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“I like your earrings.”
Yoriichi doesn’t understand what he is looking at. They’re a human, clearly, because they stand before him like a human being. However, the insides of his body are burning up. Fire that manifest both as flames and liquid are coursing through his veins. The brightest piece of this person is in his chest. It’s white, and circular…like the sun.
“Are they handmade? They’re lovely.”
He looks up at the person’s face. Dark red eyes stare back down at him. Dark red hairs shine bright in the beautiful summer sun. The mark on his forehead, though, is what really catches his attention. He can’t help but to brush his hand over his marked forehead. “Just like me,” he whispers.
He whispers, because those are his first words.
The dark red person kneels down to make better eye contact. Liquid fire and bright red flames disappear from his vision, and suddenly, Yoriichi is met with a young man’s kind and gentle expression. “Yes, of course,” the other marked person says. “It’s a given. You’re my incarnation, after all.”
He blinks in confusion. “Your…in-car-na-tion…”
“Yes! Very good!” he cheers. His palms clap together in joy, and the grin that stretches across his face brings a lightness to the air never before felt. “Awh, your voice is so adorable! Hearing you speak after so long truly brings me joy, little one!”
Yoriichi simply doesn’t know what to say. This stranger appeared so suddenly. He had stepped outside from his small, distant shed to get some fresh air only a minute ago. He’d just wanted to see Michikatsu train. Why did this young man appear before him?
Hands grab his shoulders. They’re large compared to his wiry frame. It’s a soft touch, though. “Whatever your family might think of you, you shouldn’t listen. You are worth every breath of life nature has to offer,” he tells him. “You have my blessing, and my power. It’s yours for as long as you live, Yoriichi. You may do whatever you want with it.”
He stares, processing those words with no real idea on how to actually process it. He eventually decides that he doesn’t understand, and without trying, his shoulders slink with defeat.
A reassuring hand pats his head. A comforting thumb brushes over his birthmark. A soft, kind smile holds his gaze. The dark red person quite literally begins to glow. The ichimatsu patterned yukata he wears slowly turns into something that lacks a pattern. It’s a maroon red when the glowing stops. He pulls the new yukata off his body, revealing a plain, white kimono beneath, and then drapes it over Yoriichi’s shoulders. “Your understanding of my words will come with time,” he says. “For now, wear this yukata on cold nights, and pick up a sword. It will keep you warm and safe.”
Yoriichi grabs the hem of the yukata, which is far too large for his small stature right now, but he nods anyways. He likes this person—this person, who shares the strange birthmark and wine-like colorings, seems to like him too. “Okay,” he replies.
The dark red man chuckles lightly, and stands. “Off you go, now. Michikatsu is waiting for you.”
Yoriichi nods again, and then scampers away with the yukata still draped over his shoulders. He quickly realizes that he had never caught the stranger’s name. As a last second thought to try and learn it, he stops running and looks over his shoulder.
The stranger is gone, though.
Eleven thousand years of responsibility would kill a human’s spirit within the first few centuries.
Hinokami Tanjiro is lucky that he hadn’t been born human, even though he’d been born from a human. His first wail of life created a series of volcanic eruptions that still dot the continents today. His power is simply that immense, but it killed his mother, and that hurts far more than anything he sees later in his lifetime. Learning pain and suffering first had sent him down a path of destruction in the first handful of years that he lives, but his human father gets through to him with a slap to his face and a rather particular question that he holds onto for the duration of his life.
“What do you take life for, exactly?”
He’d never known back then, so he answered with silence, but…as time continues forward, and as his father dies of old age in the blink of an eye, he learns.
He can do many fire-related things—whether it be burning knowledge, burning the ocean, or burning half a continent, he can do it. He doesn’t, though.
Life is too beautiful to be consumed and charred, and that is exactly what he thinks he should take it for.
Tanjiro always used to cry when someone moves onto the afterlife, suffering a longwinded death of fire and charred flesh. He outgrows that habit in two short eons, though, because he eventually learns that his domain of power is not something he should feel guilty about. There is beauty in it, and it never fails him. In turn, he never fails his power.
That is…until a doctor concocts a medicine for a sick human. A desperate, sick human.
Deities are not known to mortals in ways that mortals are known to deities.
Hinokami Tanjiro watches people live their lives with vague interest, spending their daily routines with them in a form that they could never perceive. Animals always follow him when he’s doing such small things, because they have honed and primitive senses. He radiates warmth and safety that they can easily detect.
No animal follows him into this sick human’s home, though. Typically a stray cat or dog might circle around him and try to snuggle up to his legs, even though he’s untouchable, but not even the tweets of a morning birdsong are echoing into this minka.
“Ubuyashiki-sama, I have successfully created a medicine that will completely heal your body,” the generous doctor announces. He sounds so proud. “Your cure is here. Are you ready to take it?”
Tanjiro has been following this man for a few days by now. He’d been studying a blue spider lily that no other human seems to have heard of before, and when this sick man asked for help, he’d used the flower. He seems excited to use it, too, but Tanjiro knows better.
He knows better, but he doesn’t interfere.
It’s not like he can.
Directly, that is.
Still, it hurts a little to watch the desperate, sick man kill his doctor after the administrated medicine doesn’t work. Hinokami Tanjiro knows it works. The man, Ubuyashiki, does not know.
Moments of silence follow as blood pools beneath the doctor’s corpse. Drool spills from Ubuyashiki’s lips, his hand flexing with hunger and power. Something is different. Something is inhumane. Tanjiro, for the first time in eons, detects a cruel, new version of life.
He watches with a slightly fascinated grimace as Ubuyashiki eats the raw flesh of his first kill.
When nothing but clothes and blood remains, Ubuyashiki’s pink eyes drill holes into Hinokami Tanjiro’s face. “Who are you?” he asks warily. His voice is raw with pain and wet with the doctor’s blood.
He stares in amazement, tilting his head as he crouches down to meet Ubuyashiki’s groveling eye level. “You can see me?” he asks. He smiles despite the carnage that’s mere centimeters away from his toes. “Impressive. No one can see me.”
Ubuyashiki stares back. “What?”
“You’ve made quite a mess here,” Tanjiro goes on to say. He balances on the balls of his feet, and folds his arms over his knees. He already has a general understanding of this man’s reformed body. He’s something of a mutant now. “I sure do hope you didn’t ruin your own life with his murder, though. Quite rude to kill him because of your own impatience. He saved your life.”
“I was angry,” Ubuyashiki snaps. “I was hungry! I am still hungry…I need…I need more…”
“Don’t go killing innocent lives,” Tanjiro admonishes. “That would be treachery. You’ll burn in Hell for as long as it exists.”
“What do I care?” he screams. “I can feel power in my veins! They will mean nothing to me!”
Well, this perspective he has certainly makes sense. Why hold back when there’s overwhelming power in your nails alone? Tanjiro hums as he ponders his response, but Ubuyashiki charges at him with a roar of cocky effort. They don’t clash, though, and the soaked tatami mats slide out of place. Hinokami Tanjiro stands as he turns around to face Ubuyashiki again. The mutant tries to maul him again, swiping with pale blue claws, and to no avail does anything land.
“Why can’t I hit you!?” Ubuyashiki shouts.
Tanjiro sighs quietly as he slides his arms into his billowed sleeves. He feels like he should be frustrated, but a reason doesn’t come to mind.
So he walks away.
That ends up becoming one of the biggest mistakes of his long, long lifetime. He’s not omniscient, though. He learns that.
Kibutsuji Muzan grows into a monstrosity that knows no fear beyond the sun that rotates in the sky in a quick five centuries. Hinokami Tanjiro can fight against the mutants in that small way. Still yet, they eat scores of innocent humans under the veil of night, and the small community of evil mutants, that Muzan builds by sharing his blood, murders thrice as many as that in his stead.
All for the sake of superiority.
Tanjiro sticks around to…understand—to fathom the weight of his helplessness. Though to understand what beyond that, he hasn’t much of a clue, but it’s on this journey of observation and mourning that he gains a presence of sorts. The humans that suffer the most at the hands of Kibutsuji and his mutants pray to any deity that listens, placing their faith in him with thoughts and feelings alone. The encouragment that grows in his chest gives life to opportunity he never thought possible in the eleven and a half thousand years he lives.
A boy is born one day. He bares the unknown mark of Hinokami Tanjiro—a red, flame-like mark over his temple.
His name is Tsugikuni Yoriichi.
His mother, Tsugikuni Akeno, prays to the sun god for good luck and protection. She prays from the moment she understands spiritual lifestyles. With babes in her belly, her prayers strengthen to the point where Tanjiro feels like he could touch the three souls that reside within Akeno’s body. The day she succumbs to her illness is the day that all of those prayers stop.
