Archive of Our Own

Hunger had always been part of her life ; a close relative she couldn’t run away from. Like an annoying brother or an overwhelming sister you learn to bear with. She remembered very few things of her human’s life, but when she managed to get a few glimpse of it, hunger was always there.

And nausea. 

Past a certain point, hunger always turned into a fist of nausea that settled inside her stomach and dwelled there until it became a part of her, almost natural. 

Maybe she never grew out of her first famine, as a child. Her parents were poor, that much she remembered. Maybe something happened. But that was lost in time. Maybe she had always been like that. 

In the end it didn’t matter ; it didn’t change the fact that, as far as her memory went, she had hated eating. 

It was not that she was picky -even though she probably was, to some extent- it’s just that food was never appealing to her. It was a duty to survive, a wasted moment, at best, and at worst, a moment of extreme embarrassement and shame. 

She remembered trying. The smile of her mother when she presented a plate that took so much effort to fill, the eyes of her father, watching her every move, hoping, and the whispers of her sibling as she took a bit. But it always ended the same : nausea took over and she ended up throwing far too often. 

Something was not as it looked? Nausea. The taste was different from usual? Nausea. Aliment were touching? Nausea. Insects on the table, not even in her plate? Nausea. Far too many reason that led to far too many accident, far too many wasted meals. 

The deception of her family, the worry she could read in her eyes, the sadness, as they threw away what could have been eaten by someone who would have enjoyed it. It stung. It hurt. 

She sticked to safe dishes, she started to ate less and less. Sometimes she laughed about it, trying to make it funnier than it was, to convince other that it wasn’t that bad, when she couldn’t even do this job for herself. Sometimes, she even tried to prove that it could be useful ; when hunger stroke went rampant again, she gave her share to her brothers and sisters, arguing that she was used to starvation. 

Kind and patients words mixed to impatient and frustrated ones mixed alike in her souvenirs. 

“It’s okay, dear, you tried.” “What are we going to do with you?” “Take your time, there’s no hurry.” “No one will ever marry you if you’re that difficult.” 

But one, especially, still rung in her ears even hundred of years later.

“Why can’t you eat?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. 

“Do you want to be cured?” 

Muzan Murata’s words felt like the world. It sounded like hope. It turned the dream into a reality for her parents and family, while all she could say was stare at her oldest friend and ennemy in the eyes. Hunger ; nausea, the weight in her stomach. At the moment, it felt like killing a part of herself, her identity itself, as she had no recollection of how she was without. Who she would be, if she could eat like everyone around her.

Would she finally enjoy a family meal, at the table? Would she finally be able to say yes to her friends, when they invited her over for tea and dinner? Would she stop be a bother to those she loved? Would they stop telling she needed to be fixed and accept her as she was?

 What was she, even? 

Apparently, a demon. 

The cure that cost all her parent’s economy turned her into a monster. 

At first it didn’t seem that way ; her skin went as pale as the moon, her eyes’ color turning like the riverbend during summer night, her black hair already as dark as the night took a beautiful tone at the tips, as if they were reflecting the sky, even her freckles started to shone under the light, like stars. She became beautiful, as as princesses from tellers’ tales. People from all the village came to see the miracle, as they called her. 

“So, can you eat?” 

People asked, a smile on their lips. 

They didn’t care that she became so sensible to light that she couldn’t even get out during the day anymore. All that mattered to them was this : could she finally eat? Was she finally like them? 

She wasn’t. She couldn’t. 

Food was the same as always in her mouth : disgusting. Yet, hunger, her friend, was still there. It was disappointing. She didn’t feel like she had changed one bit. 

Until the day one guy, full of himself, and wanting to be the first to taste this so called “miracle” tried to sneak into her room and put a knife under her throat. He cut himself a bit on the blade, and a small amount of his blood fell on her cheek.

And suddenly, hunger was just a part of her anymore. It became her completely. 

She remembered coming back to her senses in a puddle of blood that wasn’t her own. Hunger had vanished, and all that left was nausea. She had threw up like she never had before. Where were her parents? Her siblings? Had they been there? Had they saw her? There was so much blood. 

Did hunger took them away?

“So, this is a failure too.”

At her doorstep stood the doctor that had failed to cure her. Muzan Murata stared at his experience, one of his first try, she would learn, many, many years later. 

“I don’t get it, didn’t you enjoy the meal i sent you? You’re the first one to not appreciate this. Why? Why can’t you eat?” 

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know!

“Should you need more blood from me? Maybe the transformation is not complete…” He mumbled to itself, cutting his thumb and presenting it under her nose. 

She felt the presence of hunger surfacing. And so, she ran. 

She had enough of it. She ran away, as far as she could, as fast. But she could never outrun hunger and nausea. There were always there, behind her back, like a shadow, not matter how deep the darkness she hid inside…

She refused to eat. 

