Chapter Text
“Hakuji-san, let’s go home.”
“Hakuji-chan, let’s go!”
There’s a woman in his house standing by the door, smiling at him.
He blinks against her silhouette, fuzzy vision coming to focus on her face, and…
…It’s not Koyuki, to Hakuji Soyama’s great disappointment - all he’s wanted to do, in death, is to see his beloved again. He died, he knew it, he could have sworn, as he turned towards the light, that he heard Koyuki’s voice.
Perhaps he is in hell, and he does not get the privilege of being with her again in the afterlife. (Although, what sort of hell would give him a different woman?)
“Hn, are you feeling unwell?” The woman steps closer, and Hakuji realizes, she is tall. No, he is simply just short, all of a sudden, and his feet sway beneath him, as her palm comes to cradle his cheek. She has to crouch to do so; He freezes.
“You don’t feel feverish…” Hands on her hips. “Ne, some sunlight will do you good, so follow me to the market, okay?” The woman grabs her hands, and begins to tug him to the door. It should be so easy, to yank himself out of her grip, but there’s no strength in his arms, or his legs!
He almost yells, No!
But sunlight hits his face and it does not hurt.
A deep breath. Two. Hakuji looks to the sky and breathes in a shock of cool autumn air, and sees orange-yellow leaves drift in the sky towards him. It’s bright.
“Come on, slowpoke!” The woman yells, already down the path.
Hakuji looks down at his hands (small), up to his arms (clean, white skin), and feet (shoes). He steels his shoulders, rolls his ankles, and dashes after her.
“Hello, Tsutako-san, Hakuji-kun!”
“Soyama-kun, helping your sister grocery shop, again?”
“You’ve grown taller since I last saw you!”
He learns: Hakuji Soyama is ten years old and he’s living in the Taishou Era. This time, he has an elder sister. Does he have parents? He hopes to meet Father soon.
The Taishou Era was when he, Akaza, passed away. So, has he been reincarnated directly after? Is it strange to retain his memories? Regardless, he can hardly contain his excitement. He hasn’t been in the sun in so long, and, perhaps, he can still meet Keizou and Koyuki in this new life.
A part of him feels that this is too beautiful a fate to be granted to a monster like him. But is it possible, that his sins as a demon were erased, if the Slayers won their fight? Then he remembers - he was still a monster, when he had been human. Hakuji takes in a deep breath. He will atone, in this lifetime.
“Mum, Dad, we’re home!”
There was his answer. There was an altar with two tablets waiting for them, incense still smoking. Tsutako presses her palms to her hands and bows, and Hakuji stands next to her, to follow suit. After that, she picks up the groceries to bring to the kitchen, and Hakuji goes to (stand on his tip-toes to) observe the tablets. Not names he recognizes. It is alright.
“Hello, Mum, Dad, of this life” he whispers.
“Hakuji, come wash your hands and help me with the daikon!”
He shuts his eyes, then opens them. “Coming, Nee-san!”
Tsutako is a bride-to-be, which Hakuji finds out and promptly blurts, “is he a nice man?”
His sister, luckily, does not seem to find the question strange. “You ask me that everytime…” She sighs. “Of course he is a nice man, he agreed to take you in as well, remember?”
Hakuji thinks it is quite strange to have suddenly awoken in this life, with memories of a different one, but none from this. Unsure of what answer to give, he simply just nods, and Tsutako puts another fillet of salmon on his plate, patting his hair.
He gets to live in this sun-kissed life for a season. Hakuji thinks, if this is Muzan’s doing, then at least, he can thank the bastard, for the best dream he’s had in a long time.
“Please, hide, don’t say anything-!”
“Sis, that’s a demon!” Hakuji strains against her, but she is strong with the adrenaline of protectiveness, and she shoves him into the closet. A broom by the handle, to stop Hakuji opening it from the inside. He slams his palm (it hurts!), but the doors only rattle.
So, the Demon Slayers have lost and demons still plague the world.
And, he’s in a ten year old’s body, without any of his previous power!
Then he hears it - a woman’s scream, and frantically Hakuji braces himself against the back wall of the closet to kick it viciously. Two, three, four! Times, and the broomstick splinters, so he shoves the door open-
-To a gaping maw, dripping with blood!
“My, my, a little snack!” The demon reaches for him-
Hakuji dives to the floor. He scrambles around the corner and tries to escape the bedroom-
-And trips-
“TSUTAKO!”
-Over his sister’s body!
“NOOO!”
Is she still breathing?! She must be, she must-!
“How touching!” The demon cackles, “Not to worry, I shall reunite you both, in my stomach!”
