Chapter Text
“Become a demon, Kyojuro Rengoku!”
Akaza’s anger simmers in his chest as he slams his hand into the brat’s sword. Not only had he not killed the boy with hanafuda earrings, but the flame hashira had lived.
“I will not!” The man wheezes, blood is pooling in his eye— it’s most certainly crushed, and will never function again. “If we ever meet a— again, Demon, I will either kill you or die fighting.”
Akaza stands just out of range of the sun, his stomach eating itself. So many humans, and he had ignored the chance for a meal for a fight instead. If he had just eaten even one man from the train, he would have killed both the hashira and the brat.
Now, he stands in a clearing, covered in the night’s shadow and with bits of nichirin sword. The black blade made his nose twist in disgust. Something about the sword made him want to scream— it was so deep inside him that he didn’t know if it started with him or if it started with Muzan. Kyojuro’s broken sword was too beautiful to destroy like the brat’s. The cabin he had found was empty of any people, filled with nails and broken glass. The scent of old, dried blood permeates the place, leading Akaza to believe that the resident of the house was a meal for another demon.
The demon groans at the thought of eating, his stomach clenching tighter than before. He rocks back and forth on his feet as he tries to fend off the worst of the hunger. Akaza’s hands raise up, and he shakily takes his stand for his blood demon art. At first, he doesn’t feel anything around him, then he presses himself further, further, further—
The second he feels the fighting spirit of a grown man about a five minute’s run from himself, Akaza takes off. As he gets closer, he feels a smaller spirit. A little girl, her fighting spirit shaky and unnerved. The bigger fighting spirit is bigger than hers, but it’s still weaker than most others spirits, especially when Akaza’s standard are Hashiras.
Akaza stops just outside of the house, the sound of the man’s yelling reverberating through the glass on the windows. The house is secluded, but close enough to a town that a human could walk for thirty minutes and be at a large shop.
“Useless little bitch!” The man yells. “Can’t do anything right, like your good for nothing mother! Should have drowned you in the fucking river when you were born!”
Akaza leaps feet first into the window, shattering the window. He doesn’t give the man time to react to his presence, hand going down onto the ground and one leg going up. The sound of the man’s skull shattering underneath the force of his feet is a near-calming sound, like a melody that Akaza had been sung when he was an infant.
The body lands on it’s back with a thump, brain matter splattering over the floor and cabinets. Almost right after, there’s the sound of ceramic hitting the floor and shatter. Akaza turns his head around, his yellow eyes meeting wide red ones. When Akaza stands, she stumbles back, running into a doorway. She nearly loses her footing on the small genkan leading to the back door.
“Don’t be stupid,” he snaps, and the little girl gasps softly. “If you move any more, you’re going to get glass in your feet.”
Fear flashes over the girl’s face when Akaza stands up, but she doesn’t move even when Akaza gets closer. When Akaza puts his hands under her armpits, that’s when she reacts, kicking her feet out and giving him a poor imitation of a warrior’s cry.
Akaza moves her to a non-glass covered place, grabbing her leg before she can kick him. Something akin to a sob escapes her throat, and her eyes meet his once again. He crouches down so that they’re eye level, and he holds up a finger to her, twirling it around.
“Turn around,” he says firmly, “you’re not going to want to see this.”
He waits a moment before the girl finally complies, shuffling around so that she’s facing away from him. She’s limping, and Akaza barely glances down to see if there’s anything obviously wrong with her through her hakama. He can’t see anything, though, so he stands up and makes his way over to the man’s body.
He’s fit, for a human who probably doesn’t do any strenuous for work. His face is no longer there to take in what he looked like, though Akaza found that he didn’t really care for a meal’s appearance. Instead, he looks at the man’s knuckles. Bruises are darted over them, even some scraps from probably punching a hard surface. Akaza bet that if he were to look at the girl’s bruises, they would match these man’s knuckles.
With that concluded, he kneels down, and he begins to tear into his meal. He tries to not moan in satisfaction as the ravenous hunger is slowly dulled down, but he doesn’t disguise the squishing of flesh and breaking of bones. The girl behind him is tense, but she doesn’t run— she doesn’t turn around.
