protesting every movement.

“You hurt Lady Tamayo!” she hears Yushiro saying in the distance.

“Tamayo?” Yahaba says. “The fugitive Tamayo? She’d make a great prize.”

“Let’s bring him back four heads then,” Susamaru says.

“No just the two,” Yahaba says. “The others don’t matter.”

Nezuko tightens her grip on her sword. No matter what, she has to win this.

But how?

More arrows come flying towards her. She dodges and tries to cut one of them with her sword, but
the action just sends her flying in the arrow’s direction. She’s slammed against the brick wall that
bordered the area. Black spots swim in her vision and she nearly loses her grip on her sword, but
she keeps hold of it. She has to. She doesn’t have a choice.

She rolls out of the way of another arrow, but one twists around her leg and starts to pull it in an
unnatural direction.

Sixth form, whirlpool.

She uses the momentum from the breathing form to twist her body quickly in the arrows direction
and negate its effect. She takes a deep breath.

Ninth form, splashing water flow.

Using the ninth form, she’s able to dodge the arrows even more efficiently, jumping over them and
weaving through the twists and turns. Once she’s close enough, she uses the fastest technique she
knows to cut off the demon’s head.

But that isn’t the end of it.

“Curse you!” the demon howls from the ground. “I’ll make you pay for putting my face in the dirt
like this!”

Arrows materialize, pointing out of her chest in almost every direction. Visceral terror seizes
through her— is this where I die?

She flies backwards, the pressure of the arrows are stronger now—it hurts to even breathe. At this
rate, if she hits something, she’ll be crushed to death. She needs to act fast.

She goes through every breathing technique she knows to keep herself from hitting anything as she
dragged in every possible direction. Each time it takes more and more of her strength to keep it up.
Black spots and tears blur her vision but she has to keep moving—she has to!
She’s suspended in midair when the arrows finally disappear. She falls to the ground, but this time
she’s too spent to even attempt to break the fall or even scream. She lies on the ground,
hyperventilating. The world spins around her and even the thought of moving her body hurts.

“Blood…” she rasps, trying to force herself up. “Need...the...sample…”

A sharp pain in her ribs forces her back to the ground and she cries out. Reflexively, she tries to
grab her abdomen, but a blinding pain in her left arm makes itself known. Cracked ribs. Broken
arm. Dislocated hip. Possibly dozens of bruises that will form later.

She’s never known pain like this before, not even during her training or Final Selection. It’s
terrifying. This is the life of a demon slayer, the one Urokodaki had tried to warn her about
countless times.

This is her life now—she just has to accept it.

Battered and broken, she pulls herself to her feet. She’s kept a death grip on her sword, afraid that
if she lets go she won’t be able to pick it back up. She has to get back to the others. That other
demon is still alive, she can feel it.

On the first step, she stumbles. She uses her sword to catch herself, but the movement sends fresh
waves of pain throughout her body. She takes a moment to recover and pushes herself back up,
shuffling forward one step at a time, practically grinding her teeth from the pain.

I’ll be there soon big brother, just hold out a little longer!

When she rounds the corner of the house, she sees something she never expected.

Tanjiro and Susamaru are locked in a kicking match, the temari flying between them with such
strength and speed that Nezuko can only see it by the dirt it kicks up as it shoots through the air.
The veins on Tanjiro’s forehead bulge, and as he goes to kick the ball again—

It lights on fire.

Tanjiro’s not sure how it happened. As the battle raged on, he felt himself getting progressively
stronger. When he went to kick the temari this time, something boiled in his blood. It was an
instinct he knew he could trust.

Blood demon art, Wildfire!

The flaming temari flies towards Susamaru who looks scared for the first time since this battle
started. She tries to dodge, but the ball obliterates the left side of her body, smashing into the wall
behind her and sending debris everywhere. The demon rises slowly as her body regenerates once
again.

Nezuko couldn’t believe what she just saw. Was this Tanjiro’s blood demon art? It was incredible!

“You may be strong, kid,” Susumaru grunts. “But I’m one of his chosen ones!”

“Girl of the Twelve Kizuki, do you know the truth about Kibutsuji?” Tamayo says, stepping in
front of Tanjiro. There’s dried blood on her forehead and her hair is out of place, but she looks as
put together as she did when they were speaking earlier.

Susuamaru gasps. “What the hell did you just say?!”

“He is nothing but a coward,” Tamayo continues. “He lives in a constant state of fear.”

“Stop—dammit just stop talking!” Susamaru shouts.

“Do you know why demons can’t team up, why we eat each other?” Tamayo asks. “It’s to keep us
from banding together and attacking him. That’s how he manipulates us. How he manipulates
you.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Susamaru growls. “There’s no way he’s that petty!”

Nezuko realizes that Tamayo had sliced her arm open. It was dripping blood, and a mist was
floating up from her arm, but Susamaru was too distracted to notice.

“His power is mind-blowing,” Susamaru shouts. “There’s no one alive that’s stronger than Lord
Kibutsuji!”

A beat passes in silence. Susamaru drops her temari. Nezuko can sense fear and shock pouring off
of her, even from this distance. There’s horror in her eyes as she covers her mouth.

Tamayo lifts her hand, the colorful mist is even stronger now. Yushiro glances Nezuko’s way and
gestures frantically for her to cover her nose. Nezuko drops her sword and covers her nose and
mouth with her haori.

“You’ve said his name aloud,” Tamayo says, a dark look in her eyes. “That will trigger the curse. I
do feel sorry for you, but...farewell.”

“No, I—I didn’t mean it, I swear!” Susamaru screams and runs. “Please forgive me, please! I’m
begging you, Master, please don’t do this! I’m your loyal—”

She’s not far from Nezuko when she chokes on her words and stops, the whites of her eyes turning
darker. The blood in her veins pulses visibly, and Nezuko watches in horror as arms shoot out from
the demon’s mouth, chest, and stomach. They’re massive and scarred like they were someone
else’s arms.

Blood splatters everywhere around the demon. Nezuko has to swallow back bile as some of it lands
on her. The demon’s skin is grey from blood loss, but she’s still alive and screaming as the arm
from her mouth twists around and crushes her skull in its hand.

The worst part is her body doesn’t disintegrate. The pieces of her lie scattered about in pools of her
own blood. Nezuko can still sense her presence. Susamaru isn’t dead.

Nezuko does not like demons that kill humans—but this? This was torture. There wasn’t even a
head left behind for her to cut off so she could end this.

What kind of person is capable of inflicting this kind of pain on someone?

Her eyes slowly drift back to Tamayo. Tamayo looks back at her.

“This is Kibutsuji’s curse,” she says to Nezuko. “Her flesh will be destroyed by his cells in her
body.”

“You knew this would happen?” she asks, words muffled by the fabric of her haori.
“I did,” Tamayo says. “Battles between demons are usually futile, we can’t inflict fatal wounds on
each other. I did what needed to be done.”

This wasn’t Tamayo’s fault. She had just saved them all. It had been Muzan that cursed the demon
in the first place. If anyone was to blame it was him. It was always him, wasn’t it?

“She isn’t part of the Twelve Kizuki,” Tamayo says, pointing to the demon’s detached eyeball.
“They have their rank engraved on their eyes. The other one likely wasn’t either, they were too
weak.”

“That was...weak?” Nezuko says, feeling faint at the thought of it, but also for many other reasons.

“If Lady Tamayo says so, then it’s the truth, “ Yushiro says.

Tamayo quietly collects a blood sample. “I hope this blood will help in the development of a cure.”

She looks over at something, Nezuko follows her gaze to where Tanjiro sits against the house, fast
asleep.

“I’m going to take care of Tanjiro, he inadvertently inhaled my spell,” she says then bows to
Nezuko. “I am deeply sorry.”

Nezuko tries to follow, but her body won’t cooperate. Yushiro glares at her. “Don’t move, you’re
on your own for now. I won’t leave Lady Tamayo’s side for a second!” He runs off.

Nezuko’s left alone with the scattered remains of Susamaru.

“Mari…”

Nezuko’s eyes widened— she’s talking even now?

“Mari…” Susamaru rasps. “Mari…”

“Do you mean…?” Nezuko trails off and looks at the temari ball nearby. “You want your temari?”

“Mari…”

Nezuko knows rationally that this demon has killed a lot of people. She knows that she shouldn’t
feel pity for her, but she does. The demon had followed Muzan loyally, but this was what she got in
return? He couldn’t even treat those who revered him with respect?

Nezuko shuffles forward, dropping her haori from her face now that the mist has cleared. She
picks up the temari and brings it closer to Susamaru’s dismembered hand.

“Here’s your temari,” Nezuko says.

She picks up a feeling of gratitude. She feels her eyes water. Complicated feelings swell up in her
chest, but she shoves them back down to deal with another time. For a brief moment, Nezuko
wishes she couldn’t feel any emotions. Maybe then she wouldn’t hate herself for feeling pity for a
killer.

“I should go now,” she says, but she doesn’t go anywhere.

When the sun rises, Susamaru’s presence finally leaves this world. Her body disintegrates along
with all her blood. Nezuko watches until there’s no trace of her besides a dirty kimono and a temari.
She starts walking back towards the remains of the house.
“Ms. Tamayo?” she calls as she walks through the battered house. “Yushiro?”

“Over here,” Yushiro calls. “Down the stairs, not that you need to come down here.”

“Yushiro,” Tamayo scolds.

“Only joking.”

“Hurry down, Nezuko,” Tamayo says.

Nezuko walks down the stairs, wincing with every step. When she gets down the steps, she’s
greeted by an energetic Tanjiro who gathers her into a hug. She can’t help but hug him back, even
if it’s only with one arm. Tanjiro seems to notice this and pokes her bad arm.

“Ow!” she cries. “Dammit, that hurt!”

Cue Stern Big Brother look.

“Ah, I mean, I’m...fine?” she tries, but it doesn’t work. Tanjiro drags her over to Tamayo and gives
the woman a pleading look.

“Nezuko, will you let me look over your injuries?” Tamayo says, humored by the exchange, but
still somber given the situation. “I want to help you however I can.”

“It’s really not that big of a deal—”

Tanjiro flicks her forehead.

“Alright, alright fine,” she says. “I would appreciate your help, Ms. Tamayo.”

Tanjiro nods proudly.

The next few minutes are unbearably painful as Tamayo inspects her breaks and helps reset her hip
back into place. She helps wrap her broken arm in a splint to keep it from moving too much, and
gives her medication for the pain.

“It should also help speed up the healing process a little. I’ll give you a few doses to take with you
when you leave,” Tamayo says. “You’re lucky your bones were only fractured, it could’ve been
much worse.”

“Thank you for all your help, Ms. Tamayo.”

“One last thing before you go.” Tamayo holds out a book to her. It’s a leather bound book with
pages that have yellowed from age. “It’s about aura reading, I figured you would get more use out
of it then me.”

Nezuko takes the book and holds it reverently in her hands. It’s a chance to understand herself and
grow even stronger. She stores the book with the medicine and hugs Tamayo.

“Thank you.”

Tamayo doesn’t move for a moment, still with shock. Yushiro radiates jealousy nearby. “It’s
nothing really, just an old book.”

“Tanjiro and I are very lucky to have met you both,” she says.
“Nezuko…”

“You saved our lives today, and helped us even though you didn’t have to,” she continues. “You
want to keep helping us, even after I put you both in danger.”

“Of course,” Tamayo says. “It’s the least I can do.”

“You have such a kind heart, Ms. Tamayo,” Nezuko says. “As far as I’m concerned, you and
Yushiro are family now.”

Tamayo’s eyes water with tears and Nezuko panics and pulls away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to
make you cry!”

“It’s okay,” Tamayo says with a smile. “Few people want to claim demons as part of their family,
although…” She trails off and looks over at Tanjiro who’s happily patting Yushiro’s head much to
the other demon’s dismay. “You’re a special case, aren’t you, Nezuko?”

“Tanjiro would’ve done the same for me if I’d been in his place,” she says easily. “I’m not that
special.”

“You are—both of you are,” Tamayo says. “Yushiro and I will be leaving this region.”

A somberness settles over all of them. Tanjiro stands next to Nezuko as they listen to her speak.

“We’ve gotten too close to Kibutsuji, and we have to conceal ourselves or risk being found again,”
she says. “Nezuko, I have an important question for you.”

“Yes?”

“Do you want us to take Tanjiro in? He’s strong in battle, but it would be safer for him and for you.
The demon slayers will not react well to one of their own travelling with a demon.”

Nezuko feels the world tilt a little as the words sink in. She can see Yushiro vigorously shaking his
head behind Tamayo, but Tamayo is dead serious. Nezuko isn’t sure what to do. At this moment,
she feels inadequate. Maybe it would be better for Tanjiro to stay with Tamayo. He’d be safer that
way. She still has to get that other blood sample, and it could be very dangerous.

Her thoughts are spiraling, but then she feels Tanjiro grab her hand. They share a look. She turns
back to Tamayo and bows.

“Ms. Tamayo, I really appreciate your concern, but Tanjiro and I will be sticking together,” she
says.

“Very well then,” Tamayo says. “I wish you good luck in all your future battles.”

Yushiro nods his approval. “Goodbye, then. Once we erase all traces of ourselves we’ll be
leaving.”

“Thank you again, both of you,” she says, dragging them both into a hug despite the pull on her
ribs. “Stay well! We’ll be praying for your safety!”

“Yeah, yeah, buzz off already!” Yushiro snaps.

Nezuko lets them go and turns to Tanjiro. “Let’s get going, big brother.”

Tanjiro waves at the other demons and starts going up the stairs.
 “Wait up!” Nezuko says and goes after him, but she’s stopped by Yushiro.

Yushiro doesn’t meet her eyes. “You...you really aren’t that ugly after all, Nezuko.”

Nezuko smiles and laughs.

Chapter End Notes

This one took waaaay longer then I anticipated to write. If you enjoyed reading, leave
a kudos! Each one adds another year to my life lol

Zenitsu and Inosuke are on their way! >:)

 The Mansion
Chapter Summary

Nezuko encounters another Demon Slayer on the way to her next mission. They find a
mansion full of demons and children in need of help.

Chapter Notes

Edited as of 6/28/2021
Fixed some grammar/spelling mistakes.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“South-southeast! South-southeast!” Nezuko’s kasugai crow says. Again.

“Yes, I heard you the first time, you don’t need to keep shouting it in my ear,” Nezuko says.

