Blossoming Fissure | Tanjirou Kamado

11. Tsukimi

If this had been one of the stories Ayaka had heard all her life, maybe the end would have been different.

If it had been a fairy tale like the ones she grew up with (a warrior born from a peach, sent by the gods, set off on his journey to the land of demons with the help of a pheasant, a dog and a monkey) then the hero would have managed to defeat all demons and save the humans, who had lived terrified by such monsters for years.

But this, since it was the harsh and crude reality, didn't happen.

By the time she woke up, the news of Rengoku's death had already reached until the last one of the members of the demon slaying corps. It seemed that she was the last one to know.

"So he died," Ayaka muttered over the soup served that day to the patients on the Butterfly Estate. As strange as it looked like, her eyes didn't water nor did her heart quiver on her chest. Ayaka felt over Rengoku's death nothing more than the righteous sorrow over the death of a great warrior.

"That's right," Aoi, who was the one that usually brought her food, assured her. If Ayaka had been told that barely a year before she would have denied it, claiming that pillars couldn't die so easily, but now she didn't need much more truth to believe it.

She spent more time than she should have in bed, in between fever dreams and sweaty hallucinations. She saw her father a lot, walking from one side of the room to the other with a calm smile. He was satisfied, Ayaka not so much.

"Maybe it wasn't a good idea to go out while sick." She remembered thinking at some point. "I was too impatient."

When the fever slid out of her like cold water and the worst thing left were coughs (she thought about Tanjirou, too) Ayaka changed her opinion. Her judgement, although rushed, had been right. She'd do so time and time again, without a doubt, even if that killed her.

"I should leave that option aside." She thought some time else, looking out the window to see Inosuke running around in the garden. When he wasn't trying to steal food from the kitchens he spent the time in the forest, and when he came, he brought some acorns for Ayaka. She did nothing but offer him a confused smile in between sweat and shivers and tucked them in a drawer, that started to spill with little shiny balls. Maybe she'd end up asking Shinobu for another drawer, or even a box.

Over everything else, Ayaka slept a lot and talked too little. Sometimes she woke up and believed to be in Shishou's house again, and she ended up kicking the sheets to the floor, soaked in sweat and with her heart beating fast and strong, as if it were a nightmare. The mere possibility that having done what was right, having gone with Tanjirou and the others, was nothing but an illusion was enough to make her shiver. And the only good thing she took out of it was that at least her current path wasn't misguided.

She wasn't able to stay awake enough to get out of the room, so days went by like autumn leaves carried by the wind that didn't come back, disappearing as fast as they came.

Her mind heard mutters:

"Knock knock, little bunny from the little mountain,

Why are your ears so long?

When she was small my mother ate the leaves of a tall tree.

And that's why my ears are so long."

She didn't know if it was her own wishes, affecting her delusions, but she imagined Tanjirou a lot.

He walked around the room, going in and out the door, opening the windows, and even leaving a glass vase with colourful flowers on the bedside table, where she kept Inosuke's acorns. Every time she saw him, Ayaka wasn't able to call out to him, so she was content with silently staring at Tanjirou's illusion from afar.