Chapter Text
Mount Kumotori was beautiful during winter. Snowflakes would fall to the ground in their delicate little ways, the trees bearing the packed weight of all the snow. The ground would sink beneath your feet as you walked over the snowbanks…
Okay, Akaza would have to say he’s a little too obsessed with snow.
He can’t help it. The snow enchanted him. It called to him. It’s why he loves being on mountains during winter. All the snow is simply beautiful to him.
Snow…and fireworks.
He can’t really explain why he likes snow, and his love for fireworks is even harder to explain.
Akaza shakes his head. No. Stop thinking about this.
Thinking about fireworks meant he’d try to remember why. Remembering why will only lead to dead end after dead end. Disappointment will lead to fury, then he’ll destroy everything surrounding him in his anger…this peaceful forest doesn’t have to suffer because he tried to remember something that had little importance.
Right. Importance. I have to find that damned flower.
He’s searched every corner of Japan several times looking for Muzan’s so called “blue spider lily”. He’s gotten traces, heard stories, and even tried looking in fields upon fields of spider lilies…
But it’s like the flower doesn’t even exist. Akaza believes he’s chasing after a myth at this point. He would have found it by now if it were real.
Muzan believes that it’s real, and has Akaza searching for it. It’s one of the reasons Akaza knows he exists for: to find that wretched flower so Muzan can do whatever the hell he’s trying to accomplish.
It’s a pointless existence, if anyone asked Akaza. Searching for a flower that was only in stories old humans told to their children. Surely, even Muzan has begun to suspect that it’s not real? He’s had to. When he finally begins to see reason, he’ll let Akaza do as he wishes, right?
Akaza let’s himself picture it for a moment.
He’d challenge every strong human to a battle to the death. He’d offer them immortality. He’d offer them life so that they could spar together for eternity. So that they could get stronger together and climb to the top of the ranks of the Twelve Kizuki.
It’s a song Akaza has only ever had the pleasure of dancing to when he has a free moment to spare. When he’s exhausted all his resources in finding the flower. When Muzan sends him to specific locations…It’s only then Akaza is allowed to battle demon slayers.
But to have every moment to himself to do as he wishes?
It’s a dream Akaza wishes could become reality, and his only hindrance is his mission to find that goddamned flower.
No. His only hindrance is Muzan.
Stop. Thinking.
He couldn’t risk Muzan listening in on him. Muzan listening to these traitorous thoughts in his head would only spell Akaza’s eventual death.
Akaza blanks his mind out, filling it instead with all the knowledge he posses about the blue spider lily. The number is close to none.
Because this number is so, so low, it’s easy to get distracted.
The faint flicker of a battle spirit ahead is the easiest thing that can distract a being like Akaza.
A grin splits his lips at the sweet promise of a fight or food, depending on what kind of human owns this battle spirit. The snow around him explodes as he propels himself forward toward the familiar call of a strong battle spirit.
The air bites his skin as he lands behind the brush near a lit clearing. Akaza looks up at the torch-lit clearing, his citrine-sapphire eyes locking onto a human dressed in ceremonial clothing, the human’s eyes are covered by a cloth that has the kanji “flames” written on it. He’s barefooted on the cold hard ground, yet he moves to a dance that has no song as if the cold doesn’t exist.
It takes a moment for Akaza to process what he’s witnessing.
Dancing. This man is dancing in the bitter cold. He’s going to get sick.
What a pitiful and weak way to go. To die from a sickness that he caught by staying out in the cold, dancing for whatever reason.
Akaza then shakes his head. Why does he care if this human dies of sickness or not? He’s only going to die anyway, it won’t matter if he dies of sickness or of old age. Humans die. That is as simple as how demons burn in sunlight.
…Akaza can’t say that he doesn’t care for the man’s battle spirit, however.
It’s a bright blue sheen around him, so similar to something that Akaza has seen in the past that he can’t quite grasp now. It’s wound so tightly around the man that Akaza could say it’s holding him up, carrying him around the clearing with a finesse…and lightness Akaza has never been witness to before this moment.
It’s…
Breathing-taking.
Akaza leans forward a bit more, his citrine eyes captivated by this man’s spirit and dance. It’s so beautiful that he feels that he would stay until sunrise to see it. The tiny jingles and tinkles of the bells along the wooden blade he wields is hypnotic to listen to.
The man’s spirit blazes to life for one moment; the climax of the dance, for it can’t have been any else. During that moment it’s like this human has been lit from within, casting his own gentle light onto the earth like the full moon does so often. Even after the moment ends and the man begins his dance all over again, Akaza can’t look away.
He’s so dazzled by this man’s kagura that he’s startled when a tiny voice cuts through his stupor.
“Kaa-san, how can oto-san dance in the cold like this?”
Citrine-sapphire break away from the black and red clad man to see a tiny child not too far away from where the man is dancing.
The child can’t be more than three, as tiny as he is compared to the bigness of the world around him. He has a little black and green checkered haori around his little body, with hair such a dark shade of crimson Akaza would’ve sworn it was bloodstained had he’d not known another individual with a stain of crimson in his hair.
The woman kneeling beside him has a peculiar shade of lavender eyes, with a little beauty mark beneath the right side of her mouth. On her back is bundle of blankets carrying a little girl not much younger than the boy. She has a gentle smile gracing her lips, her voice like the breeze through wind chimes.
“Your father knows a special breathing technique. If you learn it too, you’ll be able to dance like your father, Tanjiro.”
The little boy shakes himself out, as if his body is physically declining this, “If I had to dance out here all night, I bet my lungs would freeze.”
Weak. Is Akaza’s second observation about this boy named “Tanjiro”.
…he isn’t wrong, though. Dancing out here all night would freeze a human. Even standing out here would freeze humans. I hope that man has some sense and stops before he freezes himself to death.
Akaza realizes what he’s thinking, snorting quietly to himself.
Oh, come on. Me, concerned for humans ? No. I kill humans. I fight humans. I eat humans, for gods’ sake. Why would I concern myself with the health of four humans I’ve never met?
I should kill the man and be done with it. I should fight him and devour him.
Yet, when Akaza looks back at the man, he’s once again entrapped by the man’s dance and spirit.
Akaza finds that everything he is bleeds away as he continues to observe the dance. He isn’t Akaza. He isn’t Upper Moon Three of the Twelve Kizuki. He’s just a demon watching a human dance like he isn’t being watched.
Just a demon, watching a human. Nothing more, nothing less.
It’s…peaceful.
He watches for what seems like hours, taking in the rise and fall of the man’s blue battle spirit, taking in those wondrous techniques.
What is it about this dance that’s so…mesmerizing?
It’s like he’s fighting an invisible demon. Akaza realizes after scrutinizing for a while. His dance moves aren’t dance moves at all. They’re fighting techniques.
The fighting techniques of a demon slayer.
What is this madness? Is this sickly human a demon slayer? How can this be?!
The questions die in the back of his throat when a sharp chill slices his back, his skin freezing as if death is looming over him. His vision goes blurry as he looks behind, watching the horizon slowly become a brilliant shade of blue topaz.
Dammit! The sun!
How long was he here? Surely those hours he had seemed to feel going by couldn’t have really gone by?!
I have to find shelter!
Akaza sprints away from the clearing with the vague feeling of eyes trailing after him.