“Your next location is south-southeast!” the crow says a little louder just to spite her.

“This is fun for you, isn’t it?”

“South-southeast!” he caws happily.

Nezuko can’t help a laugh. “Well at least one of us is having a good time.”

Walking by the paddy fields wasn’t really all that bad. Nezuko likes the familiarity of it. She didn’t
feel as out of place as she did in the city. She didn’t even mind her crow yelling so much, the noise
helps break up the silence and keeps her from having to think too hard about anything.

“Please!” Someone shouts. “You have to marry me!”

Nezuko whips her head around to find the blonde boy from the Final Selection clinging to a girl
that looks painfully uncomfortable and keeps trying to shake him off.

“I could die any day now! That’s why I need you to marry me,” he pleads.

“Hey!” Nezuko shouts, stomping over to them and pulling the boy off of the girl. “What are you
doing? She clearly wants nothing to do with you!”

“Huh?” The boy says, confused. “But she’s in love with me!”

“When did I ever say I was in love with you?!” the girl shouts, smacking him. “You were lying on
the side of the road looking sick, all I did was ask if you were okay!”

“So you weren’t reaching out because you were worried for me out of love?”

“I’m already engaged, so definitely not!” she says. “You seem fine now, so I’ll leave.”
The girl looks at Nezuko and smiles pleasantly. “Thank you for your help! If he gives you any
trouble, come find me and I’ll send my fiance to deal with him.”

“I should be fine, you get home safely,” Nezuko says.

The girl sends the boy another harsh glare then leaves. A little sparrow flies into Nezuko’s hand
and starts chirping wildly and flapping his wings. Nezuko listens intently.

“Not only are you harassing women on the road, you’re giving your sparrow trouble too?” she asks
the boy, who hasn’t moved from the ground. “What’s wrong with you?”

The boy’s eyes bulge. “You can understand it?!”

“That’s hardly the point,” she says. “You weren’t acting this pitiful at the Final Selection.”

He stares at her blankly. “You were at the Final Selection?”

“Of course I was!” she snaps. “I stood right next to you, do you not recognize me?”

He shrieks, grabbing the sides of his head. “You’re telling me I was standing next to a pretty girl
the whole time and not a guy?!”

Nezuko slaps him.

“Ah! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that in a bad way!” he says, gripping the angry red slap mark. “You
were just wearing those manly clothes and had all that dirt on you so it was hard to tell—but you’re
a very pretty girl!”

Nezuko’s face flushes from embarrassment. “Oh, I guess it would’ve been hard to tell that day.”

“Actually, will you marry me?” he asks, grabbing her by her shoulders.

“What?” she chokes, her face burning even hotter than before.

“It didn’t work out with that other girl, but maybe you’ll marry me instead!” he says. “And you’re
a demon slayer which means you can protect me!”

“What—no! No, no, no—I’m not marrying some strange guy!” she says, shoving him off of her.

He recovers quickly and jumps to his feet. “So you’re saying if we get to know each other better,
then you’ll marry me?”

She no longer feels guilty about slapping him. “That’s not what I’m saying at all!”

“I’m Agatsuma Zenitsu, what’s your name?”

“Kamado Nezuko,” she says reflexively, then immediately regrets it when his face lights up.
“Don’t take that the wrong way, I’m only telling you because we’re allies.”

“Really? Because it sounds like you like me, Nezuko!”

Nezuko grimaces. “You’re such a creep.”

“Eh? What’s that look for? Don’t be so mean, Nezuko!”

“I’m leaving now. Stop causing trouble for your sparrow,” she says as she walks away.
“Wait, don’t leave me!” Zenitsu cries, chasing after her. “I need you to protect me, otherwise I’ll
die before we can get married!”

“I said no! I’m not marrying you,” she says. “Also, why would you need my protection? You did
just fine for yourself at the Final Selection.”

“That was pure luck!” he says with tears in his eyes, fear pouring off of him. “I was so scared I
kept passing out!”

Nezuko raises an eyebrow. “If you were so scared, then why did you become a demon slayer in the
first place?”

“Some women tricked me and I started racking up all this debt, then the old man that took it over
turned out to be a trainer!” Zenitsu explains, talking so fast that Nezuko can barely keep up. “He
put me through this hellish training day after day, and I wanted to die! I thought the Final Selection
would kill me, but it didn’t and now I’m living in constant fear!”

“So you didn’t have a choice to become a demon slayer?” she asks. He shakes his head. “I didn’t
really have a choice either.”

“Really?! So we have something in common!” he says excitedly, grabbing her hands. “We’re going
to have such a happy life together, Nezuko!”

She takes her hands back, wincing from the pain in her broken arm. “Stop saying weird things or
I’ll knock you out and leave you on the side of the road.”

“So harsh, Nezuko,” he says.

The afternoon sun is beating down on them as they walk together quietly. Zenitsu’s aura had been a
whirlwind of emotions, but it settled down fairly quickly. The silence is broken by the sound of a
stomach growling.

Zenitsu flushes. “Sorry, I forgot that I haven’t really eaten today.”

“Do you not have any food?”

When he shakes his head, Nezuko hands him the rice ball she had been saving. “Here, you should
eat.”

“That’s so nice of you, Nezuko,” he says, taking a bite. “Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

“No, that’s all I had on me,” she says. “It’s fine though, I can wait until we find a town or
something.”

He freezes. “What? You gave me the last of your food?!”

“I said it’s fine, don’t make a big deal out of it,” she says.

“It’s not fine, I can’t just take all of your food,” he says, halving the rice ball.

Nezuko is stunned. Zenitsu doesn’t let up until she finally accepts the half and eats it. She’s
reminded of her family, who never let her go hungry even if she always chose to eat last. She thinks
that she could get used to having Zenitsu around, even if he is a little strange.

It gets quiet again for a little while as they eat. That is, until Zenitsu breaks the silence again with a
question. “Hey, Nezuko?”
“Hm?”

“I was just wondering, what did you mean earlier when you said you didn’t have a choice to
become a demon slayer?”

Nezuko chooses her words carefully. “I lost almost everything I had to a demon. I needed to be
strong enough to avenge my family and protect what I have left.”

Zenitsu looks like he’s about to say something else, but he’s interrupted by her crow yelling at
them from overhead.

“Run Nezuko! Run Zenitsu! Head to your next location immediately!”

Zenitsu screams, “It talks?!”

“Come on, we need to get moving,” she says, picking up the pace.

“I don’t think I should come with you,” Zenitsu says, even as he follows her. “I’ll be useless if a
demon shows up.”

“That’s stupid, I watched you kill a demon in the blink of an eye during the Final Selection,” she
says. “I want you there with me if there’s a fight.”

His energy brightens immediately. “Of course, I’ll do anything for you, Nezuko!”

“Don’t be weird about it,” she says.

He giggles to himself as they follow her crow. Eventually, Nezuko picks up on a strong demonic
presence and starts running towards it. Through a patch of woods, they stumble upon what seems
to be an abandoned mansion. The demonic energy hovers over the place like a dark cloud.

Nezuko can sense something else though, something human. She sees two children in the woods
nearby, fear and concern rolling off of them in waves. The older boy is holding the little girl close
to him. They remind her of her siblings Shigeru and Hanako in a way. She approaches them, but
stops when their fear only increases. She sits down on the ground a few feet away from them.

“Hello there,” she says, smiling gently. “My name is Nezuko, and I want to help you.”

The kids stare at her for a moment, their eyes watery. They seem to calm down after a beat and sit
down as well, still holding onto each other.

“M-my name is Shoichi, and this is my sister Teruko,” the boy says, shaking with fear. “Our older
brother was taken by the monster living in that mansion!”

“I see,” Nezuko says. “My friend and I will save your brother and defeat the monster for sure.”

“You will?” Shoichi asks timidly.

“Of course, I want you to rest easy now. We’ll take care of everything.”

“Uh, Nezuko?” Zenitsu says. “Do you hear that creepy sound?”

“What sound?” she asks. “I don’t hear anything.”

“It sounds—it sounds like a tsuzumi,” he says, his aura darkening with fear.
Nezuko stands next to him and strains her ears. At first, she still doesn’t hear anything, but then she
hears a faint sound that starts getting louder and louder. Her senses scream danger at her, so she
pulls Zenitsu back as a man comes flying out of the top floor window and hits the ground with a
sickening crunch—blood splattering all around him. Nezuko blocks the sight as best she can from
the children.

“Don’t look!” she shouts, once their eyes are turned, she runs towards the man.

His presence is fading quickly. She kneels down in the blood pooling around him and desperately
starts trying to put pressure on his wounds. When she does, she hears his bones crack from the
pressure and he groans.

“Am I…am I going to die?” he rasps.

Nezuko’s eyes burn with unshed tears. “I’m sorry—I’m so, so sorry, maybe if I had gotten here
sooner—”

“Even though...even though I got out…”

Nezuko holds him as the light dims in his eyes and his presence leaves this world. She’s seen
dozens of dead bodies and thought she was familiar with death, but as it turns out she was wrong.
Watching a human die while she couldn’t do anything to stop it...it’s the worst feeling in the world.

She sets him down gently on the ground. “I’ll be back to bury you,” she promises, saying a quick
prayer over him. She stands and looks back at Zenitsu who looks like he’s frozen in place with
fear.

“Do you think that was…?” Zenitsu trails off, his face pale as he glances between the body and the
kids.

“Was that your brother?” Nezuko asks the children.

Shoichi shakes his head, sniffing as tears and snot trail down his face. “That’s not him, our brother
is wearing an orange kimono.”

“Okay, we’ll be sure to find him,” she says.

“I’m not going in there!” Zenitsu says.

Nezuko forces herself to take a deep breath. She knows for a fact Zenitsu can hold his own in a
fight, even if he doesn’t seem to want to own up to it. She reevaluates her options here and makes a
choice.

“Alright,” she says. “If that’s the case, then you can stay out here and protect these kids if anything
bad happens.”

“Wait, really?” Zenitsu asks in surprise.

“I can’t force you to follow me into a dangerous situation,” she says. “But these kids are scared
and they need someone to look out for them—can I trust you to do that?”

“Thank you, Nezuko,” he says gratefully. “I won’t let you down!”

Nezuko hums and addresses the kids. “My friend Zenitsu is going to protect you while I’m gone,
I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“But you’ll be all alone!” Shoichi protests.

“I’ll be fine,” she says gently. “Look after your sister.”

The mansion is fairly normal. If Nezuko couldn’t feel the demonic auras in the house, she could've
easily mistaken it as someone’s home and not a demon’s territory. She starts exploring, keeping an
eye out for any movement. It’s eerily quiet and the lights flicker ominously overhead, adding to the
creepy atmosphere. There’s dust in the air and caked onto every flat surface. She focuses on the
auras in the house, there’s definitely more than a few demons here, but one is just a bit stronger
then the rest. There are at least two other humans as well, buried under all the darkness.

Just as she’s about to follow those auras, she hears, “Ms. Nezuko!”

Nezuko sees Shoichi and Teruko running down the hallway, Zenitsu close behind.

“You shouldn’t be here, it’s too dangerous!” she says.

“I’m so sorry Nezuko, they slipped past me!” Zenitsu says, panting with each breath.

Nezuko is about a second away from giving him a piece of her mind when she hears the sound of a
drumbeat and suddenly Zenitsu and the kids are gone. With each beat of the tsuzumi, the room
around her changes into a new one until the drumming finally stops. It must be a blood demon art
of some kind, she realizes. And now she doesn’t know where she is.

She reaches out to try and get a sense of where Zenitsu and the kids might be, but she feels the
powerful demonic presence nearby instead. She can hear heavy footsteps from the hallway. She
reaches behind her and knocks on Tanjiro’s box. He quickly climbs out and grows back to his full
height next to her, likely having smelled the demon already.

Nezuko draws her sword as the demon steps into the doorway. He towers over them both with grey
skin and clawed hands and feet. He has black markings on his face and long matted hair. There are
two tsuzumi drums growing out of his shoulders and thighs, and one growing from his stomach.

“Curse them!” The demon growls, grinding his sharpened teeth. “Because of them my prey got
away, I need the marechi.”

Nezuko charges at the demon, ready to cut off his head.

“I have to get rid of all these pests,” the demon says, then hits the tsuzumi on his left shoulder.

The room tilts, and Nezuko is thrown towards the wall—no, the floor? Tanjiro catches her before
she makes any impact, but the movement still strains her injuries that haven’t fully healed. She
hisses through her teeth, but gets back on her feet.

“Thank you, Tanjiro,” she says, then stares at the tatami mats that had once been the floor. “Did he
move the room?”

Tanjiro nods, tapping his shoulder.

“When he hit the tsuzumi?” she asks, mimicking the movement.

Tanjiro nods again.

“That must be his blood demon art, we need to—” she senses something wild and chaotic heading
right towards them, “—get down!”
She pulls Tanjiro down as a shirtless guy bursts through the wall above them wearing a boar’s hide
mask. Both of his swords are chipped, but they’re undoubtedly nichirin steel. She recognizes the
uniform pants as well.

He’s a demon slayer.

“Finally, I found you,” he says to the demon. “Now you can serve as the springboard for Hashibira
Inosuke’s rise to the top!”

He charges at the demon the same way she did.

“Wait!” she calls out to him. “He’s going to—”

“It’s so infuriating,” the demon says, tapping one of his tsuzumi.

Another few drumbeats and the room spins left and right. Expecting it this time, Nezuko follows
Tanjiro’s movements and keeps her footing by running along the rotating walls. When the room
finally stops rotating, Inosuke raises his swords towards them with a laugh.

“This is fun!” he says. “Not just one demon for my swords to slice through, but two!”

He lunges for Tanjiro. Nezuko rushes forward and blocks his path, using her sword to hold back
his chipped ones.

“You may be a demon slayer, but if you threaten my brother, I’ll take you down,” she says.

Inosuke laughs. “You can’t hold me back with that puny sword—I’ll shred you too!”

He tries to use the jagged edges of his sword to get leverage and flip her sword out of her hands.
Nezuko follows, but only so she can use the moment to create an opening for her to kick him in the
chest and send him flying backwards. She hears and feels ribs cracking under her foot, but when
Inosuke stands again, he doesn’t seem affected.

“You’ve got one hell of a kick,” he says. “No human has ever sent me flying like that before! I’ll
acknowledge you as my rival!”

He lunges towards her again, laughing wildly. This time, Tanjiro tackles him.

“Don’t get in my way!” Inosuke shouts, trying to knock Tanjiro off of him.