Unfortunately, Amaterasu Omikami does not exist. Fortunately, Hinokami Tanjiro does exist.
There is nothing he can do when disaster strikes again and again, though.
Despite the despair and the pain that Yoriichi suffers in losing his minutes-old newborn and the love of his life, he blames no one but the mutant who did it.
Despite the knowledge that Hinokami Tanjiro is out there, an individual born with domain over all sorts of fires, Yoriichi still begins his battles and his unstable mornings with a prayer for good fortune and strength. He does not wish for protection.
Despite the lack of genuine contact and knowledge, Kamado Sumiyoshi still prays to Hinokami Tanjiro for well-behaved fires to properly burn charcoal, and for Yoriichi’s prosperity. Occasionally, one Rengoku Wakato sends a prayer for protection and a blessed blaze to cut down any and all mutants in his path.
Tanjiro does his best for all of them.
The very first offering that Hinokami Tanjiro ever receives are the hanafuda earrings Akeno had crafted for her youngest son.
It comes in a prayer; please accept my gift for granting fortune to my battles and safety to Kibutsuji’s victims. That prayer doesn’t sound out in the air, though. Tanjiro only hears it between his ears, and decides to finally show himself once again to the young marked man.
He crouches down in front of the burning incense and the offered hanafuda earrings, hugging his knees and balancing on the balls of his feet. He listens for a few seconds longer, waiting for Yoriichi’s moment of prayer to end, before he chirps, “Your earrings are lovely as ever.”
Yoriichi flinches and his eyes snap open. His guard is up. The Nichirin katana that rests by his leg is grabbed, but it barely lifts off the ground. He stares, eyes blown wide with shock. “Oh. You’re…the dark red person,” he says in bewilderment.
Tanjiro chuckles and grins. “Is that what you’ve been calling me?”
“Yes, I…never caught your name…” Yoriichi points out.
“I apologize. I suppose names are important, aren’t they?” Tanjiro ponders. Then, without ever saying his own name out loud, he looks down to the incense and the earrings. “Is that wisteria incense?”
“It is.”
“A good choice. I adore the smell.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
“You should be careful, though. Wisteria is poisonous to all things that consume,” he points out.
“Um…I will. Thank you.”
“Are you sure you’re willing to gift me these earrings?”
“I am.”
Tanjiro’s smile grows wider, though he feels sad knowing he’ll never be able to wear them. “They’re lovely. Your mother did a wonderful job. You should keep them, though. It will suit others far better than me.”
Yoriichi is stunned into a bout of silence.
He looks at the marked human, and mellows his expression when he notices the rivers of tears rolling down his face. As he tilts his head, the tears slip down Yoriichi’s jawline and drip onto the dark hakama he wears. “Did I make you sad?” he asks gingerly.
“A lot has happened since our first encounter,” Yoriichi mumbles. He wipes his face with the hem of his maroon red yukata, and sniffs. “I apologize for crying like this.”
Hinokami Tanjiro shakes his head. “You don’t deserve to apologize to me, you know,” he states. “Nothing that has happened was ever your fault.”
“I have to disagree there…” Yoriichi says. He sounds so sad. It breaks Tanjiro’s heart. “Michikatsu would have never been turned into a demon if I’d just…killed Muzan faster.”
“Michikatsu never would have chosen to become a demon if I hadn’t marked him,” he points out somberly. The smile on his face falls. He’d genuinely thought that the oldest Tsugikuni son would’ve grown in strength just shy of Yoriichi’s, but he had been wrong. His choice had been wrong. Many other slayers who have received marks could never even dream of matching the individual strengths of the Tsugikuni twins, though all of them have the potential to match Michikatsu’s threshold of decision-making. “I was wrong to give it to him. You suffered quite a bit because of it.”
“You…mark people?” Yoriichi asks.
Tanjiro cheerfully nods. “Why, yes I do!” he chirps. “I’ve only been able to do it because of the prayers you and your friends offer up. Your mother’s voice was the very first to reach me, though.”
“Prayers…” he echoes.
“Yes. Prayers.”
Yoriichi frowns again; it’s borne of confusion this time. “I…don’t understand. Why would a prayer to the sun god give you the ability to…mark people?”
“It’s simple,” he replies. “I am Hinokami Tanjiro. I am not human, nor am I a mutated human. My main domain is fire, but that includes the sun, the volcanoes, the blazing heatwaves, the hot Hellfires, and the powerful destruction that accompanies it all.” He points a single finger at the burning incense. “That little ember wouldn’t exist without me.”
“You’re a deity.”
“That’s putting it bluntly, but…yes. I am.”
“…You chose me.”
“I choose a lot of people,” Tanjiro points out with a quiet voice. Truthfully, though, he never chose Yoriichi. Poetically, and also more accurately, it could be said that Yoriichi chose him. In the end, whoever chose first doesn’t matter. They are both here in the present. He knows that he could use his two hands to list those who have been given the mark. He refuses to call it a gift. “You just so happened to be the first.”
Yoriichi stares, quiet as a mouse, and runs his hands over the sleeves of his maroon red yukata. He averts his gaze to stare at the burning wisteria incense and the hanafuda earrings. “I’ve never felt cold because of this yukata,” he whispers. “Uta never did, either. Not until…” He trails off for only a mere second before he goes on to meekly say, “Thank you, Hinokami Tanjiro.”
“The pain of life and the suffering of cold go hand-in-hand,” he says. Going by the newer expression on Yoriichi’s face it’s becoming apparent that his words seem too out of reach, if not wise. He moves on. “Have you gained an understanding of my words, Yoriichi? Time has passed.”
A mirthful smile stretches Yoriichi’s lips. “Time has passed, indeed,” he agrees. He sounds a bit more cheerful now. “But…yes. I believe my understanding of your words is adequate enough nowadays.”
Tanjiro couldn’t help but tap his fingertips together in a lighthearted celebration. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” he exclaims. “You really were an adorable kid. So small, though. It was a little concerning, but I’m happy to see that you’ve filled in your yukata!”
His ears run red, and he doesn’t respond. He’s too flustered.
“How are your friends?” Tanjiro moves on to ask. “The Kamado and Rengoku families, that is. You’re awfully close to one another. It’s wonderful. Really. That makes me happy. You should tell me about them.”
Yoriichi does. He isn’t very talkative, so his sentences are short and his words are simple.
Hinokami Tanjiro still absorbs every bit and piece served quite happily.
After that encounter, he makes it a point to show himself at least once every four seasons. The pattern is sporadic at best; some years he only shows himself once, while others he might show up thrice. One consistency, however, is that he never appears in the winter seasons.
But that never means that he leaves Yoriichi’s side. Demons, of which the mutants have been widely named, might see him on odd occasions. Sometimes, he touches their pained souls and wishes them well in the afterlife. He still makes sure that his Hellfires show no mercy. Yoriichi is acutely aware that he has an invisible companion of sorts, and at first his assumption is full of uncertainty. Regardless, he never asks when they see each other, and his daily prayers always end with endearing words.
I wish you the best prosperity that a deity is allowed to have.
Tanjiro can never stop himself from smiling when he hears that.
Old age takes Yoriichi’s eyes, but not his sight, the second to last time they interact. It’s autumn, so the maple leaves around them are brilliant assortments of yellow, orange, and red. Wisteria incense burns atop a smooth, oval rock.
Instead of sitting across from Yoriichi, Hinokami Tanjiro sits by his side. His other ear is too damaged by time and battle. “You can still see color, can’t you?” Tanjiro asks.
Yoriichi’s voice is so gruff and tired, now. The change is eerily similar to his long-dead father. “I can,” he croaks. He holds out a hand to reach for Tanjiro. “It’s a gorgeous, fiery blur. Just like you. Let us walk. I wish to enjoy the seasons with you one last time before I go.”
Tanjiro holds his tongue, ready to ask where Yoriichi is to go…but he already knows the answer.
They stroll in silence until Yoriichi chooses a specific spot by a lake. On the opposing side is a cliffside that leads up to the nearest mountain. Tanjiro stares up at it with Yoriichi’s arm hooked around his own. The dormant magma swirls peacefully beneath their feet, and the harmony of the blistering heat creates a natural hot spring that’s not too far off. The edge that they stand by is littered with muddy sludge and wet leaves, all colored dark brown or black with time and rot. Tanjiro takes a deep breath of air through his nose, giving rise to his chest as he absorbs the freshness nature has to offer.
“Is the water still as clear as ever?” Yoriichi asks.
“It is!” Tanjiro chirps. “It is just a wonderful view. The day is really clear down here and all the way up the mountain, so you can see it for as far as the eye can see.”
Yoriichi chuckles. It’s husky on his throat. “Your eye can see far too much.”
“Very true, indeed.” He still smiles despite his next words. “This will be our last meeting as we are. I’d reckon things will change dramatically these next few centuries.”
