Can't I See You One Last Time?

Chapter 9: It Fused

Tanjiro woke up yelling. He looked around and touched his neck. His neck was still intact. There was no blood. Tanjiro looked next to him to see Nezuko, who was startled by his yell, hiding behind the arm rest.
"NEZUKO ARE YOU OKAY..."
Tanjiro lifted his arm feeling that there was an additional weight on it. It was a rope that was burned. The rope had smelled like a demon. Then Tanjiro remembered the ticket. He apologized and reached into Giyuu's inside haori pocket. Tanjiro pulled out one of the tickets that the conductor punched and smelled the faint sent of a demon.

After a little thinking, Tanjiro concluded that it was the punching of the ticket that caused him to fall asleep. Tanjiro looked up and saw Rengoku choking a girl.
"RENGOKU-SAN!"
He saw his two friends fast sleep on the other seats. Tanjiro quickly grabbed his sword the was under the seat then started inspecting the ropes. Tanjiro wondered who the humans tying themselves to the slayer's wrists and felt like cutting the rope with his sword was a bad idea. He remembered how his rope was destroyed and looked to Nezuko.
"Nezuko, please! Burn off the ropes!"
Nezuko nodded her head and used the blood, that was one her hand from her now healed forehead wound, to burn the ropes.

Tanjiro's instinct was spot on because if the rope was cut by a demon slaying sword, the people involved wouldn't wake up again.

Tanjiro looked to the other slayers and started shaking them awake, but they would budge. Not one of them woke up. Nezuko was on the side angry and huffing. Tanjiro sweat nervously and patted Nezuko's head.
"There, there, I'm sorry. Thanks."
Tanjiro heard the sound of Rengoku plopping down into his seat,
"RENGOKU-"
Tanjiro was cut off by the girl from Rengoku's dream attacked him. The girl yelled at him.
"DON'T GET IN THEY WAY! WE CAN'T HABE SWEET DREAMS BECAUSE YOU GUYS SHOWED UP!"
That's when Tanjiro realized that these people where doing this out of their own free will. All of the passengers that entered dreams where pointing killing intent at his. Well, instead of the man who entered Tanjiro's dream. Tanjiro felt bad for him. He could smell that the man had tuberculosis and his anger rose.

The reason the young man had no killing intent towards Tanjiro was because when he had entered Tanjiro's unconsciousness the kind man he was returned. It was warm in Tanjiro's unconsciousness. The feeling was serene and nice. There were small dwarfs, incarnations of Tanjiro's kindness, waiting for him. They were shinning and guessed that the man was looking for Tanjiro's spiritual core. They took the man's hand, without any caution, and led him to Tanjiro's core. When the man figured out that the core was the things creating the warmth and nice atmosphere, he couldn't destroy the it. He felt bad. He wanted to stay in that warm place forever, but he couldn't. Tanjiro had woken up and was quickly driven out of the unconsciousness. Before he was fully pushed out, the man grabbed one of the shinny dwarves and pulled it into his world. Now, that small dwarf was shinny in his world, lighting up his once dark world.

Tanjiro looked at them with pity at first but now, he looked at them with serious faces.
"I'm sorry. I have to go and fight."
Tanjiro knocked out the four passengers quickly and caught them as they fell of the floor. He gently placed them on seats talking like they were listening to him.
"You want to have happy dreams, don't you? I know that feeling. I wanted to keep dreaming too..."
Tanjiro looked at them sincerely even though they were trying to kill him. The man looked back at the man with worry.
"Are you alright?"
The young man smiled at him with tear stains on his cheeks.
"Thank you. Be careful."
Tanjiro smiled at the man,
"Yes."
He called to his sister that started following him.

There was a reason the dream demon, Enmu, didn't enter other people's dreams. It was because it was, not only dangerous, but influential. Like with the young man, Enmu could have been influenced by someone's unconsciousness and become weak, so he uses desperate humans.