“Bothersome pests,” Nezuko hears the demon say. There’s a drumbeat, and Nezuko senses the
danger.

“Look out!” she shouts, jumping out of the way as three claw marks tear through the floor.

Somehow the other two had managed to dodge it as well. The demon beats the tsuzumi again, and
this time it's pure chaos. Claw marks barely miss them—ripping through the walls and floors as the
room spins randomly. Nezuko manages to grab onto a piece of furniture to steady herself, but she
sees Inosuke grab Tanjiro as he’s thrown out of the room, taking her brother with him.

“Tanjiro!” she shouts, running towards him only for the room to change again before she can reach
him. It changes two more times before stopping.

Nezuko drops to her knees, her body shaking. “Please...please don’t let him be killed,” she prays.

“Nezuko!”
She whips around to see Zenitsu crying and running towards her, he pulls her into a hug. “Nezuko,
I’m so glad you’re okay!”

“What? Zenitsu—”

“I found the kids’ older brother, Kiyoshi, and he’s been keeping us safe!” he explains in a rush of
air. “There are so many demons here I thought for sure you’d be torn to pieces, but you’re alive!”

“The kids, are they okay?” she asks.

“We’re okay,” Shoichi says.

Nezuko approaches the boy in the orange kimono who she assumes is Kiyoshi. “May I see that
tsuzumi you have?”

He nods slowly and passes it to her. Nezuko turns it over in her hands. “This is just like the ones on
that demon I saw.”

Kiyoshi pales. “You saw it?”

“I did,” Nezuko says. “Was he the one that took you?”

Kiyoshi nods. “He would’ve eaten me if those other demons hadn’t attacked him, one of them cut
this tsuzumi off of him so I took it and struck it. It changed the room, so I’ve just been hitting it
every time I think a demon is coming.”

“That’s good, you’ve been doing such a great job, Kiyoshi,” she says. “Are you injured at all?”

He nods and shows her a cut on his leg that’s still bleeding slowly. Nezuko uses some of her spare
bandages and ointment Urokodaki taught her to make in order to properly wrap the wound.

“Ta-da! All better now,” she says, tying off the bandage.

“Ms. Nezuko, do you know why that demon kept calling me marechi?” Kiyoshi asks.

“I...I’m not really sure,” she says.

“Marechi!” her crow caws, landing next to them. “It’s a special blood type that demons love! One
marechi equals fifty—even a hundred normal humans! It’s a nutritional feast for demons!”

“Have you been here this whole time?” she asks.

The crow caws in a way that sounds like a laugh.

“Well, I guess there’s your answer,” she says to Kiyoshi.

The boy seems even more troubled by this though. “Is there a way to protect myself so nothing like
this happens again?”

“Wisteria!” her crow says, then flies off.

“Wait—oh, he’ll be back later,” she sighs. “Demons hate wisteria flowers, we’ll have to get you
some to ward them off.”

“Oh, okay then,” Kiyoshi says.

“I need to get going now. Zenitsu, will you continue to protect them?” she asks.

“I’m not leaving Kiyoshi’s side, this place is terrifying!” Zenitsu says.

“Alright, I’ll come find you when I’ve defeated the demon,” she says. “Hit that drum as soon as I
leave.”

Zenitsu stops her before she can walk out the door. “Hey, Nezuko? What happened to the demon
you were carrying in that box?”

Tanjiro jumps out of the way as Inosuke swings at him again. He runs, following Nezuko’s faint
scent through the mansion.

“Quit running away and fight me already!” Inosuke shouts from close behind him.

Tanjiro keeps running. His only goal right now is to find his little sister. However, the scent of
demons nearby draws him to a halt. He sees the three demons fighting over a human carcass that
smells like it's been rotting for a long time.

Inosuke laughs behind him. “You going to go fight them for a piece of that corpse?”

Tanjiro dodges another swing from the jagged swords. The other demons have noticed them now
and are advancing, their eyes on Inosuke.

“Fresh meat,” one of them says.

“It’s mine, I saw it first!” another one shouts.

Tanjiro won’t let them claim another human life. He lunges towards the first one and headbutts
him so hard, he smashes into the wall on the opposite side of the room. The others advance on him
as well, but Tanjiro summons his newfound strength and beats them both into the ground.

“Not bad for a demon,” Inosuke says. “But I can do better!”

He goes through each of them, cutting off their heads. He looks back at Tanjiro and huffs loudly
through his mask. “You’re next.”

Tanjiro walks past him to kneel next to the human corpse. It’s so mangled it’s impossible to tell
who this might’ve been. It makes him sad, but he isn’t completely sure why.

“What the hell, are you ignoring me?!” Inosuke shouts. “What's wrong with you?! Shouldn’t you
be trying to eat it?”

Tanjiro shakes his head. He has more important things to do right now. Nezuko could be in trouble.
He starts running through the halls again.

“Hey, wait up you weird-ass demon!”

Nezuko stares at Zenitsu in shock. “You...you knew?”

Zenitsu nods. “Demons have a distinct sounding heartbeat. I knew from the moment we met.”
“Then...shouldn’t you have tried to kill him?”

“I guess I figured you had a good explanation,” he says. “Besides, that demon’s heartbeat...I don’t
know how to describe it, but it sounded gentle in a way?”

“He’s my brother,” she says. “He’s different from other demons. He doesn’t eat humans or
anything like that. I’m going to turn him back into a human.”

“Isn’t that impossible?” Zenitsu asks.

“Maybe so, but I’ll spend the rest of my life looking for a cure if I have to,” she says. “I need to
find him and kill that tsuzumi demon.”

“R-right, good luck, Nezuko,” he says.

She smiles at him and leaves the room. It’s still amazing to think that he’d known the entire time,
but he’d given her the benefit of the doubt. It was all thanks to Tanjiro—with his kind nature, he’d
convinced the other demon slayer he wasn’t a threat without even having to meet him properly.
Her big brother is special like that.

Her plan was to find Tanjiro first, but fate had other ideas. She stumbles upon the tsuzumi demon,
who growls at her.

“Why won’t you pests just die?” he says, then hits the tsuzumi on his left shoulder.

The room starts to spin. Nezuko braces herself and winces at the strain on her ribs. When she
lands, she leans too hard on her bad arm in order to push herself out of the way of a claw attack.
She’s been able to ignore her injuries for the most part up until this point thanks to Tamayo’s
medicine, but with each movement, her body screams at her.

Endure it, Nezuko!

The demon doesn’t let up, striking the tsuzumi in rapid succession. Nezuko pushes herself through
the haze of pain as she starts getting used to his attack pattern. Left, left, right, claw attack—she
jumps and dodges, adapting as best she can. No matter how much the room spins, the demon
doesn’t move from his spot in the doorway.

The best water breathing form for fighting without proper footholds is the ninth form. She has to
brush her own feelings aside—all her fears, doubt, and pain—she can’t let any of it distract her at
this moment. She has to get in close to cut off his head.

The spinning of the room is making her nauseous, and every claw attack seems to get closer and
closer to hitting her despite the fact she can sense it coming. The attacks rip through the walls,
sending debris flying everywhere. If that attack managed to hit her, it would cut her to pieces. Fear
seizes her heart when one of the attacks gets too close for comfort.

She focuses her breath—even if the surface of the water ripples, the depths of the water remain
calm underneath. She needs to be calm to think clearly and to breathe properly.

The demon’s attacks only get faster. The claw attacks grow from three claws to five. The pain in
her body is excruciating, but Nezuko can’t give up. She speeds up her breathing, taking quick
shallow breaths instead of deep ones. A cabinet is torn open by the claws and papers full of writing
scatter around the room. For just a moment, the rotations stop.

Nezuko twists her body to avoid stepping on any of the writing. The demon pauses, if only for a
split second. Nezuko seizes the opportunity.

Ninth form, splashing water flow, turbulent!

The demon tries to spin the room again, but she moves fast enough with the breathing form to not
lose any balance. She senses the opening and swings her sword. The demon’s head rolls to the
ground.

“Girl—tell me why you didn’t step on my manuscript,” he says.

Nezuko catches her breath as she stands over him. She doesn’t believe anyone’s hard work should
be trampled on, but she also hadn’t realized that it was the demon’s work. Would that have
changed anything? She just shrugs helplessly and collects a blood sample for Tamayo.

“No one ever recognized my work while I was human. I thought being a demon would change that,
but in the end…” he trails off, his body starting to disintegrate.

“I’m sorry to hear that no one supported you,” she says. “But I don’t believe anything can excuse
you for what you’ve done.”

He says nothing more as his presence leaves the world. His solid red eyes roll for just a moment
and Nezuko catches a glimpse of a number etched into his eye that’s been crossed out. Had this
demon really been a part of the Twelve Kizuki? One of the lower ranks, but even still…his power
hadn’t been anything to scoff at.

“Maybe you can do some good in the afterlife,” she says, holding up the blood sample.

The knife was Yushiro’s design, it collected blood immediately after hitting it’s target. Nezuko
senses something nearby—an animal? There’s a meow, and a little calico wearing the symbol
Yushiro used for his spells appeared. The cat has a small pouch attached to it.

“Ah, I guess I’m giving this to you then,” Nezuko says, petting the cat then securing the sample
into the pouch. “There we go, all done! Give Tamayo and Yushiro my regards.”

The cat meows again and disappears. Yushiro’s spells were incredibly impressive! Without all of
the demonic energy clouding the mansion, she can sense Tanjiro and an aura that must belong to
Inosuke nearby. She runs into the hall, greeting her big brother as he checks on her.

“I’m okay, I’m not anymore injured then I already was,” she says.

This was the wrong thing to say, as Tanjiro gives her a deadpan look that says— you’re not making
me feel any better by saying that.

“Hey, you!” Inosuke shouts, pointing one of his swords at Nezuko. “I want to see which one of us
is better!”

“It can wait,” she says, ushering Tanjiro into the box for when they go outside. And also maybe
because she’s worried Inosuke might try to attack him again.

“Don’t ignore me!” he says. “I am the great Hashibira Inosuke!”

“And I’m Kamado Nezuko, I’m glad we got introductions out of the way.”

“I’ve declared you as my rival, Yamada Tenicho, and I demand you fight me!”

“Maybe I would if you could get my name right,” she says. Pulling the box onto her shoulders with
one hand proves itself to be a challenge, but she manages and starts following Zenitsu’s trail of
fear.

“You should be honored to be accepted as my rival, Zalando Meniko!”

“Somehow, I’m not,” she says, not pausing in her walk even as he tries to impede her. “So far the
only impressive thing you’ve done is butcher my name so badly it’s almost unrecognizable.”

“So you admit that I’m impressive!”

“Nothing I say is going to make you go away, huh?”

“I won’t leave until I know I’m better than you,” he says.

A mischievous idea pops into her mind. “Alright, how about we race outside—”

He takes off running before she even finishes her sentence.

“How am I both surprised that idea worked and not surprised at the same time?” she asks herself.

When she finds Zenitsu and the kids, she has to duck to avoid getting hit with a pot. The movement
doesn’t do her aching bones any favors.

“It’s just me!” she shouts.

“Ms. Nezuko, you’re back!” Teruko says, running up to her and hugging her.

“Oh thank the gods you’re back, Nezuko!” Zenitsu says, clinging to her harder than the small
child. “The drum stopped working and we got attacked, thankfully Shoichi saved us!”

“You passed out then killed the demon, I didn’t do anything!” Shoichi says.

“There’s no need to be humble, you saved us all!” Zenitsu says, going over to hug the boy.

“Let’s get you kids home already,” Nezuko says, trying hard not to laugh.

The kids get teary-eyed when she says that and they follow her out of the mansion. Before walking
out the front door, Nezuko looks at Zenitsu.

“By the way, there’s an angry demon slayer in a boar’s mask that might try to fight me when we go
outside.”

“What?!” Zenitsu shrieks. “That creepy guy with the boar’s mask is a demon slayer?! Why would
he want to fight you?!”

“Oh, you met him?”

“Briefly, he ran past us while laughing like a maniac,” he says. “And you didn’t answer my
question!”

“I don’t know, he thinks I’m his rival or something and he wants to prove he’s better than me.”

“That guy is completely despicable,” Zenitsu says, a dark expression on his face as he finally lets
go of her.

“It’s not that big of a deal, I’m pretty sure I could beat him.”
 “That’s not the point,” Zenitsu says. “I won’t let him get away with this.”

“What are you—?”

He’s gone faster than she can process. Nezuko heaves a sigh, running her good hand down her face
in exasperation.

“Come on kids,” she says. “We’re almost out of here.”

Chapter End Notes

I hope you guys are enjoying this fic as much as I enjoy writing it! I'll try to have the
next chapter up relatively soon. Also this might be the first time I've posted a chapter
during the daytime lol it's usually like one or two in the morning for me
 The Wisteria House
Chapter Summary

They finally get a break.

Chapter Notes

Edited as of 6/28/2021
Fixed some grammar/spelling mistakes and added some new dialogue.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Nezuko wastes no time ushering the kids outside after Zenitsu runs off. She has no idea what
possessed him to run off and fight the other demon slayer, but she can’t let him do it alone. The
fight seems to have been decided by the time they make it outside. Zenitsu’s beaten, barely
conscious form is the first thing she sees.

“Zenitsu!” she shouts.

He glances over at her and gives her a weak grin. “Sorry, Nezuko. I just wanted to protect you.”

“Idiot,” she says, voice trembling. “Don’t run into battles without any help—you’ll get yourself
killed!”

Inosuke laughs, stepping on Zenitsu as he walks towards her. “Finally, you’re here. Now we can
see who’s better!”

Nezuko clenches her fists, anger boiling in her blood. “What sort of person would trample on
another human being? You make me sick.”

“Ms. Nezuko, I’m scared,” Teruko says, grabbing onto her haori.

“Don’t worry,” she says, smiling at the little girl. “I’ll take care of everything. I need you three to
help Zenitsu, can you do that for me?”

The three of them nod and run off to help her new friend. She sets Tanjiro’s box down gently.
Inosuke doesn’t even spare the kids a glance when they run past him at the safest distance they can
manage. His only goal seems to be fighting her and proving he’s better. She would hate to just give
him the fight he wants, but she knows that it is inevitable.

The problem is that she can’t go all out the way she would against a demon. And in hand to hand
combat, she’s going to be at a physical disadvantage. She can hit hard, but not consistently. She
relies heavily on speed and agility to get her through fights. Something tells her though that just
being faster isn’t going to work this time. She needs to be smarter too.

