DAMSEL IN DISTRESS • 𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐲 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN, you only need me

A prostitute? The breadwinner? A child.

"Don't be too rough on her now," he grunts, smiles, teeth half chipped and half crooked after he pats you on the back, the gesture both dismissive and falsely intimate. You wince and smile as you're led off by the collar of your neck, wondering if you'll ever get to see your father smile back at you.

"Poor child, sold off as some sexual object!" your neighbour gasps, covering her mouth as if to hide the noise, hide the mocking, hide the stares. But you hear it all. "Isn't their family ashamed of themselves.."

The true reality of the scratching rope on your neck and the silent male tugging on it, leading you away from your home and your family like cattle dawns on you.

"..selling off their daughter like that?"

Hands, fingers, nails gripping into you, damp and desperate palms clinging to your prepubescent body. It's disgusting, it's horrible, and you cry out for your father, your mother, but they're not there, are they?
They're never there. Nobody is there to save you.

You're led back home like a dog again, tugged along by the collarbone, gasping for air and clawing at your restraints. You don't trust the man leading you. You don't want to trust anyone anymore.

"Are we there yet?" you whimper to the man leading you, crying out as he makes one forceful tug, eyes fixing on his stone cold face. He doesn't answer you. Somehow, you expected that.

Then something foul hits your nostrils, an unnatural odour that sneaks around your home. Smoke. Flames. A man made fume that invades your lungs and grinds all your senses to a halt. "Sorry, kid," he speaks, voice blank, and tosses the rope to the floor as everything you've ever known and dared to love collapses in a rush of wood and fire.

"Wait, please! Don't leave me here! Don't..don't leave me here alone!" you wail, grasping at his clothing. Distantly, somewhere in your mind, you wonder why the back of his clothes reads 'destroy.'

It's all gone, anyway. You see your fathers arm, reached out between the debris, and you cradle it, a soft exhaustion creeping over you. You would die in the very hands that were meant to save you, you supposed.

Then Urokodaki came. Your saviour. Your mentor.

He reached out a hand to you - and without any further words you took it. You didn't think about how strange it was, how he came, who he was. He was your father, now, wasn't he?

And it was with him were you trained for months on end. You were a little slower than all of his students, didn't grasp to Water Breathing as well, but that was to be expected.

You didn't mind his strict rules and stiff demeanour. Because he was the only father you had, the only father you could have.

"Y/N," Tanjiro whispers, face unnecessarily close to yours. Stars, he could just stare at you sleeping forever - the rise and fall of your chest, the curve of your eyelashes, the marks on your neck.

If he had been more awake, more aware of what he was thinking, he would have liked to say he would never want to hurt you. But the bruises kissing your collarbone..the perfect art of violet and blood red..they just made him wish all the more that it was his hand that painted them.

"Chuoichiro," Inosuke rumbles from his place next to him. His voice carries an uncharacteristic weariness. The scruffiness of his voice contrasts so faintly from the sound of Zenitsu's snores. "She's trying to sleep. You can tell her that Rehabilitation Training 's ended when she wa-"

He doesn't get to finish another word. With the back of his hand, Tanjiro sends him flying into the wall - his body crashing and rolling to a halt as blood drips from his chin. Oh, he didn't want to hurt him. That was a shame.

He returns his focus to you with a kind smile and unblinking maroon eyes. No, he didn't want to hurt anybody at all.

"Tanjiro?" you murmur, clenching the sleeve of his haori. "why's..why're you in your demon slayer uniform?" You realise your lips are chapped and with growing awareness as you awaken, you lick them.

"Training's ended," he replies softly, helping you sit up. "We're free to go back to our missions now." You blink away the sleep from your eyes, looking around, and registering a incapacitated Inosuke.

"He tried learning a new fighting method and fell," the rougette laughs, noticing your concern. You shrug, still suspicious, but it did sound like him. Inosuke was always doing some crazy thing to try and get stronger, even if it did hurt him. "C'mon, Y/N-chan. Let's head off, okay?"

"What about Kanao? What about Zenitsu? I still need to say goodbye to her, and it's best of we leave in a group!" you retort, but he only smiles and tugs harder. He was much stronger than he looked - You're already out of the door by the time you register you're being led away from the Butterfly Estate.

"Don't worry, Y/N." you hear him say, a stray butterfly landing on his face as you both make your leave. Anybody on looking would think he was the picture of innocence - a kind smile, benevolent eyes that sparkled with sincerity, emerald monarch cleaning its wings on the bridge of his nose.

"You only need me."

|| TAISHO ERA SECRET !

|| Inosuke now has a concussion from the force of which Tanjiro hit him. Additionally, you don't remember anything from what Shinobu asked you, neither do you remember much about your father.