“Hinokami…” he drawls. “May I ask why you chose me?”
It’s a little surprising that the question comes to light now of all times, but Tanjiro answers it with honesty. “I didn’t,” he replies.
Yoriichi turns his face towards him, tired, blind eyes lingering on his chest. “Is that so…?”
“It is so,” Tanjiro reiterates. “I have seen many souls come and go. Countless reincarnation cycles, too. The way life works like that is just shy of miracles. It certainly doesn’t do your past lives justice, but I imagine your old soul was someone who knew me…once upon a time. Despite the fact that I’ve walked this world for as long as it takes for hundreds of stable civilizations to live and die, I know I could count on one hand the amount of people that know me.”
There’s an unmistakeable stretch of silence between them. Then, he says, “Who do you think it is?”
Tanjiro doesn’t spare a beat to tell him. “My father.”
“Was your father a deity as well?”
“Oh, no…I was born to two normal humans.”
“Goodness. Is that even possible?”
“I have yet to see it happen again, you know, but it happened to me.” It happened to his parents, too. They’re the only two humans he knows he’ll never stop missing, even though he’d only been able to know one of them for mere minutes.
“Do I remind you of your father?” Yoriichi inquires.
“Not at all.”
“Then…?”
“You asked Muzan the same question that he asked me. Word for word and all. I was an angry kid with too much power, and the question he’d asked when he finally caught up with me had been; what do you take life for, exactly? I didn’t know my answer until long after he passed away.”
Yoriichi hums. It’s thoughtful, but he doesn’t push the conversation forward.
Tanjiro doesn’t, either.
He also doesn’t leave Yoriichi’s side. He remains visible and apparent until the crescent moons slice him in half moments after he passes of old age and sorrow.
Tanjiro crouches next to Yoriichi’s head, which now grows cold with the night air and death, and gently places a hand over the flame-like birthmark that remains strong on his temple. A part of his chest is boiling over with familiar rage, but he’s angry for everyone else who has suffered because of Muzan…and behind that anger is self-loathe. He can’t be a bystander anymore, even though he is incapable of interfering directly.
Yes, he can be seen. Yes, he can don the powerless with a meaningless fraction of his own intagible strength. Yes, he can manipulate his surroundings in accordance to his domain. Yes, he can tell the sun to burn evil things.
His abilities to do so are limited no matter how hard he tries. He’s not omnipotent like that. His threshold is resentfully small. A catalyst is always needed. That catalyst is always a human.
The pain that his power brings is not a light burden, and the pain that he feels beneath his fingers is at its highest as he stops and thinks. The maroon red yukata is glowing again, just as it did nearly a century ago. It returns to Tanjiro as a black and turquoise ichimatsu pattern.
Warmth coats his whole body.
“Hinokami,” a small child’s voice says.
When he looks up to meet the sound of a youth, he’s met with a familiar face. “Yoriichi,” he greets. A bright, happy grin breaks his solemn expression. “Heading off, now?”
Those dark red eyes of Yoriichi’s are so expressive. They lack the burden of life, but they’re still so sad. “I guess,” he murmurs. “But I’d like to stay here with you.”
“You don’t need to,” Tanjiro insists. “I will be okay on my own.”
Yoriichi frowns. “Is it not lonely like this?”
Tanjiro merely continues to beam, and puts his cheek in the palm of his hand. His elbow rests on his thigh, and he balances on the balls of his feet. “I am as close to eternal as something can get,” he points out. “I’m not allowed to feel lonely.”
He can feel Michikatsu’s six eyes glued to his back, but he opts to continuously ignore it. That bastard doesn’t deserve to be acknowledged. Yoriichi is staring down at him though; it’s the only thing he decides to focus on. The little soul looks sad as he says, “I’m sorry.”
“Your apology falls on deaf ears,” Tanjiro states. “I cherished the time we shared, and I won’t forget any of it for as long as I exist. Your family is waiting for you, Yoriichi. Don’t make them wait any longer.”
“Oh…oh-kay…okay. I’ll be off, now,” Yoriichi hesitantly replies. He raises a hand, preparing to give a small wave of farewell; he stares for one long second before he suddenly dives over his own corpse. His small arms embrace Tanjiro’s head, and he begins to cry.
He cries like a child. Hiccups, snivels, sobs, and thick tears roll into Tanjiro’s crown of dark red hair. Tanjiro himself isn’t one to cry, so he just holds this little soul with gentle hands. He does feel…sad.
Yoriichi never got to cry like a child because of him.
No, no…no, God, please…don’t take them from me. Please don’t take them from me like this.
The voice is incredibly heartbroken, so he goes to the person almost immediately. He’s heard plenty of desperate pleas before, but this one holds so much promise and anger. For whatever it’s worth, he is reminded of himself. The world is cruel. He is crueler.
Many might disagree, though.
Hinokami Tanjiro appears before a black-haired man grieving over a woman whose kimono collar is stained by her own blood. She is extremely young, no older than two decades, and neither is the man who holds her. The image is a familiar sight. The sight of someone clinging so desperately to what they’ve already lost, that is.
He crouches down next to the young woman, and places a hand on her shoulder. She’s not cold quite like a corpse. Not yet, at least. Her soul hasn’t budged, though. It sticks around, refusing the cycle of peace and rebirth, and desperately clings to the shoulders of this grieving man. Tanjiro knows that sticking around is…no, he can’t call it bad. He’s left countless scenes burning, empty, charred, smoky, and more often than naught he always returns with no intentions of staying. The same goes for moments of life, just like this. Muzan is another shining example.
And, if he thinks more on it, leaving Yoriichi and Michikatsu to their own devices is, too.
“Get your fucking hand off of her.”
Tanjiro does. He doesn’t smile when he looks to the grieving man. “I apologize for intruding,” he says. “I heard you. You’re in a lot of pain.”
The man glares with watery blue eyes. They’re framed by pink lashes. “Of course I am,” he gruffly snaps. His voice breaks as he speaks. “My fiancée is fucking dead.”
“What will you do now?” Tanjiro asks.
Tears fall faster, but there’s conviction in those icy eyes. “I’m killing the bastards who poisoned our well,” he seethes. “They don’t…they don’t deserve to live…”
That makes Tanjiro hum thoughtfully. “They poisoned your water,” he states. “What for?”
“This chunk of stupid land,” he mutters. “This dojo. They want it. They’ve always wanted it.”
Killing for land will always be something that Tanjiro could partially understand. It’s always a case-by-case situation—who is willing and able to share, who will take from who, how much will be taken, how sustainable is the sharing, how can it stay fair for current or future generations…his list can go on and on. Killing for it is despicable, though. Countless wars have been fought, countless lives have been lost, and every time a mass grave or battlefield comes to be needed, Hinokami Tanjiro’s fire always turns it to ash for the next pile.
“Will you stop me?” the man asks. “I’ll kill you if you try.”
Tanjiro shakes his head, and that seems to take him by surprise. “No,” he replies. “I have been in your place before, though—in my earlier years, I mean. My rage was very destructive.”
“Did you get your revenge?”
“I can’t get revenge on childbirth.”
“…Oh.”
Then, Tanjiro smiles. He places a hand on the woman’s forehead this time, thumbing the hairpin, and blesses comforting warmth for her lingering soul. “What’s your name?” he inquires.
Koyuki, she whispers sadly.
“Hakuji,” he answers hesitantly.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Tanjiro says to both of them. “Hakuji, when you’re done killing those who poison the well, you should come back here and find me.”
Hakuji glowers, tear-stained and disgruntled. “Why should I?”
“Life is a treacherous beast,” Tanjiro points out. “Do you really want to go about it alone?”
“I have absolutely no intentions of doing that,” Hakuji shoots back. He sounds as sad and angered as he looks. The emotional weight on his shoulders sag his posture, and he sets Koyuki’s corpse down very gently. “There is nothing left for me in this life.”
“You’ll get it all back in another life,” Tanjiro sagely says, “for as long as you don’t go to Hell.”
“Don’t bullshit me like that.”
“I know nothing about you, but I know everything about the cycles of life,” Tanjiro continues. Hakuji watches him scornfully, but he is too defeated to argue. He ends up listening anyways. “Someone who unreasonably murdered another thousands of years ago still burns in my Hellfires to this day. You’re not destined for that. Not yet.”
Hakuji looks down to Koyuki. “You’re trying to stop me now.”
“Do whatever it is you wish to do,” he states. “I won’t stop you. I am simply extending my hand, my warning, and my wisdom to you. Come back here if you wish, stay away if not. Respectfully mourn your loved ones, or run off to murder those who killed your family. They are your choices to make, and if you just so happen to make the right one, I will be there to make it easier.”
He fibs. He does not make things easier for anyone, but his gut feeling tells him to lie to this man right now.
