Chapter Text
What is a demon?
The brush hovered over the paper longer than necessary.
A bloodthirsty creature that feeds on people, can regenerate injuries, and gets burned in the sun.
You’re somewhat of a hybrid in between
You don’t get burned in the sun, you can feed on both demons and humans, you have the regeneration ability, and human food doesn’t disgust you as much as normal demons would.
So, what are you?
The answer wasn’t important anymore. Because you were definitely not human.
…But this was still a curious subject. If you weren’t human, then what exactly were you supposed to be?
A demon? Can you still consider yourself one?
That had been your assumption from the start.
Because—the story began with him.
Muzan Kibutsuji.
If anyone was responsible for this body, it had to be him.
You had even confronted the man (demon) about it.
Insulted him.
Called him out by name.
…
Your thoughts stopped.
Slowly, your head lifted.
“…Wait.”
━─━────༺༻────━─━
Staying with the former hashira and siblings proved more difficult than expected.
Thankfully, training did not begin immediately.
Since Tanjiro was still injured from his encounter with the demon, you convinced Urokodaki to give him some to heal first before starting. At least until his wounds had properly closed.
And so, the old man gave him a week to recover.
That week passed slowly.
Most days were quiet. Tanjiro rested while you hovered nearby, occasionally helping change his bandages or preparing hot water when needed. You insisted you were only doing it because you had medical knowledge — and not because leaving someone injured unattended made you uneasy.
Still, Tanjiro thanked you every single time.
It was irritating.
The boy had a strange way of making small actions feel heavier than they should.
But even during those quiet days, a few problems quickly made themselves known.
The first was the sleeping arrangements.
When Urokodaki showed the two of you to a shared room, you immediately raised a hand in objection.
“Kindly sir, I would prefer to have my own room.” You even spoke politely to the older man, trying to gain his favor.
“You don’t want to share a room with me, Haru?” Tanjiro asked looking dejected. For a moment, you felt a loss of composure at his expression.
“It’s not personal,” you added quickly, before he could misunderstand. Which, of course, he immediately did anyway. “I simply don’t sleep well near strangers.”
The word slipped out before you could stop it.
Stranger.
Tanjiro flinched — just slightly.
“Oh…” he muttered pitifully. There was a tiny, almost imperceptible flinch in his expression, a wince at the word ‘stranger’ for a second.
It was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by that earnest smile of his.
“That’s okay, I understand!” It would be a lie to say he didn’t feel hurt that you didn’t consider him a friend as he did you. Despite the short time spent together, he truly felt a connection towards you, and wished you felt the same about him as well.
It would have been easier if he had gotten angry. Instead he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.
“We only just met, after all.”
You sighed internally. Can he really blame you? You had known the boy for barely a few days.
Still, the faint sadness in his voice made you feel oddly guilty.
“It’s not just you, it’s everyone.” you clarified, almost defensively.
“I mean, I’m not comfortable sharing a room with anyone to be exact.” You’re not even sure why you’re explaining yourself to him. It’s just the sad expression on his face earlier… Maybe your choice of words was a bit harsh there.
Urokodaki studied you for a moment — longer than necessary — but ultimately nodded. “There is an unused room. You may take it.”
Relief settled in your chest immediately.
That was the first issue, which was thankfully resolved pretty fast. Although the unused room was a bit smaller in comparison to the previous one, you were still grateful there was extra space for you to occupy.
A private room meant no one would see you sleeping. No one would notice if your mask slipped. No one would question the nights you woke up with a strange hunger gnawing at your throat.
Getting your own room proved to be helpful, but not fully. You still remained cautious. Even with your own room, the thought of someone walking in unexpectedly kept you on edge for the first few nights.
But thankfully, the manners of both men proved to be better than you’d thought. It still didn’t ease your guard completely, but at least you’re much more relaxed.
This second problem was also easily resolved—Meals. Human meals, to be exact.
What was harder to avoid was eating meals. Human meals, to be exact. While the normal demon would find such food disgusting and nasty, you were on the milder side for them.
Urokodaki cooked simple meals — rice, miso soup, grilled fish, simmered vegetables. The kind of food that should have been comforting.
Food was more tolerable to you. Bland but manageable. That didn’t mean you liked forcing yourself three sets of meals every single day.
Thankfully, because of your mask you were able to avoid eating around them without raising too much suspicions.
It was also easier having another person who wears a mask constantly. Since that proved to be a plausible excuse he could understand.
