Chapter Text
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“Aniki, you’re alive, thank goodness.”
Relief coursed through Genya, sharp and fleeting as fire. The one respite he had, his reason for fighting still breathed, and that was enough. Himejima-san laid Sanemi's body beside him and the world narrowed to that single heartbeat —alive, alive. That single truth eclipsed everything else.
But with the weight of that realization came a profound loosening. If Tokitou had survived. Himejima-san, his shishou, had endured, and Sanemi was safe. All at once, it no longer mattered, Genya no longer needed to weigh his brother down anymore.
So his body began to falter, and started the process of letting go. His fingertips flaked to dust, crumbling in ways no human’s should, pain dulling into numbness as darkness blossomed across his sight.
Then, a sound Genya felt more than heard made him want to look up. His brother’s sudden cry, ragged and raw.
The wind Hashira’s voice had cracked in the rage he had always hidden behind, always shrouded himself in. Silly Aniki. By now Genya’s ears were gone, crumbled with the rest of him, and still he knew, still he listened.
“Agh! Genya!”
Actions were always spoken louder than words with this brother of his, fluent only in the language of blows and glare. In the sting of practice and in the weight of silence. With arms that would throw him onto the training mat again and again, and sharp eyes that burned holes into him when he thought no one was watching. Always harsh, always unyielding, always there.
Now those same arms held him again like they once did, long ago, before everything broke, before the pain and the blood and the loss, not as a soldier, not as a failure, but as a brother once more. Only this time he is cradled in slipping pieces.
And he would’ve been blind not to see it. See it in the way Sanemi clutched the lapels of his yukata, hands trembling. See it in the storm behind his eyes, a tangle of hate, worry, rage, grief— yet threaded with something older, something he almost doesn’t recognize, something half-buried.
it’s something Genya only barely remembered,
the warmth of a smile,
of secrets whispered beneath a futon,
of too-small hands twined together in a promise,
and oh.
How could he not have noticed?
Love.
Unspoken, yet undeniable, it burned in Sanemi’s gaze, steady as any vow. A sentence his lips had never uttered, but one that his eyes confessed all the same, saying the words his mouth never could:
‘I’ve got you. My little brother.’
And something stupid and fragile stirred in Genya — hope, rough and ugly, that unfurled like a wound that insisted on forming new edges. It reached for him, clumsy and persistent, toward the only family he’d ever known.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do something— ‘Nemi’s gonna figure something out!” Sanemi barked, panic palpable with tears that streaked down his scarred face, a map of anguish.
His eyes were darting at a frantic pace, as if searching in the air would snatch him a miracle that could stitch his brother back together whole.
Here a sense of wrongness gnawed at Genya. Why is his Nii-chan crying for him? Crying for the burden who dragged him down, the brother too weak to master a breathing style, the one who had to resort to devouring demons, to dirty tricks just to scrape by, who lived by cheap, ugly shortcuts to even come close to his brother’s light? How could Sanemi weep for someone so unworthy?
Genya tried to knit his brows, to scowl, to fold his face into the usual armor but found that his body wouldn't obey. The thought nested in him like a bitter seed, ‘Nemi must be disappointed— of course he was. Genya was a failure, even in death that will not change.
There was an apology that clawed up through whatever hollow is left, Genya forced his mouth open, heavy as lead, fangs in grotesque display, because this might be his only chance. The only chance to tell his big brother he’s sorry.
“Aniki… Nii-chan, I’m sorry.” The words scraped out as he forced the confession and strained with the effort. Genya felt the need to press these feelings into the fissures of the world with the last of his strength. Each breath was a struggle, yet he persevered. He had to do this. “Back then… I blamed you. I’m sorry. For being a burden… I’m really sorry.”
Sanemi’s face crumpled, as if struck. The expression that crossed him wasn’t just pain but a stunned, terrible tenderness, the sort that makes grown men look like children.
The hurt those words leave is cruel, harsher than any Blood Demon Art meant to tear through flesh. Yet even within that rupture, Genya felt a flicker of relief, fragile but real. He had said it. At last. Forgiveness, or its at least its shadow.
His body began to truly deteriorate at this point. He felt it falling apart, not merely the bone and skin turning into nothingness, but the deeper cords that tethered him to the world were snapping thread by thread
Unable to accept the reality they found themselves in, Sanemi’s voice clawed at the fraying edges of Genya’s being. Broken and furious, holding him back for a fleeting moment.
“You were never a burden to me,” Sanemi ground out, every syllable a blow and a promise. “Not even once! So don’t you dare die before me!”
The words struck Genya like a bullet. Fierce. Unrelenting.
For years Genya had carried failure like a cross; the confession had anchored him to shame. Because for as long as he could remember, Genya believed the only weight he bore was of being useless, broken, the little brother forever trailing behind.
Something in Genya shifted the moment Sanemi chose to tell the truth. Something he hadn’t allowed himself to name, threaded its way through the pain and took hold. For the first time in a long time, the idea was not a faraway dream but a possibility, that love, silent and stubborn, might be enough to steady him.
But now, seeing the tremor in Sanemi’s shoulder, something else broke through.
Something truer.
Something he had never dared to let himself believe.
“Thank you… for protecting me,” Genya rasped. The admission was dragged from vocal chords no longer there, each one weighted with dust. His lips snagged on his teeth; he tasted iron. It was only when wetness slid along his cheeks did he realize— there were tears. When had he begun crying?
“I didn’t protect you for shit, moron!” Sanemi snapped sharply, but it splintered at the edges, brittle as wood under strain. Beneath the snarl, Genya sensed the weight of his brother’s heartbreak seeping into the embrace he was held in. Sanemi’s voice dropped softly, almost as if he were confessing to himself as much as to Genya. “I didn’t protect you.”
But that wasn’t true, wasn’t it? Genya had known his brother cared since the beginning. Sanemi had guarded him in ways he could never name, through discipline, through distance, through fists meant to harden and not to wound. He had never done anything to warrant this kind of dedication, and yet it had been there all along. Even now, as he rose in height over the brother he had grown far apart from, the man that surpassed him in age and strength, Genya still felt small beside that shadow.
His Nii-chan had always been his shield. The one who bore all the damage. Was there ever a time Sanemi hadn’t protected him, in one form or another?
“You were trying to protect me,” Genya insisted, vision back flickering at the edges, “And I was trying to protect you, nii-chan. We feel the same… because we are brothers.”
Then the memories rose again, curled through him like smoke from an incense. Cold winter nights softened by siblings huddled together, hiding candy under the floorboards for their secret stash, sneaking out after dark to watch the stars from their yard, new years spent with eyes tight hopeful for the future ahead.
