Chapter Text
One of the first things Muichirou remembered about his mother was her love of flowers.
When Tokitou Hana was able to pick them herself, a little bouquet always adorned the table, and more often than not, Muichirou and his brother went about with one tucked in their hair or clothing. She said that they were little splashes of color in a world weighed down by anger and fear, just like her two sons.
After she grew ill, Muichirou tried to pick some for her himself, though his arrangements were never as pretty as hers, always flat and lopsided. But Mom always smiled and said she loved them anyway.
After her death, whenever he’d brought flowers home, Yuichirou had scoffed at him. That was energy you could have used to bring in more food, or money for food, he said. There’s no point. She’s gone, and stupid flowers won’t bring her back.
He always turned away after that, and now that Muichirou was older, he realized it was because his brother had once loved flowers as much as their mother did.
It was an interesting time, after his little adventure in the swordsmiths’ village. First came the discovery that he and Kanroji had accidentally unearthed some long-lost technique that would probably kill them by age twenty-five, but whatever. The other Hashira fawned over him because he had killed Upper Five with only Kotetsu’s help; apparently no one had done that except that one guy from like five hundred years ago whom he was related to. Naturally, all this stuff paled in comparison to his memories returning. Demon attacks stopped and Hashira training started pretty soon after that, all because of Tanjirou’s sister.
Nezuko. That was her name, and he would not forget. Not again.
Muichirou came up with an obstacle course and some agility exercises for the lower-ranked Slayers. They weren’t easy—no, these people needed to be strong for the battle that was to come—but they weren’t nearly fatal the way they would have been before he’d met Tanjirou, before he’d remembered who his family wanted him to be.
He lay in bed the night before training started, letting the memories wash over him as they trickled back into his mind. A fishing trip with Dad and Yuichirou turning into a splash battle. Mom braiding his hair in the summer. Him and Yuichirou crawling into Mom and Dad’s bed during the winter, and the warmth from his loved ones that had told him that he would never be alone.
At first glance, it seemed that they were wrong… but were they?
Oyakata-sama and Amane-san had always been there if he needed them. He’d pushed them away. Rengoku, Himejima, Kanroji, and even Tomioka had always offered to eat with him or train with him or just keep him company. He’d pushed them away. Looking back on it without that cursed haze in his mind, Uzui and Kochou had always grown softer around him, giving him smiles and jokes that they gave no one else. He’d pushed them away. Even Shinazugawa and Iguro had cut down on cursing and shouting when they knew he was around and had given him the occasional headpat.
He’d pushed them away. He’d pushed them all away, and for what?
Then, of course, came Tanjirou. Tanjirou, who loved and loved and loved like Muichirou’s father had. Tanjirou, who was only stern with him when he was bullying a ten-year-old child over a training dummy, for God’s sake. Tanjirou, who stood up for the weak no matter the risk, who represented everything that made humanity good, who snapped Muichirou out of his funk and helped him face the truth.
Without Tanjirou, Muichirou would still be like that. Still taking on the worst parts of his dear brother and lashing out at the world for taking away everything he had ever loved.
Well, Tanjirou believed that Tokitou Muichirou still had good in him, so maybe it was true.
The first person whom Muichirou recognized once Hashira training started wore a boar mask and no shirt. He was loud and crass, but he performed extraordinarily well, just as Tanjirou had said he did before they separated at the village.
“Hashibira Inosuke,” Muichirou said, approaching the strange boar boy from behind on the fourth night of his stay. He’d move on to Kanroji soon. No one else studying under Muichirou picked up his techniques as well as this… wild animal of a boy.
“Eh?” Inosuke said, bending around to face Muichirou without moving his feet. He was also incredibly flexible.
Muichirou blinked at him for a moment. This was… a weird thing to do for a stranger, but this stranger was weird, so maybe he’d accept it.
Just stop thinking and do it, Yuichirou would have said, albeit pretty rudely. Muichirou shook his head and stuck out his arms. “This is for you.”
“Whassat?” Inosuke said, but he snatched the box from Muichirou’s hands anyway.
“Flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“Flowers.”
The box of torch ginger, wisteria, mini protea, bear grass, and Ming fern was a little flat and a little lopsided, but Muichirou had worked hard on it. He wasn’t artistic like his mother and his brother. But, once upon a time, Mom had taken them to bring flowers to the neighbors, as far away as they were, because that was something they could do to bring a little more happiness into the world.
But why? he could recall Yuichirou asking. It’s just a bunch of plants.
Yes, dear, but a bunch of plants can bring a little bit of joy to someone else, Mom had replied. These little bits of joy add up and make the world a better place. And, like your dad says, these little acts that help others also help you.
Muichirou had stared up at his mother in awe that day, and he hoped that she could be proud of him, wherever she was.