Think, Nezuko!
Her eyes land on a nearby tree. A plan forms in her mind. Inosuke is strong, but he’s also reckless.
Maybe she could use that against him?

He charges at her.

Inosuke fights low to the ground. His movements are erratic like a wild animal, but they’re driven
by a single-minded focus. Nezuko dodges his attacks as best she can. He’s only a little slower than
her, but he makes up for it through flexibility that lets him strike from odd angles she can’t predict.
He lands a kick to her chest that causes her to lose her footing for half a second from the pain. He
takes advantage of her misstep and lands a few more blows.

“See how great I am?! I’m so amazing!” he laughs.

“If you’re so great, then why do you need to prove yourself so bad?!” she spits.

He makes an angry noise and starts putting even more power behind his attacks. Nezuko needs to
end this fight. She starts navigating the fight towards the trees, and when Inosuke goes to ram into
her—she leaps out of the way and lets him ram himself directly into the tree, shaking it from the
force.

He stumbles backwards and the boar mask slips and falls to the ground. If Nezuko hadn’t watched
the mask fall, she never would’ve believed that the boy that looks at her with the most beautiful
green eyes she’s ever seen is the same one she was fighting just a second ago. She still can’t
believe it, even though she can clearly see the blood running down his face from the wound he just
gave himself.

“Why’re you looking at me like that?” Inosuke growls, snapping her out of her reverie.

Nezuko’s face flushes. “I didn’t expect you to look like that.”

“Huh?! What were you expecting me to look like?!”

“I don’t know, but I wasn’t expecting you to be pretty!”

Inosuke looks like he’s going to say something else, but he pauses. His eyes roll back into his head
and he falls to the ground—completely knocked out.

“Eh? What’s wrong with him? Why’d he pass out like that?!” Zenitsu says, sitting upright next to
the kids.

“He probably has a concussion, he hit that tree much harder than I expected him to,” Nezuko says,
managing to only feel a little guilty. “I hope he didn’t crack his skull.”

“I didn’t hear anything crack, so I doubt it,” Zenitsu says, struggling to get to his feet. Nezuko
grabs his arm and helps pull him up even though it sends a sharp pain down her arm and through
her body. Once he’s upright, she smacks his head lightly with her good hand.

“Please don’t go running off alone to fight people on my behalf again,” she says. “I don’t want you
to get hurt because of me.”

Zenitsu looks like he’s close to tears, and he sniffs loudly. “You’re so nice, Nezuko! I’m sorry, I
won’t do it again—it just made me so mad that a guy would want to attack a lady like that!”

Nezuko smiles, but it falls when she turns her head away and sees the dead man from earlier.
“We need to bury the people that were killed here,” she says. “They deserve proper burials.”

“We’ll help,” Kiyoshi says, determined.

“Are you sure? You kids should be getting home,” Nezuko says.

“We want to help,” Shoichi says, his expression mirroring his brother’s. Teruko nods as well. It
warms Nezuko’s heart, and if she’s reminded of her little siblings and her eyes get misty—that’ll
just have to be her own little secret.

Obviously she won’t let them touch the dead bodies, but she could use their help in digging and
finding rocks to surround the graves with. She takes a moment to look at Inosuke’s prone form on
the ground. She removes her haori, folding it so that she can slide it under his head like a makeshift
pillow. She brushes his hair out of his face and does her best to wipe off the blood from his wound,
bandaging it.

“Aw, Nezuko! You’re so sweet, taking care of a brute like him. Maybe you can take care of me
too!” Zenitsu says dreamily.

“Can I borrow your haori?” she asks him instead of dignifying that statement with a response. “I
want to cover him up while he’s passed out, it doesn’t feel right to leave him exposed.”

“You can have whatever you want from me, Nezuko,” he says, handing her the haori.

“Please stop saying weird things,” she says, then uses his yellow haori to cover Inosuke like a
blanket.

They spend the next hour or so digging and moving bodies out of the mansion. It’s slow, hard
work. She and Zenitsu struggle to carry the bodies into the graves due to their injuries. Nezuko’s
pushing through it, but her arm is starting to give her serious issues from all of the heavy lifting.
The kids are helping as much as they can, and Nezuko is proud of them for wanting to do so much
after such a traumatic day.

They’re finishing the third grave when Inosuke wakes up yelling. Zenitsu practically jumps a foot
in the air.

“He’s awake!” he shouts, screaming when Inosuke starts to chase him.

“Fight me! Fight me!” Inosuke yells at him.

“Is this really how he wakes up?!” Zenitsu cries and ducks to hide behind Teruko, who just shoots
him a tired look that doesn’t suit her young face.

“What are you doing?” Inosuke asks as though he actually has no idea what they’re doing. Maybe
he doesn’t. She can sense genuine confusion from him.

Nezuko sets down the heavy rock in her hands. “We’re burying the bodies of the dead.”

“Huh?”

“You could help us,” she suggests. “There are still a lot of bodies inside the mansion.”

“What’s the point in that?! Just fight me!” he says loudly.

“You—” Nezuko blinks and shakes her head. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
“Stop talking and fight me!” Inosuke snarls, frustrated.

“No thank you. We need to bury these people so that their souls can rest peacefully,” she explains.
“It’s very important.”

“It doesn’t make any sense!” Inosuke shouts. “They just return to the earth anyways! It’s stupid!”

“Well it’s fine if you don’t want to help us. You shouldn’t be doing any heavy lifting with all of
those injuries. We’ll take care of everything, you just sit down and rest,” she says.

“What, you think I’m weaker than you?!”

“When did I say that? Did I say that?” Nezuko asks Zenitsu who just shrugs. “I don’t think I said
that. You shouldn’t strain yourself though, I wouldn’t want your head injury to get any worse.”

“Shut up! I can do everything you can do and more! Just watch, I’ll bury hundreds—thousands of
bodies!” he shouts, running into the mansion.

“Did you say all that stuff because you knew he would react like that?” Zenitsu asks her.

“What? No, I had no idea,” Nezuko says. “He’s kind of weird, huh? Wanting to do all that work
even though he’s injured...”

Zenitsu gives her a weird look.

“What’s that look for?” she asks.

“You’re being serious,” Zenitsu says as though he can’t believe it.

“Yes? Of course I’m serious.”

“You think it’s weird that he wants to do physical labor even though he’s injured?” Zenitsu asks
slowly.

Nezuko tilts her head, thoroughly confused. “Why are you saying it like that? Is that not weird?”

“You know what? Nevermind,” Zenitsu says, shaking his head and going back to digging.

The sun is setting in the sky when they finally finish all eight graves. With the exception of
Inosuke, they each pray over the graves. Inosuke has donned the boar mask again and is hitting his
head against a tree. Nezuko has decided to let him keep doing it. He can be stupid if he wants to,
she’ll just have to pretend not to care.

Overhead, she hears her crow. “Descend the mountain! Descend, descend!”

Nezuko rises and starts pulling Tanjiro’s box onto her shoulders, when she starts to struggle due to
her arm, Zenitsu helps her. She sends him a grateful smile and thanks him, to which he responds by
nearly bursting into tears. He doesn’t seem to actually be upset or anything, so she just accepts that
as part of his weirdness and moves on.

As they start to walk away, Inosuke calls out to them. “Where are you going?! We haven’t finished
our fight!”

“We’re descending the mountain,” Nezuko answers. “And I’m not going to fight you. Aren’t you
tired?”
“I’m not tired!” he says defensively.

“You could come with us if you want,” Nezuko says. “Come on, these kids need to get home
before dark.”

He tries to provoke her into fighting the entire way down, but Nezuko decides it would be better
for her to not engage in it. When they reach the base of the mountain, her crow flies down in front
of Kiyoshi.

“Open your hands!” the crow demands. When Kiyoshi does so, the crow hacks out a little purple
pouch into his hands.

“That’s disgusting,” Zenitsu says with a horrified expression. Kiyoshi looks just as grossed out.

The crow ignores them, “You with marechi, carry this with you!”

“Oh I see, it must be wisteria. Remember how we talked about it? It’ll ward off demons,” Nezuko
says as her crow lands on her shoulder.

“Demon repellent!” The crow caws loudly near her ear. Rude bird.

Kiyoshi nods and pockets the pouch, wiping his hands off his kimono. He and his siblings say their
goodbyes soon after—Teruko gives her a teary hug despite the fact that Nezuko is covered in dried
blood, dirt, and sweat. She can’t help but tear up. She’s so reminded of her sister Hanako it hurts.

“Stay safe!” she tells them, trying to wipe her eyes discreetly with her sleeve. She’s not sure if
she’s very successful, but no one mentions it.

“You too, Ms. Nezuko! Mr. Zenitsu!” Shoichi says.

As sad as it is to see them go, Nezuko is glad that they are all returning home to their family alive.
Zenitsu spends a few minutes begging Kiyoshi and Shoichi not to leave, but Nezuko drags him
away so that they can leave.

Inosuke rams his head into a tree again.

“Are you trying to give yourself brain damage?” she finally snaps at him.

“I’m trying to build up my tolerance!” he snaps back.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, you can’t build a tolerance for concussions!”

“How would you know, huh?!”

“I—” she pauses. “I don’t know, but it sure doesn’t sound right!”

“Hah! See, you don’t know—which means it could work and you just don’t know it!”

“I guess that could be true,” she concedes. “But I just hate seeing people hurt themselves and I’m
worried about you! So if you could please just stop, that would make me feel better.”

He stares at her for a moment. Or at least, she thinks he does. It’s hard to tell where he’s looking
with that boar’s mask on his head.

“Who cares if he wants to hurt himself? That’s what he gets for beating me up,” Zenitsu says
petulantly.
Nezuko summons her sweetest smile and puts her good hand on his shoulder. “Zenitsu, I’m sorry
you’re in pain, but you definitely brought it upon yourself by running into that fight alone.”

“Guys that beat women are the scum of the earth,” Zenitsu says seriously. “I just wanted to protect
you.”

“That’s very sweet, Zenitsu,” she says. “I understand where you’re coming from, but running into
fights on your own could get you or others killed. Besides, I don’t think that he wanted to fight me
because I’m a girl. I think he just likes to fight.”

“I’ll trample anyone that stands in my way!” Inosuke declares.

“I think I see what you mean,” Zenitsu says to her. “I promise I’ll be more careful in the future.”

“That’s all I can ask,” Nezuko says, patting his shoulder.

“Follow me! Follow me!” Her crow shouts, swooping down in order to yell as close to her ear as
possible.

“Such a mean bird,” she whines, rubbing her ear.

He caws like he’s laughing then takes off into the sky. They follow at a subdued pace. Zenitsu is
dragging his feet as he walks, visibly exhausted. Nezuko feels the same, but she is doing her best to
hide it. Inosuke seems perfectly fine in spite of the blossoming bruises along his chest.

“I swear I’m going to find your weak point and take you down, Yamada Tenicho,” Inosuke says.

“My name is Kamado Nezuko—I promise it’s not that hard to get it right,” she replies.

“Kamaboko Nenriko!”

“You’re getting closer, at least,” she sighs.

“Henricho Yoshiko, I will take you down!”

“You know exactly what my name is, you’re just making fun of me, aren’t you?”

Inosuke just cackles. It’s all the answer she needs.

“Call me whatever you like, Hakudo Izumi—it doesn’t bother me at all,” she says.

“Huh?! Who the hell are you talking to?!”

“That’s your name isn’t it?” she asks innocently. Zenitsu snickers next to her.

“My name is Hashibira Inosuke, and don’t you forget it!”

“Ah, so it’s Kuwahara Michiko!”

Inosuke lets out a frustrated growl. “Just say it right!”

“Not so fun when you’re the one getting your name butchered, is it?” she asks sweetly.

He huffs and Nezuko swears she sees the nose of the boar’s mask flare. She must be more tired
than she thought. Inosuke just grumbles to himself but stays relatively quiet as they walk. Her crow
eventually leads them to an estate with the Wisteria Family Crest painted on the gate.
“Rest! Rest!” The crow caws at them, flying down to land on Nezuko’s good arm. “You all
sustained injuries, so now your orders are to rest!”

Nezuko nearly faints from relief. If those are her orders, then she has to follow them right?

“Let’s eat this thing,” Inosuke says, tugging on the crows' tail feathers, making the crow squawk
indignantly and fly up to perch on Nezuko’s head as if that made him safer.

The gate suddenly creaks open and a little old woman in a dark red kimono peeks her head out
through the gap.

“Yes?” she says questioningly.

“Hello!” Nezuko says. “Sorry for bothering you so late at night—”

“It’s a ghost!” Zenitsu cries, hiding behind her and clutching her haori.

She turns around to scold him. “Don’t be rude!”

“Who the hell is this?” Inosuke asks.

“Ah, you must be demon slayers,” she says, bowing politely.

Inosuke pokes her hair. “She seems weak.”

“Don’t do that!” Nezuko snaps at him.

“Please, come in,” the old woman says. “I’ll show you where you will be staying.”

They follow her into the estate. It’s truly a beautiful place. Nezuko can only see what’s illuminated
by the moonlight and scattered lanterns closer to the house, but she can tell it’s pretty and well
kept. Inosuke seems enamoured with the place, his head swiveling to try and look at everything.
Zenitsu hasn’t let go of her haori.

“She walks so fast for an old woman,” Zenitsu hisses.

It’s not an inherently insulting statement, so Nezuko lets it slide. The woman seems entirely
unbothered by their behavior. She likely meets all sorts of unruly people from hosting demon
slayers in her home.

The woman leads the boys to a room and stops Nezuko before she can follow them inside.

“I’ll give you your own room to stay in,” the woman says. Nezuko feels her face flush with
embarrassment. She hadn’t even thought about how weird it would be to share a room with two
boys she barely knew. But for some reason, she’d grown attached to them without even realizing it.

“I don’t get it, why does she have to sleep somewhere else?!” Inosuke asks loudly.

“It’s inappropriate for a girl to share a room with two boys she’s not related or married to!” Zenitsu
shouts back. “I’m sure she’ll be much more comfortable in her own room anyways!”

“What does inappropriate mean?!”

“Are you stupid?” Zenitsu shoots back. “It just means it wouldn’t be right!”

“If it’s okay, I think I’d rather stay with them,” Nezuko tells the old woman. “Someone has to keep
the peace, afterall. Maybe I could just use the other room to change?”