Hakuji’s wince is painfully noticeable, but he stays quiet. When he looks up next, Hinokami Tanjiro is gone from sight. When the night ends, and the sun rises, and the murderers are murdered, Hinokami Tanjiro remains alone in the dojo that smells like poison and death.
Hakuji never comes back.
Rengoku Taijuno is a religious man.
He prays everyday much like Yoriichi had done.
Hinokami, please allow my grandchild the privilege to be a strong and prosperous man.
Hinokami Tanjiro visits the man for the first time ever after he hears that prayer. He doesn’t use an impartial approach when he answers these prayers; each case is different day in, day out. Just yesterday he was blessing Meiji’s water hashira with morale to expertly prevent the murder of a newborn.
Witnessing the birth of Meiji’s flame hashira’s grandchild is a fitting follow up, isn’t it?
The woman who gives birth is a pretty brunette. Her eyes are similar to Tanjiro’s in the fact that they’re red, but his eyes are significantly darker shades. Her pained efforts are piercing the air, and he sits on his knees beside her head in consolation. He places gentle fingertips on her shoulder; she leans into the touch for a split second before one final yell melts into the fresh wails of a baby.
Tanjiro looks up from the breathless, red-eyed woman and towards the midwife that celebrates the terribly loud bundle of joy. There’s so much life in those lungs. A lump forms in his throat as the midwife cheerfully announces, “It’s a boy!”
“It’s a boy!” Taijuno exclaims. It’s the most explosive reaction in the room despite the fact that he’s the grandfather. Still, he grabs his bewildered son’s shoulders, and shouts his joys. “Oh, Shinjuro! Shinjuro! Did you hear that? It’s a boy! It’s a boy!”
His son, Shinjuro, is crying too hard with happiness and relief to actually respond.
Tanjiro stares in awe. He can recall every detail of his own birth without any faults or errors. The tears that his own father shed were nothing alike to what Shinjuro shows. He’s witnessed life on separate occasions, so this is no different of an experience…or it should be, at least.
He isn’t one to cry.
So, he simply watches as the new mother snuggles up to her newborn son. Her tears and her smiles are so bright, exhausted yet humble. Tanjiro leans in a little, and brushes a finger over the wailing child’s cheek in hopes of providing a sense of welcome. He immediately retracts his hand when a red flame-like birthmark grows. In a diagonal line, from jaw to cheekbone, it appears like a bruise at first. Then, it darkens.
The sight makes him grimace. Did he just…accidentally gave this little one a slayer mark?
No, no…
He doesn’t do things on accident.
“Oh, wow!” the midwife remarks not even a few seconds later. “Look at his birthmark, Ruka-san, Shinjuro-san. It’s so bold!”
The explosive reactions grow tenfold. The newborn’s wailing never stops. Later that night, they celebrate the birth of their son, and the birth of a chosen sun-wielder.
Tanjiro does not celebrate with them.
He does stick around, though.
It takes three days for the newborn’s parents to choose a name. In that time, Hinokami Tanjiro answers another mother’s prayer to heal her son’s fever. He does, though the young boy had gone too long with it and lost his eyesight as a result. There is nothing he could do about that, but he makes sure to leave a blessing of protection against heat and fire in his stead when he departs for the Rengoku’s home.
The morning sun is so bright. It’s all he can think as he stands in the middle of their backyard, face tilted up to the sky to absorb the beams with fervor.
Earth is not quite tilted enough for the summer warmth to settle in. There’s spring chills in the air, but the sensation is welcomed on his intangible skin. There are clouds in the sky, too. Tanjiro can smell the rain that will come this evening.
“Are you sure you’re well enough to be walking around right now?” a man frets. “The birth was so taxing on your body—and you’re still not fully recovered—“
Tanjiro smiles lightly as he hears Shinjuro pester his dearly beloved wife, Ruka. Taijuno is lounging around further inside the home, smoking up a tobacco storm that can be smelt from the next home, and Ruka wobbles along the engawa with her newborn in her arms. Her gait struggles, and her face is slightly pinched with postpartum recovery pains.
From a distance, it’s easy to measure just how taxing a birth is on a mother. It’s saddening to bear witness to—Tanjiro’s mother never got to hold her newborn baby, and she never got to struggle with every footstep in her journey for recovery. Twelve thousand years and hundreds of thousands of mothers passing as naturally as the sun cycles has never dulled that pained loss.
“Help me sit,” Ruka says. “I just want to enjoy the sun with Kyojuro for the morning.”
Shinjuro doesn’t stop his fretting, looking as nervous as any new parent would as he helps. He sits next to his wife, leaning over her shoulder just to close whatever distance could exist. They’re both smiling and doting on their baby.
Tanjiro sits on the engawa next to Ruka, solemn and silent. He tucks his arms into the billows of his ichimatsu sleeves, and crosses his ankles. He doesn’t smile with them—and it all has to do with the mark. It’d been a genuine mistake. That’s what he tells himself.
“Our little sun breather…”
Their doting stings. It stings so, so much—to the point of where it suffocates his heart and chokes him up.
Tanjiro leaves; he doesn’t spare a moment for farewell, and he doesn’t return.
Not even when Taijuno prays for a blessing to his family’s future health.
God…God, please, please…don’t take my best friend from me…please, please…
The prayer is incoherent at best, and it doesn’t address him directly, but Hinokami Tanjiro hears it.
A boy who couldn’t be older than fourteen fights and kills almost every single demon in the wisteria mountain. Tanjiro watches it play out from a bird’s eye view…and he’s a little impressed. They are children, yet they fight so hard.
He still can’t help but feel at fault for it all.
When the black-haired boy passes out from his wounds, whispering his begging prayers into his own pool of blood, Tanjiro joins the fray. Two demons fight a peach-haired boy—the best friend that the unconscious one speaks of—who hops like a rabbit from tree trunk to tree trunk with significant speed for his age. By the time his feet hit a tree for a third time, both heads slide off the respective demons’ necks. They’re nothing but ash when those sandals hit dirt.
“Giyuu!”
“Mn…”
“Stay with me! I’ll get…I’ll get help! I’ll…I’ll…”
Tanjiro decides to appear before them. It’s harmless. So, he steps up to the peach-haired boy’s side, crouching down and balancing on the balls of his feet. “Are you alright?” he asks lightly.
The boy winces, and grabs the hilt of his Nichirin katana as a reflex. He relaxes a little when he notices that Tanjiro is not a demon, but he does stare with intensity that only hardship could ever bring. “I’m fine,” he snaps. “He’s bleeding out.”
“Do you know how to help him?” Tanjiro inquires. “No one else is around. All but one demon remains on this mountain. Good work, by the way—“
“Don’t praise me!” he shouts. “Don’t do that! I can’t be praised when my friend’s about to die!”
Tanjiro hums dismissively. “Ohh, that’s true,” he assents. The glare he receives is mixed with anger and confusion. “Use your haori to apply pressure to his wound. Tie it tight around his head.”
“What?”
“Your friend is dying. You’re his last hope. Keep up.”
The peach-haired boy immediately sets his katana down, and peels the white haori off his shoulders.
“Support his neck when you lift his head. Be careful not to shake him. Good, good! Just like that. Tie it as snug as an obi, but make sure your fingers are unable to slip through. Oh—hold on. That is right over the wound. It should be off to the side, right next to it. The pressure of the tied up cloth will do more harm than good. Just like that. Don’t knot it. Wrap it again, tuck any excess away in the folds. Keep it snug.”
He works under Tanjiro’s instruction with sharp focus, trusting the guidance with little regard for whether or not he’s a stranger. Giyuu’s hair is almost completely covered when the haori is used. A splotch of blood leaks through, but it’s slow and small. “He’s…still bleeding…” he drawls nervously.
“It will stop on its own for as long as you keep his head wrapped,” Tanjiro reassures him. He stares down at Giyuu. “It’s a very open wound. He took a hard hit. I reckon it’ll scar.”
“He’ll be okay, though.” Those words sound more like he’s trying to convince himself than anything else.
Tanjiro smiles. “What’s your name?”
The peach-haired boy sends another nervous glance, one that scans Tanjiro’s whole body for a brief second before he answers, “Sabito. You?”
“Tanjiro.”
“Where’s your katana?” Sabito asks. “It’s dangerous out here without one.”
“Ohh…I don’t know. I lost it some time ago,” Tanjiro wistfully fibs. He isn’t sure if he refers to Yoriichi’s passing, or if he refers to his inability to directly interfere. “I won’t need it, though. You’ll have to head off to the wisteria with your friend soon, so this is where we part ways.”
Sabito scowls. “Don’t be so cocky. You said there’s still one more demon, right? It’ll kill you if you can’t defend yourself.”
