Chapter Text
“Obanai-san!”
Redemption.
Each of the Hashira- no, each demon slayer- has some sort of goal that they’re reaching for. Most of these goals are generally along the same lines. Revenge is pretty common, as well as duty and honor. That boy accompanied by his demon sister has a more interesting one; changing demons back to humans. Most of the Hashira simply and naively dream of wiping out the Upper-Rank demons, and then finally, Muzan. Some joined just to purge their lives from the regrets of their past in blood. Some actually want to make the world a better place. Some want to avenge a fallen loved one. Some just seek adventure and battle. Some were roped into it and just want to stay alive.
Redemption is an uncommon one, but guilt, of course, is not. There is a difference. Those who join the Demon Slayers out of guilt often say that they want to redeem themselves, but there’s a difference. There’s a difference between feeling guilty about being unable to save a loved one or feeling guilty about a mistake you made in the past, and actually needing redemption for your sins with only one way out. There’s only one path to salvation for me. Redemption. Muzan’s head in my hands. It’s only by his blood, and then, my own, that I can possibly hope to be forgiven for my sins. Guilt and redemption. They aren’t the same. Guilt is wallowing in the past. Redemption is pursuing salvation for yourself. Both are unarguably selfish, and both can push a person to action. The difference is that redemption has an endpoint. There is a plan. There is a way out. A person can drown in guilt, but if they seek redemption, they will never stop acting upon that, not even for a second, not until they die. They’re both selfish. One is just a little less pathetic.
There is also a difference between pathetic self-loathing and a genuine awareness of your own situation and past. Everybody at some point reflects on their past. Many regard their past with a neutral feeling. Regret for some actions, gratefulness for others. Others- truly the better of us as a race- are able to regard their past with closed eyes and a smile. Pride in their actions, if not a little bittersweet feeling at the mistakes of a younger them. But a general awareness that they have lived a good life. Then there are those who have truly lived cursed lives. Those who have messed up so terribly that they can feel their past self looming over their shoulders, cold fingers on their back, haunting eyes, and a desperate need to atone as much as they can before they are inevitably swallowed. In this case, there are two options you can take. Guilt, or redemption. You can wallow in your own self-hatred and let it affect everyone else around you, letting that horror seep into those closest to you in an attempt to unburden yourself of that weight. Or you can take responsibility and bear it yourself.
There is a plan for redemption carved onto my soul. It is tedious, and it may not bear anything at all. But, if I fail, I will go to hell with the tainted blood I currently carry. In that case, at the very least, I will be the only one to suffer. And my family, of course.
I don’t love my family. God, I don’t think about them unless I’m seeking out pain. I don’t remember their names, if I was ever told them- I buried those somewhere deep into my mind and I will never trudge them up. My family doesn’t deserve to be remembered. Neither do I, really. For what they did to me. For what I did to them. For what we had to do, and for what we didn’t have to do but did anyway. However, if I redeem myself, and my blood is cleansed, so is theirs. Only by killing him, the source of all evil, all demons, and then myself, can we have any hope for untainting our blood. We are past the point of realistic redemption in this world, our entire line so disgraced and revolting, that there is no salvation for us. There is only the hope of redeeming us enough so that in our forgotten history, we can all rest with redeemed blood. I don’t hate my family.
I didn’t hate my family growing up. I didn’t have any time to hate them, I was so hellbent on just surviving. There was no sleep, no health. No family, no religion, no friends, no freedom. There was a wooden cage and there was that demon who had controlled our family for centuries. She was God. She was Satan. She was everything. She was death. She was the only reason I was still alive. If I have one person to thank- or despise- for being alive, it would be her, not my parents. I was born to be a sacrifice, born to be killed the moment I was born to protect the rest of my family, but I had interesting eyes to her, so I was to be kept alive for later consumption. Until I was a better size for eating. I grew up in the cell, and from the moment I was old enough to gain consciousness, my every moment was spent in fear. Maybe it was pathetic, but I wouldn’t have known. There was food. There was so much food - the bigger I was, the happier she would be when she could finally eat me. The day I was presented to her then, to be eaten, it was decided I would be spared a little longer. She took such a liking to me that she had my family cut my mouth, slits on both sides, so I would look like her. They held me down, fingers wrapped around my wrists, cutting my mouth open with a jagged knife and as I bled and bled and bled, they slipped a bowl underneath me so she could drink it. Then, I was thrown right back into that wooden cell. (Sometimes, at night, she would slither in and just stare at me. The first time that happened, my fist clutched in my mouth, my entire body pressed in the corner, I knew I would never sleep right again for the rest of my life). But I didn’t hate them. How could I hate them? It wasn’t like they hated me. If they didn’t mutilate me like that, she surely would’ve done worse to all of us. Besides, I was not even a member of the family in the way they all were. Even if you could consider us a functional family, I was born for a purpose, nothing more. That wasn’t their fault.