“Of course, I will set up your futon here then,” she says.

“Thank you, Ms…?”

“Hisa,” the old woman supplies with a kind smile.

“Thank you, Ms. Hisa,” she says with a bow, her ribs protesting the movement.

With that taken care of, Nezuko sets Tanjiro’s box down gently in the corner of the room, away
from where the sun might shine through the sliding door.

“Nezuko,” Zneitsu says dreamily. “You really want to stay here with me?”

“Sure, I don’t like the quiet,” she says. “Besides, I think I can trust you guys not to do anything
like... that.”

“What are you talking about?” Inosuke asks, clearly confused.

She and Zenitsu share a look. Well, she’s not going to be the one to explain that kind of stuff. And
from the looks of it, neither is Zenitsu.

“I just mean that I trust you not to hurt me in my sleep,” she rephrases.

This is enough to satisfy Inosuke, who nods. “It wouldn’t be a real fight if you were asleep.”

“I’ve brought a change of clothes,” Hisa says, practically materializing in the doorway.

Nezuko barely even sensed her presence, so it’s enough to make her flinch, but Zenitsu outright
screams.

“Ghost! I’m telling you, she’s a ghost!” he wails.

“Stop being rude to her,” Nezuko scolds him.

Hisa leads Nezuko to a separate room to get changed, and she makes quick work of it. Hisa
promises to wash all of their clothing, and Nezuko is glad for it. She offers to help, and for the first
time, the old woman gives her a stern look.

“You are to rest, I will take care of this for you,” she says, then returns to her pleasant demeanor as
she serves them dinner. Nezuko finally feels like she can relax.

The spread of food is mouth-watering. Crispy tempura, vegetables, and rice cooked to perfection.
They start eating almost immediately. It’s been a week since Nezuko’s eaten anything this good.
The thought makes her pause. Has it really only been a week?

Her first mission feels like it was a lifetime ago. Since then she’s confronted the Demon King,
broken multiple bones, killed two demons and befriended two more. And now she’s resting
alongside two other demon slayers—one of whom had attempted to kill her brother.

Inosuke tears through the tempura, shoving everything he can into his mouth. He grabs some off of
Nezuko’s plate while she’s distracted by her thoughts. He grins like a toddler that thinks they did
something really bad and is waiting for a reaction.

“Are you that hungry?” she asks, holding out her food to him. “You can have the rest.”
This was not the reaction he wanted. He snarls and refuses to take anything else from her. Nezuko
can’t help but laugh.

A doctor stops by to check on their injuries. He hums quietly to himself while he checks over them
then nods. “Yes, very severe,” he says. “You’ll need to heal for at least a few weeks.”

“A few weeks?” Nezuko asks, surprised. “Surely we can’t intrude for that long.”

“It’s no trouble at all. I’ll set up your futons now,” the old woman says serenely.

The doctor leaves and the futons are laid out for them. Inosuke dives into one immediately.

“This one’s mine!” he declares, smirking as though he expects someone to challenge him.

“Alright, then,” Nezuko says, then turns to Zenitsu. “Where do you want to sleep?”

Zenitsu grins happily. “You can pick first, Nezuko, I don’t mind!”

“Argh! Don’t ignore me!” Inosuke shouts, throwing his pillow at Nezuko’s face.

Nezuko catches the pillow before it can hit her, handing it back to Inosuke with a smile on her
face. “I think you lost this.”

He snatches it back with a frustrated noise. Zenitsu looks like he’s going to say something, but then
there are scratching noises from Tanjiro’s box and he freezes.

“Nezuko, I think your demon is awake,” Zenitsu stage-whispers to her, his body trembling as he
hides behind her.

“Ah, it’s okay, my brother won’t hurt any of us,” she reassures him, but as Tanjiro’s box creaks
open, Zenitsu just seems to get more scared.

“It’s not even locked?!” he shouts and tries to hide himself in the closet.

Tanjiro crawls out of the box and rises back to his full height.

“I’m so glad to see you awake, Tanjiro!” she says happily. Tanjiro smiles around the muzzle then
tilts his head curiously at Zenitsu who has frozen in place with one foot in the closet. “Oh yeah,
you haven't met yet. This is Zenitsu, he really helped me out back at the mansion. And…” she
trails off gesturing towards Inosuke, “well, you already know Inosuke.”

“Ha! You do know my name!” Inosuke cheers from his place on the futon.

Nezuko ignores him and starts explaining the situation. “It seems like we’ll be staying here for a
little while while we all heal. Apparently our injuries are really severe.”

Tanjiro blinks then walks over to her bag, digging through it. He triumphantly pulls out the little
black box Tamayo had given her with the extra doses of medicine.

“I’d forgotten all about that! You’re so smart, Tanjiro!” she exclaims, ruffling her brother's hair
and taking the box.

“What is it?” Zenitsu asks. He’s still keeping a wary distance, but he’s not trying to hide anymore.

“We met a doctor recently and she gave me this medication to help my injuries heal a little faster,”
she says, opening the box. “There’s exactly three in here! One for each of us—how lucky!”
“That is pretty convenient,” Zenitsu says, leaning over to look inside the box. “Needles?! Oh no, I
hate needles!”

“Hush, it’s good for you,” she says, then gives him the dosage quickly to get it out of the way.

Inosuke eyes her suspiciously when she sits down next to him. “What is that?”

“It’s just the medicine,” she says. “It’ll sting a little bit, but I think you're strong enough to handle
it.”

Those seem to be the magic words. He huffs and holds out his arm. Nezuko makes quick work of
giving him the shot—and if he happens to wince when the needle goes in, she chooses not to
mention it. She gives herself the final dose, even though the angle makes her arm hurt.

“Ta-da, all done!” she sings, her voice a little strained even to her own ears.

They end up going to bed soon after. They’re all so exhausted it doesn’t take long for them to fall
asleep.

Nezuko wakes up slowly the next morning, Inosuke and Zenitsu snoring next to her. She tries to sit
up, but her body aches so bad she just flops back down and stares up at the ceiling. The sun is
peeking through the sliding door and lighting up the room. Tanjiro seems to be back in his box,
and Nezuko reassures herself that he’s safe.

She manages to summon enough energy to push herself up with her good arm. Groggily, she
stumbles out into the hallway, shutting the door softly behind her. She nearly trips right into Hisa
who smiles at her pleasantly.

“Good afternoon, young Nezuko,” she says. “I trust you slept well?”

“I guess I did if it’s already afternoon,” Nezuko laughs, keeping her volume low.

“That’s good, can I get you anything?”

“Uh...I think I’d really like to take a bath?” she says, feeling awkward all of the sudden.

Hisa thankfully takes it in stride and immediately shows her to the bath. It has to be one of the
nicest ones Nezuko has ever seen. Hisa shows her where all of the soaps and towels are then
leaves, telling her to call if she needs anything.

Nezuko quickly washes off all of the dirt and grime from the past few days, trying very hard not to
think about the dried blood that she scrubs off. She catches a glimpse of herself in a mirror. Her
body is covered in bruises that are heavily concentrated on her hurt arm and rib cage. Dark purple
with varying shades of red and blue litter her body almost everywhere. Many of the lighter ones
were already healing, turning yellow and green. She supposes it’s a good sign that they’re healing.
It doesn’t make her feel any better though.

She winces as she lowers herself into the warm bath to soak. A few scrapes and blisters she hadn’t
noticed decide to make themselves known. When the pain finally passes, she sighs and closes her
eyes. Her mind decides to start supplying images of the last few days. Muzan’s glare, Susamaru’s
body convulsing before the curse tore her apart, the scattered remains of dead people and children.

A seemingly endless supply of worries and anxieties nag at her in the quiet of the room. In the
quiet, there’s no one to ground her. She loses herself in the dark abyss of her thoughts. She stares
blankly at the wall, a million thoughts running through her head. The humidity of the room is
suddenly suffocating. She can’t relax. There’s too much to do, too much at stake. How can she just
be sitting here doing nothing?

She’s not sure how long she sits there for, but she’s thankful when the yelling starts. It pulls her
from the dark cloud of thoughts. She leaves the bath and dries off as quickly as she can and pulls
on the clothes she’d been wearing before.

Inosuke is chasing Zenitsu when she arrives, his boar mask over his head again. The sight drags a
small bubble of laughter out of her, drawing both of their attention.

“This isn’t funny, he’s harassing me!” Zenitsu whines.

Nezuko just laughs harder, tears forming in her eyes. Inosuke gives a battle cry and starts chasing
her instead. It’s nothing like their fight from before. This is charged with a playful energy, and she
wonders if this is Inosuke’s way of accepting them. She smiles wide as she evades him, giggling as
Zenitsu starts chasing Inosuke to get him to stop chasing after her.

It’s the most she’s laughed in a long time.

When Hisa enters the room with lunch, Inosuke wastes no time in lifting up his mask to shovel
food into his mouth.

“Ugh, who raised you? That’s so gross,” Zenitsu says.

“Boars,” Inosuke says around his food.

“What do you mean boars?” Zenitsu asks.

“That’s who raised me,” Inosuke says, then promptly dumps half a bowl of rice into his mouth.

This raises a lot of questions in Nezuko’s mind. However, the first thing that actually tumbles out
of her mouth is— “I’m sorry.”

“...Why?” Inosuke asks.

“I don’t know, it’s just...that sounds like a really lonely way to grow up,” she says.

“Ha! I was never lonely, I had constant competition! Then one day this demon slayer came up my
mountain and I challenged him to see who was stronger. I won and took his sword,” he says
proudly.

Zenitsu shakes his head. “Poor guy, hope he’s okay.”

“Then I learned about demons and this thing called Final Selection, and I just knew I had to
become a demon slayer!” Inosuke barrels on, unimpeded by Zenitsu’s interruption.

“Did you find a master to teach you how to fight demons?” she asks, invested now in the story.

“I taught myself! I’ve never needed a master, I created the beast breathing style all on my own,” he
says.

“That’s really impressive, Inosuke,” she says. “I’d be really interested to see what your beast
breathing looks like after we heal.”

Inosuke seems to glow from the praise. “I can show you right now!”
She proceeds to spend the rest of the afternoon trying and failing to convince Inosuke that he
actually needs to wait until he heals to do anything strenuous. He responds to her by bending his
body into impossible shapes and cackling wildly. Zenitsu watches from the porch, seeming content
not to get involved. Finally, Inosuke begrudgingly agrees to rest after she threatens to never spar
with him if he doesn’t.

After dinner, the sun sets in the sky and Tanjiro leaves the box. Zenitsu, to his credit, only freaks
out a little bit this time. Inosuke on the other hand ignores his presence completely, pretending to
already be asleep. Tanjiro settles down next to her on her futon. Instinctively, she starts brushing
his hair while humming an old lullaby their mother used to sing to them. A few minutes pass
peacefully, occasionally interrupted by Inosuke’s obnoxious pretend snores.

“Nezuko,” Zenitsu starts hesitantly, “how did Tanjiro become a demon?”

Inosuke stops pretending to snore, and silence fills the room. Nezuko holds back a sigh. She
expected that this question would come up, so she’d prepared herself to answer.

“It happened a little over two years ago,” she recites, distracting herself by braiding and unbraiding
Tanjiro’s hair. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to mind. “I’d left to sell charcoal, but when I came back
my brothers, my sister, my mother—all of them had been killed. Tanjiro was the only one still
alive, but that’s because he was a demon. We were found by the Water Pillar, Tomioka Giyuu. He
sent us to Master Urokodaki who trained me to become a demon slayer.”

“Was Tanjiro the one who gave you that scar?” Zenitsu asks, gesturing to his face.

Nezuko stares at him blankly for a moment until it finally registers what he’s asking. “Oh, no, that
was the first demon we fought together on the way to meet Master Urokodaki.”

“So he just...doesn’t eat humans? I thought demons had to do that to survive,” Zenitsu says.

“Tanjiro slept during the two years I was training,” she says. “I like to think we were training
together—he was training his body to handle not eating humans, while I was training my body to
kill demons.”

“Do you really think you can turn him human again?” Zenitsu asks.

“I’ll spend the rest of my life looking for a cure if I have to,” she admits, not meeting Tanjiro’s
eyes when he turns to give her a sad look. She puts on her most comforting smile. “Besides, I think
we’re already getting close to finding one. I just need to get more blood samples from powerful
demons.”

The night passes without much incident. Nezuko has a weird dream about fire, but that’s about it.
The doctor returns in the morning and gives them a stern reminder to be resting. So Nezuko takes
the time to read from the book Tamayo gave her.

Every living thing emits a presence in the world. However, only animals and humans can produce
an aura. Auras can tell what a person is feeling and what their intentions are. There are three
types of intentions, positive, negative, and neutral. Aura readers can sense these and differentiate
between them. Experienced aura readers will not only be able to feel an aura, but see it manifested
as well—

Nezuko has to stop reading when Inosuke starts hovering over her shoulder.

“If you want to read it, you can borrow it when I’m done,” she says.
Inosuke scoffs. “Why would I want your stupid book—I can’t even read!”

“Then why are you hovering over me?”

“I’m bored,” he says as if this explains everything.

“We’re all bored, idiot,” Zenitsu says from where he’s laying on his futon. “At least let Nezuko
read her book in peace.”

“I could read it out loud,” she suggests. “I mean, it’s just about aura reading so I’m not sure how
interesting it will be, but it could help with the boredom.”

Inosuke grumbles a bit but settles down onto his futon again. Zenitsu cheers and props himself up
so that he can watch her with a dreamy expression. Nezuko makes a face and flicks his forehead.

“Quit being weird,” she tells him.

Once she starts reading to them, she settles into a comfortable rhythm. The book starts out
instructional—just explaining what aura reading is and what it entails. As she reads further it
transitions into diary entries from over a hundred years ago of different aura-readers sharing their
advice to those seeking to learn. Their suggestions all seem to boil down to the same four things:
meditation, focus, patience, and practice.

They pause to eat, but end up right back where they were. Even Inosuke seems intrigued. She’s
getting better at reading his body language. As the sun sets, Tanjiro joins them. A part of her heart
aches that he can’t be with them during the day, but the other part is just happy he’s with them
now. Hisa is kind enough to leave the lanterns on for them. She finally finishes the book well into
the night.

The next day Nezuko goes out into the garden and starts meditating, using the instructions from
the book to guide her. Eventually, she’s able to hone in on her own aura. One of the entries
mentioned being able to shrink their aura in order to be less detectable to others.

