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I.
“I’m scared,” Giyuu says. Quiet, like others might hear. But nobody else comes here, it’s only them. Sabito breathes, in and out. “That’s okay, though, right?”
“For now, it’s okay,” Sabito says. “When the time comes, if it’s not useful we should forget it’s there.”
Sabito was always saying strange things like that. Like his stream of thought evolved from moment to moment. Like blinking gave him new ideas about light.
(pull)
Nobody believed him. It’s like yelling in water. Scream and scream, until the little fish die. Until it’s all dead. Until he’s all dead.
He understands himself better in water. He grew up by the ocean, but his reflection was never clear—only in little streams and ponds in the mountains can he really see his own face.
(push)
Sabito was the real risk-taker, but it was Giyuu who first passed through the great cliffside waterfall. The force of the crashing water landed hard on his shoulders. Behind it there was a damp outcrop; smooth rocks twice his size, with amphibians tattooing their undersides and moss dangling above. It was his space for a moment, before Sabito barreled in after him.
(pull)
Giyuu avoids mirrors.
He doesn’t look very much like his sister, he thinks, except for his eyes. They’re not even the same shape, but the color—that deep blue. That’s too familiar.
(push)
The demon stands before him. Giyuu is cut, and bleeding. If he looks down, he is sure he will see his insides, so he doesn’t look—keeps his body on his feet. His ears ring, and ring, and the creature grins, bloody and prideful. Its body seals its wounds without time, without stitches. That smile… it ties angry knots in Giyuu’s blood. It turns things red.
“Is that all you have to show, little demon slayer?“
Is it? Is this all he has?
He makes little pieces of himself, lines them up in a long row and counts them. It’s an old scab scratched over too many times. Crusted and still bleeding, a bit of himself he would never let heal.
If he is nothing but the sword in his hand, then what does it matter what else he has to give? He’s half-dead and alone, at odds with a foe.
The demon chuckles deep in its throat, like a woodpecker caught in smoke.
(Many who were there that day would swear up and down at the suddenness of a typhoon, a great wail of a storm that lasted mere minutes before passing without sound.)
The thin slice of his blade sings like a windchime, rings like death. There may as well have been no demon, no proof it was ever there, save for the corpses it left behind.
Giyuu's breath heaves in and out with the storm, and the receding force makes him tremble so terribly he thinks he might shake out of his bones. His head spins, and only when the ashes of the demon’s body sog in the rain do his legs give out, his back hitting a tree trunk. He squelches against the muddy ground, can’t even lift his head. Pain oozes back to him. He can barely control his breathing.
(A typhoon in the dry season, in the crook of the mountains. When the strange news carries to Urokodaki Sakonji, he knows his son is okay.)
Vision doubling and blurring, Giyuu remembers one of those lessons he would nod obediently to during training, one of the old sayings that may as well have been throwaways to a child's ears.
The most dangerous enemies are those with nothing to lose.
Despite it all, he could laugh. He wants to laugh. He wouldn’t mind dying here.
(pull)
The child’s head remains bowed.
“What is the matter?”
Any age is too young to be a demon slayer—youth’s adaptability does not last like the searing brand of memory. If Kagaya could only raise a sword…
“Is…” Giyuu’s voice is quite soft, and Kagaya can’t help but smile. “…Is there, nobody else? No one better?”
At first, Kagaya has nothing to say, but his surprise fades quickly.
“Giyuu,” he beckons. “Come here.” He extends his arm, but Giyuu does not lift his head.
It won’t be long before these old eyes fail him, so he sits outside every day, he watches the sky even when it’s fettered by cloud cover. He makes sure he remembers the faces of the people around him, so he can see them when he blinks. Amane, Hinaki, Nichika. Kanata, Kuina. Kiriya. Gyomei, Tengen, Shinjuro, and all the others. The only thing he regrets is not being able to summon every slayer to his home. His children are stronger and brighter than he could have ever hoped.
The child’s head lifts slowly. His hair hangs low and dark, but his eyes are bluer than clear skies. Uncertainty swims in them, now. Kagaya beckons for him with his open hand, and he takes a careful step, then another. On the porch, he stares at Kagaya’s open hand, but does not reach for it. He kneels, and bows again.
