Dancing in the Mist (Demon Slayer / Kimetsu no Yaiba: Tokito Muichiro x OC)

Chapter 10

"Now that your treatment is over, I shall take my leave. Aoi, dear, you may stay for a few more minutes. However, be sure to return to work quickly. We still have the other victims of the battle to care for," Kochou said, turning towards the door.

Kasumi, feeling slightly bad for actively avoiding this nice-looking woman, called out after her, "Thank you... for helping me, Butterfly Lady."

Kochou turned around with a surprised expression, then gently smiled. "My name is Kochou Shinobu. You can just call me Shinobu, dear," she said before walking through the door, sliding it closed behind her. An awkward silence descended upon the two girls with Shinobu's absence before Kasumi broke it.

"Aoi, who was that boy from before?" Kasumi asked the girl, finally remembering her question.

"That was Tokito Muichiro, another friend of yours and fellow amnesiac. We were honestly surprised when he kept coming to visit you every day without fail. Usually he would forget about a person as soon as they left his sight," Aoi explained. "...Do you really want to eat fish?" she asked Kasumi, who nodded.

"I started craving it after seeing his fish hair," she replied as if that were a perfectly normal train of thought.

"O-oh," Aoi said, not knowing what else to say.

"Aoi, can you give me my notebook? I should have written down something about him if he really was a friend," Kasumi asked, pointing towards the pair of items on the nightstand just barely out of her reach.

"Sure!" Aoi said, passing them over to her.

Kasumi affectionately ran her fingers over the familiar paper, the faint smell of wisteria unlocking vague memories of being surrounded by the ethereal flowers. She opened the cover, passing her eyes over the words that had become her reason for living for the past years: "I promised to kill Kiyomi." With those few words, the large majority of the fog in her brain was blown away; she was Kasumi, ward of the demons Kiyomi and Tamayo, and she was taking the Demon Slayer Corps Final Selection in order to be trained in the techniques of demon slaying. She flipped over to the last entry of her journal, vaguely recollecting that she had written something about someone... someone who had become strangely precious to her. Her hands paused as she came across a drawing - a drawing of the boy who had visited her just minutes earlier. She quickly scanned the words that accompanied this drawing that she was beginning to remember drawing: "Tokito Muichiro. A strange boy who acts like me. I wonder why being around him doesn't make me anxious like with other people? His hands are warm but rough... He must've had a teacher as hellish as Kiyomi. Once the test is over, I'm pretty sure we'd have both passed. I wonder if we can become friends in the future? I'll have to hide Kiyomi and Aunty Tamayo from him, though... What a pain in the ass. I'm hungry."

"Muichiro..." Kasumi murmured as she softly closed the notebook and set it on her lap.

"What," Muichiro said as he opened the door, a platter of food balanced on his hand.

He really brought back fish! Aoi thought in shock, not expecting him to actually remember Kasumi's request.

Kasumi stared at him contemplatively. "I remember you. Sort of. Why did you come back to the battle? You had no reason to."

"What battle?" Muichiro asked blankly, tilting his head to the side.

"The battle with Momotsuki," Kasumi clarified.

"Who?"

"..."

"..."

"I'm hungry."

"Oh. I brought fish for some reason. Do you want it?" Muichiro asked, offering the lunch platter to her. Kasumi nodded, scooting over to the side so that Muichiro could sit down and set the platter on her lap, shifting her notebook to the side in the process.