He missed them— Sumi, Teiko, Hiroshi, Shuya, Koto. He longed for them as if the river beyond already called their names. The emotion is so vivid it hurts. Other memories followed, heavier, darker. The cramped house, the constant pangs of endless hunger that gnawed at their bones, a father’s cruelty, a mother too gentle for the world’s talons. He carried them all now, his regrets spilling loose. What he had wanted, more than anything, was simple. He longed to protect Sanemi as Sanemi had always protected him.
The phantom of Genya’s chest constricted, his breath snagged as if time itself seemed to beseech him, urging him to hurry, to speak before silence claimed him permanently. Before it was too late.
“You had so many horrible memories,” Genya murmured, “and I wanted you to be happy.”
And some last corner of his consciousness, what little remained of his awareness. Thin and faded, admitted the truth: that this was the end.
“Because my Nii-chan is the sweetest person in the world.”
The words hung suspended, unbearably gentle against the ruin of the battlefield. And with them, something within Sanemi finally gave— a fissure shot through the storm, the armor, the silence, through the years of fury worn as thorn, ravaged and beaten until all that remained was a boy begging the heavens.
Sanemi’s scream tore through the labyrinth, a howl more prayer than rage, torn from the depths of a soul that has lost too much too young. “God, don’t take my brother away. Please. Please!”
Sanemi’s fingers seized up, white knuckled and bloodied. With a grip so tight it had desperation carved into the bone. It seemed an act of defiance to the unravelling happening in front of his eyes, as if the sheer force of will alone could stitch flesh to soul.
As if Sanemi’s scarred hands, scarred and trembling, could defy death itself.
“Thank you, Nii-chan.” The words left Genya soft, steady, and final. A farewell, shaped like a gift he had carried in silence his entire life. A goodbye.
Sanemi’s sob tore free, vulnerable and hopeless, rending the battlefield as his hands clutched only fragments, ready to reach through life itself and hold Genya back. Holding, until even those slipped away like ash between his fingers.
“GENYA!”
They said every soul must one day come to the Sanzu River.[1]
Some would find a bridge of stone and cross with steady steps. Others would wade through its waters, cold lapping only at the ankles. But there were those who sank without trace, drawn into depths no lantern-light could reach, never to surface again.
Almost always, a pull awaited you. A current that bore each spirit through to the other side.
So it had always been. So it would always be. That was the way of fate.
Yet once in a millennia, when the moon rose round and silver as a coin, the river was said to betray its own course. The flow turned upstream, as though time itself had recoiled.
The village elders whispered then, voice lowered like prayer: If ever you see the river run against itself, do not follow.
For those who chased its defiance were never seen again.
They said the backward current belonged to no world, claimed by neither the living nor the dead.
It was something in between.
To be carried by that stream and to be swept along its path was to slip from memory itself,
To drift outside the order of the Heavens. To be unmoored from the weave of life and death.
As if the thread of one’s being had slipped from the loom of time, left loose and untethered.
—
Genya found himself standing amongst a field of red spider lilies, their stems bowing like a crowd of quiet witnesses. The sunlight warmed his face in a way that made the moment feel absurdly ordinary. He knows at once where he is, and for an instant the world zoned on the river that faced him.
His mother had told him, long ago, whispered to him and his siblings like a warning within a lullaby— the old wives’ tale came back to him unbidden, the river that carried you across, the current that met you at the edge of everything. It had been said to him as a child, a thing to keep in the corner of the mind like a reminder. Now it felt less like a tale and more like a foretelling.
He thought, without surprise, that perhaps this was his time. Exhaustion sat deep in his bones, weary beyond the years on his face. He took a slow step toward the water’s edge. He would look into the river, he decided; he would measure the weight of every sin, every wrong turn, measure just how badly he has ruined this life, and see what he must drag with him into the next.
Alive again, unnervingly whole, body unbroken, he knelt at the shore and leaned over the surface. The water lay almost unnaturally calm. He expected ruin, roiling shadows, reflections mangled by accusation. Instead, he sees a reflection—his own.
For a moment, he almost doesn’t recognize the eyes that stared back at him. Not violet, but the telltale hinge of the thing he had feared he was. Black, tinged red, sharp and monstrous. The sight seared something open in him. Emotion rushed in like a tide that had chosen this precise moment to break.
Devastation, fury, insecurity, love, regret, cowardice, guilt, weakness, hatred. He could name them as they rose and fell, one after the other, crude as stones in a stream.
How fitting, he thinks, that he should die as a demon.
The anger came first, as it always did. Blunt, immediate, the old companion that had kept him moving on nights when nothing else could. Even here, even after death, he could not escape it. He had always lived with that war inside him, with rage streaming through his veins until he thought he would die with it.
He was furious at demons for all they had taken from him, furious at the world for its small cruelties, for what it had stolen, but most corrosive of all was the rage he kept for himself. It was a cold, precise thing, it hollowed him out in places he could not name. He hated the weakness he believed lived in his blood, the half-thing the world used to mark him.
He hated with equal measure, and threaded through those feelings, impossibly, no matter how deep it went, his hatred never outweighed the one thing more unbearable than all. It was love for his older brother.
It was a gut-level, unreasonable affection, a fondness that made the rest of his fury feel ridiculous. He hated that, too he hated that he could not sever himself from his Sanemi; couldn’t turn away from him. That love could hurt as much as any wound, that love still bound him, still bled from him, could unmake him from the inside out.
Eventually the storm spent itself of its fury, the overwhelming wave of emotions stilled, quieted. The fervor sank back into him, cold and distant, buried once more in the prison of his heart. Folded into the deeper, dull ache he had carried so long it had become a companion. He found himself staring again into the water, the face there steady. What remained, now that the rest of his feelings had been named, was the old, familiar pain: a slow, patient absence that had followed him like shadow.
That pain swelled into a more physical ache, sharp and immediate, and his hand rose almost of its own accord. They settled there like a root lodged deep at the back the confines of his mind, unmoving, as he fixed his gaze upon the water again.
He watched as his reflection followed how he curled a clawed finger toward his eyes, an ugly, private impulse to erase the thing that marked him: the cursed ability, the reminder of all the ways he’d failed. He wanted to claw the offending organ out, remove the proof of his weakness, the curse that sat in his veins like rot.
He hesitated, the fingertip hovering. For a second the world held. The lilies leaned in, a silence like a witness settling over the riverbank, and for the first time in a long while Genya felt less like a weapon and more like a man who had been allowed a moment of mercy — small, thin, but real.
