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

Chapter 58

"Thank you!" Kyojuro thanks the shopkeeper, as he takes the paper bag full of delicious, baked sweet potatoes from the bald elderly uncle who managed the stall. The old man raises an eyebrow at his greeting. Some of the people around his stall seem to cringe and shy away from his voice.

"You don't look like you're from around here," The shopkeeper spoke, as he looked down at his small basket of change and found the correct coins and handed them to him. Kyojuro shifted the bag of food from his right to his left, cradling it with his elbow as he took the change from the man.

"Yep! I'm not!" He replies, as he places the change in his pocket. The man, with sharp eyes, seems to scrutinise him hard. Kyojuro looks back at the man, feeling very awkward.

"You shouldn't say that so blatantly, young man. This village is not fond of outsiders, and never will. For protecting my wife and our grandaughter, here's some word of advice, don't go to the temples in winter," The old man mutters, as he turns to his still grilling new batch of sweet potatoes. How interesting. He did go to one, well the only temple in the centre of town the night before, but he felt that the old man was warning him.

"Why?" He tones his voice down, in case the two of them were being watched.

"I think I might have given you the wrong change," The old man suddenly says very loudly, much louder than what was necessary, as he holds his hand out. Kyojuro digs his hand into his pockets, digging out his change and playing along.

"It's best to stay ignorant in times like these. Demons may not roam about here, and demon slayers have never been welcome here because the Guardian of Snow has protected us from the demons. In the past, some of the priests and priestesses would head up the mountain to pray and seek her protection, it needed a sacrifice. Now, it's different. Now here's your change," The old man smiles at him, forced but with enough ease in it to pass off as a normal smile. He takes the new change from the man, as his next customers go up to him. The coins are warm of him, and they smell faintly of rusted metal and sweet potatoes.

But the old man was right. There was something up with this town. The fact that all of the towns people seemed to shoot hostile glares at him, through the cloak of night, as the orange lanterns burn like eyes, illuminating a path filled with nothing but unknown strangers.

His gut instinct was telling him to return back to the house.

Humans were unpredictable when faced with an unknown threat. They either react by fleeing or fighting. And when they fought, they fought till the threat was completely annihilated.

That, coupled with the apparent lack of a wisteria house in this entire town, at the base of a mountain, nor had he seen any trace of any patrolling demon slayer at all was suspicious. The sweet potatoes were waiting for him. As he reached his free hand into the bag, he pulled out one as he started to eat it. The old man had helped him to peel the potatoes, which he had been surprised he had done as such, since no other stall keepers had ever done such a thing for him.

In response, the old man had said that his hands were going to be full, and the potatoes were best eaten warm.

It was nice to know that not everyone in this village seemed to shoot hateful glares towards him. As he walks back towards the inn, he's relieved that both of his eyes are human, and that there was nothing to give away the fact that he was, or perhaps now, had been a demon. There's a calmness in his heart, akin to that of still water, with the smoothest, untouched surface.

"Please solve all of our problems!" He hears people shouting and chanting, and his ears perk up at the sound of people pleading. He looks behind him, as he catches what seemed to be a small parade, in which numerous priests, dressed in a white and grey haori and the traditional priests clothing, but the sight of the coloured haori.....