It only takes him a moment to finish the body, and Akaza finds himself still hungry. All that’s left of the man is the blood and brain matter that was still coating the cabinets, and Akaza wasn’t that desperate.
He turns back around, staring at the little girl. Her hair is knotted, like the man couldn’t even bother to brush it. In fact, it looked as though she was barely even bathed in the last month, most likely just had a rag scrubbed over her face.
Her hands are clenched into her hakama, which is just a plain brown color. Even the shirt, which Akaza had seen be a multitudes of beautiful colors, was just brown. And it didn’t even look like it fit her right, like someone had just thrown it at her and said good enough.
Akaza looks over at the sight of broken glass, then glances around the room until he finds the broom. He makes his way over, ignoring the blood he’s stepping him, and opens the back door before he starts swiping up the glass. If the girl stepped on the glass and then tried to take it out herself, she’d find herself in a world of hurt.
Once the glass is gone, Akaza finds a rag and dunks it into the bucket of water that’s a little murky. He rings it out, glancing over at the girl once again. She’s still standing there, though her hands aren’t clenched in her clothing anymore. Instead, they’re held in front of her, like she’s just… politely standing there.
Akaza shakes his head, and makes his way over to where the glass had been, wiping down the area for any minuscule pieces of glass that the broom couldn’t pick up.
“I’m so sorry,” a little girl says, then coughs, “I thought… I thought I could do it myself.”
“It’s fine,” he finds himself saying, wiping up the spilled tea, “but you don’t need to do it by yourself. That’s why I’m here.”
Akaza blinks, and he’s standing up again, staring down at where he had just cleaned, rag still in hand. He shoves down the vague memory that he isn’t even sure is real, or his own, and throws the rag out the back door with the rest of the glass.
He makes his way towards the other door— the one that probably leads to the main room and then the front door— when he feels the little girl move again. He lets her grab onto his haori, but that doesn’t help his annoyance.
“Please,” she squeaks out, “Please don’t leave me alone.”
Akaza opens his mouth, about to tell her off— You’re not my issue, that’s too much of a burden, I don’t care about you, I just wanted to eat your shitty father— when he smells it.
Instead of all the words he wants to say, he says: “where are you hurt?”
The little girl hesitates for a moment, one of her hands letting go as she points at her stomach— Akaza hopes it’s just her stomach— and then to her side, tears pooling in her vibrant red eyes.
He grabs onto the girl’s hakama, glancing up at her for a second before he pulls them down just enough that he can pull her hakamashita away from her stomach. There’s a large bruise that’s a multitude of colors. He moves it further away, and he grimaces as the cloth comes back with blood smeared on it and her body. There’s a large cut on her side, like someone had carelessly thrown a knife around and cut her. Thankfully, it’s shallow, and it wouldn’t need any stitches. Akaza didn’t know if he remembered how to do those.
“Where are your bandages,” he asks, looking up from the cut and to the girl. She doesn’t meet his gaze, and Akaza has to suppress an annoyed sigh.
Instead, he moves the hakamashita further away from her body, moving her hand so that it was holding it open, and he moves away from her to go back into the kitchen. He doesn’t bother trying to dodge the now dried blood on the floor, letting the tacky blood cling to his feet.
He rummages around in the cupboards for a moment before he finds more rags, slamming the cupboard closed.
“Um—” Akaza turns around to look at the girl, who was now back in the doorway. “Why did you…” he takes a second before he follows her gaze to the splattering of blood and brain matter.
“I was hungry,” he says simply, because it was just that. If he hadn’t been hungry, he might have not even cared to stop to look further into the house. “It’s as easy as that.”
He moved back to the girl, this time kneeling down on the ground to tend to her wounds. He pulls her hakamashita away from her body entirely this time. Just centimeter revealing more bruises and old wounds that had healed and scarred from improper care.
It’s silent for a moment, the only sound being Akaza tearing the rag into a longer strip for easier use. He then moves to take care of the wound, making sure he doesn’t press too hard on it.
“Why didn’t you eat me?” She finally whispers, and Akaza’s head jerks up as he pauses his work. “I would have been easier to eat. No one would have missed me. So why eat him?”
