Blossoming Fissure | Tanjirou Kamado

10. Wrath

Solitude was something that could break you.

It planted itself like a seed in your heart and fed off sadness and fear as if feeding off water and sunlight. The roots ran deeper on your chest, branches growing out as they sank in your bones and broke you apart from the inside.

The machinist knew that very well, that was why he couldn't stand it.

The deaths of his wife and kids served as fertilizer for that seed, always there but never fed. And without wanting to, the thorns grew from the inside and by the time he realized the poisonous plant was already so deeply engraved in him he was unable to take it off without destroying himself completely.

The only remedy for his sickness was death, sweet and glorious death he was too much of a coward to achieve by himself.

So he resorted to the devil.

He took Enmu's hand, did everything he told him to, repeating in his mind that those gone would approve of his actions, this path he had taken to escape from the pain.

He couldn't be blamed. Him, who the world had snatched everything away from, couldn't be reproached for wishing to snatch away someone else's happiness to get his.

The machinist held the bone awl tighter and stared with nervous eyes.

The swordspeople, they had woken up a while ago and were gonna cut the head of the demon that had stained his hands. And he couldn't allow it.

«If it's at least one I can do it. Maybe the demon will reward me for it» His eyes went over to the trembling little girl that leaned against the wall. As if he could smell it, he instantly recognised the loneliness coming from her, the same seed that had drank from his sadness and misery. She also lost her family. «You'll forgive me, right? You understand why I have to do this, right? You will, I'm sure you'll be able to understand me, I would do the same for you, so you have to do the same for me»

It wasn't that important, the girl looked like she was on her last breath either way.

«She'll forgive me» he told himself one last time.

It happened so fast everything felt dizzy.

He remembered yelling, at the same time as he lunged at her with the awl. But then the redhead got in between them, just a moment away from having cut the demon's head off as that thing with a boar head cried his name.

He felt the way the awl sank on his insides, how it teared them apart along with his tender flesh at the same time as his hands got soaked in sticky, warm blood.

The girl only stared, unmoving and with eyes as open as an owl's. Then he heard her wail like a deranged animal.

She kicked him, sent him flying at the other side of the wagon at the same time as the train fell out on a side and everything spun. There was a pulsing pain on his leg, in between what was left of the train and the dust. Looking down, he saw himself imprisoned under the weight of the train. Maybe he'll die like this once and for all.

In the end they cut the demon's head off, so what else to wish for.

And the only way to remediate his pain was fading away, only leaving the train behind. The machinist looked, in the wind, at how the demon turned into dust and disappeared.

He could swear that a headless figure, rising from the dead, appeared on the corner of his eye. And it was looking right down at him.

He felt like crying.

ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ✿ᵒᵒ

The world stayed still and a thousand voices echoed in his mind. But his own rose above them all.