𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙾𝚍𝚍 𝙾𝚗𝚎 𝙾𝚞𝚝 || Demon Slayer

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚃𝚠𝚘 - 𝚃𝚑𝚛𝚎𝚎 𝚂𝚒𝚋𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝚁𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚒𝚗

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❝世界は残酷だ それでも君を愛すよ❞

𝚘𝚛

❝𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐞𝐥 

𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐞𝐭, 𝐈 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮❞

- 𝙰𝚔𝚞𝚖𝚊 𝚗𝚘 𝙺𝚘, 𝙰𝚒 𝙷𝚒𝚐𝚞𝚌𝚑𝚒

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Hinode Atsuki

After a few moments of silence of Rui in his thoughts, he spoke up. "Come along Atsuki, we're going to see Mother."

"All right, brother."

The two of us made our way towards Mother, avoiding her puppets and the Demon Slayers. Eventually her voice filtered into my human ears. She was speaking softly to herself. Rui must have heard her long before I did.

"-closer you get to me, the thicker and stronger these threads are, and the more powerful my dolls become."

I stood to the side of her little clearing with Rui as he made our presence known. "Mother... you can win, right?"

During their entire conversation, Mother was terrified. Her voice was higher pitched and shaky. When Rui threatened to involve Father, her fear only worsened. The quivering of her hands made that apparent.

From the few memories I had left of my original family, intimidation shouldn't be used with your loved ones. However, I'd grown up like this. This type of behaviour was considered very normal for us. Nevertheless, my existence had decreased Rui's violent tendencies towards the others. But he could still be extreme on some occasions.

"Then, hurry it up," Rui said. He began to walk away but paused, turning back to Mother. "Atsuki is going to stay with you to make sure you get this done already." With that, he left.

Once he was gone I addressed Mother. My eyes were loving but my words cold. "Your son is right, Mother." I did love my Mother. Very much in fact. But she needed to get rid of these pests and kindness wouldn't make her work faster.

"You can trust me Atsuki, I'm your mother!" Her voice rose in volume as she spoke but I knew she wasn't mad at me. She was annoyed with herself and the Demon Slayers.

I watched from a tree as she tried to even her breathing and stop her shaking hands. When her dolls kept failing she yelled in frustration while waving her threads around wildly. "Die! Die! Just die already! Or else there'll be hell for me to pay!"

In other fights, I'd watched Mother easily manoeuvre her threads to make her puppets kill. It was usually a beautiful sight. At that moment, it was not.

Mother was getting reckless. She frantically swung her hands in different directions because she was panicking. While this would make the moves more deadly, they would be more effective if she was doing them with more control. From my spot I could see she was still shaking but her breathing had mostly evened out, aside from a few pants every now and then.

"So stubborn! How about this?!"

After a while of her violent attacks, I could see her threads weren't responding correctly. I sat there feeling sorry for her but also annoyed at her. She's supposed to protect us, but here she was... failing.