Justice is Blind |『 Female OC 』• Kimetsu no Yaiba

Act 38: The Last Prayer of the Living

The night had draped itself over the village with a heavy, almost oppressive silence, and beneath its cover, a young boy crouched alone in the shadows of his family's modest home.

Eno, barely thirteen, wrapped his arms around his knees, his fingers gripping his skin as he tried to ignore the sting that radiated from his bruised ribs. He had been born into a quiet, unremarkable family.

They were neither noble nor destitute. They simply existed in the margins of the town, where no one paid much attention. But behind the walls of their modest home, the veneer of normalcy crumbled.

Eno's father was a large man with a voice that seemed to fill every corner of their tiny home. His presence was thunderous, demanding attention, demanding obedience, and his fury was as unpredictable as it was relentless.

The boy's mother had vanished when he was very young. People in the town whispered about her departure, but no one knew the truth. To Eno, she was nothing more than a distant memory, a faint smile, a scent that would sometimes return to him in dreams. She was a shadow, barely there and always beyond reach.

To cope, Eno turned inward, learning early on that if he could find a small patch of quiet within himself, he might escape the noise of the world around him. He found solace in reading, burying himself in books that transported him to realms far beyond his father's reach.

He devoured tales of heroes and monsters, gods and men, and people whose worlds were much bigger than the four cramped walls holding him captive. Sometimes, when no one was around, he would sing softly to himself. Singing was his way of reclaiming his own small corner of the world, a space his father couldn't touch.

But the solace was fleeting. Whenever Eno dared to linger too long in his imaginary world, he would find himself dragged back to reality by his father's voice. A booming and angry voice that shook him to his very bones.

Eno learned to anticipate the anger and recognise the signs before the storm hit. He was always one step ahead, bracing himself, holding his breath, waiting for the inevitable. However, the other children sensed his weakness, his silence.

They saw him as an easy target, an outlet for their own cruelties. They called him names, laughed at the bruises they didn't understand, and shoved him down when no one was looking. And Eno took it all, his voice growing quieter, his world shrinking smaller. Then, one day, a friend emerged from the shadows.

He met Tadao in the most unlikely of places. Eno had wandered down to the edge of the town, to the old canal where rainwater and debris gathered, where people's cast-offs ended up. There, hidden beneath the broken boards and overgrown weeds, Eno found a boy huddled against the cold stones.

Tadao was homeless, a runaway, an outsider. He lived in the sewers, lurking in the shadows, but his smile was warm, and his eyes held a spark that Eno had never seen before. They struck up a strange friendship.

"What are you reading?" Tadao asked, making Eno hold up the book, unsure if Tadao could read, but he opened it anyway, reciting passages as best as he could remember. From that night on, they had met secretly, sharing whatever scraps of food Eno could sneak away, exchanging stories, and even laughing at times.