You never understood why people were always so curious to see what’s under your mask. But now that you’re meeting a fellow masked man…
It would be a lie to say you weren’t curious about how he looked, never seeing his face in the anime or manga.
Now you kinda understand why others found it so intriguing to hide one’s face. It was the fun of discovering what he’s hiding under it.
So, just for the sake of finding out how he looked, you decided to sit down and dine next to the two males. (Sit down and watch them dine, to be exact.)
“Urokodaki-san, why do you wear a mask?” Tanjiro asks during the meal, stealing glances between his meal and teacher. It was funny seeing him hesitate to finally ask what was on his mind. As curious as the boy was, he still had the manners to be considerate.
That’s when Urokodaki went on to explain how his real face looks too kind and gentle. And that Demons didn’t take him seriously because of it. So, he started wearing the tengu mask instead.
That had the redhead turn his gaze towards you next, giving you the same curious question.
“It is a personal habit. I do not remove my mask in front of others.” You answered vaguely.
As expected, Urokodaki was supportive of you wearing one.
“A swordsman who hides their face learns discipline.” He’d hum, nodding to himself in content at your decision.
Meanwhile, you were more focused on the masked man across the table, trying to catch him eating without his mask. Unlike Tanjiro who seemed to understand there was more context to the mask.
Despite the conversation moving on, your attention remained fixed on the man seated across from you.
Urokodaki held his chopsticks with the calm composure of someone who had performed this routine countless times before. His posture was straight, movements measured and deliberate as he prepared to eat. Yet the one detail that refused to leave your mind was the obvious obstacle resting on his face.
The mask.
You had seen him wear it constantly since arriving here, never once revealing what lay beneath the carved tengu expression. If he truly never removed it in front of others, then how exactly did he manage something as simple as eating?
Apparently, Tanjiro had the exact same thought.
The redhead finished praying over the meal and reached for his chopsticks.
Urokodaki did the same.
You and Tanjiro both stared, watching him with barely any concealed anticipation.
Urokodaki seemed either unaware of the attention or simply uninterested in acknowledging it. After offering a quiet thanks for the meal, he calmly reached forward and picked up a portion of rice between his chopsticks.
For a moment, nothing unusual happened.
Surely this time—
Then his hand moved.
The motion was so fast it barely registered in your vision—just a brief blur between the table and his face. One second the rice was still held neatly between the chopsticks, and the next it had vanished entirely.
Your eyes widened.
The mask hadn’t moved.
It was still sitting perfectly in place, the carved wooden nose angled slightly downward as if staring at the bowl in front of him.
You blinked.
Tanjiro blinked too.
Neither of you had seen anything.
Across the table, Urokodaki calmly reached for another bite as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Once again the chopsticks lifted, once again his hand moved in that same impossibly quick motion, and once again the food simply… disappeared.
You leaned forward slightly, narrowing your eyes in suspicion.
There had to be some trick to it.
But no matter how closely you watched, you never once caught sight of the mask being lifted. Each bite occurred in the span of a heartbeat, faster than your eyes could follow, leaving behind only the quiet evidence of another empty pair of chopsticks.
For a long moment you simply stared at him in disbelief.
Tanjiro eventually leaned closer to you and whispered under his breath, his voice filled with amazement.
“Did… did you see that?”
You slowly shook your head.
Hashira truly were monsters.
“…Sir,” you said after a moment, still staring at him with undisguised awe, “if I were to hypothetically ask you to teach me that eating technique…”
Tanjiro blinked. “Eating technique?”
You pointed directly at Urokodaki.
“The eating-without-showing-your-face ninjutsu.”
Tanjiro’s confusion deepened instantly.
“…Nin… jutsu?”
You waved a hand dismissively. “Just a dialect thing.”
The chopsticks in Urokodaki’s hand slammed sharply onto the table.
“It seems,” he said calmly, “it is time for me to put you two to the test.”
He straightened.
“Training begins tomorrow,” he declared.
Tanjiro choked on his rice.
You blinked.
That… was not what you meant.
━─━────༺༻────━─━
Training began the very next morning.
Unfortunately, it began long before you could solve your third and most pressing problem.
Food.
Not human food. That had already proven useless.
What you needed were meals suited for your… special constitution.
Instead, you were currently climbing what felt like the ten thousandth stone step carved into Mount Sagiri.
“This is ridiculous,” you muttered beneath the long beak of your mask, your voice echoing faintly inside the wooden shell. Warm air gathered unpleasantly beneath it with every breath. You hooked a finger beneath the strap at your jaw and tugged it slightly to let in a sliver of fresh air.