“It’s not going to make you invisible, but it will help if you need to sneak around. I’ve also noticed
that if I suppress my presence, it makes people ignore me, even when I’m standing right next to
them.”

The entry seemed to have been made by someone...less than honorable, but that doesn’t make what
they said any less helpful. The only downside was that spreading out her aura seemed to be how
she sensed dangers, if she shrinks her aura, she’s essentially blinding herself to potential threats.
She’s not sure if this would be useful in a fight against a demon, but being able to consciously
control her aura is a useful skill in itself. Not just for shrinking her aura, but for expanding it to
sense things even further away.

Controlling her aura turns out to be pretty easy once she can focus on it. However, when it comes
to her presence—it seems completely out of her reach. It doesn’t even seem like something she can
actively control. She wonders then how the person in the entry managed to do it. It’s likely
something that will take extensive practice on her part.

Nezuko used to think she was a patient person. Caring for children, sewing, cooking, cleaning—all
of it required patience. Her training under Urokodaki had required her to be patient as well. No
matter how desperately she wanted to find a cure for her brother, she needed to be ready to face the
dangers that were waiting for them.

For a while there, she’d lost sight of that patience. She’d been reckless—running into fights
 without any regards to her own safety. It was her confrontation with Muzan that finally made her
stop and think. This is her chance to reclaim that patience. She’ll need it if she wants to improve.

So over the next week, she practices. She learns to focus in on the auras of the people around her
and even see it manifested in colors around them. She finds out Hisa just has a muted aura, while
Inosuke, Zenitsu, and Tanjiro’s are all very loud. The colors are interesting to her as well. They can
shift with emotions, but there seems to be a specific color that every person returns to normally.
For Zenitsu it’s yellow, for Tanjiro it’s green, for Inosuke it’s blue. Her own aura is pink with
traces of red.

Inosuke and Zenitsu warm up to Tanjiro much faster than she could’ve ever anticipated. Zenitsu
decides to befriend him. At one point he mentions asking him for her hand in marriage, but Tanjiro
responded to that with such a powerful grimace that it made Zenitsu cry. Inosuke...well, he’s
Inosuke. He chases Tanjiro around and challenges him to fights, which seems to mean that he likes
him.

All of it warms Nezuko’s heart. Her brother had a way of getting people to like him so effortlessly.
His kind nature draws people to him like a magnet, and she sees it in full effect.

The doctor declares they’re fully healed two weeks after they started staying in the Wisteria House.
He only seems faintly surprised, but he doesn’t ask them any questions. Soon after, her crow flies
in alongside Zenitsu’s sparrow to announce their next mission.

“We’ve been assigned to another mission already?!” Zenitsu cries. “This is horrible—they’re really
trying to kill us!”

“I’m sure everything will turn out fine, Zenitsu,” Nezuko says.

They change into their uniforms. A strange part of her feels more comfortable to be wearing it.

At the gate, she bows to Hisa. “Thank you for letting us stay in your home.”

“It was no trouble at all, I wish you all luck in battle,” Hisa says, bowing back. “Stand tall with
pride, young demon slayers.”

Her crow flies up to lead the way. Zenitsu’s sparrow perches on his head. At some point they break
into a sprint.

“I’ll beat you both there,” Inosuke declares as he pulls ahead.

“As if,” Nezuko huffs and passes him.

“You guys—wait for me!” Zenitsu whines from behind.

Nezuko basks in the moment while she can. There’s a darkness looming over them, promising
horrible things. For this one moment, she can ignore it. Life isn’t all about the bad things after all,
it’s full of love and laughter if you know where to look.

Chapter End Notes

Whoops, this one took much longer then I planned. Next up will be the spider arc and
I do plan on going back and editing some stuff here soon. A lot of this was written
during a manic episode so I've been meaning to go back and fix some stuff. Feel free
to leave a kudo if you enjoyed! I thrive on validation lmao

In case anyone is curious, this is a link to the chart I'm using for aura color meanings, I
really like how well their color coding in their designs match up with the descriptions:
https://pin.it/4RsxFt5
 Into the Woods
Chapter Summary

Nezuko, Inosuke, and Tanjiro fight their way through Mt. Natagumo. They try their
best to stick together, but nothing goes according to plan.

Chapter Notes

This chapter will feature Tanjiro's POV

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The forest of Mount Natagumo is blanketed in a black fog that screams danger. All of Nezuko’s
survival instincts tell her to run the other way—this place is already making her last mission seem
like nothing. With each step, she feels like she’s walking closer to her own doom.

“Is this really where our mission is?” Zenitsu asks, clearly hoping that someone will say no.

“This is where we were told to go. Not to mention that I can sense demons from here,” Nezuko
says, flexing her grip on the hilt of her sword. She hasn’t let go of it for the past hour, she’s so on
edge that she feels like she needs to be ready for a fight at any moment.

“I can sense them too,” Inosuke says, slightly petulant.

Nezuko distracts herself with this shiny new piece of information. Despite how often Inosuke
bragged about his abilities, he rarely said much outside of what she already knew from fighting
him. “Seriously? That’s amazing Inosuke!”

He pauses for a moment then seems to snap back to himself. “Of course it’s amazing, I’m the
best!”

Nezuko notices a change in Zenitsu’s aura. She turns her head and sees him looking down at the
ground. “Is everything okay, Zenitsu?”

“It’s just...this doesn’t seem like a good idea,” he says hesitantly. “I know we’re just supposed to
be reinforcements, but that means something went really wrong. There’s got to be some higher
ranking demon slayers that could help with this instead.”

“Maybe they sent us because we were closer,” she guesses. “It doesn’t really matter why, we
should still do everything we can to help.”

Inosuke huffs proudly. “My swords are craving to slice through some demon flesh! I’ll lead the
way, you two can follow behind me as you tremble in fear.”

“That’s good to hear, Inosuke! Thank you,” she says with a smile. Inosuke cares about them in his
own way, and right now she’s more appreciative of it than ever. Knowing that he wants to help
them fight makes it easier for her to push her fear away just a little. It’s still there, but it’s less all
consuming than it was.

He stares at her for a long moment before finally saying, “Whatever. You’d better not die before I
have the chance to beat you, Tenicho!”

“I’ll do my best... Daisuke,” she says, trying and failing to hold back laughter as she dodges his
angry punches.

“It just—it doesn’t make any sense!” Zenitsu cuts in, making her and Inosuke pause in their antics.
“If these other demon slayers couldn’t handle this, then how are we supposed to do any better? I
mean seriously, it’s like they’re trying to get us all killed!” Zenitsu says, clutching his hair
anxiously.

“Zenitsu…” she trails off, unsure of what to say.

“Stop being weird,” Inosuke tells him simply.

Zenitsu scoffs. “Weird? I’m not the weird one here, you’re the ones acting like this is just some big
joke! We could die, don't you idiots understand that?!”

“Of course we know that,” Nezuko says. “Zenitsu, I know you’re worried—”

“I’m not just worried, I’m terrified!” he shouts, cutting her off. “I don’t want to die fighting
demons! I just want to get married, settle down, and have children. You should want that too,
Nezuko.”

“You—” Nezuko feels her face heat up. A furious mix of feelings stirring in her chest as she
searches for words. “You’re really selfish.”

“What?” Zenitsu asks as if the word is pulled out of him. A look of betrayal crosses his face that
makes Nezuko’s heart fill with complicated emotions she’s not ready to think about.

“You’re selfish,” she repeats, spitting the word out like poison. “You only care about yourself and
—and how you feel. I’m scared too! And I know you know that because you said you hear
heartbeats, so you must’ve heard how scared I am! You…” she loses her momentum, distracted by
the hurt she can feel from him. She gathers herself quickly, furiously drying her frustrated tears.
“But—but you don’t care about any of that. If...if you’re only here because you think I might marry
you…you should just leave. I don’t want you to get hurt over something you’ll never have.”

“Nezuko…” he says quietly, reaching out to her.

She shakes her head and walks away from him, not wanting to hear anything else he has to say. She
puts a fair amount of distance between them. Inosuke is close behind her. As they’re walking, she
notices something up ahead—someone in a demon slayer uniform is lying face down in the dirt.
She breaks into a sprint then crouches down to examine him.

There are strings with a strange light blue aura attached to him. She reaches out and touches them.
Something presses on the edge of her mind. As she focuses on it, she gets a few vague impressions
of emotions. Loneliness, sadness—she’s not sure how, but she feels it. It doesn’t make sense,
inanimate objects don’t have auras, and it doesn’t belong to the boy.

Suddenly the strings are pulled taut, and Nezuko is forced back into the present. The strings start to
pull the boy away, but she quickly grabs hold of the strings and pulls back, wishing she had gotten
to her feet. With both hands on the strings, that presence in her mind grows stronger. Nezuko
ignores it as she digs her heels into the ground, gritting her teeth as the strings pull even harder,
dragging her forward a bit. Inosuke finally joins her, using his strength to pull until the strings snap
and go slack. The aura around the strings disappear, and the presence leaves her mind entirely.

“What—what was that?” Nezuko pants, looking down at her hands which were now red and sore.

“...you...you saved me,” the boy rasps.

“I thought you were unconscious,” Nezuko says, taken by surprise. “Are you okay?”

“Thought I was done for,” he says, rolling onto his side to meet her eyes. There’s blood all over his
uniform, Nezuko realizes. None of it seems to be his. “You gotta help them...the others...those
webs came out of nowhere, then everyone started killing each other. You gotta…” he trails off
with a cough.

“We’ll help them,” Nezuko says. “What’s your name?”

“T-Takashi,” he says. “Please help them...Murata...my friends…”

Nezuko hesitates. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“Just some broken bones—” he tries to chuckle but it ends with a pained cough, “I’ll live.”

She nods and stands. Inosuke is bouncing on his heels, ready to go. She looks down the road and
sees Zenitsu sitting on the ground. He catches her eyes for a moment, but ends up putting his head
in his hands.

He’s not coming with them. She pretends like the hurt that cuts through her core is his that she’s
feeling, not her own.

Finally, she turns to Inosuke. “Let’s go.”

For Nezuko, running through the forest is as natural as breathing. The same could likely be said for
Inosuke who seems right at home in the woods. Without even having to talk, they navigate through
the trees effortlessly. She takes a slight lead when she senses humans nearby. The further they go,
the more menacing the forest gets—spider webs cover the foliage and the branches of the trees and
the demon energy only seems to be getting stronger. It’s strange, she’s never been this sensitive to
it before. Maybe it has something to do with her recent training?

“Ugh, these damn spiderwebs are everywhere!” Inosuke growls, trying to shake off webs from his
hands.

“One of the demons here must have some kind of spider related blood art,” Nezuko says,
grimacing as she brushes webs off her head. “We should be careful until we know more.”

“Being careful is for losers,” Inosuke huffs, puffing out his chest.

“I don’t—I don’t think that’s true,” Nezuko says. She comes to a halt when she sees another
demon slayer crouching and looking out onto what appears to be an empty clearing up ahead.

He’s clearly terrified of something, so Nezuko is quiet when she joins him. “What’s—”

He yelps and stumbles in an attempt to back away from her. When he finally catches his breath, he
whispers loudly, “Gods above, don’t just sneak up on people like that!”

“Sorry! I thought you were hiding from something,” Nezuko whispers back. “We’re here as
reinforcements.”
“Well—wait, what are your ranks?” he asks, looking between her and Inosuke.

Nezuko’s mind blanks. She can’t remember what the name of their rank was. Mizuno? Mizunato?
Something like that? That sounds right, but she isn’t sure. Zenitsu would probably know, a voice in
the back of her head says. She shakes the thought from her mind and tries to change the subject.
“Are you hiding from the demon slayers that started killing each other?”

“How...how do you know about that?” he asks, his face even paler now.

“We helped someone earlier who told us what happened. His name was Takashi.”

“Takashi’s alive?” he says absently, then sighs in relief. “Thank the gods. He got dragged away by
those webs, I thought he was dead for sure.”

“Are you Murata by any chance?”

He glances at her in surprise. “I am.”

“Okay, Murata, there are humans closing in on us,” she explains as calmly as she can. “From what
I’ve heard, it’s those webs that are controlling them right?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Alright,” she stands up. “Then we just need to cut the webs. Everything seemed fine after we
broke the webs on Takashi, right Inosuke?”

Inosuke has already started unwrapping his swords. “Damn right, I’ll bet I’ll cut through more
webs then you!”

“I can’t wait to see it,” she replies with a grin.

“You two...are really weird,” Murata says.

“Huh?! Who are you callin’ weird? I’ll kick your ass!” Inosuke says, stomping towards Murata.

Nezuko quickly blocks his path. “Stop it, we need to—” A loud creaking sound makes her pause.

Murata flinches. “They’re here,” he whispers fearfully.

They stumble into the clearing through the trees. There’s five of them, three more than she had
been able to sense. The two she had sensed are just barely clinging to life and unconscious from the
looks of it. The webs pull their limbs in jerky, messy movements. Whoever is doing this must not
have much control. The webs have the same light blue aura around them as the ones that had been
on Takashi, which means it’s the same demon pulling the strings.

Nezuko and Inosuke cut through the strings quickly and efficiently. The bodies drop to the ground
without anything to hold them up. That’s when she notices—

“Spiders,” she gasps, watching as dozens of tiny white and red spiders crawl over the bodies,
reattaching new strings and pulling them back up one limb at a time. She sees some of them on her
arm and panics, cutting through the string it was trying to attach to her and squashing it. It
crumbles to dust in hand, almost like...almost like a demon. She looks over and watches Inosuke
try stabbing as many spiders as he can but they keep multiplying.

“We can’t kill them all,” she realizes. “They’ll just keep coming back. We have to find the demon
doing this, it’s the only way!”
“I knew that!” Inosuke insists, stabbing his swords into the ground and crouching down. “I’ll find
the demon, you hold them off!”

“Right!” Nezuko says, using her sword to block one of the controlled demon slayers. Murata steps
in and starts helping as well. Together, they cut through the strings again to buy time.

“Found her,” Inosuke growls, he points north-east. “She’s that way!”

“Great job, Inosuke!” she says, cutting through more of the strings. “We should—”

From above.

Nezuko doesn’t have to look up to sense the presence of a powerful demon, but she raises her head
anyway. On top of the webs, a child with powder white skin stares down at them with a blank
expression. Long, unkempt hair covers his left eye. His kimono is white, decorated with
spiderwebs and red markings that match the ones on his face. But it’s his aura that catches her
attention. Sharp, empty black with angry red spots. The red seems to grow with rage as their eyes
meet though his face doesn’t give anything away.