Just try a little bite! Hushed her mother’s voice in her ears, forever encouraging. Maybe you’ll love it! Smiled her father. Here, take a bit of my meal, and mine. CIf you don’t like it, i will take it! Here, have my rice, and i take your vegetables. Her sisters and brothers’ bickering, merchandising over her bowl, she missed them.

Maybe she hadn’t like to eat, but she had liked every meal she had shared with them. 

And now they were gone. Now they were...Now they were…

Don’t think about that. Don’t think at all. Forget. Forget. 

Time became blurry, vague and unreliable, as she wandered around. Sleeping in cave during the day, and walking under the stars. She tried to name each tiny light by the name of one of her family, so they would stay by her side a little bit longer. But they were so few of them, when they were so many, she couldn’t even know the names of the parent of her parents. She didn’t even know their favorite meal; when it seemed to be the most important thing in people’s life.  

She cried, alone, realizing how small and insignificant she was in a sea of people. If she had accepted to stay the way she had always been, she would not be a monster. She would not have become hunger, but stayed…

Huh?

What was her name, again?

She didn’t remember. 

Afraid of losing the small amount of herself she had clung to, she let her feets lead her back again to her hometown. Surely, someone there would know. Surely, someone there would remember.

They would also remember her parents and sibling. They would tell her what she didn’t know about them. The name of their parents, their favorite meal. Who they were. She couldn’t let them disappear too! She needed to keep them close, she needed them to be more than stars lost in the sky. 

When she arrived to her village, it had changed. Her house was not where she remembered it was. 

She wandered among the streets, at night, trying to look at the faces of strangers, trying to recognize someone, anyone. 

But it was someone who recognized her instead. They shouted her name. 

-Kaoru!

And suddenly, it became clear, she found a little bit of herself, again. As if it had never been missing at all. She turned around, and gazed at the face of her little brother. When she had left, he had been nothing but a noisy brat and now he looked like an handsome man. She loved him all the same. 

-You didn’t change at all! He cried. -I thought...I thought you had been devoured! We all thought-!

They almost all survived. Her father and mother were still there, when the attacked happened they had been called at a friend’s house to help with their cattle, they had called everyone but her, as they knew the work would keep way past dawn time. 

The only person that had been killed was the rapist. 

She only killed the rapist. 

It didn’t take the nausea away, but she could finally look at hunger in the eyes once again. Her old friend, more than an enemy that took everything she loved from her. The only person missing was one of her sisters, who succumbed to childbirth. 

As she sat down at the table, her family all around, eyes focused on her, and not her plate, full of questions about her disappearance and not her meal...She finally broke and told them everything. 

Everything she thought had happened, everything that she leaned as she wandered, all that she was, here and now. 

And they listened. And they understood. And they kindly accepted her back again despite everything. 

-If you hadn’t killed him, i would have done it, nodded her father, and it made her laugh, as he was all frail and old now, yet she had no doubt he would. 

-He deserved it. 

It was not as easy as she remembered, she was sure, but time erased all the bad moments, the awkwardness and their first misteps. She only kept close to her heart the one that eased her pain, ones that made her who she was, and who she would be.

“Now that i think about it, had said one of her brother, as she helped him in the middle of the night find back a runaway cattle, we do the same with animal. We eat them.” 

At first, she didn’t want to think about it that way. They were more than animals. But at the same time, to ease her loneliness during the day, as she hides nearby in the forest, her brother gave her a little kitten. And as she grew to love this little pet, talking to him and spotting its odd habit, she understood how narrow minded she had been.

Her hunger grumbled with satisfaction, as she finally accepted to let her out from time to time, despite the nausea. The same way she had done when she was still human. It was a necessity. A need to survive. She could accept that. She had done that before.

“I need your help, there’s a guy who beat wives and kill their children on the road. Can you do something about him? Pleaded her sister, as she held tight her baby in her arms.” 

A rule emerged, naturally, after her demand, and the wound of her condition finally started to heal. She could clear the area, protect the people she cared about from bad ones. From ones who committed crime, that killed and raped. 

There were plenty of it, she discovered, as the last remain of her naivety faded away, along with the guild. 

She still hated to eat, she still walked with Hunger and Nausea on daily basis, and maybe that’s what saved her, kept her mind sane. Maybe that is why Muzan never found her back and forgot about her existence. 

She was insignificant, after all, just a star lost in a ocean sky. 

As she stared at the beautiful night, her brother’s kid on the knee, trying to spot a shooting stars, she found out that it didn’t hurt anymore to think it that way. 

The starsky is like happiness, it’s full of tiny moments that light your whole life brightly. 

She found peace, there, in this tiny village. She found herself and who she was. Maybe a monster, maybe hunger and nausea, maybe someone who couldn’t eat, but still, Kaoru. 

As her father got sick and laid on his bed, knowing he would never recover, Kaoru took his hands, so thin and tiny inside her, and whispered:

“Do you want to be cured?” 

The same way Muzan had done in her memory. 

Her father blinked, and he didn’t say a thing about the cost. None of them mentioned food. All he did, was smile and whisper :

“How lovely it would be, to stay by your sides for ever.” 

