Stone Cold | Tanjirou Kamado (old version)

19. Steps backwards on Budda's path

The Butterfly Estate smelled like always, a strong scent of medicine mixed in with fresh flowers and the green from the grass in the garden, that was why when Tanjirou smelled a great scent of sadness, he knew something was up.

A change, something wrong, and he didn't like how that clenched a part on the deepest corner of his chest. Aya had always smelled lightly of sadness, as if she wore it like perfume, slightly on the neck or on the wrists. But now it waved off from her in such a way it drowned his nostrils, waterfalls instead of the single drops that came from her skin. Now the sadness soaked the corridors, and her body, as if it was devoid of a soul, wandered through the gardens, dragging her feet like someone that had nowhere else to go, and she sang incessantly in between whispers. "Round, round, go round, waterwheel, go round. Go round, and call Mr. Sun."

It appeared she tried to hide that smell from him in between the intoxicating one that waved off the colourful flowers in the garden, because she spent her days there, looking at the flowers, even forgetting to eat. Never before had he found her name more ironic, Ayaka, colourful flower, maybe she wanted to turn into one and bury her roots in the earth, because she didn't go back to training, not even when her legs healed and not even when Zenitsu and Inosuke stopped, even if Tanjirou started using Total Concentration Breathing all the time, and that was as strange as the way she didn't yell with Inosuke anymore nor did she aggressively motivate Zenitsu.

Tanjirou was on foreign waters now, somewhere in the mountain that wasn't recorded in the maps, struggling to walk in between the melted snow and the frozen water. He feared the fact Aya's eyes looked like Tomioka's now more than ever.

Something he feared, too, was that from Aya didn't come even a pinch of anger, and that was the strangest thing of it all. Now there was only a strong scent to hate, but it wasn't bitter or burning hate, it was sour, unpleasant when he smelled it and stinky to its worse point, it wasn't hate towards other people.

Tanjirou loathed it, he loathed that it buried itself in the back of his nose and that it reached so deep he could taste it with his tongue, he loathed it so much that before realizing it, Tanjirou found himself walking up to her and asking a simple question.

"Will you start training soon?"

She barely hummed, fingers distractedly playing around with the leaf of a lily.

"Maybe."

She didn't even spare him a glance. A wave of sourness lashed at his nose, and Tanjirou had to force himself not to scrunch his face up in disgust.

He couldn't stand it, it was disgusting, a rotten smell that the hundred flowers nor Aya's soap could make Tanjirou ignore the fact it had digged its way to the deepest part of hise nose. So, without knowing what to do, Tanjirou made the unthinkable.

"Hey, Aya." She gave him a new lazy hum.

"What do you tell a three headed ghost?"

The relief that dissipated on his veins like honey on tea made Tanjirou finally able to relax when Aya finally lifted her gaze. The smell had dispelled, light now and waterfalls stopping on their flow from her skin.

The corners of her lips tensed in what looked like a poor attempt to smile, irremediably ending in a frown so pathetic even Tanjirou flinched in pain at seeing it.

"What do you tell them?"

The smell had been one thing, but her voice was something completely different. Tanjirou wondered if Zenitsu would be able to stand hearing Aya's voice like how he wasn't able to stand up her smell.

Taking a deep breath of air, Tanjirou painfully finished telling the joke, "hello, hello, hello". He had to gather all the strength he had left so he didn't frown because telling a joke so bad and pretending it was funny felt just like lying.