⊱ ❅Clouded Judgement ❅⊰ | ❆ - • A Demon Slayer Story • - ❆

Chapter 3.

We had just started getting settled into a more comfortable life, and Kamiya was already going to tell us a personal story? Although it was quite odd, I understood he needed to get that off his chest, so none of us bothered to interrupt him. Interrupting the man who just decided to provide you with food and good living conditions would have been stupid and we both knew that.

"Twenty years ago, my wife and I decided we wanted to raise a child. So I temporarily retired from being a demon slayer for a year to support her pregnancy and to be able to be there for her."

I had no idea what half of that meant but I got the general idea and continued listening to him.

"However, the day our son was supposed to be born, a strong demon attacked the village nearby. I had to make a choice between supporting my wife in childbirth or saving an entire village from dying. I had trouble deciding, but she encouraged me to choose the village over her. So I did, I told myself she was strong enough and could do it with the help of the doctors.."

His voice started shaking and he had to pause for a few seconds before continuing his story.

"..However, once I returned from successfully saving the village, it wasn't my wife happily holding our son I saw. She was in tears, screaming and yelling at me. I asked her what was wrong, but she couldn't answer. So I asked the doctor, and I was told she had a stillbirth. So I told the doctors to leave, and comforted her for the night."

I didn't want to ask, but Kiseki did it for me once again.
"Sir.. what's a stil-"

"He was already dead when he was born, Kiseki."

Kiseki and I shivered. Was that why he was taking care of us? Because he never got to be the father he wished to be?

"However, once she had emotionally recovered enough to speak in full sentences, she told me that's not what actually happened. Apparently the doctors took the baby away simply because he was missing an arm. I was.. furious, to say the least, so I tracked down the doctors and.."

Another long, excruciating pause followed. He did not sound comfortable at all, but I could tell he wanted to continue.

"..I killed them. All of them. And for no reason because even after everything, Kaito was already long gone. Atleast that's what I thought.

Shortly after, Hana, my wife, took her own life because she couldn't stand being separated from her own child. I still miss her, to this day."

Once again, silence filled up the room for a little while. He was the verge of breaking into tears, but he regained his emotional composure and carried on with his story as we were both curious and had stopped eating our food.

"So about sixteen years later, about four years ago, I get a visitor. I still remember his appearance clearly. Long hair, one arm. He had a burn scar running through his face, however he had a.. third eye, on his forehead. However, that third eye was part of his.. demon abilities, as it was completely purple. He had sharp claws and fangs, however he still carried around a sword for some reason. That was what my son, Kaito Aki, had become. A demon, a man-eating monster.. I was disappointed, but at the time it didn't matter. He was angry at me for.. not raising him, for letting him become what he became, and told me he would come for me one day. What I am getting at is.. don't become like him. Don't ever kill a human being, or you'll be just as horrible as he was."

He shoved the plates of food closer to us to encourage us to eat it. Kiseki continued eating immediately, however I wasn't too hungry anymore for some reason.

"This being said, you two will have to make a lot of important decisions in the future when you'll kill demons, so be prepared."

From that day on, he never mentioned that story again. He refused to tell us about his wife until we were around seven or eight years old, and even then he only sparingly mentioned her.

And so the years passed, time slipping away through our fingers. I tried to capture every minute I could, but only few of these memories stuck with me. Everything we knew, we had learned from Kamiya through his stories.

I remember visiting the nearby village with Kiseki once every two weeks. Over time, the residents there started greeting us by name, however only Kiseki remembered every individual name of the residents. Every now and then, some of the elder residents would prepare us gifts.

Every winter, when the snow would fall and cover everything in a thick, cold blanket, Kiseki would without exception engage at least twice in a snowball battle. At some point it was me who woke up early in the morning to prepare a couple of oversized snowballs. The moment he would leave the house, it came flying into his face and knocked him over. He likely knew it would happen, but for some odd reason he always pretended to ignorantly leave the house 'looking for me', only to get knocked over and have a laugh.

The three of us grew closer every passing day. Eventually, Kamiya told us more stories about his deceased wife, Hana. We also learned a lot about his days of being a demon slayer which he abandoned one year after taking us into his care. Apparently, he was on duty when he found and saved us that night, and the group of corpses we were sitting in was part of what led him into leaving his job.

As my attachment to them grew, the tight box in my heart that had been trapping me after my mothers death started loosening up, step by step. It could have lasted longer.

When we were somewhere around nine years old, we took our first weapon in hand. It felt heavy, but I was eager to learn how to utilise it, and Kiseki didn't feel any different about it. From that day on, we trained our skills about five hours a day. Every year, we kept count of our sparring results, but it always ended up at either a tie or a rough 10:9 ratio.

For my thirteenth birthday, Kiseki even got me a hand-made haori to put over our uniforms the day we would become demon slayers. He told me it had 'cloud symbols' on it because "my head was always in the clouds." A mild insult from his side, but I didn't mind it. For his fifteenth birthday, I gave him cherry-shaped earrings because he was addicted to these things. He did not take that mild insult as well as I took his, and we started a fight until both of us had bloody noses. Kamiya agreed with both of these mild insults, and doubled down on mine saying;

"You know Kiseki, it's funny how you're so addicted to cherries part of the pigmentation gave your white hair a red strand."

Kiseki almost jumped on him to beat his ass but he had a sufficient amount of self-restraint not to engage in a fistfight with the man who paid for his clothes with the money he had left from killing demons.

That peaceful life could have continued on forever. But instead, it only lasted until Kiseki and I were seventeen years old.