He was cornered.
Panic coiled like a trapped thing. Genya lashed out, fist meeting the river, and the water only sighed, indifferent, an answer that mocked him. Then, from somewhere under the sun’s washed light, a voice rolled over the bank, low and patient as distant thunder.
“Namu Amida Butsu.[2] That boy was always too stubborn for his own good… Sometimes I wonder if he even realizes how much he desires to be seen, not just feared.”
Genya froze, breath stuttering before he spun, "Shishou—!", muscles snapped tight around to find the source of the voice. The motion was animal, blind, urgent, searching, like prey desperate to spot the predator before it struck.
Himejima-san stood there like a cliff, a massive frame, immense, immovable, his silhouette carved against the mellow landscape. His words fell in a monk’s cadence, scripture softened into consolation, spoke of release, of letting go, of stepping beyond, “You did well, Genya. I am proud of you.”
Yet his unseeing gaze told another story. Sorrow clouded them, but not with acceptance, more like an accusation. They bore at Genya as though at a monster. The man’s mouth and his expression warred with one another, and Genya felt that dissonance start to ring alarmingly through his head.
The riverbank closed in. More faces surfaced around him—judgmental, still, their disapproval like a weight, silent, small tribunals that pressed in with the weight of disappointments and old grievances.
Each time he searched for an opening, a route away from blame, he found one had closed, someone he knew had already shifted to block it, though Genya could’ve sworn they hadn’t been there a second ago. The more he wished them gone, the more the crowd multiplied like a nightmare’s echo, the circle grew denser until he was trapped in a suffocating half-circle of accusation, with nowhere left to run.
The Insect Hashira and Water Hashira watched him from a little ways off, their eyes glinting with a cool contempt, yet their arms were oddly held open in something like a welcoming embrace, a mock hospitality that felt like a trap.
Tokitou-san stood nearer, his young face pinched in the reproach shadowing his gaze, but at the edges of that look a helplessly soft smile flickered at the corners of his mouth.
Tanjiro’s face took up the expression of amicability, of the easy friendliness that masked his warrior stance, ready to strike him at any time.
And farther still, beyond the pall of witnesses, across the stream, Genya saw the impossible clearness of childhood. His siblings, small and unscarred, running through the spider lilies as if the world had not yet learned to hurt them. Their baby faces glowed with laughter, bright and unknowing, voices rose like a chorus of bells, ringing in cruel contrast to the heaviness of his chest.
His chest hammered, a heart frantic drum against the ribcage. Something in him tried to answer that distant laughter, an old muscle reaching for comfort, pulling his body like a bowstring taut and quivering. For one terrible, honest beat he could imagine stepping into that light, joining the small faces he loved, letting the river take the rest. The impulse was raw, simple, to follow the memory home and let the world stop asking for more than he had left to give.
Then the voice came. So certain, so familiar that it made his blood go cold. The voice that had slept beneath his bones for years, one that had haunted his nightmares, the one he had tried—and failed—to bury in silence, to compartmentalize, to lock away.
“What are you waiting for?”
His father swayed forward like a drunk man pushed by some cruel gravity, bitter, compelled, as the cruel sneer cuts into Genya once more, “You should go, child.”
Genya saw red. Panic burst into rage.
“Like hell I do!”
Without thinking, without the slow courtesy of reason, his hand moved, intent clear. With a single thrust, his sharpened nails had already plunged into the yellow-robed chest. Blood answered him in a hot, indiscriminate gush, spilling from a mouth that was no longer sneering. A strangled gasp tore free—but the sound was higher, softer, more feminine than he expected.
His vision whited out, his mind stuttered along with it. Blank, even as fresh entrails followed when he ripped his hands away. The body crumpled, torso folded awkwardly. The knees hit the ground with a lightness that did not match the weight of a man, striking the ground lighter, far too light, for his father.
And when he looked again, the truth struck like ice. Black hair cropped short in a marumage[3], the plain knot of a poor woman. A faded obi tied around a homespun yellow kimono of meisen silk[4], the kind worn by those who worked themselves raw.
Not a man’s garments. Not his father at all.
Genya’s vision swam. His throat closed around a soundless cry. Numb as he realized father had already been dead for years—
Then who had he just...?
Invisible hands crept around his throat, cold and rough, pressing until his breath snagged in his chest. He turned in panic, eyes darting from face to face, but the crowd that had hemmed him in only moments before had thinned.
Where there had been a wall of accusing figures, now none remained, no longer blurred shapes at the edge of his vision.
The tension pressed heavier than the hands at his neck.
Against his will, his gaze drifted downward.
At his feet, small and impossibly exposed, a pale face gazed back at him, luminous even in its frailty. White as paper, cheeks washed of color wide blue eyes shone with disbelief, wet with pain, searching his own as though begging for some explanation. His heart lurched.
“Genya…”
Her lips barely moved, and then the light in her eyes feathered out. His mother’s body collapsed at his feet, folding in on itself like a marionette severed from its strings, lifeless.
Genya froze where he stood, horror rooting him to the ground. His claws trembled in front of him, slick and burning, stained in blood that was not his own. It dripped hot against his palms, down his wrists, each drop branding him with a guilt too vast to comprehend.
“What… what is this?” His voice sounded foreign as he struggled to speak. “What nightmare… have I stepped into?”
No answer came. The lilies did not whisper. The river did not answer. The silence itself felt like judgment.
With a broken sound, Genya dragged his claws down his own skin. The motion was desperate, vicious, as though tearing at his own body might strip the vision away. His sharpened nails found his eyes, digging past lashes, past lids, tearing until wet heat spilled down his cheeks. Sinking to his knees, pain did not stop him, he gouged deeper, a beast cornered by his own mind, his face coming undone beneath his hands.
“Wake up. Wake up.” His voice climbed with each word, straining higher until it broke apart into a scream.
“WAKE UP!”
The world snapped.
He lurched upright with a hoarse gasp, heartbeat hammering in his ears. Red specks crowded his sight, swimming like embers against the dark. His chest heaved as he doubled forward, palms pressed hard into his ruined sockets, grinding until the colors burst brighter. He clung to the scriptures drilled into him, sutras stumbling past his lips in frantic succession. Frantic, the old words dragged from memory. Wards against evil. Prayers to steady the heart. Words against shadows
He whispered them until his throat burned, until his breathing evened out into rhythm, steadied enough to draw him back from the edge.
At last, when he finally dared to open his eyes, they were whole, somehow healed.
The world had shifted.