“If the goal is to kill demons,” you continued under your breath, “surely we could skip the part where we die of exhaustion first.”
Behind you, the uneven rhythm of strained breathing echoed up the mountain.
Tanjiro.
You glanced over your shoulder.
The poor boy looked like his lungs were attempting to escape his body, but he still forced himself upward step after step.
You slowed your pace slightly.
Not enough for him to notice.
Despite your complaints, climbing came far easier to you than it did to him.
Your muscles didn’t burn the same way. Your breathing never quite reached that desperate edge. Even after hours of running, climbing, and carrying water buckets up the mountain, exhaustion only brushed against you rather than swallowing you whole.
Your body existed in an awkward middle ground.
You were stronger than humans—the non-hashira ones.
Your reflexes were sharper. Your recovery quicker. Your stamina stretched longer than any average person’s stamina.
But compared to demons?
You were pitiful. And that’s probably because you’re always in a state of hunger, plus the fact you refuse to feed on humans.
Sure, blood samples do help with your strength, but the real strength-boosting part is human flesh. The little humanity you keep holding onto refuses to let you succumb to cannibalism.
…Maybe that’s a bit ambitious considering you’re feeding on other beings that resemble you just as much.
Most demons, who actually do hunt humans, possessed monstrous strength and ridiculous regeneration. They tore through humans like paper with unbelievable ease.
You, unfortunately, were something in between.
Stronger than humans, yet weaker than demons.
An incredibly inconvenient category to exist in.
By the time you reached the top of the staircase, you stepped aside near a tree and adjusted the strap of your crow mask, letting cooler air slip inside as you waited.
It took another minute before Tanjiro finally staggered over the last step.
The moment he reached the top, his entire body folded forward as he grabbed his knees, gasping.
“Haru-san—!” huff “When did—” huff “—you get here?”
You shrugged.
“Just now.”
That was a lie.
You had been standing there long enough to contemplate your life choices.
Tanjiro straightened slowly, eyes wide with admiration.
“You’re amazing! Your stamina is incredible!”
You waved a dismissive hand. An instinctive move that’s become a habit you’d do before making up another fake story to Tanjiro’s face.
“Ah, it’s nothing. I just trained a lot before we met.”
Another lie.
Tanjiro nodded immediately, fully convinced.
“Wow… that makes sense.”
You stared at him for a moment through the dark lenses of your mask.
…That worked far too easily.
Below you both, Urokodaki’s voice suddenly echoed through the mountain path.
“You two are not finished.”
Both of you stiffened.
“There are still five more runs.”
Tanjiro’s spirit visibly attempted to leave his body.
“F-Five…?”
You groaned and tilted your masked face toward the sky.
“This has absolutely nothing to do with eating ninjutsu.”
Behind you, Tanjiro blinked before attempting to repeat it.
“Eating… nin—nin-jagso.”
You paused.
“…I’m choosing not to correct that.”
Then you turned back toward the endless staircase.
At this point, you were beginning to suspect the technique didn’t exist at all.
“It was anime logic all along.”
“A-anime?” Tanjiro echoed weakly, his legs trembling as exhaustion finally caught up to him.
“It’s a cultural thing in my hometown.”
“Ohhh…” he breathed, nodding seriously despite the fact he looked seconds away from collapsing. “I understand!”
He lifted a fist with surprising determination.
“Huff… please tell me all about your hometown after we survive this training, Haru-san!”
“…Sure.”
You watched him stumble forward again, utterly convinced.
Maybe this was a sign to stop talking to yourself so much.
Especially around people who believed everything you said.
━─━────༺༻────━─━
By the fourth trip down the mountain, your legs had stopped complaining.
And by the sixth, your mind had gone somewhere else entirely.
“You stupid thing.”
The words echoed with every step.
“Do you think I have time to entertain you with dumb lies?”
Your grip tightened on the empty bucket.
You'd actually thought you could fight him.
Fight Kibutsuji Muzan.
With a broken sword and zero planning.
"Ha."
The sound escaped before you could stop it. Tanjiro, several steps behind and barely conscious, probably didn't hear it over his own wheezing.
Good.
Your pace quickened.
“You stood against him. That's amazing.”
Tanjiro's voice, full of sincere admiration.
Amazing.
Sure. Amazingly stupid.
You hadn't stood against anything. You'd charged in like an idiot, thrown a tantrum, and survived purely because Muzan had been curious.