“Focus on saving him,” he states as he points a finger at Giyuu, who comes and goes from unconsciousness. “He needs you. He’ll continue to need you after this.”
Those words stop Sabito from replying right away. He stares down at Giyuu, pondering what that could mean because he’s certain that there’s layers to dissect here. When he looks back up to face Tanjiro again, he is no longer perceivable.
Hinokami Tanjiro stands as if he never truly left. His jovial expression drops. The death in the air stings his nose and hurts his heart. He wants to interfere—to do something, anything, about the carnage demons cause…but that would mean another person would have to suffer, wouldn’t it? His thoughts return to the Rengoku’s, and their marked firstborn son that is just around thirteen-years-old now.
So many suffer regardless of what he does or who he chooses, but if Tanjiro can help it, he would much rather not be the cause.
Who is to say that he’s not the cause for all of…this, though? He had the opportunity to at least influence Muzan a thousand years ago, but he had simply walked away. That has to be despicable, right? He couldn’t be any better than a demon.
Hinokami Tanjiro…please, bless my husband with good health, and protection…against those that wish us harm…
His name is called. That’s new.
…please bless the souls lost to the man-eating bear that plagues our forest…that family does not deserve despair, yet they suffer, and I can only pray that your fire burns away the pains in their hearts…
The prayer is answered.
Well, there’s nothing to answer. Tanjiro appears before the praying woman regardless of what she asks for, which borderlines impossible in some ways, and feels an ache bloom in his chest. She’s a pregnant woman—many months along and still going—with dainty hands that are calloused by hard work. She wears an ichimatsu kimono. A beauty mark dots her chin. Her eyelashes are long, and the way her lengthy, straight hair drops over her shoulders is reminiscent of a person Tanjiro never thought he’d see again.
It’s his mother.
Well, it’s not his mother. She is dead, but this is her face. He knows her face—it’d been the first thing he caught clear sight of in his long, long lifetime. A reincarnation, then.
How strange. His mother is the only person who has yet to go through any sort of rebirth. So why now?
Her hands are clasped together for prayer. Her head is lowered. She sits on her knees with a zabuton beneath her. Even from where Tanjiro stands mere meters away, he can tell that the weight of her own child is pushing down on her body in uncomfortable ways. He walks up to her, holding out a hand to provide some sort of warmth and comfort, but fear stops him.
What if he marks her unborn child? What if the unborn child suffers in its life in all the same ways that Yoriichi had, that Kyojuro will, just because he’d marked it by simply touching this woman?
For the first time in eons, Tanjiro is scared. Scared of himself, scared of what this world has to offer for the unborn, scared of what the flame mark could mean for any human.
His reincarnated mother groans as she begins to get up. She pushes down hard on the floor, joints popping with effort, and takes a deep breath when her feet are properly planted. She rests a hand over the cusp of her belly, and smiles down at the burning incense. It smells of wisteria and lemon. “Thank you for all you do, Hinokami Tanjiro,” she murmurs to her little shrine. Then, she bows her head one last time, and wobbles further into her home.
A man’s voice wafts into the room where Tanjiro stands as still as a statue, soft and gentle, as his reincarnated mother greets him. The man sounds as familiar as his mother’s reincarnated face.
Tanjiro retreats. He disappears from the little forest home, and he never returns.
The Rengoku family prays to him quite often these days. Shinjuro and Ruka had picked up Taijuno’s slack when he’d inevitably died of elderly sickness, and more recently, their son has joined in sending a whisper of a prayer every now and then. A second son, one far too young to be weaned from a mother’s love just yet, has recently joined their little family.
He visits them. Never once has he bothered to step foot in their vicinity, avoiding Rengoku Kyojuro like the plague out of fear of tragedy that follows the mark. It had been night when he helped Sabito and Giyuu; it had been twilight when he discovered his reincarnated mother; it is now morning. The sunshine outside is bright, albeit scarce because of rain clouds, and the early spring winds disturb a little wind chime that hangs outside of Ruka’s bedroom.
A bedroom that which smells heavily of disinfectant, medicine, and feverish sickness. Shinjuro is nowhere to be found, likely out on a mission as a demon slayer, and the newest addition to their family sleeps peacefully at the foot of Ruka’s futon. By all means, he isn’t small, but little Renogku Senjuro is just a young child. Kyojuro is helping his mother with her medicines, careful with his touch and in maintaining a lukewarm temperature for her water.
Tanjiro watches from beyond the engawa in silence. Kyojuro’s mark has grown significantly since his birth. Now, it extends down to his jawline, and over his eyelid. His hands are rough and tough from handling countless bokken and katana, and his physique is refined so acutely for battle. An expression similar to Yoriichi is plastered over his face. It’s not quite conserved and aloof, but it is knowing and tranquil. Peace blazes in those red and yellow eyes.
Vivid memories of past conversations return for a brief moment. The transparent world is a state that any marked person can access; bodies are see-through, and everything is perceived in slow motion. It’s how Yoriichi knew of Muzan’s organic build, how he understood and then created the Breathing techniques, and how he could move so fluently as he did in his final geriatric moments. To put it simply, it’s very difficult to combat such an ability in any given situation.
In that same conversation, Tanjiro confirmed that his physical body is some type of organic. He’s never truly known nor understood his own self like that, so some outside perspective had been nice.
“Kyojuro,” Ruka says, almost suddenly. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
“It’s the least I can do for you, Mother,” Kyojuro states. He settles down at the side of her futon as she speaks. “Do you want some food? I can cook something for you if you’re hungry.”
Ruka doesn’t answer his question. Instead, she puts her arms out invitingly. “Come here.”
He does.
She wraps her arms around him in a hug, tight and loving, and she whispers words into his crown that only he hears.
Tanjiro is reeling. A sick, loving mother, and a son with a mark—that is a terrible echo of the past he can’t shake off, and his fear returns. It’s a new feeling, and he doesn’t know how to handle it, so he festers with it. Yoriichi deserved so much more than what he’d been given in life. Kyojuro deserves the same.
From a distance, the scene is a heartfelt moment.
The more he stares, though, the quicker he comes to realize that Kyojuro is crying tears of grief.
“I know,” Kyojuro is replying to her whispered words. His voice quavers and his shoulders shake. His breathing is wet and it skips with every inhale. “I know.”
Ruka says nothing. She runs her fingers through his brilliant golden hair to whatever pains plague her son, and she, too, cries.
Tanjiro steps into the bedroom. He keeps his prying eyes off the family, but not off the medicine. There is a note beneath the instructions of how to take the medicine. It reads, Final Dose. My sincerest apologies for not being able to do more for you.
Please, protect my family from illness. Bless them with good, healthy bodies.
Yet again, another outcome he might have been able to change if he hadn’t just…walked away.
Hinokami, please…
It’s Kyojuro’s voice this time. Hinokami Tanjiro looks to the crying boy, and grimaces at the intense sadness on his face.
Please…let my mother’s passing be gentle.
Hinokami Tanjiro visits the reincarnation of his mother when Ruka passes away in the first year of the Taisho Era.
He does not find life, though. There are five graves and a deserted home.
His shrine inside the home is shredded by sharp claws. Blood spurts are soaked into the tatami mats, and the wood is forever colored a void of red. The stench of death hangs in the air, swinging back and forth from old and new depending on where he stands, and for the first time in twelve eons, Hinokami Tanjiro seethes with unbridled rage.
He knows the mark of slaughter—of a demon’s work. He doesn’t know which demon, but he also knows that that doesn’t matter. Kibutsuji Muzan is at fault. He has always been at fault. He hasn’t seen the monster in just around a thousand years—not since his newborn days, when all he’d known was crazed hunger and desperate survival. Tanjiro never bothered to visit him, knowing all too well just how useless and angering it would be to do so, but he craves for revenge now. He will visit.
His mother is dead. Again. Her life has been cut short, again, and while he hadn’t been at fault so directly this time, he overlooked Muzan. She would be alive and thriving in this day and age as a reincarnation if Tanjiro hadn’t walked away.
So, he leaves the home as it is, and reappears in another. It’s human, made from brick and stone and wood. The moment his feet touch the wooden floors, all of it combusts into shredded architecture and bright yellow flames. Splinters and rubble are flung everywhere into the street. Guttural screams rip through the air, and the explosion’s shockwave silences everything for only a split moment.
It’s a split moment which exposes a black-haired, human-shaped monster. Tanjiro knows that his face is calm, knows that the flames wrap around him like a tornado, so at first sight he just looks like a burning person. That is exactly what Kibutsuji Muzan mistakes him for, merely casting a dismissive gaze over the disaster only once before turning to walk away. Tanjiro is in his face in a literal instant, never using his feet to step forward. Pink demonic eyes are set ablaze with shock, but not fear, and that is so…aggravating.
“You…” Muzan drawls in surprise and recognition. “You appeared before me a thousand years ago.”