And it was as simple as that. 

But demons aren’t supposed to gang up. That rule from the origin of all demons, Muzan, did not exist when Kaoru came to be. She witnessed its birth, though. As she gave a little bit of her blood to her brother, her path crossed with another demon. One without family and reason. One that had lost to hunger. 

She fought, protecting what was her, and with her own, and heard about this stupid rule and stupid master they had to follow from his very mouth, before he died.

Before she didn’t even knew her kind could die. Before she ignored there was even a kind like her besides her family and loved ones she shared her blood with.  

Yet here they were, and strong, far stronger than she was. They said that eating humans gave them strength, and while she had eaten her share of bad people, the other didn’t seem to pick their meal with as much care as her own did. 

And fortunately, in the world, there were way more good people than bad ones. 

As she stared at her family, she realized the truth:

“We need to hide.”

Something had awakened within her, while she fought, something new and miraculous, something that gave her the power to survive. She pulled a string of her hair and it took the color of the starsky she cherished so much. The hair took the form of a house they never ever could have dream to live in when they were humans. 

But that was their new life, now, and they weren’t human anymore. 

Bit by bit, her mother and father awakened their own too, and they built a secret village in the mountain, hidden behind the mist and the snow. A village that could disappear during the day, and only appear by midnight, trapping by accident, sometimes, poor souls that had been lost in the wood. 

They never ate them, she made sure of that : when she was a kid, she had been taught to eat and not be picky despite the nausea. This time it was her turn to teach them to be picky and not eat whatever they felt like it, despite the hunger. 

It worked, most of the time. Oh, they were failure, of course, but so few and they always managed to get it under control. 

“I went into the town, last night, it seems the wanderer sis ate had left behind children. Orphans.”

Kaoru pulled out a hair and turned it into jewels and gold. 

“Bring this to them, leave it at their doorstep, it should give them enough to survive. If you see them struggle...bring them into the village, we will take care of them and i will raise them as my own to atone.”

Little by little, their little village grew more and more. Oasis lost in time and space, where no one unwanted could reach thanks to her brother’s demon arcane, with a portal that could make them go wherever they wanted thanks to her mother’s power. Some humans, those who they accepted within, gave them blood in time of peace, and they did the same, when their time arrived. 

“What if Muzan ever found us? What if hunters find the village?” 

One of the little one asked to her, one day, tear in their eyes and fear in her heart. 

She had heard terrible things from the world outside, how he ruled over the demons with a iron grasp, and how hunter started to spread, humans with incredible sword skills, to fight him. 

But she was old enough to not be scared of them anymore. Strong enough, she believed, to always outran them. So she smiled and held the kid in her arms, hunger and nausea not as close to her heart as her adoptive kids were. 

“You don’t have to worry, they can’t find us. We’re safe here.

-But what if we’re not, one day? What if we have to go out one day and one of them follow us? What if one of us don’t want to stay here and go tell them where we are?”

The argument was true, and it could very well happened, but it also fear’s whisper. Was it hunger or fear, she had learned, we all had some evil entity within that we had to bear. 

“I can provide you of all you need with my power. Why would you ever need to go outside? And even if you do...Even if you want to go, your uncle can always move our village somewhere else.”

One day, though, as she chased down a human killer for her meal, she crossed way with a strange man with a black sword and weird earrings. He spotted her, sniffed her, from distance. She noticed it. But unlike other hunter with his uniform, he didn’t attack right away. 

And she felt the presence of a demon, nearby. A young girl emerged from a box the boy was carrying on his back. and she starred in her direction. None of them seemed hostile. Maybe they would have, if they had witnessed her kill her prey, but she had, unfortunately lost its tracks, too troubled by their presence.

“There’s a killer wandering in these mountains, she said to the human boy, though. -You should be careful. He attacks cute girl like this little one.”

The boy blinked, but nodded, as if he actually listened to what she had said. It was the first demon hunter that had done that. It was also the first demon slayer she saw, that had a demon as a partner. She had a strangle muzzle in her mouth, but didn’t seem to be enslaved. 

They did that too, to young demons that couldn’t control their hunger, the first few years. 

“Are you going to kill me?” She asked the boy. 

“Are you a good demon, like lady Tamako?”

She didn’t know that human outside her village could find demon good, or that other demon under Muzan’s rules could be. But she was happy to hear that. 

“I am.” 

She said. And she truly believed it, now. Maybe sometimes she forgot how time passed, and to felt like weeks to her when it had been years. She didn’t know about fashion anymore, but made her own clothes as she liked, a mix of what she see pretty when she wandered outside and what she saw in books. She loved the sky, stained glass and build her village with strange architecture, as eclectic as her people and family.

She still hated to eat, but that was okay. That was enough. That didn’t matter anymore, as it was just a tiny side of her, and not her whole identity. 

She was a demon, yes, but she was happy.

Maybe one day, when musan would not be around anymore, and when more boy like this one existed, they could all be.