“Don’t disturb my family’s peaceful life,” he says, his voice devoid of any emotion. “Mother will
kill you right away.”

Nezuko’s brows draw together in confusion. Why isn’t he attacking them? Who is ‘Mother?’
Certainly he doesn’t mean his actual mother...right?

Inosuke rushes forward with a battle cry and tries to reach the demon, but he’s too high up. The
demon just watches impassively and finally walks away. She manages to catch her friend before he
hits the ground, though he shoves her away with a grumble.

“You two should go on ahead and kill the demon controlling these webs,” Murata says, cutting
through another set of strings.

“Are you sure?” Nezuko asks.

He nods, determination lighting up his aura. “I know this hasn’t been my finest moment, but I’m a
demon slayer too! I’ll be fine now that I know I can cut the strings. Be careful as you get closer,
their movements are simple here but that might be due to distance.”

“Stay safe, Murata,” she says with a nod.

“You too—” he pauses. “Wait, I don’t know your name!”

“It’s Nezuko!” she shouts back as she and Inosuke take off towards the demon.

She doesn’t hear any response. She says a quick prayer for his safety as she follows Inosuke’s lead
through the woods. The webs in the trees get thicker the further they go. They find a clearing after
a while of running.

There’s a demon slayer girl sobbing, her sword buried in the chest of another demon slayer. Four
more bodies behind her and even more littering the clearing, filling the air with the stench of blood
and death. The strings on her pull her up, forcing her to face them. She cries even harder.

“Please—please don’t come any closer!” The girl screams. “Run away! Please! I don’t want to kill
you too!”
The girl’s fear and terror is so visceral it causes Nezuko to hesitate, her own breathing speeding up
as she tries to parse through whose emotions are whose. There’s two others nearby, clinging to life.
Inosuke, however, doesn’t hesitate. He runs right into the fight, trying to cut the strings on the girl.
But just as soon as they’re cut, they reform again much faster here than before.

“Cutting the strings isn’t going to work here,” Nezuko says, horrified. She isn’t sure what to do.
The girl’s body suddenly jerks and she screams as her arms are forced back with a sickening crack.
The demon doesn’t care about them. Why would she? They’re just...puppets to her. Toys.

“Please...kill us,” another controlled demon slayer says, his body twisted at awkward angles. “Can
feel...my ribs stabbing my organs...hurts…”

“I’m sorry…” Nezuko whispers, shaking her head. “I just—I can’t…”

It’s cruel. It’s cruel. It’s cruel.

When she was really little, she remembers watching her father kill an old hen that had gotten sick.
She wasn’t supposed to watch, she was supposed to be inside, but she watched anyway. He found
her later, crying.

“It was the kindest thing I could do,” her father explained to her. “She was in so much pain, it
would’ve been cruel to force her to die that way.”

“Aren’t you in pain from your sickness?” she cries. “Would you rather die?”

“No, Nezuko,” he says, pulling her into a weak hug. “It’s not the same. I want to be with my family
for as long as I can.”

“Even if it hurts?” she asks with tears in her eyes.

He just smiled. He never really gave her an answer, but even then she understood it was a yes.

Tanjiro leaps out of the box. He takes a second to evaluate the situation then rushes the girl head
on, throwing her over a tree branch and tangling the strings.

“That’s...that’s brilliant, Tanjiro!” Nezuko exclaims, finally pulled from her spiraling thoughts.
“The strings are so tangled, the demon can’t control them!”

“I want to do that too!” Inosuke shouts and barrels into another controlled demon slayer and throws
them over a branch. “Hah! Did you see that?!”

Nezuko is too busy trying to do the same thing, but she notices Tanjiro nod excitedly at Inosuke
who huffs with pride. Nezuko struggles to throw the demon slayer over a solid branch, but she
finds the strength somehow. They’re all tangled when she notices the spider crawling on her. When
she goes to squash it, she catches a whirlwind of emotions from what must be the demon
controlling these webs and spiders.

Fear, anger, desperation—

A horrible crack fills the air, quickly followed by two more. Nezuko shakily looks up, her eyes
wide. The boy she just threw over the branch looks back at her with blank eyes, his head twisted
from a broken neck. The others look the same. They’re alive for a few more painful seconds until
they finally leave this world. Nezuko tries to breathe calmly, but all she can feel is a helpless kind
of rage. She should’ve seen this coming. Of course the demon would kill them once they were
useless to her! She clenches her fist around her sword.
Tanjiro put his hand on her shoulder. She allows it, but doesn’t meet his eyes. “Let’s go,” she says,
ready to put an end to this.

The demon has another trick up her sleeve apparently. The body of a large purple skinned demon
looms over them. There are giant curved blades where its hands should be. The strings pull its arms
up and it’s blades swing towards them. It’s movements are quick and controlled. The demon must
be nearby.

“It doesn’t have a neck!” Insouke shouts. “How do we kill it?!”

Nezuko raises her hand and makes a sideways cutting motion. “Through the shoulder, down
through the belly. That should do it.”

Inosuke huffs in acknowledgement. The demon swings down, and they have to jump out of the
way. It cuts Inosuke with it’s blade. Tanjiro jumps in and kicks the demon back, making it
stumble. Inosuke cuts off one of it’s arms, but the other one suddenly swings towards him. Tanjiro
holds back the blade with his hands, blood pouring from the wounds.. Nezuko slices through the
arm, then crouches down—turning to Inosuke.

“Jump off my back!” she shouts, hoping she doesn’t have to explain further.

Inosuke gets the message, and gets a running start, using the box on her back as a springboard to
get above the demon. He brings his swords down at just the right angle and kills the demon,
landing as it starts to crumble away.

He stomps towards Nezuko and picks her up with ease. She makes an embarrassing squeaking
noise that quickly becomes a cry of terror as he throws her up high into the air over the treeline.
From this vantage point, she easily pinpoints the demon’s location and angles herself towards it.
The demoness sits atop a rock, still holding onto her strings. Nezuko readies her attack.

First form—

The demoness sees her and reaches her arms out, eyes closed. Nezuko remembers the emotions she
felt from this demon earlier, the desperation and fear. She remembers her own rage at failing to
save her allies. There’s only one feeling she can sense now, one that tramples over everything.

Acceptance.

Fifth form, blessed rain after the drought.

It’s a painless death. A kind death. Kinder than she probably deserves, but that’s not up to Nezuko
to decide. Urokodaki always taught that any enemy demon that surrendered was to be killed using
the fifth form, so she’ll honor those teachings. It’s simpler to think of it that way. This way she
doesn’t have to think about the complicated emotions tangled up in her chest. Pity and anger and
sadness...it’s too much right now.

“Thank you,” the demoness says as she crumbles away. “I’ll give you this warning...one of the
Twelve Kizuki is on this mountain.”

Nezuko sucks in a breath, feeling like she just got punched. “The child,” she whispers.

The demoness says nothing else to her.

Nezuko sprints back to the others. When she gets there, she sees Tanjiro struggling to bandage
Inosuke’s wounds. She hadn’t even realized how badly wounded he was until now. His arms are
covered in blood, and he has a nasty cut on his side. Was she a bad friend for not noticing?

“Inosuke...maybe you should descend the mountain,” she says.

His head whips towards her. “Huh?! No way, this is nothing!”

“One of the Twelve Kizuki is here,” she says. “The demon I killed just said so, and I think it might
be that child demon we met earlier.”

“There’s no way that’s one of the Twelve Kizuki!” Inosuke insists.

“Trust me. I could feel his power,” Nezuko says. “I—I think we’re in over our heads.
Zenitsu...Zenitsu was right, we should leave this to someone stronger before we end up getting
killed.”

“How do we know if there’s anyone else stronger here?! We’re—you— I’m strong enough to
handle one of the Twelve Kizuki! I’ll kill any demon in my way!” Inosuke says, stomping away.

She and Tanjiro share a worried look and follow him. They end up by a peaceful stream that feels a
little out of place after everything they’ve just been through. In the distance, there’s a loud clap of
thunder.

“That’s odd,” she says. “I didn’t think there was a storm.”

Tanjiro shrugs.

“Maybe we should go check that out,” she says. Subtly, she adds, “You should come with us,
Inosuke.”

“Do whatever you want, I don’t care,” he huffs.

She wants to sigh, but she freezes when she senses a demon nearby. She locks eyes with a little girl
standing on the other side of the stream, her eyes are wide. She looks hauntingly similar to the boy
from earlier, but her aura is muted and dark in a much different way. Inosuke and Tanjiro notice
her too.

Inosuke tries to attack her but she suddenly screams—“Father!”

Nezuko is barely able to drag Inosuke out of the way in time for a giant demon with the face of a
spider to land in the middle of the stream.

“Don’t mess with my family!” The demon growls, slamming his fist into a stone. It leaves a crater
in the ground.

Nezuko wishes that she’d been a little more insistent about leaving. None of this would’ve
happened if they’d just listened to Zenistu instead of brushing him aside. But now isn’t the time to
feel guilty. She’ll apologize to him later. If they survive.

The giant demon raises his fist to punch Inosuke, but Tanjiro manages to hold the demon back, the
veins of his forehead and neck bulge from the strain. Nezuko rushes in to help, she tries a breathing
form to cut off the demon’s arm, but her sword won’t cut through his skin?!

The demon goes to knock her aside, but Inosuke uses his swords to stop him, only his swords
won’t cut through the demon’s skin either! Nezuko is pushed off, so she lands herself on a nearby
stone as best she can. Tanjiro is doing remarkably well holding off the demon. His attacks force
the demon to stumble, but he still manages to send her brother crashing into a tree. He seems to
think of something and proceeds to lift the tree out of the ground and slam it down on top of the
demon?!

Nezuko can hardly believe her eyes, but he meets her gaze and nods. She raises her sword and
prepares to use the tenth water breathing form, she jumps forward—

The demon lifts the tree above his head.

It all happens too fast. Her sword arm breaks on impact with the tree when the demon swings it,
and her sword falls out of her hands as she’s sent flying up into the air. Tanjiro’s horrified
expression is the last she sees of him as she sails over the trees. Panic seizes her as she free falls
into another part of the woods. Branches from the trees dig into her skin as they snap under her
weight. She rolls into the fall to minimize as much damage as she can, but it’s still painful. She
hisses through her teeth as she tries to sit up. Her entire body protests the movement.

Finally, she manages to get up. Tanjiro’s box makes a creaking sound and she’s painfully reminded
that he is still with Inosuke. She takes it off carefully to inspect the damage. The inside latch is
missing and the hinges have seen better days, but considering everything, she’s just glad it’s still
intact.

She forces herself to stand, using her good arm to lean against a tree for support. Something about
this feels familiar. She’s about to try fanning out her aura to find Tanjiro and Inosuke when she
feels that powerful demonic energy from earlier. The child demon.

There’s another demon with him. There’s a scream from their direction. Nezuko’s hesitant to go
near it since missing her sword and she’s injured, but she can’t ignore someone in trouble. She
takes a breath and focuses on her aura. She shrinks it down to nothing, just like she practiced at the
Wisteria house. It feels weird to turn her senses off like this, but it’s the only way to go undetected.
She edges closer cautiously.

“I’m begging you, Rui, please stop!” The girl cries, sobbing fearfully. It’s the demon girl from
earlier that called on her ‘Father.’ She’s holding her face in her hands as she cries. Blood spills onto
the ground from wounds on her face. The boy demon, Rui, stands over her, looking bored. His aura
is just as intimidating as it was before, more so now that she’s practically defenseless.

A demon slayer boy she doesn’t recognize approaches Rui from behind. She didn’t sense him.
Does he not realize what he’s walking into?!

“Finally!” The demon slayer boy says—she can’t sense his feelings, but he looks smug. “A child
demon I can take out easily! I’ll climb the ranks safely and claim the higher pay.”

“You idiot! Run!” Nezuko screams at him, giving herself away.

It doesn’t help. She watches in horror as the boy swings his sword. Rui slices him into pieces with
barely any movement, blood and viscera splatter over the ground. All Nezuko can do is watch.

“That’s odd. I didn’t see you,” Rui says, looking at her now with his blood red eyes.

Carefully, she inches her way towards the boy’s discarded sword as she asks, “Why would you
hurt your ally?”

Nezuko can’t afford any missteps here. And she can’t let the gore and terror hold her back. She
needs to do everything she can to survive. She still needs to find her brother a cure. She needs to
apologize to Zenitsu. She still needs to make good on her promise to spar with Inosuke. There’s so
much she hasn’t done. So much she needs to do.

“Ally? Don’t use such a flimsy term. She’s my family. Our bond is stronger than anything,” he
says with that same emotionless voice. He’s watching her carefully. He’s letting her get the sword.
Maybe he doesn’t care if she has it or not. Considering the other demon slayer’s fate, she’s not
surprised he’s arrogant enough to think she can’t kill him. Maybe she can’t. She can’t run now
though, so her only option is to fight.

His words sink in. She pauses. “You call this family? She’s terrified of you. You hate her. You say
your family, but your emotions make it obvious you don’t care about each other. That’s not family,
and it’s certainly not a bond. Family loves each other, family takes care of one another. They don’t
hurt each other.”

“What would you know about family?” Rui says, his rage apparent. The red spots on his aura grow
larger, consuming the black void in bits and pieces.

“My older brother is here on this mountain,” Nezuko finds herself saying, picking up the sword
despite the still-warm blood on it. “Our bond is real. It isn’t fake like yours.”

Rui is clearly angered by her words. He raises his hands, spider webs intertwined in his fingers. “If
he’s really your big brother, he’ll come to protect you. Let’s test this bond of yours.”

Tanjiro wants to immediately run after his sister, but when he watches the spider demon lunge after
Inosuke, he has to intervene. Using all of his strength, and even more he didn’t know he had, he
grabs the demon’s arm, using it to lift the demon up and slam him into the ground.

The demon runs away. Inosuke immediately runs after it, shouting.

Tanjiro’s eyes land on Nezuko’s abandoned sword. He quickly grabs it out of the water. He’ll have
to return it to her later. He catches up to Inosuke who is trying and failing not to double over from
his injuries.

“I’m fine,” he insists when Tanjiro tries to help him. “What doesn’t hurt...doesn’t hurt!”

