Chapter Text
Ugh! I hate that stupid principal! Sending me all the way to his office just to bring him a useless piece of paper, what a prick. Mr. Ubuyashiki is a way better principal than he is!
It's like Mr. Muzan had hated me in another life. Then again, he does, for some reason, hate Tanjiro more than me.
Anyways, I want to leave this damned office as soon as I can, so I’ll just get the papers and leave! I stepped into the office, and I was hit with a wave of cold air. I shivered a bit before spotting a pile of papers on Mr. Muzan’s desk, the ones that I was supposed to take. I sighed a breath of relief, I can finally leave! I thought, smiling to myself. I walked up to the desk and took the papers. But, before I took even one step back, my eyes scanned around the room.
Mr. Muzan told me not to snoop around in his and Mr. Ubuyashiki’s office that they shared since they came to this school. I took that as a pretty good sign that he was definitely hiding something.
I tried not to snoop, Mr. Muzan would kill you! I thought, but while I was looking around the office, my eyes caught one of the cabinets that was a tiny bit open, as if someone wanted to close it fully but was in a rush. Of course, my curiosity got the best of me and I found myself knelt down, looking inside Mr. Muzan’s cabinet. Well this is actually his fault for letting me of all people bring the papers, he knows I'm a little snoopy!
My hands searched and searched the cabinet until it landed on something that felt like a… rectangle? It was cold and felt pretty dusty, like it hadn't been used for a very long period of time. I finally pulled it out of the cabinet, hoping I wouldn’t regret my choice, to see that it was a VHS tape. Like those things that old people used to watch movies, yeah those. Then I picked out another one and 3 more. I had 5 tapes.They looked exactly like what I thought they would look like, dusty beyond recognition.
I quickly dusted off the side of the first tape I took and was about to put them away because they didn’t really look that important until I caught a glance of the title that I had just wiped over. Kimetsu No Yaiba, 1912 S1.
Demon Slayer? What does that mean? Is that some old fantasy show? Pft, of course Mr. Muzan would know about it, he's like 1000 years old (no one really knows his age, not even the staff!).
I soon realized that I had goosebumps on my arms.
This tape is… reminding me of something, like an experience I’ve never had, or at least I don’t remember having. Wait a minute. Demon Slayers, the myth that demons, maneating monsters, existed and the demon slayers saved us from death long ago, Gramps told me about it. I never really thought about it much, though.
Why would Mr. Muzan have a tape about something like this? Does he believe in demons? After all this thinking, I decided to bring the tapes back to my house, maybe Gramps will know more about why I’m feeling like this about a myth. After all, he was the one who told me about it.
Without much thought, I shoved the tapes quickly into my book bag in case there were any janitors, and was about to stand up when something from my back pocket started to ring. It was my phone, bright as ever in this dark office.
Who in the world would be calling me right now, school already ended 30 minutes ago? Unless… Mr. Muzan was suspicious of me! I mean, there had to be at least one camera in this office, right?! My face went pale as I took my phone out of my pocket. ‘The world's biggest idiot’ is calling.
I sighed a great breath of relief. Oh my, of course it’s him. I soon realized that even though I dodged a massive bullet, a headache was awaiting me. I got up off the ground and answered the call. “What do you want, Inosuke?” I asked him, desperate to get back home and find out whatever the hell ‘Demon Slayer’ was.
“Come over to my house! Fast!” said the stupid boar head. “Your grandpa is coming over to my place! He says he wants you to come too!”.
What. I have to visit a guy like him at a time like this?
Whatever, I’ll just pretend I’m sick or something and ask Gramps later. “First, stop yelling, my ears hurt, and second, tell Gramps th-”, “Oh and Kuwajima also said you can’t pretend to be sick! HAHA you got BUSTED!” answered, or interrupted, the obnoxiously loud voice from behind the phone.
“Oh and also Gonpachiro is here! He wanted to hang out with us!”.
Ok. so tanjiro’s gonna be there. If he is, I’ll be fine. “I’ll pick up an uber, be there in 5” I responded shortly
“Oh, and do you have a VHS player?” I asked, really hoping he did, I literally couldn’t wait to play the tapes.
“Uh yeah an old one from Kanae, why?” responded Inosuke. “K thanks, bye” I said, not waiting for Inosuke to respond before hanging up on him. This is gonna be a long afternoon.
After I got out of my uber, I had arrived outside of Inosuke’s enormous house. Apparently, his mom married a really rich guy and bought a huge house with Inosuke’s sisters. I think his name was Douma? I really don’t know much, I mean Inosuke doesn’t talk much about him.
I walk up the stairs to the door and ring their doorbell. Not even a millisecond later, Inosuke was at the door. “MONITSU! Come in, we were waiting for you!” yelled an excited Inosuke.
He grabbed my hand and started to run up the almost endless looking stairs. “Inosuke! Let me breathe first before rushing me to your room! It’s common etiquette! At least let me say hi to Gramps!” I yelled back angrily as Inosuke dragged me to his room upstairs.
When we reached his room, Tanjiro, who was sitting on Inosuke bed, immediately jumped up and hugged me. “Zenitsu! I’m so happy you came!” he pulled away and Inosuke pushed me onto the bed. While Tanjiro was still standing, he put my book bag on the chair beside Inosuke’s bed where I could reach it. The bed was surprisingly big, bigger than it had been last time I came here.
Inosuke jumped onto the bed and painfully landed on me. “OW! Inosuke, don’t do that!” I said, clearly agitated “and did you bring the VHS player to your room?” I asked desperately, with an obvious mood swing.
