Stone Cold | Tanjirou Kamado (old version)

10. The doors to Hell are in the sea

"Are you sure we can stay here until we recover? Without having to pay anything?" Ayaka asked, without taking her eyes off the emblem on the door's house Tanjirou's crow had led them to.

A purple emblem made out of wisteria, a symbol that for all demon slayers meant rest and healing. She had heard once the family bearer of the wisteria gave their services to all demon slayers needing help, would it be just to heal after a long battle or simply a place to sleep.

Even so, it didn't feel right to go into a stranger's house. The idea of special treatment was even worse, even if she knew it should be a tempting idea for everyone with a brain. Just thinking about how the people working there would see her as someone the same status as the daughter of a rich family made shivers run down her back. False kindness never sit right with her, especially when she had grown up in a poor family. It was, certainly, an uncomfortable thought.

"Those injured will rest until fully healed! Caw! Rest, rest!" Tanjirou's crow answered, whose owner held it on his hands.

"Eh? We can rest?" Tanjirou asked, which made Ayaka raise her eyebrows in surprise.

"Don't tell me you've been going injured from mission to mission all this time," she said in a tired voice, crossing her arms over her chest as she left her crow settle on her shoulder and they exchanged a look, only one thought in mind. How irresponsible from both the crow and the demon slayer.

Ayaka didn't know why she was surprised about Tanjirou's broken bones.

The anger against her crow had slowly faded away. She had ran after him and shouted a few curses at him before reaching a common goal, they were both hungry.

A demon slayer couldn't disobey their crow's mission assignments, and if hers had wanted, it could have assigned her a close mission in revenge for wanting to turn him into stew, but there was a better solution for both parts. Her crow sent her to the wisteria emblem house (although she wasn't gravely injured) and she didn't made soup with him. Besides the unmentioned implication of giving him her leftovers, because of course, he was just as hungry as her.

Silently and softly a woman appeared, finally opening the door Ayaka had been so intently watching.

It was an old lady, small and thin with a big bun on top of her head painted in gray silver.

She looked at them with a disturbing air to her, like those who know things one didn't and only refrained to see as one ended up on a tragic end. If the old lady was a supernatural being who had lived thousands of years, she would have fit the image Ayaka had of her, but after all, she was simply paranoid and this was just a simple old lady that looked at them in kindness, what she didn't know was if it was fake kindness, proper to servants used to work in houses as big as this, or if she really looked after the wellbeing of the people she took care of.

Even so, such an old and collected woman didn't give off any safety to her.

"Come in," the old lady said, merely peeking through the door. She was very small.

"We're sorry for bothering you this late," Tanjirou apologized to her, appearing particularly anxious. Ayaka scrunched up her nose at the sight of sweat on his forehead.

Behind her, as he clutched to her shoulders, Zenitsu started trembling just by giving the woman a look. Now that he didn't have Shoichi (who he still believed was the one to kill the demon even if he was a thirteen year old kid without any kind of training, Ayaka did so as well) he stayed as close to Ayaka as possible since it was clear after the Inosuke incident without the need to say it aloud that she was the strongest of them all. So Zenisu, naturally, had nothing else to do than hide behind her.