Tanjiro reaches out in silence. He wants to touch Muzan’s skin, to burn this evil to nothing but ash and send it to the deepest levels of hell. But, as usual, his intangible hand sinks into the body. So much for organic, right? This is torture. “You killed a family,” he states.
“I have killed hundreds of families,” Muzan confirms. “So what? What is to you? Surely you don’t care about some mosquitos, considering just how old I think you are.”
It is a moonless night right now. Tanjiro can’t mimic the sun with his flames under the veil of a pure night, so whatever licks at Muzan right now heals almost as immediately as it’s made. “You killed my mother.”
“Your mother died a swift death, then.”
Tanjiro says nothing to that. He just wishes to burn everything around him.
Muzan is beginning to realize what is in front of him. Slowly yet surely. “You made these flames happen,” he says, “even though you are not a demon. You’re not human, either. Who are you?”
“I am Hinokami Tanjiro,” he answers, cold and angered. He doesn’t know where this conversation could be going. Lacking specific knowledge of Muzan’s activities is really doing him in at this point. Whatever is in store, whatever comes next, will be dictated by this interaction.
“Hinokami…” Muzan echoes. The bewilderment in his face melts into something scornful. Something angry. “That marked sun breather uttered a prayer to a god before striking me down, asking for a blessing of good fortune. He did not receive it. Were you that god he prayed to?”
Tanjiro stares.
“That god that failed to bless him with good fortune?” Muzan continues. He sneers, and through his sneer he laughs. His voice drips with hatred, his words are filled to the brim with mockery. He patronizes with minimal effort. “Your flames don’t reach me. His flames did, though. Are you so weak that you can’t even accomplish what a human could?”
Power is not his concern. Capability is. Tanjiro reaches out again, fingers mystically sinking through Muzan’s cheek. Nothing comes of it. Those pink demonic eyes narrow with thoughts and plots, though. “You’re a walking curse,” Tanjiro tells him. “The moment you bit into that doctor’s corpse was the same moment that you could never walk beneath the sunlight. I may not be able to bless those who ask for good fortune, but I most certainly can curse any sort of evil like you to be burned by the sun for an eternity.”
Those words make Muzan go quiet.
Tanjiro steps away.
“Tanjiro!” his father yells. “What do you take life for, exactly?”
Roaring disasters and poisonous smokes twirl around this volcano. Neither man nor child move away from it.
Hinokami Tanjiro picks up lava that rushes all around him in the palm of his hands, tiny and free of any burns, and turns to his father. He doesn’t know how to answer such an abstract question, not even knowing where to begin in understanding what life even is, so he just glares. The handful of lava drips between his fingers like thick water.
His father still approaches him. Fearlessly, or perhaps stupidly, he slaps his son. “Stop this madness!” he shouts. “You’ll kill everyone! The whole world! The very same world that your mother loved, and will continue to love from beyond the grave!”
Humans crying and sobbing ebb in and out of his ears. His fire is still blazing strong, so he doesn’t catch every little noise, but he understands that their despair is his fault. His fault. Again. He’d been angry and inconsiderate of their life. There is so much suffering. There is nothing to be done to stop it.
What does he take life for, exactly?
He takes it for cruelty.
An odd handful of years pass after Hinokami Tanjiro encounters Muzan. He’d resorted to simply answering prayers to calm down. It works, but the calm only blankets him. It does nothing to dwindle his boiling rage.
He comes across Sabito, Giyuu, and Kyojuro in one day, and that’s when all things fueling his fear explodes in his own face.
All three of them are hashira nowadays, considered to be pillars of hope and power within the Demon Slayer Corps. They’re all well-versed with their own swordsmanships. Sabito and Giyuu are both water breathers, and Kyojuro is…complex. He calls it Fire Breathing, but not Sun Breathing. Tanjiro knows that he can see all things with the transparent world that accompanies most marks. His style is almost exactly like Sun Breathing, but it’s not called that.
He’s known that Yoriichi’s prowess could never be matched, so all breathing styles are derived and modified to better fit individual swordsmen. Kyojuro is closer to Yoriichi more than anything else alive right now. Not even Michikatsu, who still remains a demon to this day, is similar enough.
He’s also known that all who could use Sun Breathing, who bore the mark and accessed the transparent world, were hunted down and slaughtered by Muzan himself. When he hears Kyojuro’s title as the Fire Hashira, and not the Sun Hashira, and when he thinks more on it, he believes it to be a good thing that there’s a misleading veil around this Rengoku.
Kyojuro meets with his fellow hashira on this bright summer day, as a congregation of sorts, and they discuss things. Sabito is twenty-two, Giyuu is twenty-one, and Kyojuro is twenty. They all prosper in equal standing as friends, even though Ruka has been dead for three years. Tanjiro doesn’t intrude on the meeting, simply because he holds no interest in it. He does follow the trio around when, instead of trekking to their respective homes, they head for the local town’s marketplace.
“Barbecue sounds like a good lunch!” Sabito is exclaiming when they’re finally in earshot.
Tanjiro trails after them. None of them can notice.
“It does,” Kyojuro agrees. “Any ideas on restaurants?”
“Uh…no.”
“I know one,” Giyuu mentions. “It’s small, but good.”
Whether or not they decide to go there is never said out loud. They go, unanimously, and they sit outdoors since it’s late enough in the day. Tanjiro pulls the summer heat from the area anyways. The shadows cool down, and each of them enjoy their meals without breaking a sweat.
One odd habit that Kyojuro has formed, and that Tanjiro had no idea of, is his meal yelling. He’s sat on the bench next to Kyojuro, invisible to the normal eye when suddenly—“Delicious!”
If Tanjiro weren’t intangible, his knees would’ve have bumped the under table because he flinches so hard.
“Right?” Sabito agrees just as loudly. His cheeks are full of food. Some sauce spills from the corners of his mouth, too. So messy.
Kyojuro’s face is entirely clean, even though he eats fast as he breathes. “Delicious!”
Tanjiro smiles slightly. Despite the flame-like birthmark—which now runs from the side of his neck to right above his brow—he doesn’t suffer. That’s good. The relief at that thought is a bit alarming, though. He feels naive for focusing so much on the burden of a living thing, because suffering is natural. It’s a part of survival. It’s the cost of survival.
“There’s also a dessert shop I’d like to take you both to after this,” Giyuu says. He doesn’t speak so loudly. His voice is actually softer than most, but his volume is in its own league compared to his two companions. Kyojuro’s booms; Sabito’s projects. “Or before you leave for your missions at the very least.”
“Sounds like a wonderful idea,” Kyojuro replies. His meal is gone, but there’s another set to the side right in front of Tanjiro. He takes it, and as he does, his elbow brushes against his ichimatsu kimono.
They make actual, real contact for a brief moment. A brief moment that was never willed, and a brief moment that puts all three pairs of eyes on someone they only know as a stranger.
“Who are you?” Giyuu blurts.
Hinokami Tanjiro is rendered speechless. He stares down at the table surface with a stiff, awkward posture, too nervous to speak up. For the first time in his life, he doesn’t know what to do. This is so sudden. Too sudden. What brought this on?
“You’re the guy!” Sabito suddenly yells. It gains stares from passersby; none of them care for it no matter how rude yelling is. He sets his bowl of rice down, and jabs his finger right at Tanjiro. “From my Final Selection! It’s been so long—you haven’t changed a bit!”
He glances up and at Sabito. For the first time, he gets a good look at the peach-haired man. Right beneath the collar of his Corps uniform is a dark red mark. It’s squiggly, much like a map layout of streams and rivers, and there’s one solid circle in the middle of it all. It’s not quite like Kyojuro’s, nor is it like his own, but from here he can tell what it is. He gestures to his own neck at the same spot, and comments, “That’s new.”
Sabito pauses for a moment to think. Then, he places a hand over his mark, and nods in agreement. “It is,” he says. “I got it just three years ago. Almost to date, actually.”
Tanjiro finds himself to be stumped by the explanation. Three years ago would put Sabito at nineteen—but most marks are acquired from birth, or from a dramatically earlier age. Not to mention the fact that he consciously chose each one, even if they never became a proper slayer. “Three years ago?” he echoes. “That is odd.”
“How so?” he asks, clearly eager to acquire knowledge. “A lot of slayers got their own little versions of a mark three years ago. I also remember your mark. It looks exactly like Kyojuro’s, you know?”
Tanjiro unleashed a lot of emotion and sudden combustive power three years ago. “I know,” he replies, though he avoids answering the question. He decides that he’s very uncomfortable sitting next to the Fire Hashira now.
“Are you two friends?” Kyojuro asks.
“I wouldn’t say that. I haven’t seen him in about seven years,” Sabito answers. He looks at Giyuu. “He’s the one who helped me treat your head wound.”