Tanjiro tilts his head. That...doesn’t make any sense. It clearly hurts. The words are stubbornly
stuck in his throat however, so Inosuke trudges on. The bitter, acid scent that’s been clogging his
nose gets stronger.

He looks up, and quickly makes Inosuke do the same. The demon is shedding it’s skin, a bigger,
stronger form rising up.

“It’s—it’s molting?!” Inosuke shouts, gripping his swords. Fear is a scent that doesn’t suit him,
Tanjiro decides.

The demon roars and jumps down to the ground. Inosuke tries to attack, but he’s swatted away like
a pesky bug. He bounces between the trees, hitting the ground hard. He’s slow to get back up.

Tanjiro dodges the demon’s next attack, and blocks the next one using the sword. It’s such a
natural movement he doesn’t register it at first. But when he finally notices what he’s doing, he
loses confidence and jumps back. He can’t use Nezuko’s sword! What if he breaks it?!

He sets it down so he can fight his own way. Inosuke is back, but he’s much slower than usual.
The demon batters him aside once again. Tanjiro catches him before he hits the ground and sets
him down gently. He runs in to keep the demon occupied while Inosuke gathers himself.
Hopefully he can make the final strike.

Inosuke tries to cut through the demon’s neck but his swords end up breaking against the tough
skin. The demon grabs him by the head and starts to crush him. Inosuke tries to stab the demon
with his broken swords, but it does nothing. Blood is running down from beneath his mask.

Tanjiro needs to kill this demon. He needs a nichirin sword.

Nezuko’s sword feels oddly at home in his hand. Something inside of him clicks into place like a
puzzle piece that shouldn’t fit but still does.

Breathe, Tanjiro, an unfamiliar voice says in the back of his mind. You must control your
breathing like Hinokami.

A distant, fuzzy memory he can’t quite catch drifts through his mind. The movements come
naturally, though it does feel like someone is helping him. He rushes towards the spider demon
using a dance he both knows and yet doesn’t simultaneously. Flames burst from the sword and
swirl around him, spitting from his mouth and burning through the muzzle.

Hinokami Kagura—Dance of the Fire God.

The spider demon’s head rolls onto the ground, severed. Tanjiro blinks as he tries to catch his
breath. That was…

“How did you…” Inosuke trails off, just as shocked as he is.

“I don’t know,” Tanjiro says, gasping as the words actually leave his mouth instead of being
trapped in his throat.

“Oh,” he hears Inosuke say.

He looks down at the hilt of Nezuko’s sword that he seemed to accidentally burn through.
Hopefully his sister will forgive him.

The scent of saltwater and cedar hits his nose, he looks and sees a man with long black hair and a
dual patterned haori split down the middle. The Water Pillar, he remembers. Tomioka Giyuu. He
considers Tanjiro for a moment, then surveys the scene. The demon’s huge body is still crumbling
away. Nezuko’s sword is in his hands. He doesn’t smell upset, but something like confusion creeps
in quickly.

“Where is your sister?”

The first round of strings wasn’t so bad.

Nezuko could see and sense the aura from them, so they weren’t hard to avoid. That didn’t stop a
few of them from nicking her, but she’d rather that then...oh maybe getting sliced to pieces like the
guy whose bloody sword she’s holding.

“If you take back what you said, I might let you die quickly,” Rui says, throwing another volley of
strings her way.

Nezuko dances around them, using all of her nimbleness and agility to her advantage. “I won’t take
back what I said. Your bond is fake! Pretending to be a family is worse than having no family at
all!”

She probably shouldn’t be agitating him, but it makes her so angry to see him faking a family. Just
as angry as it made her when she saw Muzan pretending to have a family. Her father suffered
through his illness to have a few more years with his family. Her mother worked herself to the
bone to take care of them. Tanjiro did the same as soon as their dad died, and even before when the
illness had gotten so bad he couldn’t leave his bed. Her younger siblings could be loud and
obnoxious sometimes, but they still tried to help where they could. Yet despite all of that they were
happy. They had a bond that couldn’t be broken, not even now that most of them are gone. She and
Tanjiro will fight to the end of the world for each other. That was love. That was family. Not
whatever Rui is pretending to have.

The strings get worse then. She tries cutting through some of them, but they threaten to break the
sword if she isn’t careful. The most she can do is dodge right now. She needs to get in closer to his
neck.

“Your brother is doing a terrible job at protecting you,” Rui says impassively. “Surely if he cared,
he’d be here by now.”

Rage bursts through her like an open flame. “Shut up!”

Fourth form, striking tide turbulent.

The sword doesn’t take to her breathing style as well as she would like, but it works enough to cut
through the strings and allows her to get even closer. “You know nothing about real family,” she
spits. “And you know nothing about my family!”

She can’t avoid the webs that trap her into place. The sword falls from her hand, broken now and
useless. She tries to gasp for a breath, but the strings close in tighter around her. Her neck, her
arms, her legs, her stomach—the webs are already cutting into her. Every twitch of her body makes
them close in even more.

“Perhaps you could enlighten me then,” Rui says, leaning in. The web around her neck grows a
little tighter, cutting deeper into her skin.

“R-Rui,” the girl demon says, but he turns and glares at her.

“Make yourself useful. Go kill the people running around the mountain, maybe then I’ll forgive
you.”

The girl nods, still terrified. “I’ll—I’ll kill them.” She runs off.

“Go on,” Rui says to her. “Tell me, what makes you so special that your family is better than mine?
You don’t seem all that special to me. I could kill you right now if I wanted to.”

Nezuko’s heart is pounding so hard, she’s afraid it will rip itself out of her chest. She feels like
she’s burning. Every muscle in her body is completely tense trying to maintain perfect stillness.
The skin of her broken arm is being cut into, the pain of holding it up is almost too much to bear.
At this rate her muscles will spasm and cause the webs to kill her.

A presence pushes against her mind. Dark and red. It’s Rui, she realizes. Instinct tells her to pull at
the connection, so she does. Emotions flood into her. A dark emptiness, lonely and sad. Bubbling
red anger and hatred. It washes over her and threatens to consume her.
Don’t let it control you, Nezuko, she hears her mother say in her ear. You have to be the one in
control.

Nezuko focuses on her own emotions. Her rage, her guilt, her desperation—but also her love for
everyone she cares about. She has to get back to them. So she pushes back, back, back.

“What—what is this?” Rui asks, surprised. He steps away from her. The strings loosen.

Nezuko makes one final push, letting out a guttural cry as she breaks herself free from the strings.
Her broken arm screams in pain and the places she’s been cut open burn with pain. Rui grips his
own arm.

“I don’t understand,” he says, he’s like a scared little kid now. She can feel his fear. Her own pain
doubles back at her as he feels it. “I’m not hurt—why am I in pain? W-who are you? How are you
doing this?”

“I’m a demon slayer,” Nezuko says, fighting for air as she raises her hands, she copies the
movements Rui made earlier. The webs obey her commands. She traps Rui with his own blood
demon art.

“There’s no way you can be doing this!” he says, fighting to regain control as the webs dig into his
skin. “You’re just a human!”

Nezuko grits her teeth and stands her ground. Her face is burning. Her body is shaking from the
effort of maintaining this connection. It feels like she’s the one trapped still. It hurts. It hurts. It
hurts.

Then she sees him—Tomioka Giyuu. He cuts through Rui’s neck from behind. The ease of it
would be breath-taking if she could breathe.

Nezuko’s bloody hands fly to her neck—she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe. The world flickers in
and out of focus. Tomioka is suddenly at her side, his eyes wide. That’s weird, she doesn’t
remember them having so much expression. He might be trying to talk to her, but she can’t hear it
over the rush of blood in her ears. She tries to call out to him, but her voice won’t work. She can’t
make any sound. A feeling of loneliness settles over her before she passes out. She isn’t sure who
the feeling belongs to.

Tanjiro regrets leaving Inosuke tied up, but he really was too injured to go with them despite his
insistence that he was fine. All of those thoughts are pushed to the back of his mind when he sees
Giyuu lay his sister down on the ground. He’s careful, but Tanjiro still feels a flare of
protectiveness. He drops Nezuko’s sword and rushes to her side.

“Nezuko…?” he trails off.

Her wounds are really bad. Her right arm must be broken with the angle it’s at and there are
multiple wounds on her that need stitches. There’s a dark red mark on her right cheek that covers
her scar from their first real fight with a demon. It reminds him of a flame, the mark goes over her
chin and almost reaches the middle of her neck just below her ear.

“We need to stitch up her wounds or she’ll bleed out,” Giyuu says.

“That will take too long,” Tanjiro says, raising his hands over her. “Sorry, Nezuko. Please forgive
me.”
He focuses on his blood demon art, taming it into something more manageable for this. The worst
of the wounds burn shut. He’ll leave the bandageable ones open to be treated. She doesn’t flinch at
all in her sleep.

She looks so young. His little baby sister, scarred and marked for life because he failed to protect
her. Tears well up in his eyes, but he scrubs them away. She doesn’t need his tears right now. She
needs him to be strong.

He won’t fail to protect her ever again.

The scent of medicine and anger is all the warning he gets. The woman in the butterfly haori is
swift on her feet. She swings at him, but Giyuu blocks her sword. She hums and skids to a stop a
little bit away from them.

“Why would you get in my way, Tomioka?” The woman asks. Her voice is sweet, but it’s laced
with venom. “And after you told me we couldn’t get along with demons? See, this is why no one
likes you, you know. Now please move out of my way.”

“I’m not disliked by people, Shinobu,” Giyuu says, his voice flat.

She and Tanjiro stare at him in shock. Likely for different reasons. Tanjiro is mostly surprised
that’s what he wanted to respond to out of everything she said.

“I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you that no one likes you,” Shinobu says, not sounding sorry
at all. “I shouldn’t have said anything, my bad.”

Tanjiro winces a little, that one must’ve hurt. Giyuu doesn’t seem too distraught by it though, but
he’s also not sure if he’d be able to tell the difference in his expression.

“We need to make sure that demon doesn’t kill one of our own,” Shinobu says, sending a pointed
look his way. “I would think you’d want to do your job, Tomioka.”

“She’s my sister,” Tanjiro says, glad to have his voice now more than ever. “I don’t want to kill
her!”

“Oh you poor thing, of course you don’t want to,” Shinobu says, raising her sword. “But it’s in
your nature, is it not?”

“You need to run,” Giyuu says to him. “Take your sister and try to get her to wake up.”

“R-right,” Tanjiro says, pulling Nezuko onto his back as quickly and as gently as he can manage.

“Isn’t that against Corps rules?” Shinobu asks, sounding genuinely surprised.

Tanjiro runs through the woods, putting as much distance as he can between them. “Come on,
Nezuko, please wake up!”

Nezuko wakes up lying in a patch of grass, facing a clear blue sky. It’s warm. Her aches and pains
are gone so she sits up without any trouble. She’s sitting beside a dark chasm in the ground. On the
other side, she sees Rui and two people that are both strangers but she somehow recognizes they
are his parents. There’s no grass on their side. It looks dark and foreboding, but they seem at peace.
Rui looks like a normal kid now, not at all like his demon self.
“I’m sorry for all the pain and misery I caused,” he says. “All I wanted was to fill the void in my
heart, but you were right. The bonds I tried to forge were fake, and I’ll spend eternity paying for
what I’ve done.”

Silence almost seems to widen the gap between them. Finally, Nezuko finds her words.

“I’m glad you found your family again,” she says.

Rui’s parents hug him close. He stifles a sob as he says, “Me too.”

“We’ll stay by his side no matter where he ends up,” his mother says.

His father nods. “We won’t let him down again.”

Even if it hurts, Nezuko thinks.

Rui brushes away his tears. “You should be getting back to your family soon.”

Nezuko feels a breeze on her back. She turns away from Rui to look behind her, but there’s no one
there. When she turns back, Rui, his parents, the chasm—it’s all gone. Nothing but clear skies and
fields of wildflowers.

“It’s time to go back, Nezuko,” someone says. “I’ll speak with you soon.”

When Nezuko cracks open her eyes, all of her aches and pains have returned. Though it’s hard to
remember if she ever stopped feeling them at all. She feels like she just woke up from a long
dream, but all of it is fuzzy now that she’s awake.

None of that really matters considering that Tanjiro is currently carrying her on his back and a
familiar demon slayer girl is chasing them through the woods with a serene expression on her
face.

“Wh—what’s—” she tries asking what’s going on, but she can’t quite get all of the words out. She
feels like she’s been strangled.

Tanjiro tries to leap into the branches to get away from the girl, but she follows easily. Nezuko
hangs on tightly to Tanjiro, not wanting to fall again today. The girl’s aura is a muted grey color,
but there’s something deeper there that Nezuko can’t quite make out.

As they’re running, a familiar crow’s voice cuts through the air. “Attention! Attention! New
orders! Nezuko and the demon Tanjiro are to be taken into custody and brought back to
headquarters! Nezuko in a pink haori, and Tanjiro in a green checkered haori!”

Her crow repeats the order, circling the sky above them.

“Are you Tanjiro?” The girl asks her brother. He nods.

Once the girl stands down and sheathes her sword, her crow moves on. Tanjiro stops and carefully
lets her down. Nezuko wobbles a little on her feet, but he helps steady her. She notices now that
he’s not wearing the bamboo muzzle anymore.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Something inside of Nezuko breaks.

“Nezuko?” he asks again.

 Tears well up in her eyes. She sniffs. She pulls her brother into a hug, shaking as she tries her best
not to collapse from joy and pain. Mostly joy.

A few years ago when she couldn’t sleep, she’d spend the night praying to hear his voice again at
least once. To tell her everything was going to be okay. To tell her that he loved her. When he woke
up, she’d made peace with the idea that she might never hear it until he was human again. He
didn’t have to talk for her to understand him, and she’d love him no matter what.

Now she’s crying like a baby as he tries his best to comfort her. It feels like the gods might actually
be on her side for once.

It feels like everything might be okay.

Chapter End Notes

Okay yeah this one was tough, but hey it's done now! I've decided to split this work
into a series. Part one follows the canon timeline, while parts two and three will split
off into it's own timeline. I'll have chapter one of part two up as soon as possible. I'm
currently fighting through the last few weeks of the summer semester so it’ll be
another week or two sorry :( also I did go back make some edits to better reflect that
story I want to tell so if want to check that out feel free to do so :D chapter one has the
most changes, otherwise it wasn’t much.

Let me know if you enjoyed! Kudos and comments are appreciated <33333

Please drop by the archive and comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!