Something inside of Akaza aches at the words, the same something that made him think of ridiculous things like caring for a girl who he doesn’t even know the face of. He ignore it, and instead reaches up to grab her nose, wiggling her head around playfully.
“Little girls,” he finally says, “are not tasty. You’re too small, too skinny. Maybe if you were older, like fifteen, I might have eaten you, but right now? No way!” That gets a giggle from him, and he grins. “You wouldn’t have been fun to eat anyways.”
That gets a joyful laugh from the girl, and Akaza can’t help the chuckle that escapes his own mouth. He goes back to try and finish wrapping the wound, but two little hands grab onto his wrist— not even fully wrapping around them. He looks back up into red eyes, which are a lot of more joyful.
“What do your eyes say?”
Apparently, making the girl laugh is all it takes to make her speak up more. He tries to ignore her, finishing up the bandages. When he stands, he finds that the eyes are looking up at him. Expectantly. He finds that he can’t really refuse her an answer.
“Upper Three.”
“Does that mean you’re really strong?”
“Yes.”
“…Stronger than ten people?”
“I’m stronger than a thousand.”
The little girl gasps, then her nose crinkles, no doubt trying to figure out how many that is in her head. Akaza takes the moment to turn away, heading right back for the door.
“Wait!” The girl calls. “Where are you going?”
Annoyance fills Akaza’s head, and he scowls a little bit before he turns around. The girl reels back a little bit, though she doesn’t cower even when Akaza’s eyes are bright in the darkness of the rest of house. “I have to leave,” he states impatiently. “You can’t really expect me to stay here.”
She shuffles back and forth on her feet for a moment, and just as he’s about to turn back around, she gives out a cry of dismay. “Please, wait a moment! I’ll be really fast”
He scowls harder as he watches her run off towards another room. Still, he stays put, curiosity getting the best of him.
True to her word, she’s fast. It’s maybe only two or three minutes before she emerges from the hallway, another change of clothing in her arms, and a quited thing that vaguely resembles a cat. When she makes it to him, she shuffles the things in her arm and reaches out, taking two of his fingers into her hand and looking up at him.
“’Kay,” she chirps, “I’m ready.”
Akaza raises an eyebrow at her, but doesn’t pull his hand away. “And what makes you think that you’re coming with him?”
She hesitates, her lip quivering a little bit before he looks down, her arm hugging her things closer to herself and her hand tightens on his fingers. “I— I can good. And I can clean really good. And I can be really, really quiet.”
“I eat humans,” Akaza follows up, crouching down so that he’s eye level with her. He takes his other hand, gently tapping the bottom of her chin to make her look into his eyes. Even still, she doesn’t flinch away. “It’s all I eat. Doesn’t that bother you?”
Confliction crosses over her eyes, and she looks down at her feet. She hestitates for a moment longer before she speaks up, quiet— almost meek. “Do I have to eat human, too?”
Akaza stares at her, a jolt of surprise running down his spine. He finally speaks up after a moment, a chuckle in his voice. “No. You don’t need to eat humans.”
She relaxes, and finally looks back up at him, though her grip on his hand doesn’t let up. “Can… Can I please come with?”
Akaza’s nose crinkles, and he sighs as he stands up. The girl perks up, and lets herself be lead to the genkan.
“You need to keep up with me,” he says sternly, watches as she shoves her feet into an old pair of shoes. “If you can’t, I’ll be leaving you behind.”
She looks back at him, smiling up at him for the first time. “I’m Keifuji.”
Akaza can feel a small headache coming on already, which he didn’t think possible as a demon. “Akaza.”
Keifuji smiles even wider, and the two of them are leaving the house at a leisurely pace. She’s quiet, except for her footsteps on the tree branches, and her hand is happily swinging both of their hands as she kept her eyes forward.
If any other demon saw this, Akaza thought bitterly, they’d doubt my strength.
(In the end, Akaza’s threat doesn’t last more than twenty minutes before he notices Keifuji starting to slow down and barely keep up with him with her dragging feet, any excitement from before gone and replaced with exhaustion. It’s barely a moment after he notices before he’s scooping her up into his arms, careful of her injury. It’s barely a few seconds later before she’s fast asleep.)