Whether or not Giyuu actually knows that he places a hand over the side of his head is not made clear, but the look on his face is full of gratitude. “Oh,” he murmurs. “Thank you for that. You really saved both of us.”
All the wrong words push against Tanjiro’s tongue. He says nothing despite the urge to speak.
“What rank are you?” Sabito asks. “I’ve never seen you around—but I assume that’s because you’re out and about completing missions, right? Or are you just not in the area?”
“Oh. I’m…not a slayer,” Tanjiro clarifies.
That makes everyone frown, either with reeling thoughts or blatant confusion or a bit of both. Sabito speaks for them all. “Then what were you doing on that mountain?”
“I heard a call for help,” he answers, which is the truth. Giyuu did pray to a celestial force. His best friend is still alive seven years later. That success has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with them. “I just answered it.”
“The Final Selection mountain swarms with demons all the time during those trials,” Giyuu points out brazenly. “That’s dangerous for a non-slayer.”
“Sabito killed them all,” Tanjiro says. It’s not like that matters—they couldn’t have touched him, but these three don’t know that and right now Tanjiro himself isn’t so sure if that’s true anymore.
“Did I?”
“You did,” he reiterates nonchalantly. “All but one, just as I said all those years ago. Did you not believe me?”
Sabito shakes his head.
“Amazing work!” Kyojuro exclaims. His outburst has Tanjiro leaning away ever so slightly.
“How do you know that, though?” Giyuu asks.
“Does that really matter?” the Fire Hashira shoots back. “What a feat!”
Sabito is cheeky and proud, but he glowers anyways. “Shut up,” he says. “You literally killed everything.”
“I admit that passing the Final Selection at ten years old is impressive and unique, but I did not kill everything!” Kyojuro points out. That earns a panning expression from both water breathers. “Only the demons!”
Giyuu rolls his eyes mirthfully as Sabito sputters over lighthearted insults and retorts. They’re going back and forth, having their silly conversations, but Tanjiro is not listening. His eyes drop back down to the surface of the table again, of which his palms lightly rest on top of now, and he thinks. He thinks hard, because if what Sabito says is true, then that means a handful of humans possess the mark right now, and they have for the past three years. Kyojuro has always had it, and Giyuu does not.
He lifts his palms from the table, and places them in his lap out of discomfort. He doesn’t like how he can touch the corporeal world so unintentionally like this. There has always been a need for conscious effort. Now, there is none needed, and it all changed when Kyojuro brushed up against him. He interrupts their laughter with a rather dark question. “Are your marked slayers being hunted down?” he asks.
“What?” Giyuu blurts. He sounds stunned, if not horrified.
“No,” Kyojuro answers. He stares at Tanjiro, but he isn’t outwardly acknowledged. “As a matter of fact, all slayers who possess the mark right now are hashira. Some of them are kinoe-ranked.”
Giyuu leans forward a little. He sounds concerned. Frightened. “Why would you ask that?”
“The last time slayers gained marks, Muzan relentlessly hunted them all down and murdered them when they least expected it,” Tanjiro murmurs. He doesn’t look up from the table. He can feel every single stare. “That was the golden age of your organization. No marked slayers reappeared again until twenty years ago.”
“You sure do know a lot about the mark,” Kyojuro comments lightly. “Have you had that mark on your forehead your whole life?”
Tanjiro only nods. They don’t need to know more than that.
“And you didn’t become a slayer?” Sabito asks. He sounds a little affronted.
When Tanjiro looks up, he takes notice of the suspicions and the mistrust growing on their faces. He understands it completely. His typical appearances are sparse, happening more in these last thousand years than ever before, but he would always have a lighthearted tone. Something in his voice would be full of cheer and his disposition would be casual.
Right now, he is the phantom of a human sitting in the presence of three swordsmen. He answers with vagueness and very few words. He probably looks as awkward and uncomfortable as he feels right now—keeping calm, too calm, in casual situations like this is easy enough. Abating his anger is not his forte, though.
“I’ve never needed to kill a demon before,” Tanjiro explains. As the words leave his mouth, he finds that he is lying. The one demon he needs to—no, wants to kill is Kibutsuji Muzan.
Sabito frowns, and snarks, “Good for you.”
An elbow is jabbed into his side, and his face scrunches up in pain. He shoots a glare at Giyuu—whose expression is just as sharp and unimpressed—before relenting with a slight eye roll.
“You misunderstand,” Tanjiro says.
This time, when Sabito speaks, his voice isn’t soaked with criticism and judgment. “What’s there to misunderstand?”
“I have never needed to kill a demon because they won’t attack me,” he replies. “They know better.”
All three swordsmen immediately stare at him in complete disbelief. No one says anything simply because the way they look at him speaks for them. They’re chalking him up to be a pompous, egotistical prick.
“Little demons are a waste of time,” Tanjiro continues. “You three handle them wonderfully. The only thing I’m interested in killing is Muzan, but I can’t, so I bless people like you with the mark to accomplish it for me. Only one person has gotten close and that was five hundred years ago. That’s not your faults, though. Muzan is slippery and a coward. By any chance, Sabito, have you seen a demon through the transparent world?”
Their expressions mellow out into something between shock and confusion. Regardless of what they feel, none of them answer quick enough.
He casts a glance to the Rengoku at his side. “It’s a powerful tool that takes a simple, conscious effort. The moment you see will be the moment you understand that any battles you fight will end within seconds. I know that you are all wondering about the way I speak just in general, but I ask that you overlook it for a moment to hear me out.”
Sabito slams an interruptive hand on the table. “Now hold on—“
“That was rude. Mind your manners,” Tanjiro snaps at Sabito. Without a beat to spare, he continues speaking. “I will find Muzan and I will kill him with the sun. If I can’t touch him, I will bring you to Muzan. Any unmarked slayers will be too weak to stand against him. They will be nothing but dog food before the dog fight even begins.”
Both Kyojuro and Sabito look beyond offended. Their brows are pinched and their eyes ablaze. Giyuu, on the other hand, remains as quiet as a mouse. It’s clear that he has accepted the implied inferiority long before it had ever been spoken aloud.
“Bolster your ranks as much as you wish,” he goes on, “and prepare for a final battle. That is all.”
“We need more details than that,” Giyuu jumps to say. Both of the other two slayers give him looks of concern. “We don’t even know who you are. At least introduce yourself before you drop anymore details.”
“I am Hinokami Tanjiro,” he replies honestly. He gets up from the bench, standing on stone that bakes in the sun beams, and he looks around. Some people stare. They stare at him. He knows that they do simply because he makes eye contact with them. Real eye contact. “This is goodbye.”
“Wait—“
Tanjiro is not there to hear what Kyojuro might have to say. He doesn’t quite disappear as he usually does—he has to ask the sunshine to steal him away. It does so as faithfully as it burns a demon.
By the time he finds Kibutsuji Muzan, he is unable touch anything again.
That angers Hinokami Tanjiro beyond all reason, so the sunset is an overly saturated red as a result. It only takes seven hours to find the progenitor of all demons—which, considering all things relative to Tanjiro’s age, is inconceivably fast. The bastard is lounging around in a new western-style house within the large city of Tokyo. He has a human wife and daughter in the house. None of them are around when Tanjiro steps into the office-like room.
“You again?” Muzan greets him angrily. He dresses like a human, sits like a human, talks like a human. His eyes are sharp and demonic; so are his teeth and nails. However, unlike their previous meetings, he is unafraid and confident with a cunning edge.
Tanjiro walks up to the demon without a word, and pokes a finger into his face. He is both unsurprised and disappointed when no contact is made. Immediate anger boils under his skin like an active volcano’s magma, and he glares at the demon.
Muzan’s triumphant grin is almost as immediate. His fangs glint in the electric lights, and pastel blue claws grow from his fingers. He flexes his hand, and thrusts it forward. It goes straight through Tanjiro’s chest. As expected, no contact is actually made. Tanjiro compares it to fighting a ghost. He opens his mouth to taunt the bastard, to call him out on his stupidity, but then a familiar face breaks in through the glass window.
That changes everything.
Hinokami Tanjiro sees the newcomer, and immediately recognizes that it’s another demon. Or, more specifically, it’s Michikatsu in all of his demonic glory. His mark has grown substantially, as has his power, but he does not flaunt it. His sword isn’t unsheathed, either. He simply makes a loud entrance, and then he steps up behind Muzan with loyalty in every step. It’s disgusting. How can someone of Yoriichi’s blood do—
Tanjiro coughs. It’s a sudden thing. Coughing implies breathing, and unlike most living things, he doesn’t breathe. There has never been a need. Only for a second does the coughing last, though, before it suddenly turns into a waterfall of liquid. Red liquid. It tastes metallic and it’s thick on his tongue. Then, pain explodes in his chest.
