Heart Of Fire; Veins Of Ice | Kimetsu No Yaiba Fanfic (Kyojurou's POV)

Chapter 51

The tray is easily balanced on the tip of her fingers as Hiromi softly slides open the door to Kyojuro's room.

She'd been extremely angry at Kaori and the others for trying to kill him, and had given all of her dancers a tongue lashing for escalating into violence so easily at the sight of a demon. At least she wanted to make sure he was fine, and perhaps, get him some food to make up to him for it?

He'd been in his room for the past two days, not leaving at any moment, and while she and Yousuke had been concerned somewhat, Masahiko had simply informed them that he was sleeping to make up for energy lost. Although the two of them had been informed that he was a half demon, still, he could be killed.

In fact, she was certain that he had the vulnerabilities of both a human and a demon, and yet the strength of both.

The speed of which he had drawn his sword had been.... insane.

She finds the door with the Kirin, a beast with the head of a dragon with antlers, and yet with the body of a horse. The painting is exquisite, and it belonged to the top floor for a reason. On the smooth paper, it stood atop a snowy mountain, as below it, the Suzaku and Byakko seemingly ceased fighting for it. The two animals bowed to the Kirin, gorgeous splashes of paint across the paper which spread from the bottom of the door to the top and its edges.

The Kirin's gaze was all encompassing, as it seemed to peer with warm kindness into all whom walked past it.

Hiromi gives it a small bow before she heads into Kyojuro's room.

When she opens the door, she's met with a gust of cold wind.

His room is spacious, open and hollow, with nothing but a thick futon neatly placed at the side of a room, and a sparse bookshelf at the corner. A plant which sat at the corner seemingly frosted over, as she could see Kyojuro standing by the window, which was wide open even in the middle of what had to be one of the colder winters in town.

The moonlight casts an eerie shadow of his figure onto the light grey carpeted ground, and the paintings of the animals and figures all over the room seem to be dull, lifeless, and retreating from him in the dim moonlight.

She wonders why the hell he put out the lanterns, but there's something telling her that there was something, very, very wrong.

She gently sets the tray on the ground, as his shadow seemingly flickers and shifts into something else entirely before she blinks, and she passes it off as a hallucination as a shadow from the lack of light. Being trained by the Director for so long, as well as with Yousuke, she knows when a situation goes horribly, horribly wrong.

The pale moonlight seemingly bleaches the colour from his clothes and his skin, as cold wind blows and moves the still, freezing air in the room. But it does nothing to help and only freezes the room more. Hiromi sees frost forming on the walls, over the paintings as its stretches from Kyojuro-kun's position by the window.

"Kyojuro-kun?" She asks him, and he doesn't respond.

She asks again.

This time, he does.

More accurately. It.

Both of his eyes flicker grey for a moment before his right regains his usual gold hue, but she can see that he is not fully conscious, and his right eye is dull, lifeless and a puppet to the demon which laid within his left. And yet something skilfully manipulates his limbs, giving him an unnatural grace and elegance she knew was not part of him.

She may have only met him for several hours, but it was enough for her to know that his strength laid in fortitude and passion.

Not grace and cold intelligence.