Tonight || Giyushino

~Chapter 15~

First day of training, and Giyu came back looking like he had survived a war. I can't do this, he thought hopelessly. He dragged himself to one of the houses in the area and before he knew it, he was fast asleep. 

For a few months, they kept doing the going-up-and-down-the-freaking-mountain routine. Slowly, navigating the mountain became easier. It was probably because Giyu was more stronger than before now. He could even keep up with Shinobu, who flashed him a smile every time he overtook her. However, the first two people were always Kanae and Sanemi. Those two were built different. 

But now the traps became even more dangerous. People could sustain seriously bad injuries with them. It was as if the trainers wanted to kill them. But they got through it. No one died. Thank kami.

Then, they started the ascends with swords. The swords greatly slowed down Giyu's movements, and he got trapped in many traps. He was not the only one. Most of the princes and princesses were hanging from trees or had fallen into ditches. Giyu did not miss Tanjiro and Nezuko's giggles while they zoomed past everyone else. Aww, stop flexing. 

Since Sanemi and Kanae always sped ahead, and he always overtook Shinobu, Giyu had found a new training companion. The cheerful Flame prince was really a ray of sunshine. He was the most motivational person Giyu knew. Rengoku and Giyu ran at the same speed, and they became good friends. Giyu was not as cold as before, so he did not have trouble making friends. Pity that Rengoku was not learning the same breathing style as Giyu.

After a few times, Giyu got the hang of holding a sword. Then, they were trained to swing a sword. Technically, they were swinging swords every single day. They would ascend the mountain in the night, return in the morning, swing swords in the afternoon, rest in the evening and repeat. They could pretty much do anything they wanted in the evening.

Swinging a sword was very difficult, compared to the normal weak "slash" Giyu was trained to do in the palace for self defence. After returning from the mountain, they would swing the sword until his hands fell off. His sister, Tsukato, picked up the sword-swinging better than he did.

"Ne, Giyu, it's not that hard! You have to grip the sword with both hands!" Tsukato tried to teach Giyu, but he did not have the natural talent like her. Tsukato could go swinging the sword 5000 times and only would break a sweat. Damn, his sister was strong. The cultivators were extremely strict.

Giyu POV

After the sword swinging training segment, they were trained to slice tatami mats.

"Swords break easily. Although they are strong vertically, it is weak horizontally. So, you will need to apply force straight on the blade. The blade's direction and the direction in which you apply the force must be exactly the same," the cultivator with the white haori explained. "You will need to master this to learn the breathing techniques."

The next day, it was a painful training-fall traning. We all wielded swords and charged towards Tanjiro and Nezuko. They were unarmed, but all of us wielded swords. 

Unsurprisingly, they flung us off their shoulders with ease. My ego was crushed when a girl, five years younger than me, threw me five metres away. Tanjiro looked like he really did not want to throw people away, but was forced to. Nezuko, on the other hand, was enjoying flinging people around.

"Nyah! Giyu ni-san, get up and come again! Shinobu ne-san! You are very light! Nyahhaahhaha!" Nezuko yelled. Tanjiro looked at her disapprovingly.

"Nezuko, please don't tell me you are enjoing this."

"What? Its fun! I love throwing things around!"

"They are people!"    

"But we were instructed to do this, oni-chan! Lemme have fun!" Nezuko pouted. Tanjiro sighed, and they continued throwing people. While they were having their friendly conversation, Giyu was suffering from extreme pain. The whole point of this lesson was to be able to improve their reflexes and for them to be able to get up from any position, and continue fighting. It hurt like hell. 

[i needed to take so much reference from the first few eps of season 1]