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Mitsuri is no stranger to hunger. It’s a memory she can’t seem to shake, like a persistent ghost. It’s there whenever she’s eating; it’s there when she’s not. Mostly, she tries to think of it as a reminder, as motivation. A kind of you don’t have to do that ever again and you’re better as you are now and you’d never have been able to help people like that . Mostly, thinking of it like that helps. These days, Mitsuri eats whenever she gets hungry.
It’s an effort, though, snapping out of old patterns of thought. No one will like you like this the memory tells her. No one will love you like this .
Mitsuri tries to stack the memories of the lives she’s saved against the memory of hunger, but it’s like trying to stop the tide with nothing but her own outstretched arms. Her reach is only so wide.
Loss is like a kind of hunger, she thinks, doing her best to hold up Obanai. It’s the same species of sharpness, of gutting absence. Shinobu is dead. Oyakata-sama is dead. Amane-sama is dead. The children…
She has to set Obanai down soon, she’s not got the strength left to keep holding him for much longer. They’ve been dropped in the remains of the Ubuyashiki estate. After her and Obanai had killed that demon, the fortress had disappeared like so much mist. She thinks Muzan is dead, if only because no one is attacking them. Her hearing is still off from the blows she’d taken against the ever-shifting walls of the fortress. Her ears are gummed up with blood.
She wants to check in with everyone, make sure they’re all still here, still alive, but she has to set Obanai down soon. She’s losing her grip on him, both of them slick with blood.
There’s a part of what Mitsuri thinks used to be the garden that is relatively free of debris. She takes Obanai there. Lays him down on the gravel. His haori is already in tatters, so she slips it from his shoulders, unable to tell where the worst of his wounds are due to the black of his uniform hiding the blood. Someone is wailing.
She glances back, lost for a moment, thinking she needs to go help, but no, she’s needed here. Obanai’s wounds.
“Kanroji-sama,” someone says, from a great distance after a great time has passed, “please, let me help.”
One of the lower-ranked demon slayers is kneeling next to her. She doesn’t know him, doesn’t know when he got there. She’s still holding Obanai’s haori. She looks down to it, to Obanai’s still form, to the demon slayer who has had to get right next to her to speak directly into her ear for her to hear.
“Please,” she says, “help him.”
Someone is still wailing, she makes herself sit back so that they--there’s a woman with the demon slayer, Mitsuri thinks she’s seen her before but can’t place her--can get to Obanai. She starts to watch them, but the wailing isn’t stopping and she has to help. That’s what she’d decided, isn’t it? She can’t stop now, Obanai will be okay, people better qualified than herself will care for him, and he will be okay. She staggers at first, almost unable to carry her own weight, but this is something she has to do, so she does it.
She follows the sound to where Himejima is sitting, his broad back bent as he leans over, speaking to someone she can’t see, too quietly for her to hear. She pauses to take stock then, of who is missing.
Shinobu, but then she knew that, she’d heard the crow, hadn’t she?
It hits her again, what she hadn’t allowed herself to feel inside that maze. She has to cover her mouth with both hands to keep from screaming.
They’re all hurting. They’re all hurting, but Mitsuri lives with the memory of her hunger. The trade off is that she must also always remember her strength.
Mitsuri forces everything back, and goes to do whatever she can to help.