Stone Cold | Tanjirou Kamado (old version)

27. Cycle of pain

The night became day, and the demon became the Sun.

Burning ball that consumed and shone, blistering fire that destroyed everything on its wake; the paddies turned gold as if ready for harvest as they became then murky and black. Ayaka wondered what these people would eat now that their precious likelihood was being burned down to the ground.

This was what she had provoked, this was what her wrath had teared apart and what would be sacrificed under the rocks that fell from the cliff to blame on her wavering determination.

And although it had been years ever since Ayaka didn't need the rice fields to survive, the sight of them as they burned made her eyes water as if she had.

"Aniki," she muttered, feeling the trails of demonic essence on her blood. Bones hurt, pulsing and buzzing on their attempt to bear the flesh that stopped being human the more time passed. Was this what Genya felt? Did it hurt like this every time he used his powers? The painful tremble on bones and blood, would Nezuko feel it all the time?

Kanao looked at her and on her face there was no worry. Ayaka sometimes wondered, too, if, when the gods made the doll Kanao Tsuyuri was, they forgot to paint her expressions. Maybe they just painted Kanao's on Ayaka, it would have explained why this pain that shouldn't belong to her pulsed so strongly under her skin. This was what she had desired, with such eagerness that she had been a moment away from adding another sin to the list.

It would have been easy, it would have been simple to let the demon, now aware of their intent to hunt her down, become deranged that night because of the fear of having her head cut off and in consequence eat the entire village.

Then, when she finished, behead her and say that Ayaka had simply been too late, tell Oyakata-sama that she had been knocked out for most of the night and that she hadn't been able to kill the demon before she ate all those people. It wasn't uncommon or strange for dozens of people to perish, and Ayaka's village would have just been another tragedy, which she would have enjoyed from the shadows without the blame ever directed at her.

But Kanao's purple eyes were there, unmoving and powerful and unwavering. Why had Ayaka stared at her so much during the Final Selection? Right, because she had been brilliant, untouchable, even. Kanao was a true demon slayer, Ayaka, allowing her determination to tremble because of her own wrath, wasn't.

That was the truth of it all, those with vile motives didn't survive for long in the corps. Shishou had said that countless times.

"Aniki," Ayaka repeated once more, because if she died there she wouldn't be able to apologize to her brother.

Maybe Kanao would know what to do, maybe the unbreakable tsuguko would have an answer as to why it hurt so much to be a demon and how to stop hurting. But even if Ayaka looked at her, pleading, as she clutched to her shoulder, because it hurt so much it was hard to stay on her feet, Kanao looked back and it didn't seem like there was anything on her eyes.

All that time Ayaka had believed Kanao bearer of the answer, she had been bearer of nothing, and that was so foreign that Ayaka even wondered if her shishou wasn't a bearer, either.

Like the Sun in which the demon had turned into in the middle of the night, everything burnt on her path.

The first row of houses sparked, creaking on the first moments, omen to the wooden pillars burning down and collapsing, either if they wanted to or not.

"No..." Ayaka painfully whispered. "Now they won't have anywhere to go, the people from the village, if we don't cut her head off soon..."

But as much as she pleaded, the demon, turned into a black and abhorrent mass with paws that came out from everywhere, kept walking toward her. Houses burnt and creaked. That fire was different to Tanjirou's fire, how could Ayaka have desired a fire different to Tanjirou's?