But still, I was born. Even if I didn’t have anything else, I had the right to survive. The moment my palms hit the wooden floor of the cell with a smack, I knew that at any cost, I had to escape. I had to survive. I wasn’t going to turn over and die. Somehow, I had to survive. There wasn’t much thought process beyond that. If, maybe, I had stopped to think for a moment, I would’ve realized there was no point in my survival. I would’ve thought of the consequences. But I didn’t think. I never thought. I just followed the primal instincts inside of myself, that told me to get out and never look back. That told me to just keep breathing because I hadn’t done anything wrong. I thought of nothing except escaping and surviving. I wanted to live.
Every day, I scratched and cut at that lattice cell, scrambling to the back of the wall with dead eyes when anybody walked past. Fear shook every cell of my body, my muscles barely able to scratch away. Yet, I kept scratching with that damn stolen hairpiece. Every time the sun set, I resigned myself to the fact that I would not see the next sunrise. They would find me. My family would find me, or she would come into my cell, and then it would really be over. Yet I was alive every morning. Until the rotted wood gave way. Until I vanished into the night. I blended into the shadows as though I was born to, and the eyes that had kept me alive for that many years continued to do their job. I made it out of the compound, fear and pain so familiar that they barely inhibited my actions. I was so used to being terrified that I disappeared without a hitch.
Of course, she found me. She was a god, after all, and I barely got farther than the woods around the compound on my stumbling legs before she hunted me down with all the fury and rage of something divinely evil. That was going to be it, really. All of my attempts to survive had been thwarted, by nobody other than the one who had locked me into twelve hellish years in between life and death. Then the flame Hashira cut her down, and when her blood landed on my legs I could just stare at it. It was the same color as mine. She had drank my blood right in front of me, devoured the flesh of dozens of my brothers before me, and my family had become so entwined with her that there was no difference between us and her. We shared the same blood, and it smoked and smelled and seeped, so what did that say about me?
Still, I didn’t reflect on it as the flame Hashira carried me away into the night, and I didn’t reflect on it as I was nursed to health in a place I don’t remember. I didn’t reflect as I was taught how to stand up the right way and I didn’t reflect on it as people wondered and mused and questioned why I didn’t talk, sleep, or eat barely at all. I was still a shadow out in the world, but I was alive, and that was all that mattered.
I didn’t think about it until the Hashira took me to see my only surviving family member- a female cousin, a few years older than me, with long dark hair. (After that night, she had somehow escaped, and was now living a quiet life in a sunny town). I didn’t think about it until she screamed upon seeing me that it was ‘all my fault.’
What, exactly, was all my fault? I didn’t ask - I just stared at her until she explained with fiery, vengeful eyes. That my entire family had died as punishment for me running away. That fifty people had been murdered because of me. That I was just meant to be a sacrifice, and if only I could’ve died like I was supposed to, stayed quiet and been eaten like I should’ve, then-
That was when I realized it. My place in the world. The second I began to feel fifty pairs of hands carving their rotten fingernails into my flesh, grabbing me and dragging me down, I realized what I was. (Just another piece of shit born to a piece of shit family). I had been too focused on wanting to survive to think about the consequences of my actions. Her words might have been too abusive and irrational to really focus on, but they struck a bitter chord within me nonetheless.
But then again, it isn’t like I regret doing what I did. I did what I could with what I had. I did what I had to do, and what I thought was best. If I had stayed, I would’ve been killed, and nothing would’ve changed - my family and that demon would’ve remained a curse on this world for eternity. I wouldn’t have been able to kill the demon myself at that age, with legs that could barely stand up straight and a mangled face. I don’t feel guilt or regret for what happened. It happened, and now I will pay for it. That’s fair. That’s life. That’s this world.
That moment did change things for me, though. I went from just surviving, just staying alive, taking one breath after another and acting to keep myself alive to the next morning, to having some sort of self-awareness. Was that awareness a seething resentment? Yes. But it was awareness nonetheless. Awareness that I would never be able to have a normal life. Awareness of the deep karma that I had brought upon myself.