Nighttime cloaked the riverbank. Blue and silver washed the landscape, the moon round and weighty overhead, a lantern hung too close to earth. Stars scattered themselves across the surface of the water like offerings. Grass bowed along the shore, gentle and untouched. For one heartbeat it was almost beautiful.
But Genya’s heart did not settle.
No red. The lilies were gone. Only the hush of open grassy fields devoid of spider lilies.
Then Genya looked down at himself, and his heart nearly stopped. Brown stains clung to his hands, dried and flaking, but unmistakable. His purple yukata was worse—stiff with it, soaked through so heavily that the fabric no longer felt like cloth but something ruined, heavy and alien against his skin.
Panic seized him. Frantically, he scrambled to the river’s edge and plunged his hands into the cool water, scrubbing until his nails bit into his own skin, until wisps of brown drifted away in the current. But the stains would not leave his robes; no matter how he clawed and rubbed, the fabric seemed saturated beyond redemption. There was too much. Far too much.
Something’s wrong.
The realization struck deeper than thought, more of a gut feeling, an instinct, primal and certain. His chest heaved as he yanked his hands free from the water. He had grown up around rivers, spent his childhood afternoons wading at their banks; he could tell when something in them was off. And this—this was not right.
There was definitely something very wrong here.
He forced himself to try again, dipping one hand into the stream. The pull was strong, cold to touch against his skin, but the riverflow…
The water came from the wrong direction.
It was going backwards.
The hairs along his nape lifted, a chill cutting through the night air. The current was running against itself, violently, unnaturally, as though time itself had recoiled.
And then he saw it, his reflection. No red tinged demon eyes. No monster staring back at him, no trace of the creature he always believed himself to be. Only Genya.
His breath caught, but understanding struck just as swiftly. The tales had been true—the warnings his mother sang him to sleep with, the old spun tale in cautions about rivers that turned in defiance. Every word had been a map to this moment.
He’s not stupid, far from it. He knew what this was.
A chance.
The river was flowing upstream, harshly at that.
In an instant he forced himself up, his legs unsteady but driven forward. He staggered first, nearly collapsing, then surged into a wild, stumbling run on the riverbank, chasing the impossible current, trying to follow the stream. The river’s current beckoned, impossible and irresistible, and he chased it like a man possessed. Forward, forward, forward towards—
“Genya”
He froze.
The voice rose above the rush of the water, familiar, steady, undeniable.
“Genya.”
Stronger now. Clearer.
His blood turned to fire. Holy shit—that was definitely his brother.
Suddenly, he can feel his feet carry him faster, as if driven by the sound. Panic gave way to momentum, nausea to motion. He can feel himself stumble from the previous queasiness and cursed himself for having attempted to gouge his own eyes out. Good that it did him now that he’s crashed to his knees in a fit of disorientation, it felt extremely providential now.
Acidic bile back surged up his throat, sour and burning, making him gag. The stench of dried blood clung to him like an insult, refusing to wash away.
But a clarity was beginning to seep through the cloudiness.
Think, Genya, think. The Sanzu River—his mother had told him the tales. He’d heard the folk lore all his life, the stories near hearth-sides, even Himejima’s sutras rolled through his memory. Spirituality had stubborn truth in it; he had learned that the hard way at the edges of blades and in the lessons of the Stone Hashira. That memory could not fail him now.
And now here he was, chasing an endless stream, sprinting with purpose alongside a river that snaked towards a horizon that refused to show its end.
He pressed an arm against his mouth to keep from retching, almost barreling over. He couldn’t falter now. Hesitation would be fatal here. The current that ran upstream allowed no pauses, no turning back. It was a one-way thread pulled tight toward some impossible weft. All he could do was follow.
As long—
“Genya.”
He reeled back onto his feet and kept running.
The name, when it came, braided with the water’s tone, a thin, younger echo shaped like his brother. It rose above the stream’s tinkling and steadied something inside him. The syllables were different somehow, a younger Sanemi folded into the voice, less a warrior’s command than a brother’s call. It became an anchor in the fog.
It was the only safe thing he could cling to in this purgatory.
He did not know where it led; he only knew he could not let it die away.
He had to reach it. He simply had to.
The voice whispered again, clear as a bell across the silence of the night.
Genya was never the one blessed with sharp hearing, that was Zenitsu’s domain. But now he wished for it desperately, wished he could track the voice, find its direction, find the way out of this gods-forsaken place and towards— towards what? He didn’t know.
His sprint dropped to a slower stride.
When his pace allowed for his mind to wander, the familiar skepticism that never left him crept back in. Genya had swallowed enough fairy tales and hard truths to know wishful thinking when it gleamed at him.
Genya had seen and learnt enough in his lifetime. Life had taught him never to dismiss old tales outright, there was always some shard of truth buried in them, and demons were proof enough of that. Yet even as the novelty of his death wore thin, he couldn’t shake the thought: this particular tale had to be utter horseshit.
Rewrite and change the course of history? Nothing could grant that sort of power. No God or myths would hand such authority to someone simply for stumbling along the banks of some fate river. Hell, ‘Shinazugawa’ even his own name had spelled out his fate from the beginning[5]. He could only apologize for bringing shame onto their shared name and hoped that his brother could at least avoid that state of affairs and live peacefully. Really, If any deity truly looked upon him now, it would be only to laugh at the mess he had become.
Then there was the matter of timing. Spirits, if they existed, followed patterns, returning on anniversaries, on dates taken into memory. They did not appear at random intervals, sometimes separated by years. Such irregularity was anything but typical.
Far more likely, this was nothing more than a trick of nature, some strange current or omen that had caught human imagination, Heavens knows he’s out of it. The moon already commanded the tides, why not bend a river’s course now and again?
Yet here he was, confronted with the unthinkable, wrestling with the impossibility of it. Genya’s thoughts felt scattered, circling the edges of absurdity.
Empty tales, nothing more. He knew better.
Still, even as the mockery moved at the corners of his mind, the river’s backward pull felt less like a trick and more like a hinge left unlocked. He could scoff; he could surrender to cynicism. Or he could run until his lungs tore and hope the current carried him into something softer than the life he’d left.
A plea, faint but unmistakable, carried across the water. He stiffened, then without thought, he was moving again.
—
Moon swallowed by night,
the river forgets its way,
flows against its course
those who walk the backward stream
tread a path no soul should know.[6]
—
“Genya.”
What the fuck.
There it was again. He hadn’t stopped running, hadn’t dared stop, but somehow he was right back where he started. The same damp mud clung to his knees, the same clearing stretched before him. The river mocked him with its endless churn. Hunched over, panting hard, chest burning.
