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Douma holds the woman in his arms, just as he has held countless others before her: chin lowered to rest against the crown of her head, a pantomime of intimacy so practiced it costs him no thought at all. tenderness, for him, has always been mere etiquette before the feast.
but tonight there is no feast in waiting.
he has held, bedded and devoured many beautiful maidens before, but none quite like kotoha: this delicate creature with obsidian hair, its ends kissed by a wash of blue, and eyes the colour of jade. only one eye still sees him; the other gazes upon some private horizon, the pupil filmed with a pearly haze. still, the singular flaw does not diminish kotoha’s beauty in the slightest. upon hearing her woeful tale of abuse and how her husband’s violent temper had left her half blind, douma had wept as propriety demanded: fat, luminous tears trailed down his cheeks, conjured from the same reservoir of manufactured empathy he has siphoned all his life.
if only he were capable of mistaking the gesture for sincerity! alas, delusion remains a mortal luxury.
as a sensualist, douma understands lust in its cold, abstract sense, or at least the mechanistic version of it. lust is a mechanism as simple as hunger; he knows how to satiate both. but the warm and fuzzy feeling that lingers even after he spends himself inside her is something new.
(there’s that word again, “feeling”)
the sweet scent that clings to her skin proves distracting: milk-sweet, animal, faintly saline. it makes his mouth water. douma has long suspected that young, fertile (preferably beautiful) women contain a richer essence; that vitality thickens their blood, seasons their flesh absent in men. akaza’s quaint refusal to consume them must account, he concludes, for his inferiority.
her body still carries the faint signatures of new motherhood: the softness of her hips, the lush weight of her nursing breasts—pale, luminous as snowdrifts beneath a cold sun, their peaks tinted the blushing pink of thawing plum blossoms. and though his mind wanders toward less-than-pure territory, the sight moves him in a manner that is oddly clean, like winter touched by the first colour of spring. his childhood poetry tutors would have scoffed at such an image. oh well, he was never a particularly imaginative boy, and sentiment was not among his virtues.
between those pale mounds nestles her infant son, inosuke, a small bundle swathed in cloth. douma looks down at the sleeping babe and finds in him a miniature echo of the mother, from the delicate nose to the girlish long lashes. there is no trace of the man who sired him.
douma’s memory, ordinarily unerring, fails to retrieve the husband’s face. not that he cares. it has already blurred into the same anonymous, bloody pulp as the old crone he slaughtered beside him. both now feed the mountain vermin, a fitting redistribution of the loss of kotoha’s eye. an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, was it not said so? the demon allows himself a brief grin as a wicked pleasure flits through—a sensation so unusual, so flagrantly spiteful, that he pauses, startled by his own capacity for it.
he tilts his head in mild amusement. huh! intelligent as he has always believed himself to be, he had assumed nothing could surprise him; apparently, one continues to learn—about the world, and about oneself.
still, when he studies the child again, a faint amusement stirs. if anyone were to assume the boy was born of his own union with kotoha, what harm would there be in that? a pleasant fiction, to imagine he had a hand in creating something so beautiful.
when her half-blind gaze drifts to his panchromatic ones, there is no moronic devotion, none of that slavish awe he so often inspires in the cultists who cling to him and weep their petty confessions. her jade eyes see him in halves, yet somehow perceive more than any whole pair ever did. the difference unsettles him. he thinks he likes that—though why, he cannot say.
kotoha often sings to inosuke while cradling him in her arms. she sings without self-consciousness, without performing for an ear beyond the child’s. her voice is limpid and untrained, yet pure in a way that feels almost anachronistic. purity that might have belonged to the first rays of sunlight after centuries of dusk—thin, improbable yet achingly bright. the sound traces faint ripples across the stagnant pool of his chest.
how strange, he muses, that mortals are so poor at cherishing the good when it is theirs. her husband had struck this gentle creature until her sight was split in two. what a grotesque irony—to possess such radiance and repay it with violence. humans are always like this, blind to the beauty within their grasp and reach out for more. they break what nourishes them, then wail at the emptiness they have made.