So, I don’t resent my family. I brought this upon myself. I don’t necessarily regret my own actions either - my feelings regarding my past are too complex and overwhelmingly negative for ‘regret’ or ‘guilt.’ I will pay the price. And, at least, I’ll feel like a better person for doing this. However temporary.
“Hey, hey, Obanai-san!”
There is just one regret.
“Are you paying attention to me?”
A spot of pink and green just below my vision catches my attention, and, torn out of my own thoughts, I glance down, baffled.
“Mitsuri,” I mumble, staring down at her. “Where’d you come from? Sorry, what did you just say?” Last I had checked, I had been alone in a tree in the orchard outside of the Master’s mansion. The trees stretched around me in a lush, perfectly organized pattern, and outside of the fence rests the sleepy town too far away to hear. It seemed that I had blinked and she had appeared, standing below me at the base of the tree, calling my name. In one fluid motion, I slid off the branch and stood across from her, my feet landing on the soft grass with a thud.
“I said I just came by to drop these off,” she explains, her brow furrowing slightly. I glance down at her hands, where she’s holding a bamboo platter, covered by a cute pink fabric. “You were acting weird this morning, and then sitting out here all by yourself in this heat?” I can only blink at her again. The concern is strange. Why would she be worried? I can take care of myself, and she knows that, just as well as I know that she can take care of herself. Still, I can smell her flowery perfume from here, and it’s impossible to break eye contact with those eyes. There’s no arguing with Mitsuri. I lean forward and delicately lift the corner of the fabric up.
“Is it mochi?” I ask curiously. The pink powdered balls smell faintly of rice and cream, barely masked by the scent of the apples.
“Yep,” she declares proudly. “They turned out all right, I think. Well, I made them for you. Here.” She sort of thrusts them into my hands, clumsily, but I manage to catch them before the thing tumbles to the floor. Then she shoves her hands in the pockets of her kimono and blinks at me.
“Um. Thank you,” I mutter, and start to turn away, feeling my face start to heat up, but I feel a tug on my sleeve.
“Are- are you sure you don’t want to try them right now? We could sit down,” she suggests hastily, pointing at the mossy ground underneath our feet. I don’t really know what to say, but she seems insistent and if she went to all the trouble of coming out here I might as well. Without saying anything, I sit down, folding my legs underneath me and placing the box between us. She grins and sits down easily, her thick braids flopping lightly.
“Why did you make them?” I ask, against my better judgement. Her face screws up, red blooming across her cheeks. She blushes really easily, although if that’s because of something to do with her breathing or her pale skin, I don’t know. Maybe her blood. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Mitsuri’s blood is meant for blushing. Mine is. Not.
“I already told you!” She squeaks, her hands clasping at her chest. “You were acting weird this morning!”
“No, I wasn’t,” I reply, tilting my head in confusion. I really wasn’t. I had just had a bad night - that was all. That happened sometimes, and it certainly never got in the way of my work, so there was no way she picked up on it. (Sleeping is still hard, sometimes, because when you’re alone in a closed bedroom with the lights off, it can feel like very much like a cell with something lurking. That’s all).
“Yes, you definitely were,” she declares, waving a finger in my face. “Don’t you even try to lie to me, Obanai-san.”
“You know,” I say softly, resting my head on my arms on top of my knees, “you really don’t need the honorific. If it’s just the two of us.”
“You’re joking,” her eyes narrow, but it sounds more like a question than a statement. “You’re always tied up with protocol and honorifics and stuff.”
“Nah,” I mumble, still not breaking eye contact. Her eyes widen a fraction, like I’ve said something that shocks her. “I told you it’s fine. I don’t mind.”
“Ok,” she replies, her voice almost as soft as mine. Then, her face turns totally red and she buries her face in her hands. “Obanai~!” Is all I can make out of her muffled speech.
“Hm?” I really can’t help myself. “I can’t hear you.” I reach my hand out and tilt her chin up, out of her arms, so we’re looking at each other again. Her skin is soft against my fingertips- how can a demon slayer’s skin be so soft? How can her eyes be so impossibly wide and watery and overcome with emotion? How can the apple blossoms, the very last of this spring season, blow in the breeze and get stuck in her hair at such a perfect time? How can she look at me like that?
“O-ba-nai-” Her face is somehow even redder, her eyes blinking impossibly fast. Quickly, I withdraw my hand, and place it casually back into my lap.
“Anyway,” I mumble, breaking eye contact and looking in the other direction. I can feel her doing the same thing, and I resist the urge to sigh. A few long moments pass until we can look each other in the face again.