If he'd decided you weren't worth the curiosity—
Your foot hit the next step harder.
The stone cracked.
You didn't slow down.
The bucket hit the ground before you realized you'd dropped it.
You stood frozen on the mountain path.
He wants to continue this conversation.
The thought hit like cold water.
Not next time I'll kill you. Not next time I'll finish the job.
“We'll have to continue this conversation next time.”
Like you were worth coming back to. Like you were interesting enough to keep alive. Like you were a puzzle he hadn't solved yet.
Kibutsuji Muzan was going to find you.
"...Haru-san?"
Tanjiro's voice, distant and worried.
You forced your shoulders to relax. Forced your breathing to steady.
"Fine," you called back. "Just dropped the bucket."
You picked it up.
Your hands weren't shaking. That was good. That was controlled.
By the time you reached the bottom again, you'd replayed the encounter seven more times. Each replay ended the same way — with those red eyes studying you like a specimen, with that pretty smile that wasn't pretty at all, with those words hanging in the air like a promise.
“We'll have to continue this conversation.”
You kicked a loose stone off the path. It bounced twice before disappearing.
Why couldn't you have just kept your mouth shut?
By the tenth trip up, your body had stopped feeling like a body. Tanjiro had long since fallen behind, probably being scolded by Urokodaki somewhere down the path.
Good. You needed this.
The repetition. The burn. The way you could focus on moving instead of thinking.
You reached the top and set the bucket down. Then you picked up the practice sword leaning against the storage shed.
You swung.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Each swing harder than the last.
The air cut cleanly around the wooden blade. No enemy. No demon. Just you and the memory of how easily he'd lifted you off the ground.
“How dare you.”
Your own voice, shrill and useless.
“You turned me into a demon, you ruined my life!!”
You'd been so sure.
But he'd looked at you like you were speaking nonsense. He'd smelled you, looking for his blood, and found nothing.
You swung again. Harder.
Didn't matter who made you. What mattered was that he was interested now. What mattered was that he'd let you go on purpose.
What mattered was that somewhere out there, Kibutsuji Muzan was thinking about you.
What the HELL am I supposed to do now?
The practice sword came down on a training post.
Crack.
The wood splintered.
You stared at the damage, breathing hard.
Right. Maybe ease up on the demon strength during practice.
━─━────༺༻────━─━
You didn't sleep well that night.
Not because of nightmares — though those happened too, sometimes. And not because of hunger — though that hummed softly beneath your skin, constant and familiar.
You didn't sleep because you couldn't stop thinking about before.
Before this world. Before demons. Before you woke up in a forest wearing clothes that weren't yours.
You remembered waking up.
The way the leaves had felt beneath your fingers. The way the kimono had bunched weirdly at your shoulders — wrong size, wrong fit, wrong everything. The way you'd stumbled through the trees for what felt like hours before finding that first village.
They'd been scared of you at first. A strange girl with no memory of how she got there, wearing clothes too fine for a peasant but too dirty for a noble.
But you'd helped them.
An old man with a cough that wouldn't quit. A child with a nasty burn. A woman in labor who needed someone to boil water and hold her hand.
You'd helped, and they'd helped you back. Food. Shelter. A reason to keep going.
You remembered the food.
Rice. Simple rice. Maybe some vegetables? There must have been vegetables.
You couldn't taste it anymore.
You lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember.
What did rice taste like? Really taste like? Not the concept of rice. Not the memory of knowingwhat rice should taste like. The actual flavor. The way it felt on your tongue.
Nothing.
You squeezed your eyes shut.
What about bread? From before this world — your world. What did bread taste like there? Warm, right? Fresh bread was warm. And soft. And—
And you couldn't remember.
You couldn't remember what human food tasted like.
When was the last time you'd actually eaten something that wasn't blood or demon flesh?
You didn't know.
Weeks? Months? Time moved weird when you were just surviving.
The realization crept up on you slowly, then all at once.
You weren't human anymore.
You'd known that. Obviously. The whole demon thing made it pretty clear.
But knowing and feeling were different.
And right now, lying in the dark with your mask pressed against your face and your stomach aching for something you couldn't name, you felt it.
The distance between who you used to be and who you were now.
You couldn't remember food.
You couldn't remember warmth.
You couldn't remember what it felt like to be safe.
Your throat tightened.
You pressed a hand to your mouth — not to stop a sound, just to feel something solid. Something real.
"I want to go home."