Stone Cold | Tanjirou Kamado (old version)

26. One is not born a demon and one is not born a human

«Aya trusts you.» That was the lie Tanjirou had been trying to carve on his mind for hours. Maybe if he repeated it another dozen times along with the hundred he had already done, he would be finally able to believe it. «She simply didn't tell you she'd go back under Himejima-san's wing, and you shouldn't feel bad about it because Aya can do whatever she wants.»

That was the only truth on his thoughts. Aya could do whatever she wanted without having to take his feelings into account. Even when she had said, as much as Tanjirou himself had insisted, that he was important.

And for the first time in years his life didn't belong to a great goal he had to achieve through a path of blood and sweat, silently burning in warm sunlight until from Tanjirou there was nothing else left but hate for Muzan Kibutsuji.

She had been the one to claim not wanting to see him burn and she had been the one to wish for him to be selfish.

«Then maybe I lied to you,» the Aya on his head said, insolently and mocking and a thousand things more that yelled she was enjoying his suffering. Maybe the real Aya had also been mocking him all along, maybe she had been lying all the time and she didn't care about Tanjirou, she didn't care about Tanjirou at all. Because Aya was selfish and arrogant and too proud for her own good and that's not something he could change or that will disappear soon, and he had been focusing too much on Aya's sweet and kind wisteria scent that was scarce instead of the other ones, more abundant and horrendous.

And maybe he shouldn't have, if not, he wouldn't be holding a torch with Aya's name carved on the handle in golden letters.

Maybe Aya hadn't lied to him, but that was a truth he won't be able to hide.

She had been the one to insist and she had been the one to tell him to trust her. And he had, ever since the first moment it was Tanjirou who told him about what Muzan Kibutsuji had done to his family all moments even if he shouldn't have, even if the smell of pride and selfishness and distrust was bigger than the one of her kindness, pure and fresh, but he had.

«Why can't you do the same?» Tanjirou asked the Aya that was his conscience. «It wouldn't have mattered if you had left to go with Himejima-san. Why can't you trust me like I trust you? Do you really see me like such a fool?»

«Why didn't you tell me you wanted to die?»

She sent him a vague, uninterested stare. She simply didn't care. And there was something about it that annoyed him to no end.

"I should check if Nezuko has come out of her box," Tanjirou finally muttered, and that was what he did.

He ran around the Butterfly Estate and the Moon looked at him from the sky on his goose chase for his sister. There was no one in the corridors at midnight and it wasn't something that surprised him, it was Aoi the first one he came across, already in her pajamas and hair free of her usual ponytails ready to go to bed.

"Your sister is in the backyard," she told him with a wave of her hand. She had a strange expression on her face when Tanjirou softly bowed to thank her. Tanjirou had been too soft that afternoon. "Tell the girls to go to bed soon!"

And she left, muttering something about Kobayashi.

It was only natural for it to smell like flowers when Shinobu's garden was involved, that was why the Iwamoto family hid there so well.

"Fight against me another time! Again, again!"

«Ah, I thought I heard Inosuke's voice,» Tanjirou thought, the closer he came to the backyard. When he opened the door that led outside, just like it was completely normal, Inosuke's body along with his boar mask was thrown against him.