perhaps that is why they come to him in droves: sobbing, begging, forever hungry for something more than their own small lives. they ask for love, for wealth, for health—never once considering that they already have enough. fools, all of them. they squander the simple joys allotted to them, then crawl to him for miracles as if he were some celestial concierge.
don’t they know there is no heaven, and there is no Buddha?
silly, foolish idiots.
ah, but that is what makes them human, no?
douma thinks he could watch kotoha forever, were it not for the tiresome inconvenience of mortality.
with mild astonishment, he realises he has grown fond of her—and, by extension, her child. the word “fond” is paltry, but it is the only one he can reach for. it needles at him, this fondness. a grain of grit lodged in a defective oyster, an irritant that will never transmute into a pearl, hurting precisely because it is futile. douma has always known something is wrong with him. if everyone else can feel and you cannot, then by definition, you are broken. the absolute absence of feeling had defined his existence, and until recently, awareness of it had never troubled him.
for once, the demon finds himself at a loss. her lifespan poses as a problem. decades pass like ice floes against the tide of his eternity; she cannot be expected to endure time measured on his scale. douma imagines her withering away, the ordinary rot of mortality, and the thought is vexing. not that it saddens him (sadness remains foreign to him); but a strand of sinew stuck between his teeth. he rolls the dilemma over and over, as he might a string of juzu beads. two solutions present themselves, neither borne from kindness. one: kill her gently, let her blood sluice down his throat, marrow melting into his belly until her essence lives within him forever. the other: offer her his blood, extend her life into an endless night and watch her humanity fade.
how inverted this is. ordinarily, his logic in consuming followers has always been a false benevolence that paints their deaths as salvation. for the first time, he wants something for himself. not for sustenance, merely for the selfishness of keeping her and her little boy forever.
as kotoha’s head tilts back, exhaustion softening her features, his palm rises to cradle the base of her skull. his thumb glides over the warm skin at her nape, feeling the pulse of life beat steady beneath it. a morbid collector’s mind notes the perfect symmetry of her occipital bone, yet the thought of seeing it bare, stripped of flesh, turns his stomach. he would rather leave it where it rests now, attached to the living column of her neck, framed by dark strands that smell faintly of lotus and incense.the vase he had gyokko-dono craft for this exact purpose is now useless. perhaps he should gift it to her, for flowers or small plants. he has no use for it anyway.
kotoha is truly something else! this woman, making him act in ways he cannot quite understand. if he hadn’t known better, if not for her kindness and simple mind, he might have suspected her of poisoning him!
something is wrong with him. he is certain of it.
the latter path carries its own perils: muzan’s inevitable wrath, and that man is nothing if not theatrical when enraged. (douma suspects his master doesn’t like him much to begin with, for some reason. oh well. liking has never been a prerequisite for receiving blood.) with his obsession over finding the blue spider lily, muzan tolerates no deviation that does not serve his singular crusade. what a temper he’d throw if he discovered upper moon two had strayed into a side-quest for reasons as frivolous as affection! still, the repercussions might prove entertaining. perhaps his lordship would rip out his tongue, crush his ribs until they bloomed from his skin like ivory petals. or gouge his eyes in a fit of pique—now wouldn’t that be delightful? not that douma is actually afraid. the absence of fear remains one of the few consolations afforded by his inability to feel.
and yet, the ultimate obstacle remains not muzan, but kotoha herself. he doubts she would ever accept his offer. her gentleness is one of the many things he likes about her, making the notion of corrupting her… ah, what word to use… regrettable. he cannot even be certain she would love him enough to forfeit her humanity for his sake. and yet, absurdly, that is what he has begun to crave: not the reverence his disciples lavished upon him—devotion bartered for false salvation—but something far rarer.