Lurching, Hakuji quickly dashes out the door, only making it because the demon swipes rather lazily in his direction, like he’s already certain he’s gotten the kill. Tears prick at the corner of his eyes - again, he cannot defend another woman who is important to him.
So, he can only avenge her…!
Heavy panting, disgusting breath, as the demon stalks after him, along the path that Hakuji sprints down.
He just needs to evade the demon, before the sun comes out, right?
Something catches him by the ankle, and he hits the dirt face-first. Hot breath over his shoulder. Hakuji swings a fist, it connects, uselessly. Fear grips him. He’s going to die, at the hands of a useless demon grunt, someone he could have crushed to dust in another life!
“Tell me your Master’s name!” Hakuji snarls. “Say his name, is it Muzan?” (The bastard’s name burns in his throat. “Is Muzan Kibutsuji still alive?!”
There’s a sudden jolt through the demon, and a widening of eyes. “You, little boy human, How do you know that name?” A roar, “You should not speak it so casually!”
The useless demon slayers! Hakuji lets out a wordless cry. They had come so close at that time… “Their failure doesn’t matter, I’ll kill you with my own two hands!”
The demon spits in Hakuji’s face, and it burns like acid. Suddenly the demon’s form convulses, and his eyes flash red - Hakuji is stricken with fear in this defenceless body. “Boy, tell me how you’ve heard that name.”
His heart pounds (he wants to live, live, live!) in his ears, and he snarls, “Get the answer from me yourself, if you fucking dare!” If he’s already put a target on his back, he’ll want to live another day!
The demon’s face splits into a grin. There’s a brief moment as Muzan’s control slips from the thing, that Hakuji can see a flicker of fear cross his eyes, and then he bursts into flames, to spare Hakuji’s life. He rolls away to the embankment of the dirt road, and watches the body burn up, dread curling in his stomach.
Muzan Kibutsuji will be here soon.
“You have to believe me, it was a demon, and everyone in this village has to leave, because the King is coming-!”
Smack!
Hakuji’s hands ball up into fists, shaking with rage at the man - a neighbour - who’s slapped him. “Have you no shame, boy, spouting these delusional lies over your sister’s dead body?!”
“Why you…” Hakuji sets his jaw. “I’m not lying! There really was a demon, and there will be more on the way, if you don’t all evacuate!”
“So where is this ‘demon’,” the policeman makes air quotes, “that you so speak of?”
Hakuji grits his teeth, “it burned in the sun.”
Adults’ derisive laughter. “Ridiculous,” he hears, also, “Nonsense.” Then, “maybe the kid did this heinous act…”
“Who said that?” Hakuji explodes. “Who said that I killed her, how DARE YOU!”
“Are you telling us you had nothing to do with it, look at the way you’re acting!” The policeman makes a grab for him, but Hakuji ducks. The neighbour, too, makes a lunge, and Hakuji punches him in the sternum. His lack of strength is made up for by his technique and accuracy; the man doubles over and retches. Voices raise, more hands emerge - Hakuji evades all of them, they’ll arrest him! He sprints out of the village.
He’ll find someone who believes him - the Demon Slayer Corps!
It’s winter, and he doesn’t know where to start. It’s freezing, too, and Hakuji has not needed to care about the weather in a long, long time. Tsutako always kept him bundled and fed him soups. Why do good people have to die?
The villagers have stopped giving chase the moment Hakuji veered off the worn path and into the forest, which was just as well, given that they likely assumed he would die out here, in only his pyjamas. They might be right. “Those fuckers.” He wraps his arms around himself. How does one begin locating the Demon Slayer Corps? He’s also never needed to worry about that, because they’ve always flocked to him as a, well, demon.
He does not know how long he wanders in a single direction, slowing more and more by the hour, and it would grow much colder soon, once the sun sets…
Then, he’ll really be a sitting duck.
Gathering his embarrassment into his lungs, he raises his head to shout, “Help! Help!”
Silence, dampened by the snow around him.
He keeps going. “Someone! Help!”
A distant return, “Hello?”
“I’m here!” Hakuji yells, picking up his pace. He waves, although he cannot see anything through the snow. His teeth chatters. “I-I’m here! Help!”
From above the trees, a boy emerges and lands a few paces from him. He calls out, “Master! I found a boy!” A crow calls. Hakuji accepts the hand the boy offers, and the two peer at each other closely.
“My Master thought he smelt someone, on this mountain,” the boy answers. Hakuji wrinkles his nose. “Come on, I’ll bring you to him.” He looks up to the sky, like he’s navigating by the sun, but Hakuji soon realizes, he’s following the bird.
Could this boy be a demon slayer…?