He couldn’t move mountains. Couldn’t make the world bend to him. He had no power over rain, storm, or miracle. So why?
Why the hell did his strength have to follow him here, of all places? Endurance had kept him alive through blades and hunger, it was supposed to serve him, not drag him back into the same circle.
If fate wanted someone strong, they’d gotten the wrong brother. He was Genya Shinazugawa for fuck’s sake. Talentless, a weak thing that couldn’t even cut up an upper moon, not at all built for the shit he’s being put through right now.
His muscles seized, a cramp seared down his calf. A bruise throbbed where his knees had kissed rock, every step since reopening the ache. Gods, if he could just sit, just sink into the dirt and let the pain ease for one damn moment—
“Genya.”
What the fuck.
The voice again: softer now, almost gentle this time.
His resolve withered immediately, curses spilled out as he willed himself to move again. He wanted to stop, to stay down, to give in. But the sound moved him, in some sick twisted way, it felt necessary to reach.
Genya dragged himself upright. Forwards again.
—
Circle without end,
all returns to where it starts,
What is bound shall be
Those who tread the weary path
arrive at their birthplace still.
—
The years had mellowed him out, he thinks.
Worn down and blunted the rage that once kept him alive. He was no longer angry, only dulled, too jaded to care about the world’s cruelties. That resignation steadied him, made him calmer, more aware. Perhaps it was that stillness that let him notice what he had missed before.
A pale white light floated far ahead, in the middle of the stream, hovering like a lantern adrift.
This second run was different to his first one, this light flickered gently in the wind, beckoning him to come closer.
Genya did, though at a much slower pace, unwilling yet compelled, eyes fixed on the faint shape that he can make out amongst the brightness, until he could squint and see the edges of a cropped haori, long white sleeves and hair as pale as the glow itself.
He clenched his fists, teeth ground together as he pushed himself onwards. He pretended he wasn’t afraid, though every step betrayed him. Genya tried to wear this fear lightly, as though pretending not to feel it might make it true. But the closer he drew, the more he understood: there was no turning back. He had chosen, and the river would not let him return unchanged.
It felt the same as when he had first stepped into Final Selection. He had wanted to become a Hashira, desperate for his brother’s acknowledgement. He had thrown himself into that path with everything he had, chasing honor, chasing love, finding a strange stillness in the promise of violence and sacrifice.
But the truth was simple:
He gave it his all.
But it was beyond him.
—
When all else is gone,
a man casts his fate away,
bartering his soul.
The backward river surges
Defying the loom of time
—
The light tugged at him still, and reason dictated this must be where his brother’s voice had risen from all along.
Step by step, he closed the distance. When no more than a meter remained between him and the glow, the sound abruptly changed. No longer the steady call of his brother’s voice, but the broken rhythm of a child’s sobs.
Genya halted.
The memory of Sanemi’s voice on the battlefield was still an open gash, freshly cut and bleeding. But this was different. Innocent. Guileless.
He realized, with a jolt that left him cold, he had never once heard his brother cry as a child.
He had never heard it, not until Sanemi held him in his final moments before he was torn away to this place.
Not even on the nights when their father’s fists turned the house into a battlefield. Not even when dawn came cruel, burning away what was left of their mother, Sanemi had never shed a tear in front of him. Too strong and proud, he’d always been the pillar of strength that guarded their family.
Despite having Genya promise to take care of their family together, Sanemi had always been the boy who stood between their family and despair, the one who shouldered everything alone, and later the Wind Pillar who hurled himself into every storm as if daring it to break him.
Never tears. Not once.
To hear it now, to hear that strength falter, was almost unbearable. Genya’s chest twisted with grief, and beneath it, a sick kind of awe. It felt wrong to hear it, like intruding upon something private— like catching sight of a hidden wound, to glimpse a truth he was never meant to see.
—
Rebirth asks a price,
a toll paid in blood or tears,
the path bends aside
neither blessed nor cursed it waits,
veil of hope or dread concealed.
—
Up close, the light was not what he had thought. It hovered just above the river’s skin, piercing and small, like a shard of glass catching moonlight. From afar, it might have been mistaken for a star’s reflection, some ordinary gleam. Easy to miss. But here, within reach, it glared back with an unnatural clarity, steady and deliberate.
Genya stopped at the bank, body sagging from fatigue, mud caked to his boots. The sobbing inside the glow had tapered off, leaving only his uneven breathing puffing white in the night air.
Perhaps the light was not a person, but a confluence of will, a scar in the fabric of fate where every regret and unfulfilled wish of his lost to the river pooled into a single, conscious current.
For a heartbeat the atmosphere felt thick, like he’d walked in on something sacred. Maybe this was the point where he was meant to stop, to wait, to bow his head for some rite of passage, to accept blessings before being shuffled on to the next life.
Yeah, no. Genya had no patience left for rites. “Aniki? Are you there?”
The world around him didn’t stir at his outburst. Nor punish him for his irritation. The stream kept its steady rise upstream. The forest didn’t flinch. But a sudden draft slid cold over his shoulders, and the ache in his body seemed to lift—too sudden to be natural.
“You poor unfortunate boy.”
“?!” Genya flinched, teeth bared before he could stop himself, trying again to battle the sense of wrongness erring in his conscience. Creepy. That was so creepy.
The voice skinned him raw. It wasn’t his brother. Not really. It only wore Sanemi’s cadence, slipping the syllables around his ears like a knife tip testing flesh..
“What is it you want in this life, or the next?”
The question coiled tight in his gut. He hated how it sounded, how it borrowed Sanemi’s tongue to twist at him. Mimicking. Mocking. And that unsettled him more than anything else had so far. Not to mention he didn’t even know what the hell to say or how to respond.
“I want my big brother to be happy.” Was almost the first thing that slipped from his mouth, because his whole life had been built on that single truth: I don’t want him to suffer anymore. He’s already carried enough pain for me. I want to take that burden away. Even if it cost him his life, Genya would be content. But when the moment came, he found he couldn’t say it.
He’d run half the night after this cursed glow, chasing it like a starving dog, desperate for something to hold, and now it asked him to speak a truth he wasn’t sure he had. His mouth went dry. His hands twitched useless at his sides. Ironic how now that he stood before it, he had nothing to say. Nothing that would come out right.
Genya Shinazugawa was selfish, that much was true. Because if he wasn’t, then why did he want so badly?
I want to go to town on New Year’s and watch the fireworks.
I want to eat good food with my friends.
I want to serve my shishou tea.
I want to make ohagi with my brother.