“Yeah, I did,” he got (jumped) off of me, searched under his bed and pulled out the player “Here!” he exclaimed in a happy tone, still not sure why I even needed it. “Good, thanks” I answered quickly before pulling my book bag off of the chair beside Inosuke’s bed.
“Why do you need a VHS player?” asked Tanjiro. “You’ll see,” I zipped open the bag and pulled out all the 5 tapes I had found.
“I found all these tapes in Mr. Muzan’s office, look at the title.” I said cautiously, as if Mr. Muzan was in the room right now.
“Zenitsu! Why would you,” Tanjiro lowered his voice “steal from Mr. Muzan!”. He was clearly scared out of his mind, but kept his usually calm-sort-of-scolding voice. “Look at the title! Come here Inosuke, you have to see too.” I patted the space next to me for Inosuke to sit.
They both looked at the title, then me, then the title again. “This was from Mr. Muzan’s office. Are you sure?” Tanjiro asked politely, though I could hear his heartbeat grow slightly faster and see the goosebumps running down his arms.
“Yeah, it was in Mr. Muzan and Mr. Ubuyashiki’s shared office, Muzan told me to get him papers from their office.”. Inosuke was being dangerously quiet, the only thing being his faster heart beat. “So, does it remind you of something?”. I ask quietly, careful not to break their thought process.
“It does. Like a forgotten memory or something.” answered Inosuke in a slightly confused tone. “Same with me…” answered Tanjiro just after. “Well, what are you waiting for Chuuitsu! Play the tapes!” said Inosuke with a sudden burst of energy. I grabbed the VHS player and put the first tape inside.
The player made some type of grumbling noise before playing the tape. It started with snow pouring down onto the screen, then a shot of the snowy floor.
It sounded like we were getting the perspective of someone who was walking. The camera shot up from the floor to a snowy sort of forest, but all of the trees were dead, and if you listened hard enough, you could hear heavy breathing.
“That’s… weird," Tanjiro said. The next scene was the side profile of a boy, presumably the one who was walking through the forest since he was also breathing heavily.
Wait a second.
“IS THAT TANJIRO!?” yelled Inosuke before my thoughts could even process. “WHAT IN THE WORLD!??” I yelled back, equally as confused as I expect him to be.
We both looked back at Tanjiro just to see him as confused as we were. Then, both of them looked at me.
Tanjiro said “If this is a joke, good job, but how? I mean I don’t remember doing anything.” he said, expecting it to be a prank.
“It’s not a joke! I found it in Mr. Muzan’s office!” I said defensively.
After a few seconds that felt like eternity, Tanjiro said “Do you guys think that this,” he paused for a second, before continuing “has anything to do with what we felt before?” he asked almost in a whisper.
“I don't really know, but I think we should keep watching to find out what all this means.” I said calmly, despite not being calm at all.
After that, we kept watching, to see nezuko with her head all bloody, she seemed to be knocked out.
She was on Tanjiro’s back. To this, we all remained silent, but you could clearly tell that all of us were scared to the point we couldn’t speak.
Still, oblivious to the shock it just caused us, the tape kept playing.
“How… did this happen?” said the shaky and terrified but recognisable voice of Tanjiro on the tape. He sounded terrified, there was no way this was fake.
We got a better shot at nezuko, she was super pale, probably due to the fact that it was winter, or that she was passed out(we really hoped she was).
Tanjiro was wearing traditional clothes, like the ones that we saw in history class, and nezuko was wearing a light purple robe to cover her from the snow.
“Nezuko, don’t die on me! Don’t die on me!” yelled Tanjiro’s usually polite voice, now filled with only fear and worry as tears rolled down his face. “I’m gonna save you no matter what!” he yelled in the same voice we had recently heard.
“I won’t let you die! Your big brother will save you no matter what!”
All of us were in shock, so I reached out my shaky hand and paused it to let us gather our thoughts. We sat there for some time, looking at each other in disbelief, before Tanjiro said “I'm going to call nezuko, she needs to come see this.”
He was still visibly shaken up by what he just saw. No one answered to his statement, so he pulled out his phone and called her. Ring. Ring. Ring.
He put the phone to his ear. “Nezuko? Um, can you come to Inosuke's house? I mean like right now. I have something you… need to see.” he asked her while looking around the room, then at us.
“Oni-san, are you ok? You sound… nevermind, I’ll come immediately, ok?” answered nezuko. “Yeah, thanks. How far are you?” “I’m about” she paused to check her phone “3 minutes away. Be there soon. Bye.”
“Bye nezuko,” he answered before hanging up. We all sat in silence for a while, sitting up on the board of Inosuke’s bed.
Not out of shock, we already(kind of) accepted that this was really crazy, but we were all thinking about what this even meant. Why did Mr. Muzan have this? Did this really have anything to do with the myth? What in the world is happening.
“Guys, have you ever thought about the possibilities of past lives?” I asked out of the blue.
No one answered, so I continued, “ What if this was Tanjiro’s past life? I have no Idea why Mr. Muzan would even have this, but I think this is something really big that not even us can comprehend.” I said, spouting out half of my thoughts to Tanjiro and Inosuke.
“I think you're right. This is something that's literally insane, I don’t even think we know half of what's going on, but we could find out if we tried.” said Inosuke.
For once, I was actually interested in what Inosuke was saying. “What do you mean ‘find out’?” I asked. “Well, you said this was in Mr. Muzan’s and Mr. Ubuyashiki’s office, so they probably know something about it too.” said Inosuke.
“I think that if we did enough digging from at least Mr. Ubuyashiki, we could actually find out what’s happening. We deserve to know. Well, at least Tanjiro and Nezuko deserve to know.” said Inosuke.
“Deserve to know what?” said Nezuko
To be continued...