𝐀 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 [𝘈 𝘒𝘕𝘠 𝘍𝘢𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯]

Chapter 4

      Tanjiro was destroyed. His family had been killed, his sister had been turned into a demon and now his other sister had been eaten by a demon. He had just returned home with Nezuko and her new muzzle after his confrontation with Tomioka Giyu. His reason for returning had been to give his family a proper burial only to find his youngest sister, Hanako missing.

     He had just entered the house, hand in hand with Nezuko and he found it strange that he couldn't exactly smell Hanako as well as he could smell the rest of his family. Looking around the bloodstained walls he attempted to ignore the corpses of his family members and searched for the spot which he had found Hanako and Takeo hiding behind the rice pot.

     He found Takeo half a foot away from the place he had once been and Hanako was nowhere in sight. Though he felt that there was no chance, he still felt a small spark of hope, imagining Hanako being alive. He searched the rest of the house hoping to find some sort of clue about where his younger sister could be. He also urged Nezuko to do the same, though he didn't think that his sister had any sense of understanding of who Hanako was. He had heard from Giyu that most demons slowly lose their memories after being turned. He wasn't sure that Nezuko would know who he was let alone Hanako.

     Miraculously though , Nezuko joined him in the search around the house for their younger sibling. Together they pulled out pots and pans leaving them strewn across the floor as they searched every cupboard and drawer, every nook and cranny. He was desperate to find his sister.  Then Nezuko made a loud noise that seemed to be a way for her to indicate to Tanjiro that she had found something: a finger.

     This brought Tanjiro back from his elated dream and crashing back to reality. A severed bloodied pointer finger lay in the middle of Nezuko's palm. After slowly leaning forward and sniffing it, Tanjiro could tell that it belonged to his sister, Hanako. Tanjiro stepped back reeling from the  shock of this discovery and stumbled out of the house. His mind whirling with thoughts and emotions.  As he stumbled out, his eyes settled on a trail of fresh footprints in the snow, that didn't belong to him leading down the mountain. Each step was laced with a splatter of blood. When he had first seen them, he had assumed it had belonged to Nezuko. Now he wasn't so sure. Cautiously, he approached the footsteps.

     Leaning down to sniff the splotches of blood, he tried to come up with some reasonable possibility that Hanako was still alive, but couldn't come up with a single one. He could clearly smell that the blood belonged to Hanako and was tempted to run down the mountain and follow the trail, but was afraid of what he might discover.

     Hanako's body had been cold when he had checked to see if she was alive. Her finger was cut off. Mysterious tracks led down the mountain that were laced with Hanako's blood. All of these clues told Tanjiro that Hanako was probably taken and eaten by a demon while he was out with Nezuko. His thoughts screamed at him for being so stupid.  Why hadn't he stayed and buried his family before taking Nezuko down the mountain. But he also knew that what he had done was probably the only way he that he was alive and that there was a chance that if he had stayed, the demon that took Hanako would have killed him and possibly Nezuko too.

     Nezuko, seemingly sensing her brother's pain leaned forward and patted him on the head, pulling him out of his personal battle with himself. Tears pricking his eyes, he grabbed a shovel and dug graves for each of his family members before gingerly carrying them one by one and placing them inside their own hole. After taking the finger from Nezuko and placing it in the last grave, he buried each of his family members along with his hopes of a happy, carefree future, because now he had been roped into the world of demons.

     Saying his wishes for them to be happy in the afterlife, he grabbed his sister's hand and went off to find Sakonji Urokodaki.