“I want to live,” understanding crashed into him, even if I don’t deserve it, remained unspoken.
He shook his head slowly, as if the weight of the question might fall loose if he didn't move carefully enough. “I’m not unfortunate,” he whispered, as if to convince himself more than the invisible force in front of him . His sleeve slipped back, fingers tracing the skin of his arm until the motion steadied him.
The light blurred in his vision, shifting like it might dissolve at any moment, and he clung to the thought that this,— whatever the hell it was—had to mean something. That it wasn’t just another cruel trick.
“I can still make it right,” Genya tried, quiet but certain, “And don’t you dare tell me otherwise”
The core of the light seemed to look at him, and smile. Which was absurd, considering it had no face at all. Yet the feeling pressed in on him unmistakably.
The gaze wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold either. It was measured. Calculating. Almost sympathetic. And, disturbingly, familiar, as though the thing had studied Sanemi long enough to wear his manner, his aura with ease. He had no idea how a fragment of light could carry emotion, but it did.
“It can all be changed.” the voice answered in his brother’s voice, borrowed and bent. A beat of silence, then the light amended itself with an afterthought, “Whether it can be fixed? That is up to you,”
“Aniki—wait!” Genya lunged forward, hand outstretched as if he could catch it before it vanished. The light broke between his fingers like thin glass; one blink and it was gone, leaving only the sound of rushing water.
He stood there wide eyed at the empty space it had occupied, quite a bit dumbfounded, every breath sharp in his throat. The air clung heavy to his skin, thick with heat that refused to settle. If he narrowed his focus, he could almost see the afterimage of the glow, etched into the dark as if the world still remembered where it had been. The thought twisted in him, reckless—half desperation, half resolve.
And that’s when he noticed the stream had undergone another change.
Where it had been calm before, a new sound stirred in the distance, low and rolling. The water ahead picked up its pace, surface flashing, the promise of a flood beginning to rise
Genya exhaled, half a laugh, half a curse.
“Fuck it.”
And hurled himself into the river.
The first thing he felt was cold. It was really cold. Two steps in and the water was already past his waist, and Genya realized his mistake.
By the third step it swallowed him whole.
It was the kind of cold that chewed straight through to the bone, scrambling his thoughts into static. For a few heartbeats he couldn’t even remember why he’d jumped, Instinct thinned to a single edge,
Breathe.
When his vision just started to steady, then came the pull. A brutal, downward drag that clamped around his chest and legs. Distantly the thought came, unbidden and cruel, the river had measured him, found his sins too heavy, and its currents were set on dragging him under.
And yet—he couldn’t move. Something unseen kept him suspended in place, like the river wanted him trapped exactly here, neither swept away nor allowed to climb back up. Intent that he remain exactly where it hung, caught on the seam between being and nothing.
Hell if that’s going to stop Genya from trying.
He fought it, but the river was deeper than sense allowed. No bottom, no edges, just black weight pressing in. Moonlight fractured high above, a thin smear of silver across the surface. The current tore past, strong enough to spin him like driftwood, ready to scatter him anywhere it pleased.
He thrashed, lungs searing, he needed air, but the depth was endless, more vast than he’d ever imagined.
His body screamed, but still he pushed, and then—
He stilled. Let the current pull him deeper down. Surely this was when something would happen. Something to prove the river meant what it promised. If something true waited below—then perhaps surrender would manifest the miracle.
He waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Nothing.
—
If I soon leave here,
I’ll lay where our haven was
Looking for us
The stream softly tugs at me
it begs me to understand
—
The water was peaceful.
Genya remembered the pond near their house, Shuya splashed clumsily in the shallow parts of the water, Hiroshi flicked droplets at him and pretended it was an accident.
It had been their haven, a place the Shinazugawa children could claim for themselves, where the siblings could frolic and forget, just for a moment, about the pain of home.
Ripples softened Sumi and Teiko’s delighted cries, cool water eased bruises no one admitted to, and for a while, the cool element became a balm for their restless, discontented hearts.
Sanemi always lingered near the edge, Koto tucked safe against his side, keeping watch with that wary protectiveness of his, warning them only not to slip.
On rare occasions, their mother would join them. She’d let down her hair, and the muddy, giggling children would do their best to braid it. The results were always a catastrophe, but only Sanemi had the courage to look sheepish about it. The others never noticed, too entranced by the way she gazed at them as though they had given her the world. In her eyes, there was pride, and warmth, and always, always love.
And the water had always been clean. Pure. Life-giving
But this river was not. A cruel inversion of the sanctuary he remembered.
Genya could last underwater longer than most—longer than any ordinary man. Hashira or not, he’d trained, forced his body through the breathing drills until his lungs learned endurance if nothing else. But even he had limits. Already he can feel the way his lungs were shrinking, heaving inside his chest, begging for relief.
He tried to kick back towards the surface, but the river’s grip was iron, unyielding, wrapping around his body like chains and keeping him agonizingly in place. His head was growing light, vision swimming, pain bursting like fireworks behind his eyes. His chest convulsed, an animal urge clawing up. Shit—if only he could find an air pocket, anything.
In a desperate fit of panic, instinct betrayed him. And against his better judgement, he inhaled.
Liquid surged into his lungs, cold and scorching all at once, filling inside him. FUCK. Wrong decision. Reflexes forced his mouth open, and even more water rushed in, flooding him, drowning him from within. His body jerked as his lungs filled, heaving and failing, burning every nerve alight and screaming.
The river ground him down to nothing, and his form wavered. Colors smeared together, light and dark bleeding like ink in water.
And then—something reoriented. Through the haze, he saw light, growing larger, brighter. His mind, half-gone and probably delirious from oxygen loss, sank into a strange equanimity, a terrible calm.
Darkness blurred at the edges, the river now took the form of his brother. Sanemi as a child, small again, with that same sad smile that had Genya aching, the figure reached out through the current, lips mouthing words that broke only into bubbles—but Genya knew what they were. The mirage closed their distance, and Genya felt a soft pressure brush his forehead, as though in blessing.
“Find me, Genya.”
Then the water swallowed everything, the pain dissolving into nothing.
—
Though the sun has risen,
I know I can see you again,
When it sets at dusk
Yet even so, how I hate
this cold light of dawn[7]
Out of all the ways he thought he might die, drowning had never made the list. Demons, sure. Losing control of the thing in his veins and being cut down for it? He had rehearsed that mortality a dozen times. ‘Nemi finding out his little brother had eaten demons? The memory made him shudder. But water? Quiet, patient, unremarkable water pulling him down? It felt ridiculous.
