"Yo Giyu, long time no see!" Tomioka Giyu widened his eyes, staring at a figure he never expected to see again. A fair-skinned teenage boy with a large scar running from the right corner of his mouth to his right ear.
"Sa-sabito?" Giyu, usually calm and collected, stuttered out as he stared at his best friend who was supposed to be dead.
"Yup! I'm glad you still remember my face, Giyu." Sabito smiled a little as they stood on an endless clearing, apparently standing on water.
"What are you doing here?" Giyu asked. Sabito shrugged.
"Oh not much, I'm just here to knock some sense into your lonely ass." Giyu saw Sabito's expression change into a serious one immediately.
"Huh?" Giyu blinked. This was weird. Why would his friend come here just for that? He wondered if this was the work of a demon's blood demon art.
"Look man, first off all, I didn't die so you could shrink. You went to the most cheerful guy I know to a depressed guy who pretends he doesn't want human connection. When I trained..." Sabito placed a hand over his chest as Giyu stared silently.
"When I ate, when I fought, when I lived, I did it with my whole chest man, I gave it my all. You used to be like that too, now you're just... a minimizer. A guy who lowers himself and pretends to be someone he's not. It's annoying, you know that Giyu? And you what's even more annoying?" Giyu widened his eyes a little at the bluntness as Sabito paused before continuing.
"You treat surviving like you cheated." Giyu's eyes widened even more at Sabito taking a jab at his survivor's guilt. "You think honoring the dead means punishing yourself. That's not respect, that's laziness."
"Living well is harder. It means taking the future I don't get and doing something with it. And also, if you're going to keep acting like my ghost is weighing you down, at least ask whether I want to be a chain." Sabito went on, Giyu clenched his fists, not because he was angry, but because Sabito was right.
"You know who else didn't get a choice? Your sister." Giyu froze at the mentioning of his late sister.
"She didn't die so you could spend your life apologizing for breathing. You treat mine and her deaths as something to atone for when you don't need to at all. You insult us by turning our sacrifice into lifelong punishment. What's wrong with you?" Sabito frowned as he walked towards Giyu who looked down, ashamed to meet Sabito's cat like eyes.
"Yaou think she saved you so you could stand alone and miserable while calling it respect? Don't make me laugh man, you hide inside grief because grief doesn't demand forward motion. Living does." Sabito placed a finger on Giyu's chest.
"Living means risking joy, bonds, meaning, and the possibility of losing them again. But isn't that just life? Doesn't that mean being a Demon Slayer is more important, so that you can protect that joy?"
He continued. "Be honest, if Tsutako could see you now, do you really think she'd say, 'Good job, you suffered correctly'? She saved you because she believed your life was worth more than hers in that moment. So did I. Please..." Sabito placed an arm on Giyu's shoulder..
"Stop turning our choices into accidents..." He whispered. Giyu remained silent for a while.
"You want me... to live my life fully?" Giyu questioned. Sabito nodded and smiled.
"Mhm! Live like there's no tomorrow! Be selfish for once! Make some friends! Get a girlfriend! Do whatever! Don't think it as an insult to us, because you not wanting to live is the real insult here. Carry us with you, that's all you have to do."
"I see..." Giyu muttered. "Thank you, Sabito. For opening my eyes again..." He offered a smile, a small one, but it's a start.
"No problem, that's what friends do... Hey, speaking of opening your eyes, the human body can handle more than you think." Sabito revealed vaguely. Giyu tilted his head a little. Did Sabito mean that there's more to a human body than it meets the eye?
"Picture this, with Breathing Styles and Total Concentration Breathing, our body can perform superhuman feats. What if you take that to the next level, do something outside of the Breathing Styles? Make your natural swordsmanship and physical abilities even stronger?" Giyu remained silent at Sabito's rant, rubbing his chin, a thoughtful glint in his eyes.
" You know, our sensei once told us that the Demon Slayers of old, the ones that existed a thousand years ago when the corps was first formed, was so strong that if the Hashira of today faced even one of them, they would be badly defeated. I don't know if it's bull or not, but I think that's something you can work towards." Sabito grinned before it returned to a smile, a sad one.
"And maybe... just maybe... we'd actually have a chance at defeating Kitbusuji Muzan once and for all..." Sabito whispered. Giyu remained silent, staring at Sabito who looked at him once again, full of conviction.
"The future of Japan is at stake. Muzan must die. Do it for me, my friend. If not, then do it for Tsutako..." Giyu widened his eyes as Sabito started fading.
"Find a way Giyu... Even if it means you have to fight the Demon King yourself... Don't wait for a savior... We don't have the time for that anymore..."
Giyu, now back to reality, gasped as he opened his eyes, immediately sitting up from his futon. He looked at his hands, his mind processing what just happened.
Then, his eyes narrowed, now full of conviction. He clenched his fists.
"I will, Sabito. Don't worry..."
...
Giyu stood in front of a boulder he found in the forest, his Nichirin blade in hand. He gripped the handle with both hands before he raised his arms. With a concentrated swing, he easily split the boulder in half. It looked easy for him, which it was, only using about 10% of his strength to do so.
'I notice... that whenever I use more power to swing my sword, it would push out strong gusts of wind. What if...' He thought to himself, gripping his blade tighter as he took a fighting stance. Giyu swung downwards at full power, noticing that the dirt and leaves around him flew away, even the sliced boulder moved from the pressure.
Giyu looked at his blade once again, coming into a realization. His blade displaced the air in ways that affect nearby objects.
"If my blade can slice through air cleanly, then can I launch that cut outward?" And so began Giyu's training montage. As he worked on it, he realized that this new technique he was creating was a little similar to Wind Breathing, but it also wasn't at the same time because the technique looks silent and fluid, not explosive and forward-forceful like Wind Breathing.
'Shinazugawa has no way of claiming that I stole his Breathing Style. The mechanics and philosophy of both breathing styles are different. I simply used my own strengths to my advantage.' Giyu thought after hours of training, feeling like he got the technique down. Looking at the sliced boulder once again, Giyu stood far away where his blade couldn't reach it.
Giyu swung his blade horizontally, with it compressing the air in front of it like a piston, displacing huge amounts of pressure in milliseconds. It expanded outwards, creating a crescent wave of compressed wind, distorting the air around it.
He watched as the dirt and boulder before him was blown back, sliced into a bunch of pieces before the flying slash cut through some trees. Giyu stared at the destruction he caused, his hands still clenching his Nichirin Blade.
"Let's call it a day..."
To be continued.....