Giyuu takes missions alone. His crow is growing senile, but he cares for it well. Amane tells him he entered his Final Selection holding someone’s hand. Kagaya suspects this brand had seared itself special, marring the child’s judgment.
“Sabito,” Kagaya says. “That was his name?”
Giyuu's head lifts haltingly, finally meeting Kagaya's gaze. Stunned.
"You..." his voice climbs out of him louder now, smoother. "You know?"
“Of course,” Kagaya smiles. He knows that look. “You are my children; I would never forget a son. Not his name, not his spirit, nor his wishes."
His heartache feeds his resilience. Kagaya sets his open hand on the crown of Giyuu’s head; his dark hair is warmed from the sun beating down. He accepts the touch like a child, letting his head move with the weight of Kagaya's hand.
“Have faith in your ability. It’s brought you here, has it not?” Kagaya says. “You are strong. I would not have given you this title if I did not think that was so.”
(between-space)
He recognizes what he sees in his reflection, until other people’s voices send ripples through. No, that’s not him. He spent years looking down, and, what? It could have been torn away in an instant? All those sorry feelings.
What are you? There’s a sway in his chest that longs for the things he can’t name. His feet don’t hold him right. He’d just fall over and die if it would save everyone else.
(Those people have suffered, and they deserve to live. I’d be happy if they could live.)
No, you wouldn’t be.
(No, I wouldn’t be. I want the sun to shine on me forever. I want to quit hating every second I can’t bother speaking.)
(I don’t want to forget the love I had.)
(still waters)
He looks down his own shoulder. He’s got scars. To the mirror, he leans in close, inspecting his face. Dark smears under his eyes, faint, scabbed spots along his jaw. Dry lips, a faint shine down his nose.
Someone thunks down the hall in another room, and his heart shoots up his throat, he almost falls over. What is he doing? He needs rest, he’s here for a mission. He wonders what he’d look like dressed in flowing silks. If his face were painted, he could fool people into thinking he was someone else.
II.
When two pebbles from the river grind together, clay powder piles; adding water makes it into paint.
Giyuu’s thumb presses between Sabito’s eyebrows. “Stop.”
Sabito opens his eyes, and remembers the ground is beneath him—the tension eases away, and the residual frown follows. Giyuu’s looking at him. Rock paint is smeared and drying high on his cheeks.
“Stop what?”
Giyuu smears the paint down Sabito’s nose, doesn’t reply, instead giving little orders to keep the paint neat and out of Sabito’s eyes. Tilt this way…chin up. Press your lips together. His voice is quieter because they’re sitting closer, the familiar frequency resonating with something warm just above his stomach. He’s close enough to see the little flitting motions of Giyuu’s eyes as he works.
He sits back; presses his thumb between Sabito’s eyebrows again, just over his nose.
“Stop,” he repeats.
“Stop what, Giyuu?”
He tilts his head, scowling in poor mimicry. Sabito rolls his eyes.
“I do not look like that.”
The scowl flips to a smile. “You do, actually.”
Habit deepens his frown, but when Giyuu laughs, it softens.
“Are you almost done?” he mocks impatience as Giyuu keeps chuckling, digging the rock into his steadily-decreasing paint supply, scratching until enough gunk mixes with the river water. He idly moves hair from his eyes, smearing dark brown over his cheek. He pauses a moment later, once the rock’s set down.
“Did I just…?”
“Yes,” it’s Sabito’s turn to smile.
Giyuu dips his fingers in the water and smears the paint-spot until it’s gone.
(vast)
People say you see loved ones lost everywhere, in everyone. It’s the pairs upon pairs of shoes lining the entrance of the Kamado house. It’s the sharp smells of the summer market, ripe fruit and savory street food cooking. It shines through the trees on Mount Sagiri, flickers in the way cool, clear water laps up his ankles, when he wades through a shallow strip of river.
It’s the laughter that trickles from open restaurant doors in the evenings; the quiet glint of fireflies dancing along the edge of town.
He sees Sabito in Tanjiro’s kind eyes, his vast, warm smile, and he wonders if the same soul can split and reinvent, living as many people at once, always retaining that warm rarity.