all this thinking is giving him a headache. with a little “heh~” of exasperation, douma lifts one hand. his index finger, tipped with a pointed nail stained with a lavender hue, finds his temple. there’s a wet, glutinous squish as he breaches skin and bone with no more resistance than soft clay, the digit swirling lazily through the pulpy grey matter. there is no pain, only the exquisite release of pressure. a small shudder of relief runs through him; his headache dissipates. a viscous trail of brain matter mixed with dark blood glistens down his knuckle when he withdraws with a soft pop. the wound knits shut at once, skin sealing over bone. unmarred, not even a smear of red. he slips the soiled finger into his mouth, sucking idly at the residue, tasting nothing in particular but enjoying the motion.
the baby stirs faintly, mumbling in its sleep. a soft sound escapes kotoha as her fingers curl instinctively around her child. douma tightens his hold by the smallest degree, his other hand smoothing the baby’s hair. the warmth of them both presses against his chest, a sensation that is alien in its softness. for a fleeting instant, he feels a bewildered flutter in the hollow cavity where his heart ought to be. how strange.
his eyelids lower, half-veiling the kaleidoscope of his irises until they soften to a muted glimmer. the smile remains, serene and unchanging.
ah… decisions, decisions. should he simply absorb her now, keep her forever? she would not feel a thing. or he could try the other way—poke a small aperture at her neck, let his blood seep in, let eternity bloom. her voice would never age, her beauty would never wither.
as for inosuke… well, he could wait. the boy is boisterous now, demanding and incapable of conversation; a perpetual infant benefits no one, least of all the object of his fixation. better to wait until he matures enough to speak with some semblance of intelligence, independent enough before contemplating any transformation.
(selfishly, douma desires kotoha’s attention entirely for himself—an eternity in which nothing and no one competes.)
kotoha stirs, the fog of sleep still clouding her gaze before her one seeing eye finally meets his. prismatic light catches in his irises, refracting like oil upon water. they softens as if some invisible hand had dimmed the kaleidoscope to a tender glow.
blessedly,douma realises, he does not have to make the decision tonight. fate, in its rare kindness, has intervened. the child’s small stirring had roused her before his mind could settle on cruelty. one might even say little inosuke had saved his mother’s life without knowing it.
his expression brightens. a smile breaks across his face like sunlight spilling over the horizon.
“ah! you’re finally awake,” he coos, tapping the tip of her nose with the same finger that had moments ago idly explored his brain. his tone drips honey. “i missed you two sleepyheads.”
she blinks up at him, dazed, long lashes flutter once, twice. recognition seeps through the drowse, and colour rushes to her cheeks as she realises she has fallen asleep in his arms. she looks so flustered that for an instant, douma feels… something.
her gaze follows his, belatedly noticing the loosened fold of her kimono. one pale breast bared where inosuke roots and fusses for milk. mortified, kotoha gasps, fumbling to pull the fabric closed, colour flooding her face in a deeper shade of rose.
douma’s expression doesn’t change. “it’s alright,” he chirps, ruffling the infant’s dark tufts of hair as inosuke gives a little mewl. “seems the little one’s just hungry.”
then, with a teasing little flourish, he leans in again to boop her nose once more.
shyness makes her all the more lovely—if such a thing as more could still exist in kotoha’s case. perhaps that’s why he never tires of teasing this poor woman. for a fleeting moment, douma almost voices the thought that flickers across his mind—how envious he is of little inosuke, nestled so sweetly against her breast—but in the end, he lets it die unspoken.
strange; he’s never been one to hold his tongue, even in muzan’s presence he speaks without filter. yet now he finds himself curiously restrained.
the sight before him ought, by all reason, to stir appetite. it should! the faint flush rising in her cheeks, the bashful composure with which she tends to her child while avoiding his gaze—such a tableau should stir some semblance of hunger.
perhaps he has overfed of late. the thought crosses his mind with clinical indifference as his tongue grazes the sharp edge of a canine, searching for the spark of appetite. then, finding none, douma lets the thought fade, dissolving like a drop of blood in water.