DAMSEL IN DISTRESS • 𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐲 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN, Y/N, can you hear me?

It's a strange feeling you have. It's as if you're watching life through someone else's eyes, distorted, warped lenses.

But you feel - in fact, it's as if all of your senses are heightened. Beads of sweat glisten down your forehead, illuminated by the sun that sprays down on you in brilliant, fluorescent rays.

Your heart is racing, the rhythmic hum of its desperate beat thrumming in your eardrums; your naked muscles ache as you wield your sword and swing, again, again, and again at the wooden dummy...and yet, a vivid joy courses through your tired veins.

Blood streaming from calloused, bruised hands. Castaways of hair sticking to your face are almost set alight by rich daylight. This feeling is of pure animal - it makes you want to fight and scream until your throat is hoarse and numb, battle til you see bone. It is a feeling of pure instinct.

Everything blurs. Nothing matters but the sword underneath this stranger's hand - and so under the flaming heat of the day, you let out an ethereal laugh that blesses the stiff air surrounding you into blossoming and causes the grass under your feet to flourish.

You were truly breathtaking, no matter the lifetime.

Someone is screaming for you, and you have blood on your hands. It's surprisingly thick. With growing realisation, you realise Tanjiro is yelling for you - the words slowly coming into focus.

"Y/N!"

"You've killed it already! Wake up!"

"It's dead!"

"The demon is dead, Y\N!"

You're being shaken gently, and your world crosshatches into reality. "Tan..Tanjiro?" you whisper dimly.

He visibly relaxes, voice growing softer, more certain. "Y/N? You're awake?"

Before you can react, he embraces you tightly, pulling you into his chest. Blood stains his haori. He seems oddly unfazed.

He continues speaking, voice muffled by your clothes. Confusion briefly lingers before being replaced by warm comfort. It's okay. Tanjiro was holding you. He was a man, but he was a nice one, this time. He wouldn't hurt you. He wouldn't. Would he?

"I'm so glad. I thought you had..left me. But you wouldn't leave me," he murmurs, oblivious to your rising paranoia. Much to your simultaneous dread and relief, he releases you, but only to look you in the eye. You catch your breath long enough to muster the words, "What happened?"

Bemusement flutters across his surprisingly delicate features. For a coal miner's son, he looked shockingly dainty, with his fair face and soft, crimson eyes. The red trickles down your neck and rests in the curve of your collarbone, landing in a pool by your feet. Suddenly, you scream.

"Wahh! Blood! Blood! I have blood all over me! Eek, gross, gross, gross!" you squeal, rolling over in the grass in a mundane attempt to rid yourself of the filth covering you.

"You killed a demon, so there's bound to be blood..?!"

"I killed a demon!" you scarcely have time to bask in your victory before the situation sets in. "Wait, I killed a demon!?"

"That's exactly it. Do you not remember anything?" he says patiently, unravelling you from your position on the ground and setting you upright.

"No. I remember walking here, with you, killing your crow-"

"You killed my crow..?"

"..and then, I don't know, it just all...goes dark?" you mumble, trailing off as you stare at the disintegrating mess that must have once been your foe. Ash swims into the clouds, and what is evil is washed clean.

You look back at Tanjiro. His face is closed off, concentrated, as if trying to piece together a particularly difficult puzzle. "You went crazy," he says as he finally breaks away.

"Huh?" You stop picking at the grass by your feet and listen intently. "Crazy?"

"You went crazy," he repeats, staring into your eyes with a growing intensity. "It was beautiful."

He might be a little crazy himself.

"You used Mist Breathing...but it looked... different. It wasn't like when the Mist Pillar fought or anyone who uses Mist Breathing. It looked entirely different." His voice picks up in speed, and his hands latch onto your shoulders as he locks eyes with you. You back away automatically as fear consumes you.

"Y/N! What do you know about your breathing style!?" he pants, lunacy dancing in his eyes.

"Nothing! It's just as I told you, I don't know anything! I know just what you told me - that I saw a demon, went crazy and like, slashed it to death!" You ramble in an attempt to mollify him. He slumps and his hands slink off you in defeat. You feel awful - he must be looking for any link to Sun Breathing, the only connection he had to his old life other than Nezuko.

"I'm sorry, Tanjiro, but I actually don't know. I'm struggling with finding my own breathing technique," you say softly.

Suspicion. Raw suspicion builds in his gaze as he turns towards you again, furrowing his eyebrows, mouth slightly agape. "...How did you know it was because of a demon?

It's as if those words themselves knot together what was once true, undeniable and clear - and tighten them into a kaleidoscope of emotions that make your head spin. Memories. A stranger, hidden relics of past so pure and foreign and yet so familiar...

Tanjiro's voice, desperate once more, calling for you. It blots into the mosaic of vague sensations as your eyelids grow heavy. A thousand lifetimes, each more divine and pearlescent than the last - too much for one mortal body to handle.

"Y/N? Can you hear me?"

"Tell my father I'm going home," you think you say- your voice is worryingly unfamiliar, and you black out.

|| TAISHO ERA SECRET!

|| The sudden influx of past and present memories was too much for any human body to handle - additionally, the side effects of the fumes Shinobu had made you inhale, combined with the exertion of killing a strong demon by your lonesome was too much, so you passed out.

In the end, you worriedly thought that Urokodaki-sama would be concerned if he heard you had passed out, so in the midst of the confusion you blurted out the last line in an attempt to try and ease his worries.