Inosuke poked at the biggest torch ginger, sticking straight up in the middle of the arrangement. “Can I eat it?”
Muichirou sighed. So much for spreading happiness. “I guess it won’t kill you, but it’s meant to be looked at.”
Inosuke stared very hard at the flowers as Muichirou fidgeted. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. He only knew the guy through Tanjirou’s stories, after all, and normal people tended to get a little weirded out by strangers handing them poorly-made flower arrangements—
A rough hand landed on top of his head without warning, and it took everything he had not to sever it from its body on instinct. “Your sacrifice to Lord Inosuke is accepted, minion!”
“What.” That was probably the first time in Muichirou’s life that he had been called a minion. Lord Inosuke? Where did that come from? What a weirdo.
Inosuke cackled and rocked Muichirou’s head back and forth. In his confusion, Muichirou just let him. “You’re a part of my pack now, Kanichirou!”
“Muichirou.”
“Yes, Tanpachirou. That’s what I said.” Ignoring Muichirou’s jaw on the ground, he stuck the box of flowers up above his head. Water sloshed out of it and onto the weird mask thing. He was gonna dislodge the chicken wire Muichirou had used to keep everything in place, damn boar. “Check out the new symbol of our pack: weird red flower!”
Oh. So he was just a bonehead.
Inosuke wrapped his thick arm around Muichirou’s shoulders and cackled like a maniac. Water dripped onto Muichirou’s head, and a piece of bear grass slipped out and fluttered to the ground. Muichirou clamped his mouth shut. He’d given a gift to Inosuke, and Inosuke could do with it whatever he pleased. If that was waving it above his head until it fell apart, then that was fine. Totally fine.
For kindness to help you, it can’t be about you, his father had said. The irritation flaring in his chest was not an emotion he should act on. It wasn’t about him.
“It’s breaking,” Inosuke said, and he clutched the arrangement to his chest. Wow, he’d actually noticed. Everything was crooked, and Muichirou could tell that the wire had shifted. Inosuke shoved it into Muichirou’s arms. “Fix it. We need it for our pack.”
And Muichirou had thought that Tanjirou was weird. He slowly took the box, never breaking eye contact with the glassy blue eyes on Inosuke’s mask. “I’ll fix it,” he said, “but they’re cut flowers. They’ll be dead in a week.”
“Dead?” Inosuke gawked at the flowers. “Why are they so weak? They’re supposed to be our symbol!”
Muichirou didn’t know much about packs or symbols or how they went together, so he looked down and straightened the wire. “Well, I—I guess we’ll have to find a different symbol.”
For one thing, he’d just stuttered. That was weird. For another thing, had he just accepted that he was part of a pack now?
Was being part of a pack all that bad?
Inosuke didn’t respond. As Muichirou straightened out the arrangement, he stuck his snout very, very close to the flowers. Very close.
“Here you go.” Muichirou bumped the edge of the box against Inosuke’s snout, and he snatched it back.
He stared at it very hard, and Muichirou could almost hear the gears turning in his head. What ideas could possibly be going through that boar brain of his?
“I got it!” Inosuke shouted, jolting the flowers and nearly sending them all tumbling out of the box. He pointed at Muichirou. “You’ll be the symbol of our pack instead!”
“What?” Muichirou said again. This night was taking quite the strange turn.
Inosuke laughed his weird feral laugh, plonked the flowers on the ground (not hard enough to jostle them out of place, he noticed) and plucked Muichirou off the ground by his waist. “Yeah, yeah, yeah! And you’ll make us new flower thingies. Gonpachirou and Monitsu and Fumiko’ll be excited! Congratulations, Tsukachirou. You’re Lord Inosuke’s new favorite minion!”
The only part of the whirlwind of thoughts in Muichirou’s head that was able to force its way out of his mouth was, “It’s Muichirou.” As he was spun and waved through the air, watching Inosuke be Inosuke and listening to his own brain sputtering out while attempting to process all of this, he stumbled upon a few very important realizations.
First, he was part of a pack now. Well, Tanjirou and Zenitsu would probably just call it a group of friends, but that was beside the point. His family had been right. He wasn’t alone. Of course, no one could replace his parents and his brother, but no one had said that his family couldn’t grow, had they? Muichirou belonged somewhere, with someone, once again.
Second, it appeared the flower thing worked, as it had for Mom. His flowers could tell other people how he felt even if his mouth couldn’t. Muichirou now had a way to apologize for what he had done and reaffirm to his pack, his family, how much he cared.
Third… Dad had been right. Selfless deeds helped the doer as much as the receiver. Muichirou had already learned that lesson in the water vase, but as he kept on trying to make the world a better place, he kept on reaping the most wonderful benefits.
Inosuke nearly crushed all of Muichirou’s bones in a big bear hug, and Muichirou couldn’t help but join him in laughter. Things really were looking up for him. His new mission would not be stopped.