Traitor. || UpperMoon0 Tanjiro.

12

---------------------☆

Tanjiro was restless last night.
It wasn't because of the quarrel with father the day before, but the aftermath of it.

Ever since Kokushibou the night was given the permission to train Tanjiro, he has been looming around his room, waiting for Tanjiro to wake up, or even spying on him.
It was actually the unsettlingly cold aura Kokushibo brought with him everywhere that kept Tanjiro awake.

...The moment Tanjiro felt sleep tugging at his eyelids, those same, empty footsteps lightly pacing outside his door... the ones that upon every click of his heel made Tanjiro tense up. Like the ones in a horror-thriller when the protagonist is hiding in the room over from the murderer and quietly holding their breath.

He wasn't used to this overwhelming feeling of dread and fear emanating off of the UpperMoon. Sure, the other UpperMoons have their own auras- metaphorically or not, but Kokushibos was on another level. Tanjiro was just glad for some odd reason, Father's always seemed content around him. Even if it was on purpose, he couldn't imagine how disturbing Fathers would be.

Usually Kokushibo's quarters resided near Muzan, like how everyone else had their own sections of the castle for training and living whenever they weren't on missions. But ever since this morning, Kokushibo has been dawdling awfully close to Tanjiro's room, and somewhere during the night, even came up to his door.

Atleast he was being kind enough to wait for Tanjiro to wake up instead of barging cruelly and "waking" up Tanjiro.

Please..! I don't know what you talked about with father yesterday, but what has it got to do with m-
Oh.

Making the mistake of shifting in his bed- along with the regretful wince- he couldn't do anything as he heard Kokushibo close in, standing directly infront of his door.

The two- despite being separated by a thin bamboo door- could tell the other was waiting for them. Both positively and negatively.

Breath hitching, Tanjiro loudly threw his blanket off the bed and slumped towards the door, eyes glued on the ominous shadow being cast from the bottom of the door, even the lanterns usually posted outside his door seemed to flicker and grow dull- as if scared from the UpperMoon approaching.

Atleast he has the manners to knock. Not like I could argue or do anything if he were to barge in.
Tanjiro sighed to himself as Kokushibo placed three, light and polite knocks with the knuckle of his index finger.

With a painfully slow and loud creak, Tanjiro- half asleep (despite not sleeping at all)-pulled the door open.

The two demons instantly locked eyes, Tanjiro's neck straining from how high he had to look up to even view the demons chin.

Licking his dry lips, acting as if he just woke up, Tanjiro croaked.
"Kokushibo."

Replying carefully in the same tone, hoping to make a good first impression, Kokushibo smiled.
"Young Master."

Tanjiro raised a brow, blinking out the tiredness and adjusting to the warm lanterns outside. He's surprised anyone can sleep with all these lights in the infinity castle.
"Don't call me that... Tanjiro is fine."

Internally scolding himself, Kokushibo nodded apologetically. Meeting Tanjiro's eyes again, a little taken aback about how similar he truly was to... that man.
Unfortunately, this caused kokushibo to slip up. And that rarely ever happened.

Flinching in surprise, he slowly blinked his first set of eyes.
Followed slowly by the second pair.
And finishing the 'surpirsed' blink with his third pair of eyes. One could relate what he did in shock to that of a lizard- how they'd slowly blink their eyes one by one.

Tanjiro, startled from the odd gesture from the UpperMoon, jumped back- a little in disgust. He'd never told anyone, but Tanjiro finds lizards, frogs- amphibians of all sorts- disgusting.

Causing a chain reaction, Kokushibo tried to fix his mistake by reaching out- a stupidly brainless move. What use was trying to calm a scared kid down by making it look like you attempted to grab or strike him!

With his sharp reactions and survival instincts, Tanjiro swerved out of the way and unknowingly tried to move his hand to block Kokushibo's misinterpreted 'attack'.
...or so he thought. Instead, the moved the wrong hand- the one that was still gripped tightly on the door handle. That only ended up with him accidentally slamming the door into one of his toes, causing a whole scene to play out.

Tanjiro painfully winced, instantly jumping backwards as he held his foot in one both hands, hopping around in a random instance, whining and hissing with the stubbed toe.

"Y-young master..!"
Kokushibo called out quietly as possible, taking a single yet long stride into Tanjiro's room, grasping the kids shoulders and trying to hold him still.
Unfortunatley, Tanjiro wriggled out of his grasp and fell to the floor, landing painfully on his wrist.

Retracting his hands from where Tanjiro's shoulders used to be, Kokushibo narrowed his eyes and turned his head ever so slightly, in a 'ouch, that looks painful' type of way.
Of course, he snapped out of it, instead falling to Tanjiro's side as he helped him lean against a wall.

"My apologies, young master! W..where does it hurt?"

Tanjiro narrowed his eyes, shaking his wrist to numb the tingling and sharp pain shooting throughout his arm.
"Where else? My wrist and toe."
He spat, looking away- not even caring as Kokushibo's sword unsheathing sounded right next to him.

Tanjiro knew that sound and smell all too well, despite the UpperMoons strictly never harming him to a certain extent.
The crisp sound of the swinging of a katana, cut bluntly and short by meeting one's flesh.
Then the smell pouring in- the metallic and deep one, in this case- smelt oddly familiar- if it weren't suffocated by the smell of fathers blood. But every demon had that so it was getting easier to detect and drain out.

Snapping his head back towards Kokushibo, Tanjiro was instantly met with a splatter of blood all over his face.

In compensation to 'stubbing Tanjiro's toe and hurting his wrist', Kokushibo didn't hesitate to shop off his lower leg and completely amputate his left arm- shoulder and everything.

Using the arm he fell on, Tanjiro squealed and pushed himself away from Kokushibo, feeling and hearing the wet squelch of his body parts falling to the knitted floor.
"W-what the fuck! There's..! There's blood everywhere!"

Wiping the blood off his face with his sleeve, Tanjiro quickly scanned the floor of his room, scowling as he saw the twitching arm of Kokushibo's, accompanied by the pale leg.
Shuddering from the sight, Tanjiro looked back up at Kokushibo.

"...Ive heard things about you, Kokushibo... turns out you're a fucking idiot."
He sighed, shaking his head as Kokushibo returned the sigh whilst sheathing his katana swiftly.

"My apologies, Young Ma-.... Tanjiro."
Kokushibou regenerated his arm and leg instantly upon seeing Tanjiro wasn't satisfied with his 'punishment'. The pair that were laying in puddles of blood on the floor seemed to disintegrate and blow away by some gust of wind... even though his room had little to no ventilation.

He threw himself into a kneel, looking seriously at the ground, not even caring his sleeves or pale knees were being stained by his blood.
"I Apologise for this. Any punishment would be fit for what I have done, Tanjiro. I refuse to let myself get away with this, especially on my first impression."

Tanjiro sighed, rubbing his temple as the irritating smell of blood now stained his room. It's so fucking hard to clean up. And the smell really lingers.

"...stand up."

---------------------☆

|| Word count: 1283 ||

|| Ik this was definitely a filler chapter, but I liked the idea of Kokushibo's and Tanjiro's first real encounter to be a goofy one. I plan on a strong brotherly bond in the future, so this helps alot. ^_^ ||

---------------------☆