Another

Chapter 35: The End of Tanjiro

I can feel it eating away at me. The looks on their faces. Seething darkness in their eyes, and the desperation in my sister's. I can almost taste blood, not my own but the blood I've caused others to shed. Weight of a thousand broken promises tightening their delicate threads around my neck.

I still cannot hear the cries around me, but that ringing noise has begun to surge again in my head. In my chest, and perhaps my very soul, that pulsing ringing reverberates in my mind.

It whispers of failure and deceit.

Of how I've killed every single thing that has ever learned to be near me out of pure unwillingness.

How I have caused nothing but pain and suffering wherever I have gone and will go.

How I am nothing.

It talks to me. Shows me why I might as well die, right here and now, where I stand.

And that ringing is right.

This way, I spare the future lives I may pollute with my life.

For I am a demon.

And I will only hurt others.

I close my eyes, and I let the rain rush down my face. The ground I kneel upon is pounding, and I can smell the humans. They're from the corps. I can tell from that distinct tang of metal their swords are forged from.

I stay kneeling.

I'm waiting.

Hurry, before I hurt somebody again.

Before I hurt my friends.

Before I hurt my family.

Hurry, hurry up.

I can only hope my family will forgive me in the afterlife.

They're close.

The ground trembles under me. I hold my breath, and I open my eyes one more time.

The creeping light has never been so beautiful behind the thinning clouds. The slowing raindrops are catching the approaching sun in their evanescence lives, transforming into a thing of common beauty before hitting the ground I sit on in a final splatter.

How tragic.

And how funny, that I'm thinking of the rain in my final moments, when the sun is rising.

My throat burns, and then there's no longer a reason for me to keep my eyes open.

Goodbye, Sabito-sama.

Goodbye, Giyuu-sama.

Goodbye, Makomo-sama.

Goodbye, Urokodaki-sama.

Goodbye, Nezuko.

I'm sorry.

Okaa-san.

Oto-san.

My precious siblings.

Nezuko.

I'm so sorry for being a selfish older brother. I can only hope that you somehow find peace. That you somehow live as long as you can happily.

Freely.

From me.

There's nothing to look to anymore. Nothing to live for now that I've failed the one thing that gave my life meaning.

My sister is better off without me.

I'll only hurt her, if I live.

So, I'll die.

To protect her.