Yet when his eyes snapped open—though he swore he had just lost consciousness a moment ago— he found himself still under the surface, bare hints of moonlight spilling down in fractured beams through the clear depths. He couldn’t command his body properly, and from the way the water was moving, he could tell he was still sinking. The world slid slow and soft at the edges. His skull throbbed in the absence of air, his mouth sat numb from disuse and aside from the reflexive involuntary twitch and jerk of his limbs, there was no real fight.
It did not feel real. He did not feel real.
Move, a voice urged inside his head. You’re dying.
'Would that really be a bad thing?’ The thought rose unbidden, almost polite, curling around him as he folded inward. There was a sweetness to the surrender, quiet, absolute. Maybe that would be mercy.
Find me, Genya.
That voice again. A bitter laugh nearly bubbled out of him. Find you for what? You’ve never wanted anything to do with me. They’d been torn apart for so long that Genya no longer knew if there was anything left to salvage… He wished that there was something to salvage.
He didn’t know why he had woken beneath the surface, nor how he was still alive, only that he was somehow closer to it now. What his body was telling him was that he was cold, exhausted, and every inch of him hurt like hell. All he understood was the raw ache that lanced through every joint. He let the thought of ending come soft and steady, the body’s final courtesy.
Can this just end already? His feelings clashed with reason, and at last, blessedly, he felt the fight leave him. His organs seemed to will themselves into silence, his body betraying rationality, survival, at last. And this, this is where Genya Shinazugawa’s story ends, slipping quietly into the dark.
Then the world erupted.
There was the sound of a splash, something heavy plunging into the water. A frantic grip locked around his wrist, clamping tightly, dragging him upwards, upwards towards the surface, until he was coughing and retching on the muddy shore. He coughed and choked on grass and river, convulsing as water tumbled from him. More fluids spilled spewed from his body as a panicked hand thudded against his back in rhythmic beats, grounding him with every hit. One strike, another—until at last he coughed air into his ribs instead of water.
‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ Genya thought between heaves, spit clinging to his tongue. The moon above shone brightly, taunting him, and the hand that had kept him living would not stop its work.
—
As Genya struggled to gather his wits, centering his core to regain balance.
His body was still spasming with aftershocks, when the sound of a voice began drilling into his ears.
“—so as I was saying, I was walking and I thought I smelled something. I assumed it was a demon, so I tried to check the area, but then the scent suddenly vanished. I felt it was really odd and I was about to leave, but then I still smelled someone, I couldn’t just leave somebody! So when I looked, I saw the pond’s surface rippling and—”
The words tumbled out, bright and frantic, all edges well intentioned enough. Familiar too, though in a way he can’t quite place. He knew this voice. Or thought he did.
But his skull was full of fog, his vision painted in black blotches that bled into soil. The world slipped, uncertain. He wasn’t real. None of this was. Most of all, the figure speaking beside him couldn’t be real either.
Because he remembered the castle. That damned endless palace, disorienting stairs folding into themselves, walls humming with power, the air curdling under Muzan’s tricks. He remembered the sound of bodies torn apart. It was a hell no one should’ve survived.
(He could still hear it: the wet ruin of flesh stretched past its limits, bones snapping, limbs wrenched apart—)
“Hey? Hey, are you with me? You’re drenched. You must be freezing. Did you fall into the pond while washing your face? Did you happen to hurt anything? Do you think you can move? It’s okay—it’ll be dawn soon. I can help carry you to the checkpoint, the Final Selection is almost over!” the figure intoned, looking over him with increasing concern.
… Final Selection?
No. No, that couldn’t—
The figure crouched beside him, voice low, careful not to draw attention from unwanted visitors. A hand waved repeatedly over Genya’s blank stare. “Hey… uh, can you hear me?”
Genya’s fingers,— strange they were, smaller and thinner than he remembered, clawed into the clumps of wet earth, shaking with effort as they tightened around the mud as though it could anchor him and stop the spinning in his skull. Slowly, reluctantly with effort like hauling stone, he dragged his gaze upward from the ground.
Eyes. Bright, earnest, burgundy red, met his own. It's with a shock that he recognizes who this is. He knew this boy. He knew that face, the dark hair heavy with sweat, bouncing with the way he was swaying on his feet, framed a young countenance marked by exhaustion. The Hanafuda earrings swung softly with every tilt of his head, That boy’s voice spilling over itself in a hurry, every word tumbling out of his lips in rapid succession, because he cared too much to measure them.
Tanjiro.
That beaming face wasn’t smiling for once, his brow pulled in worry, probably for Genya’s sorry state.
It was Tanjiro. Familiar. Too familiar. But wrong. Wrong. Wrong body. Wrong voice.
Whatever this thing was, it wore a face far too young.
Because this wasn’t Tanjiro, not as Genya knew him, not as he was supposed to be. This boy’s face had no place here, he didn’t belong. Not in purgatory, not in hell, not whatever threshold Genya stumbled into.
They were in a clearing, moonlight cutting pale strips through the trees. The redhead was crouched in front of him, voice soft, coaxing, saying things Genya couldn’t catch. Telling him to calm down, probably. As if that were possible.
Genya’s hand found Tanjiro’s shoulder, alive, fingers digging in.
Warm. Solid.
Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw them.
Red spider lilies. A ring of them blooming from the dark, their petals curling like flame. In their center stood something small and white, still as bone.
He blinked,—
— and Tanjiro’s head shifted, blocking his view.
“Move, idiot,” he hissed, shoving at the boy’s shoulder.
Tanjiro startled, frowning and trying to look over his shoulder to follow Genya's gaze, “Huh? What happened?”
But when Genya looked again,
There was nothing.
—
Tanjiro pressed a few berries into Genya’s palm, “Eat.”
The brat had all but dragged him out of the clearing, buzzing with concern, treating Genya’s less than superb state like it was his personal responsibility to fix. Genya’s stomach turned at the thought, he was older now, in his head at least, mentally older than this version of Tanjiro. Older, yet back inside the thin, wiry body of his youth. It was almost funny. Almost.
He shifts his burning gaze back into the offering in his palm. Small, bruised yamamomos[8]. Meager. Tanjiro must’ve foraged for these, scraping from what little the mountain gave. Food was scarce here. It was a battlefield with every man for himself. And yet here was Tanjiro, the idiot, giving it away as easily as he breathed.
Genya almost hated how much it warmed him, how much he appreciated the kindness. Almost wished it had been anyone else. Any other cadet would’ve left him in the dirt.