“Come, warm yourself by the fire.”
The boy (Sabito’s) Master (Urokodaki) beckons him into a hut and shuts the door, cutting the draft short. The small living space is warm and Hakuji takes the invitation gratefully.
“What were you doing out there?” Urokodaki asks. “Are you lost?”
“No, I ran away,” Hakuji answers. Sabito’s eyes widen with visible surprise, but Urokodaki does not move, which is irritating, because his tengu mask obscures his entire face. Is he curious, upset, happy? Hakuji cannot tell. “Are you going to ask me why?”
“If you wish to tell us,” Urokodaki says, his voice carefully even.
“You both aren’t going to believe me, anyway…” Hakuji chews on his inner cheek, glancing at the crow on the windowsill. Or maybe they might… “My sister was killed by a demon. I know what it was, because-!” I was one. “-It turned to ash, in the sun!”
Hakuji braces himself, but Sabito’s expression remains grave, and Urokodaki does not move. Urokodaki says, “We believe you.”
Sabito says, “We’re demon slayers!” Urokodaki smacks him on the back of the head.
“That’s right… we belong to a secret society dedicated to the eradication of demons. What you just described, creatures of the night, that kill and eat innocents, we have seen, too, with our own eyes. We believe you, child.”
“Okay,” Hakuji says, not very impressed. He already knows that. He folds his arms. “Aren’t you people supposed to be on patrol? Why didn’t you stop that demon that killed my sister?”
Sabito’s eyes widen. “Err… I’m not a real demon slayer yet… I’m just in training. And Master is… retired.”
Hakuji rolls his eyes. “Okay, so can you find me someone useful?”
“Wh- don’t disrespect Master like that!” Sabito puts his hands on his hips. “He may be retired, but he’s still one of the best around! He was the Water Hashira in his prime, which means-” Another smack on the back of the kid’s head. He’s not deterred. “-He was one of the top fighters in his prime!”
“Water Hashira?” Hakuji perks up. He knows one, whose name he’d obtained with great effort. He puts his arms behind his back. “Do you know someone named Tomioka Giyuu?”
Urokodaki observes him under his mask. Sabito fidgets. “No,” Urokodaki finally says. “I’ve never heard of anyone, with that name.”
“Hm?” Hakuji’s lips flatten. “We… are in the Taishou era, right?” It couldn’t be such that so much time had passed that Tomioka’s name was lost to history. So the alternative was that…
Tomioka didn’t exist? Was this not reincarnation? As Hakuji looks over his hands once more, Sabito says, “Is that a character? Did you read a book about demon-slaying?”
“Yes, that must be,” Hakuji simply agrees. “And, you’ll teach me how to slay demons, right?”
Sabito looks to Urokodaki, who asks, “Why do you wish to do that?”
“So I can avenge my sister.” And his fiance… and everyone else. To atone for his past sins.
Urokodaki nods.
Training, in the cold of winter, involves much of observation, and drills. He’s never used a weapon in his past life, so Hakuji is unused to holding a katana by the handle (blades, he’s snapped plenty.) “Only ten water-breathing forms?” He asks, when he hears them described to it. That can’t be right.
“Huh? Ten is a lot!” Sabito bounces on his knees. “There are other arts with only a few forms, you know, in the single digits!”
“But… there are supposed to be eleven.” Hakuji remembers it now, Tomioka Giyuu, dead calm.
“Why eleven, boy?” Urokodaki asks.
Hakuji says lamely, “it feels like a nicer number.” Sabito snorts. Urokodaki whacks his ankles with a wooden stick.
So, he spends winter walking through ten forms for Water Breathing. Although, he still insists on practicing number eleven, even though he can explain none of what he is picturing to Urokodaki and Sabito - how does he say, simply drop your blade to the ground, when an attack is approaching on all sides? Ridiculous! “I bet it was something he read in a light novel,” Sabito teases, and Hakuji just rolls his eyes. He’ll show them, one day.
“...Hah, is this really the kind of training that demon slayers go through…?” Hakuji glares against the sun warming his skin, through his soaked clothes. It’s spring, and he regrets having “moved onto the next stage of training.” What kind of lunatic throws a kid off a waterfall? No wonder this is not something he begins in the winter, or Hakuji would die of hypothermia.
He finally makes his way back up by the late evening, where Urokodaki is waiting with a warm towel, and Sabito is by his side, there to laugh at him.
Hakuji gives him an evil glare. “You should have warned me…”
“Now, where would be the fun in that?” Sabito snickers.
In the following year, Hakuji makes little (read: no) progress on his eleventh form, and gets his hand on a copy of past Hashira over the years. Truth to be told, there really is no mention of any Tomioka Giyuu anywhere. There are other names he recognizes, but disappointingly, not the one he recalls the most vividly.
