❝𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧❞ ||𝐒. 𝐔𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐤𝐢 𝐱 𝐓. 𝐊𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐨||

Prologue

𝐄𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝: 𝟓/𝟏𝟗/𝟐𝟒

The area around him resembled the same thing he always saw. A wall, the sliding doors on each side of the four caged box he was always in. Honestly, it was engraved in his mind, it's all the same, it's always the same. The door behind him slid open but he didn't turn, "Tanjirou," he didn't look behind him when his name was called, "What now? Another torture session? Aren't you satisfied by now, after everything you've done to me already," Now he had balls of steel to speak this way to his superior, his boss, his owner, but he didn't care. After everything this one man did to him, he let his anger be known every time he saw his face. Every time he heard his voice.

There wasn't an answer but there was movement from the sounds behind him and the scent that filled his nose made it aware that the man wasn't exactly happy with his rebellious nature he's managed to acquire in the few years they've known each other. He was never rebellious until he met this man, this monster four years ago. When the footsteps stopped behind him and a hand slipped from his head to his neck, a force yanked his chin to look up at the plum eyes of his owner. "You look at me when I call you, did you not learn that, Tanjirou?" Tanjirou only gave him a glare, his pale veridian eyes bore the black kanji of upper zero, a title Tanjirou hated with every fiber in his own muscles. "I did but I do not answer to you. I hate you," Tanjirou told him with the same tone Muzan used on him, that eerily calm with anger in every edge like a sharp knife waiting to be used on its victim like the very weapon it was. But for these two, it was a completely different story all on its own.

Muzan narrowed his plum eyes at him, the anger in his eyes and scent made Tanjirou know that he was putting himself in harm's way. His entire life was all harm and torture, not an ounce of the term anger until he met Muzan. He didn't know what it was, but Muzan was the only one to bring out a new emotion that he's never felt before, at one point he didn't know what this emotion was until Muzan began the taunting and the word "Anger" came out of his mouth, from that point on Tanjirou learned that the emotion he felt towards Muzan was anger and developed a nature he did not think he was capable of. "You are falling out of line, I'm your master and you listen to me" Muzan gave a hiss of anger, but Tanjirou kept his glare and let his nails sharp to their sharpest capacity, "I don't listen to you, not since you took my freedom and turned me into a hellish being!" Being rebellious, Tanjirou smacked Muzan's hand from his throat and stood up, the gray kimono slipped from his shoulders but he fixed it up and made himself look neat. Not much had changed from the time he was once Human, other than he's grown a substantial amount of muscle on his bones and looked more healthy but in truth, he still wasn't. He was always malnourished and did not devour a Human unless he was forced to do such a thing.

Life was small, but it didn't mean that it was always friendly and gave you such things that were nothing more than a mere dream. A happy life did not exist. The only thing it was was nothing more than an impossible thing and not real. That's what Tanjirou had to learn in the most brutal ways in his life and now that he's more cursed, he wondered how much harder it was going to be. "Like you had much freedom to begin with," Muzan said, his kimono traditional and very formal, and to Tanjirou's view, very wealthy with how Muzan dressed. "Do you not remember how I saved you from those people, hm? Or did you forget," Muzan walked over and was once again behind Tanjirou, even turned into a demon, he didn't get a height change. He wouldn't age, he wouldn't grow, all he could do was live immortally and kill a Human in order to survive and stay out of the sunlight. "You didn't save me, you only brought on another chain, you turned me into a demon against my will!" Tanjirou spun around, his below waist hair swung with the movement and he had his hand inches from wanting to claw the man's own throat out. "And you would have died had I not" Muzan told him, calmly but annoyed.

"I would have been absolutely fine, I've been that way for years before I had unfortunately met you. You turned me into a demon, made me kill Humans in order to satisfy the hunger that I didn't ask for. I am not going to kill anyone because your a lunatic after a flower that probably doesn't even exist-" Tanjirou couldn't even finish before Muzan grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the floor below, the tatami floor wood splintering from the hole now in the floor from Tanjirou's fallen body. One hand gripped Muzan's wrist and the other trying to knock the man off of him but it wasn't working, he's always known that Muzan would always be stronger than him and he'd always be weaker than the demon king. "You little," He growled as the boy underneath him glared, the blood slipped from his lips but he wasn't at all deterred about the blood. "I am not a lunatic," Now how Muzan was that delusional is something Tanjirou will never know. "Really? You're after a flower you sent every upper and lower moon to find and even demons who don't even have the rank of a Kizuki to find this flower when none of us even know the effects of what it'll do for you! You never let me leave this stupid place and it's always the same!" Tanjirou shouted at him in anger, clawing at his wrist that only healed instantly and the blood that remained stained the gray kimono Tanjirou wore and it wasn't at all thin.