Genya didn’t feel hungry. Truthfully, he didn’t feel much of anything at all. But Tanjiro had a tight-lipped smile and that light, steady air about him told Genya he wasn’t asking. From years of training alongside the brat, the quiet weight beneath all the gentleness. Refusal in disguise. This wasn’t a request. He knew when Tanjiro was dead serious. So grudgingly, he shoved one of the berries into his mouth and forced himself to chew.
It tasted sweet, cloyingly so.
Once reassured that his new companion was at least eating, Tanjiro allowed himself a breath of relief and busied himself with his belongings. The boy had taken it upon himself to set up a small camp, first collecting some dry leaves then turned his attention to coaxing a fire to life, attempting to chase the chill from Genya’s bones. Sparks caught, flame licked up, pushing back the damp coolness. Always putting others first. Always himself last. That was Tanjiro’s way.
Genya sat stiff, staring into the flickering light, trying to understand or make sense of his situation. It had to be real. He’d followed the call of the river upstream, been dragged under, nearly drowned, and now he’s here. Final Selection again, as promised, a point where time turned back. The chance to undo history, though he still couldn’t fathom why this moment.
Realistically, everything was in order. On the surface, everything had fitted into place. So why didn’t he feel real? Why did his body feel so drained, cold, heavy—not his own at all? It looked like his body, though a lot younger than he remembered, he was scrawny, there was no muscle, but it did move when he told it to move. But not like before. Slower. Sluggish. Almost lifeless.
He’d have to get used to it. Adapt to the feeling of being a weakling again, back when all he had was the skin on his arms. He’d get by. He always did. He’d have to.
Tanjiro plopped on the ground across him with a small grunt, back braced against a tree, chewing wild berries with considerably far more enthusiasm than Genya could even think to match at his current state. “Feeling any better?” He asked around a chew, licking the juice from his thumb, head tipped in curiosity waiting for an answer.
Genya rolled a shoulder, the half-lie leaving him easily. “I’m fine.”
Tanjiro nodded, seemingly somewhat at ease, though his frown lingered as he picked at berry pulp stuck to his fingers. Then his expression softened, as his relief spilled into a soft smile, “Good. For a second, I really thought I’d lost you.” The sincerity was so disarming Genya felt the start of a matching grin tugging at his own mouth.
Then, just as quickly, something seemed to strike him. He shot upright, nearly smacking his head on the tree. With a loud clap of fist to palm, his face lit up, beaming like an idiot who’d just discovered the sun existed. “Ah! Where are my manners? I’m Tanjiro. Tanjiro Kamado.”
He leaned forward, earnest enough to make Genya want to recoil, and beamed wide enough to split his face. “It’s great to find a comrade! Shame we didn’t meet sooner, we could’ve teamed up.” His laugh came quick, sheepish, as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Honestly, I was starting to get worried. I hadn’t seen a single person out here.”
Genya nodded dumbly, words stuck somewhere in his throat.
Tanjiro’s questions came in a rush, rapid fire and a smidge too quick for Genya’s lethargic brain to catch up with. “And your name? You’ve gotta be strong to make it to the final day of the Final Selection.” His hands were already busy feeding another stick to the fire, the glow catching in his wide eyes as he motioned wildly. “But man, it really scared me that the first person I finally ran into—outside of a demon—was drowning.”
He beamed, so guileless it almost stung. Earnest in that ridiculous way that made it hard to stay annoyed.
Genya shifted to the side, shoulders tight, eyes skating over the fire, the ground, anywhere but the boy in front of him. “...Genya. Genya Shinazugawa.” His own voice startled him, the name slipping out soft, and he prayed Tanjiro wouldn’t pry any further.
“Oh, that’s a nice name!” Tanjiro’s dark eyes brightened, though when Genya glanced up, he caught an almost affronted look, as if the boy couldn’t believe he’d kept it to himself until now. “Is the Genya in your name the same ‘gen’ as in the kanji for ‘mysterious’ right?[9]” He sounded genuinely intrigued, rolling the syllables as if testing their weight. “That’s really cool… ‘mysterious, all the more’—it suits you.”
Genya let the boy ramble, keeping his eyes on the fire, letting Tanjiro’s words pour into the silence like water filling cracks.
But inside, his mind clawed at the edges of reason. Was it possible that the river, what it had done, had really dragged him back to the past? Is it not just a really elaborate hallucination? Could that even be real? Yet how could he deny it, when living proof sat right in front of him? He’d seen it himself, his reflection in the water, younger by years. Black hair, round cheeks, the baby fat he’d long since lost. Proof that something had shifted.
But no. It couldn’t be.
Because if Tanjiro was here, alive, breathing, babbling about names, then none of it had happened. None of it. His chest seized, breath catching like thorns in his throat. Pain bloomed sharp behind his eyes. The future pressed down on him, crushing, suffocating. Panic was rising like bile, clawing at the edges of his mind. The sound of water was rushing in his ears again, the torrent was going to sweep him away. Fast. He can’t keep up. Everything was happening too fast.
“Oi, look at me, look at me!”
As if sensing the turmoil brewing under his frown, Tanjiro moved with that freakish nose of his, leaping into action.
He caught Genya’s face in both hands, turning it toward his own, shaking him with surprising force. “You’re okay. You’re alright, yeah? Just breathe. Yes, breathe. It’s all okay. Everything’s going to be okay, alright?”
Genya stared into Tanjiro’s face, suddenly so serious, so worried, and the words sank in by degrees.
“It will be okay,” he echoed shakily, breath trembling. He nodded once to himself, then again, and again, until it felt like he’d forgotten how to stop.
Genya’s muttering slid into a whisper, “Yes, it will be okay. Because it didn’t happen. It never happened. So… so…” His head jerked to the side, denial replacing affirmation, and the thought of the future-that-was made his stomach twist.
Seeing it all laid bare before him. The proof that this was his second chance, standing right there in front of him. Tanjiro’s eyes, still soft, not yet haunted by death, not yet honed into a weapon meant for killing. Genya felt something settle inside him, a newer, sharper determination.
“It’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine,” he repeated, the words steadier this time, like he almost believed them. This time, he wouldn’t let any of his comrades fall. This time, he wouldn’t let Sanemi stand alone.
Tanjiro clearly didn’t understand a word of his rambling, that much was obvious, but it seemed enough nonetheless. He eased his grip, let Genya’s face go, and stepped back with a cautious kind of reprieve.
As Genya stared into the fire and the boy who was proof of an impossible world, he thought, a little hysterically, ‘this isn’t the same world at all.’
He really was back in the Final Selection.
A laugh burst out of him, short, broken, strangled. Then he pitched forward and threw up.