The second most vividly, too, he cannot find. Flame Hashira… He runs down the list, and his brows furrow. Rengoku is the family name he recognizes, but, Shinjuro? That doesn’t seem right.
Hakuji asks the old man about it. “Do you know this guy?”
Urokodaki reads the line he’s pointing at. “Shinjuro… yes, he’s one of the current active Hashira.”
Sabito, over Hakuji’s shoulder, exclaims, “Do you want to learn Flame Breathing instead? Are you saying Water Breathing isn’t good enough for you?”
“Piss off!” Hakuji shoves him, deeply confused. Active? But he… killed the guy.
…Right?
“What the hell is Final Selection even for…”
“Weren’t you listening?” Sabito huffs at him. “It’s the test we have to pass, to become official Demon Slayers and to join the Corps.” He rattles off details - survive a week on a mountain. Easy. “What about the people that don’t pass?”
“Um…” Sabito rubs his arm. “They die, I think.”
“You think?”
“Master doesn't like to talk about it, but… before us, he’s lost a few students, already.” Sabito looks at the sky. “Not everyone passes. If you can’t survive, then you can’t be a demon slayer.”
Hakuji supposed that was a good enough rule as any. If they couldn’t pass the basic hand-picked demons, there was no way they would last on the field. Most demon slayers die early, anyways, so even as children, there was little point in discerning too much.
Sabito and he attend Final Selection together, and split up. Sabito is determined to kill every demon he comes across, and Hakuji only the strong ones. They run into each other a handful of times on the mountain - Sabito is fast. He has potential, to be great.
On the last night, Hakuji finds him near death, under a morphed demon’s gaze.
“Oi… you…” Hakuji levels his sword between the hulking demons’ eyes. “Shouldn’t be here.” The power level of this demon greatly outclasses the ones typical of the mountain.
“Hakuji-kun!” Sabito struggles, pinned under the claw of the monstrous creature of many hands and faces. “R-run! Ack!”
“I’ve never run from a fight in my life,” Hakuji says. (Well, unless, the sun was up.) “You, demon… who sent you? Tell me your true name.”
“THAT BASTARD, UROKODAKI SAKONJI, SENT ME HERE!” The demon spits. “This boy-” Its hands tighten around Sabito’s ribs, making him splutter again. “-Tells me, you are in the Taisho period. What time is it! Tell me!”
“...But we are.” Hakuji inclines his head. He grins. “What’s wrong? Been here for so long, you’ve lost all sense of time? No need to remember it - I’ll kill you today, so this will be all you need to keep track off!”
An enraged yell. The demon charges him, and Hakuji brings his sword down…
It gets stuck in the demon’s flesh!
“Huh?!” He releases the sword and swings his fist.
“Wah!!!” Sabito yells. With the morphed demon distracted, he extricates himself, and tries to yank Hakuji’s abandoned sword free. “Are you an idiot?!”
“I’m not the one who got myself stuck in the first place!” Hakuji hollers, as the both of them encircle the demon.
Sabito wipes blood trickling down his cheek. “This demon… has a grudge against Sakonji…”
“I see…” Is that why a dozen students of his have already passed? They might add to that number. His fingers flex. “Oi… tell me your name. You’re a worthy opponent (for myself at this age), I’ll remember you.”
The hand demon peers what must be his head at Hakuji as Sabito yells wordlessly in his direction.
“Or better yet…” Hakuji’s grin twists viciously, “Tell me his name.” He beckons his fingers forward, in a come hither. “Mu-zan… Ku-bi-tsu-ji…” The demon’s eyes widen, as do Sabito’s.
“Say it. Say it!”
“No!” The Hand demon skitters away. “How do you know that name?”
“From someone who can say it.” Hakuji laughs. “Say it! Or are you still too weak? Too afraid, despite all your big talk here…”
The demon hisses at him.
“...You’re still trapped on this mountain!”
Water Breathing, First Form:
Forward Surface Slash!
The demon’s head lands on the ground, and Sabito after him, panting heavily, hands trembling as he grips the handle of Hakuji’s nichirin blade. He looks up at Hakuji, his lips parted in surprise, eyelids falling shut. His knees hit the grass first, but Hakuji’s there so Sabito’s head touches his shoulder instead.
“...You did good, lasting that long,” Hakuji praises.
“Hakuji-san, let’s go home!”
Sabito’s hand grows lax, the sword slipping from his grip, as the boy nestles into Hakuji’s shoulder.
Hakuji looks up. The sun is rising.
“Let’s go.”