He understands now.
“I win,” Muzan jeers.
Has it always been this way? Tanjiro can’t help but wonder about that. What is it about the marked that give him the ability to touch the corporeal world around him without exerting any sort of will? Michikatsu…stands just a few steps away from Tanjiro. He is marked, and now Muzan’s arm is stuck in Hinokami Tanjiro’s chest. He chokes on blood. Pain numbs a very physical and very organic body.
When did things change?
Darkness surrounds him. He faces a woman with purple eyes in this ghastly void. She has a beauty mark on her chin, and Tanjiro instantly recognizes her to be his mother. He inhales sharply, because he can do that now, and tears gather at his waterline. He cries without any constraints.
When did he learn how to cry?
His mother cups his face with hands that hold no temperature. He can feel them regardless—the smile on her face is warm enough. “My son,” she says.
“Mom,” he says back. His voice quivers. The forming pit in his heart has nothing to do with Muzan’s arm.
Her smile grows ever so slightly. “Do you know why you are the way you are?”
At that, he shakes his head. “I was born this way…” he murmurs, “…right?”
“You lived as simply as you were allowed to,” she says with a sweet, loving tone. “And every single thing that you struggle with, my dearest, is a struggle that is both of and not of your own making. You did your best with the tools you have, dear.”
The pain in Tanjiro’s body is immeasurable, and he can’t think straight. With a teary-eyed frown, he says, “I’m…I’m sorry, mom…I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
Kie’s expression hardens ever so slightly. “When was the last time you felt physical pain, Tanjiro?”
Never.
No…no, that’s wrong.
“Not since…I was slapped,” Tanjiro slowly answers. That’s right; he hasn’t felt anything pain-related in eons. The sting left behind on his face from the strike hadn’t been particularly powerful, nor had it been something malicious. He still didn’t like it, and he refused to let anything touch him like that again.
Now, here he is, twelve thousand years later facing a long-dead soul with a gaping hole in his chest and blood spilling for the first time in his long, long life. He wishes for nothing more than to be able to touch his surroundings—to kill the source of demons—and he couldn’t until Mi…Kokushibo, a marked demon, who is now within arm’s length distance, and that’s his downfall.
“Whatever it takes, you must kill that bastard,” Kie says. She pulls her hands away. Her expression is full of anger and fire; it’s a reflection of Tanjiro’s own expression in times of hardship. “Kill Kibutsuji Muzan.”
Fire and red light and embers explode from Tanjiro’s body. His mother is no longer facing him; it’s just Muzan. Every parcel of wood and cloth and metal nearby catches fire, melting and disintegrating and shattering. He lets out a roar of effort to overcome the pain, and the heat is ramped up tenfold.
“Kokushibo!” Muzan screams over the screech of newborn fire.
Demonic skin that burns as easily as paper heals almost immediately. A blade decorated with many eyes swipes across Tanjiro’s vision, but a blast of heat puts off its trajectory. Tanjiro grabs ahold of Kokushibo’s scruff with strength that no demon can defy, and his other hand is placed over the mark on his six-eyed face.
“How dare you use my gift like this?” Tanjiro seethes. “How dare you use it in service of Kibutsuji Muzan…you deserve every second burning in Hell, Michikatsu!”
“You…” Kokushibo murmurs. His skin is nearly melting off his face, but he makes no move to get away. “You…gave this mark to me?”
Fangs are bared up at Tanjiro. Whether the mark is being burnt away by the power of Hinokami Tanjiro or not suddenly doesn’t seem to matter. Claws are suddenly digging into his throat, originating from behind, and while the fire rages on around them, divine heat stops being generated. Pain erupts. It’s enough to blind Tanjiro. He spits out liquid, stumbling over his own feet in shock.
He isn’t dying. He refuses to accept that.
Still yet, Muzan is towering over him. His claws are dripping with red; patches of his skin are returning as healthy and pale as they’ve always been.
“I should thank you, Hinokami Tanjiro,” Muzan pants. He smiles, licking blood off his hands. The pupils of his eyes grow thin with excitement. “You let me go a millennia ago…and here I am.”
Black and white spots dot Tanjiro’s vision to the point of where he can’t see properly. He slouches on his feet. Dizziness disorients and overwhelms his body. He puts a hand over his clawed throat, wondering why so much has gone wrong in such a short time.
Muzan grabs his jaw, though, and pulls his face up. Blood spills from both of his severe wounds at a rapid rate, pooling a lake at their feet. His legs give out, and suddenly Muzan’s hold of his skull is the only thing keeping Tanjiro upright.
“Twelve thousand years…alone, isolated, unable to touch, too experienced to do anything worth your while…” he says in mockery. “It’s only natural that you would crave connection, Hinokami Tanjiro, and in turn it’s also only natural that your connection would manifest as the one thing you have always wanted.”
Tanjiro would love to shoot something back, to go straight for Muzan’s ridiculous pursuit for perfect immortality and omnipotence. As he is, though, he cannot.
“These marks that you so-call bless humans with…” the progenitor murmurs, “is your craving for mortality, and for normal interaction with the world. Why else would being near Kokushibo, one of your few blessed, kill you? Hmm? What do you think, Hinokami Tanjiro? Oh, what am I saying? Even if you could, you needn’t answer.” As he grins, his large fangs glint in the golden light of fire. “You know I’m right.”
Without another word or thought to be spared, Kibutsuji Muzan drops Tanjiro’s head. He collapses as a puppet would when its strings are cut. The very last thing he can see are two dark figures—one dressed in a modern, westernized suit, and the other dressed as a traditional samurai.
The very last thing he hears is, “You lose.”
Life as he knows it comes to an end. Hinokami Tanjiro is no more to the real world, or so he believes, and yet he still exists as himself. In a state of nothingness that comes from bleeding to death amidst a fire of his own making, he dreams.
Dreaming is not something he does. He has never needed to. After all, he has never needed to sleep…and he most certainly has never died before, so the experience is new. The perspective is new.
His first dream follows the three young men he’d sat with during their lunch—Kyojuro, Giyuu, and Sabito. They fight long and hard battles against many demons, though one that stands out most to Tanjiro is Kokushibo. The blasted demon falls with a slashed, handmade flute in hand. Since this is a dream, Tanjiro spits on what’s left of Kokushibo.
His second dream is a lot less clear. Images blur together, becoming more like one than many, and he yells out muffled curses into a void that he can’t see. The instant he squeezes his eyes shut, there’s the location of every marked slayer nearby. His desperate scream makes them all glow like little flames. They’re imbued with the last of his efforts, he realizes, and the world goes faint.
The clearest images are the last few. A red blade kisses Kibutsuji Muzan’s neck, though whoever swings it all the way through his weakened flesh is an unknown to his amaranth eyes. All he understands is their passion, and their impact on his friends. A blur of yellow and red and white and blue and pink and purple flash across his vision at least once. They’re all so differen from one another, embodying snakes and flowers or rocks and fires or rivers and lightning.
He decides he doesn’t care for such beauty when he kneels over the progenitor’s disintegrating body, taking a handful of white hair into a tight, heated grip that speeds up his ashening, and hisses, “You lose.”
Watching those pink eyes widen with terror and teary-eyed grief is satisfying.
Watching them crumble to dust underneath the sunlight is cathartic.
Dreams are never-ending. They’re infinite, and not as abstract as Hinokami Tanjiro expects them to be.
Before he knows it, he’s dancing beneath the impossibly bright moonlight in the dead of night. A starry sky is spread out beyond him, and the darkness of the night has human-like shadows crowded within. The stage he prances across is way too big to be homey, way too perfect to be handmade, way too full of electricity and metal to be from any era of time he’s familiar with.
Yet the mirror he looks in when he exits that grand stage shows an outfit he wouldn’t consider to be traditional nor a legacy.
Still, the announcer calls out with a booming voice, “What a beautiful traditional dance! Thank you, Kamado Tanjiro, for allowing the world to see your family’s legacy!”
People screech and cry out and cheer and clap. They sound happy, not massacred nor horrified by burning.
The one person who he focuses on isn’t in a crowd of humans he can’t see, though.
“Tanjiro,” a kind, motherly voice says.
Tanjiro whips around, looking away from the impossibly clear mirror. A bright feeling in his heart makes his face so endearingly expressive. “Mom!” he exclaims with blustering cheer. His heart is full. “I had so much fun! Did you see me out there? From the crowd? There were so many people! I was so nervous!”
Kamado Kie laughs at how excited her son is. “I saw! You did such a beautiful job out there, Tanjiro, and I’m so proud of you—of your work. You truly embodied Hinokami.”
Even if it’s just a dream, Tanjiro cries with overwhelming happiness.
Those few words might have just been the only thing he’s needed to hear in all of his time.