Slayers And Heroes

"Help Him Live"

Kanao's heart shattered upon realizing Tanjiro was going to die in only around nine years. The boy she was in love with... even if he felt the same as her... even if they managed to get back to the Taisho period, they wouldn't be together for even a decade. While everyone pitied those who were still alive, only a couple noticed Kanao's shattered state. The others were wary of Midoriya. They wanted answers for what that mysterious power was, but he was unconscious. The sudden shock of power must have exhausted him.

"I'm gonna say what we're all thinking... what was that with Midoriya?" Kirishima asked.

No one could answer. It was nothing they had seen before. Kaminari tried to make a comparison to Todoroki's quirk, but Jiro fired back that it'd be equivalent to him suddenly getting a geokinetic quirk, which has nothing to do with his original quirk.

Kanao didn't focus on any of that. She couldn't focus on that. She walked over to Tanjiro.

"Is it true? That the Mark will kill you in around nine years?" She asked him quietly.

"Yeah. That's why I want to make sure Nezuko is well off after I'm gone," he said somberly.

"Just her?" She asked, tears coming to her eyes.

"Her, Zenitsu, Inosuke, Miss Aoi, the Butterfly girls, and you, of course. All of my friends," he said.

"I see..."

She walked away from him before she could start weeping. She stopped right in front of Shinobu. Shinobu tilted her head when she saw her.

"Kanao?" Shinobu asked.

She turned her face up, tears streaming from her eyes.

"Master... please... I beg you... save Tanjiro!" She cried.

"How do you--" she began to ask.

"You were able to make a cure for demons! Surely you can make a medicine to bypass the mark!" She interrupted.

"I'm not quite sure that--"

"Please! Master! Help him live!" She collapsed to her knees, clutching Shinobu's sweater.

Shinobu wanted to tell her honestly that she wasn't sure if she could. She also wanted to say that if Tanjiro did return her affection, they'd still have nearly a decade together. But she didn't have the heart to tell her that. She could tell that she was utterly heartbroken. She needed to give her some sort of assurance.

"I... I shall... I shall look into it," Shinobu said

"Please... please..." she begged, sobbing.

She kept sobbing. Shinobu placed a hand on her head, stroking her hair. As everyone began to disband, Shinobu told Tanjiro that she would need to do a couple of surprise examinations of him in the next couple days.

*

Tanjiro was sitting on an examination bed. He was called in at long last today by Shinobu. She was presently drawing some blood from his right arm. She placed a cotton ball on the place she was drawing blood from as she drew the syringe from his arm.

"That should be the last thing I need for now," she said

She had called him into this nurse office, as they had heard it called, and was running multiple tests on him. Measuring his heart rate, taking his temperature, feeling his muscular structure, and, of course, studying his blood.

She was already seeing some differences between the physiology of Marked Tanjiro versus what she remembered from unmarked Tanjiro. Base body temperature, blood pressure, many things she had to figure out.