The truth is that I am totally, 100%, without a doubt in love with Mitsuri. I don’t even care how cliche it sounds, because nobody will ever know. She is everything. She’s insanely strong and powerful; I’m second from the bottom of the list of Hashira, only Shinobu below me. Mitsuri could overpower me and probably most of the Hashira in a heartbeat by physical strength. That, and she’s insanely talented as a slayer. She’s dedicated and unique. I’ve never met anybody else like her. Nobody else has that hair, or that power, or her personality. She’s super-feminine in every way and more badass than anyone I know. She’s fun to talk to in an unpredictable and never-boring way. She’s cute and pretty and beautiful in every way; her eyes are stunning, and the way she laughs even makes Kaburamaru blush. I just want to make her happy. That’s all she deserves - a happy ending to this story.
She might like me too, but that’s not why I haven’t told her. There’s only a future for us in another world. A world with no demons, where we’re free to live normal lives. In that world, I can sleep right and she was never made fun of for things she won’t tell me about. In that world, I’m hers and she’s mine. We make food together every day and hold hands. There wouldn’t be any bandages around my mouth. There wouldn’t be any contamination in my blood. We could live together in safety and peace. I know that, when we die, if we get reincarnated together in a world with no demons, then I will tell her I love her.
For sure, in the next life we share, I’ll tell her. But for now, at least, without me, she’ll have a chance of happiness. With me, there’s no shot. And she deserves happiness.
“You’re thinking again,” she interrupts my thoughts, peering over to stare at me with that slight concern again. I blink, trying to clear my head. “When are you going to tell me what you think about?”
“When you tell me about your past,” I counter simply, like I always do, but she doesn’t seem to find it funny.
“That’s not fair. I don’t have good leverage. I would tell you in a heartbeat if I honestly believed you would return the favor,” she mumbles, sticking out her bottom lip. I resist the urge to think how cute it is, if it wasn’t so sad. “Besides, it isn’t even that deep, just embarrassing.”
“Sorry, Mitsuri,” is all I can say, glancing away. I just don’t see the point in burdening her down with a sob story. Another long moment passes until she pokes me on the arm, bringing my attention back to her.
“We sat down. C’mon, have some mochi,” she insists, opening the box and shoving it forward. I blink down at it. Right. I was so enthusiastic to do what she said that I forgot that (I don’t eat around people).
Mitsuri and I cook sometimes. What a domestic thing to do. The other Hashiras don’t spend time with each other, and they certainly don’t spend mornings cooking together, especially when only one of them ever eats the food. And Mitsuri sure eats a lot, but she’s cute, so it’s ok.
“That’s ok,” I mumble, picking my fingernails, ignoring how her face falls like she’s used to it: not as much as it should. “I’ll have some later,” I lie.
“I won’t look,” she promises suddenly, glancing away with her hand clapped over her eyes and shoving the mochi haphazardly towards me.
“Huh?”
“The others think you wear the bandages because you think it looks cool,” she explains, peeking through her fingers at me. “They’re right, of course. It does make you look cool. But I think there is something more about it. Do you have a scar or something?”
She’s half right on the money, so I don’t respond.
She doesn’t need to see what my face looks like. Nobody does. Maybe it’s vanity. Maybe it’s secrecy. Either way, besides the flame Hashira, nobody has seen my face in over a decade. Besides, she might have a point. To put it simply, ever since I was a little kid, and my only purpose in life was to eat food to get bigger for sacrifice, I’ve had a - well, a complicated relationship with food that I don’t need to get into with her now.
“You would look cooler with it off,” she adds, “but it’s fine if you don’t want to. I just wish you would eat something I made for once. I know food is complicated for some people. So I won’t look.”
“Mitsuri.”
“Go ahead.” This time, she really has looked away. I glance down at the mochi, feeling guilt worm in my stomach. I ignore it.
“Mitsuri, you can look back. I’m not going to eat it either way.”
“Ok,” she mumbles, taking her hand off her eyes but only to stare at her feet in front of her, wiggling her toes in the dirt. “That’s fine.”
None of it is fine. None of this is fine. She deserves more. I wish I could give her more. I wish I could tell her. I wish she was mine. I wish I was her’s. I know there’s no point wishing such cruel, impossible, useless wishes, but just like I can’t help but try to survive, I can’t help but try to love. As long as I never act on it, we’ll be ok. We’ll both go our separate ways, and the boy who was meant to live and then die will never even have loved in the first place.